CryoNet #32665 - #32668

CryoNet - Fri 25 Jun 2010

    #32665: Re: Response to John de Rivaz (Message 32651) [John de Rivaz]
    #32666: Changing the metaphor [Luke Parrish]
    #32667: Retire the destructive scan [Jeff Davis]
    #32668: Re: Comments [David Stodolsky]

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Message #32665
From: "John de Rivaz" <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Response to John de Rivaz (Message 32651)
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:00:40 +0100

Unfortunately, the failure to feed, and the teeth and spectacles errors are 
not rare, although there are political moves to correct them.

The NHS are making the biggest effort to remedy the poor stroke care service 
in the UK, and are opening special centres to provide thrombolysis treatment 
with 24hr access. This is, of course, extremely cost effective, resulting in 
many patients being able to return to their normal lives instead of being 
permanent invalids for the rest of their natural lives. In fact I read about 
this after making my previous post to CryoNet.

I didn't think the poor quality of care in some conventional medicine 
facilities **justifies** poor quality elsewhere, but it does suggest that 
professionalism is neither a panacea nor a guarantee of perfect safety.

Most professionals would argue, limiting their point of argument to the 
procedures and regulations they have learned, that cryonics won't work 
anyway.

Reanimation relies on technologies few people can even imagine. It is quite 
possible that if it occurs it will rely on technologies that no one has 
imagined (or could imagine) at the present point in time, even 
nanotechnology. When cryonics was first written about, the concept of 
nanotechnology did exist (but was called something else) but very few people 
considered it carefully until it was popularised by Drexler. However 
reanimation was considered by other means, such as those proposed by Segall 
and Khan in Forever Young.

Indeed the idea of preserving the dead was considered long before cryonics, 
most notably by Benjamin Franklin. In the 1891 the idea of electroplating a 
dead person to prevent ingress of bacteria was proposed. (It wouldn't have 
worked because decomposition would occur from bacteria already present.) Dr 
Varlot, a surgeon at a major hospital in Paris tried to develop the method 
according to Strange Brains and Genius (Pickover, Plenum 1998)

My point is that once someone is frozen, however badly, some as yet unnamed 
technology **may** be able to revive them into youthful good health. It is 
obviously better to cryopreserve them as well as possible, but if the choice 
is between no cryopreservation at all and a less than optimum 
cryopreservation, then surely the latter is still preferable.

Incidentally, I read that there is a judgement against Johnson
http://www.alcor.org/Library/pdfs/May2010Judgement.pdf
and according to Alcor News he is also in trouble for ignoring it.

-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

Message #32660
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:25:15 +0000 (UTC)
From: Melody Maxim <[email protected]>
Subject: Response to John de Rivaz (Message 32651)
<del>
With all due respect to Mr. de Rivaz, I think it's unproductive to attempt 
to justify the extremely poor quality of care, in cryonics, by remarking on 
mistakes made in conventional medicine. The errors he mentions are fairly 
rare, when compared to the tremendous number of procedures being performed, 
in conventional medicine.
<del> 

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Message #32666
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:39:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Luke Parrish <[email protected]>
Subject: Changing the metaphor

Message #32656
Subject: Re: Brain Preservation Petition
From: David Stodolsky 

> There is no evidence that people will remain rational on chemical 
> fixation. The reason it sells better is because of the difference in price.

> This proposal doesn't really change the metaphor.


On the contrary, the metaphor changes from "frozen caveman" to "brain
in a jar". When considering an uninformed public, the latter leaves less
room for error regarding the fact that advanced science is very much
anticipated as a part of the reanimation process.

Price is an important consideration too, of course. But trust -- the
knowledge that nobody is being scammed or bamboozled -- is far more
importan. In my experience this is the biggest hurdle that cryonics faces.
People immediately jump to the conclusion that we are trying to sell them
(and have sold ourselves) on the "frozen caveman" just so story they see
in science fiction movies which does not remotely match known science,
when in reality cryonics anticipates extreme advances in nanoscience. 

Once they make up their mind that cryonics is a scam or  on that basis,
they are reluctant to move away from the position. Plenty of people have
surface skepticism -- but most lack skepticism of their own skepticism.

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Message #32667
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:44:31 -0700
Subject: Retire the destructive scan
From: Jeff Davis <[email protected]>

Hi guys,

For some time I've had a beef with the notion of the "destructive
scan", so I decided to get it off my chest.  The cryonet community is
nothing if not eccentric, iconoclastic, autodidactic, and diverse, so
I have no doubt that everyone will have their own alternate and
most-certainly-better idea, and move right along without missing a
beat.  So be it.  Here goes.

"Destructive scan" is (as I understand it) a technique for "reading
out" the informational content of a brain -- encoded in synaptic
structures, neuronal action potentials, and perhaps other parametric
features.  For as long as I have heard this notion talked about, the
envisioned protocol has been the layer by layer "reading" and slicing
away of brain tissue.   The theoretical result being the acquisition
of the crucial data accompanied by the complete destruction of the
brain being read.

Stop with the destructive scan nonsense already!

There's no need to destroy the brain to "read" it.  Current scanning
techniques aren't destructive, and year by year they deliver higher
resolution.

Also, current scanners are macroscopic and scan from outside the body.
 Is there anyone who doubts that future scanners will exploit micro-
or nanoscopic agents which will non-traumatically scan the body from
within? The circulatory system -- capillary bed -- provides
comprehensive, fine-grained access to the most remote areas of the
body, and that includes the brain.  And if we're dealing with a cryo
patient, then use bots to clear the bulk perfusate from the
circulatory system and replace it with say LN2 as a heat sink and
navigable liquid medium for the bots.

You all get my point, so when addressing the need for a brain scan,
just leave out the "destructive"" part, will ya?  Please.

Best, Jeff Davis

   "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                           Ray Charles

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Message #32668
Subject: Re: Comments
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:35:07 +0200
References: <[email protected]>

On 24 Jun 2010, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:

> Objections to chemical fixation : there's a huge problem with chemical
> fixation, and it has nothing to do with the technology.  In order for
> cryonics to be further developed and widely accepted, it must be based upon
> scientific principles.  We can't make further improvements if we don't have
> any practical way to evaluate the improvements, and we can't get the medical
> community to accept it if we don't have evidence and reasoned arguments.

I doubt whether acceptance has much, if anything to do with evidence and reasoned arguments.

> 
>  The catch is, we cannot produce the one thing that would silence all doubt
> - a revival of a human being - without technology that is many decades away.

This might silence some doubts, but it wouldn't mean acceptance of cryonics. 


> However, this isn't the end of the story.  If cryonics as a medical
> procedure put the human brain into a state that is demonstrably revivable -
> and then froze it in a way that did not significantly change the molecular
> structure of the brain - we could show using mathematics that all
> significant information needed to reverse the process back a few minutes
> still exists in the frozen brain.  Ultimately, the process could be proven
> mathematically to work.  Frozen patients could have samples removed from
> their brains and scanned, and the data could be used to prove that a
> particular patient was still alive.

I don't see that there is much, if any difference between frozen and plastic here. 

Removing samples from a suspendee might be frowned upon.

> 
>   None of this is possible with chemical fixation, and you cannot
> chemically fix living tissue and then revive it today like you can revive
> living organisms frozen in liquid nitrogen.  You don't really have a way to
> test your work.  It may actually be possible to remove samples from a
> suspended patient and to revive individual cells, producing real proof of
> viability.

Chemical fixation has the advantage that it is cheap and doesn't require constant care to maintain low temperatures. Given the socio-political risk, it could be argued that the plastic preservation is a better bet. 


dss



David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

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