CryoNet #32686 - #32689

CryoNet - Fri 2 Jul 2010

    #32686: I am the Ebola virus of cryonics, be aware ! [Jonano]
    #32687: Cannulation and washout [Keith Henson]
    #32688: The source of "the famous text" [benbest]
    #32689: Response to Steve Harris Message 32685 [Melody Maxim]

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Message #32686
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2010 13:19:06 +0200
Subject: I am the Ebola virus of cryonics, be aware !
From: Jonano <[email protected]>

Here is the famous text:

http://www.cryonics.org/immortalist/november05/ebola.htm

and here is my response:

http://future.wikia.com/wiki/Jonathan_Despres_The_Ebola_Virus_Article_Rebuttal

--Jon

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Message #32687
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2010 08:41:20 -0700
Subject: Cannulation and washout
From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 2:00 AM, "sbharris1" <[email protected]> wrote:

> MY COMMENT: The statement "SA's cannulation procedures should be identical
> to those that have been performed, by vascular surgeons in conventional
> medicine, millions of times  is quite wrong. Cannulation in medicine for
> femoral bypass is done on patients with a good blood pressure, and this is
> true even if the patient is intended to be cooled later. That means the
> arteries are pulsatile and pinkish white, the veins properly blue and fat
> with pressure, and everything looks like an anatomy diagram.
>
> In cryonics, femoral cannulations are considerably more difficult, and are
> not "identical.   There is no good pulse even with the thumper (and the
> surgery cannot be done with the thumper running in any case),

This is really excellent material from Steve.  It can be hard to find
a pulse and locate the vessels even before death.  Marking them with a
Sharpie helps, but we failed to find them on one side and had to
switch to the other once.  Edema makes finding them even harder.

But I wonder about leaving the thumper on.  I have only done two and
watched two others, but my memory is that the thumpers were left on.
They didn't induce enough motion to interfere with the surgery site
(as I recall that is).  The more energetic thumpers we use now might
be a different story.

> and time
> without blood pressure has usually resulted in enough capillary fluid uptake
> that there is little pressure in the vascular system.

There was so little in one washed out patient that inserting the
aortic arch cannula would have obviously introduced air.  I put in the
pressure monitoring line first and bled perfusate from the circulating
loop into the vascular system.  That filled the vascular system up so
there would be a slight outflow while sliding in the aortic arch
cannula.  Is it possible to increase the flow in the meds line to help
fill the vessels?  Would it be worth adding a dye to better see them?

> The major proponent of field femoral washout in cryonics has been myself,
> and the only person who has done it consistently is also myself. Even so, I
> have failed occasionally, and had to use the (much more straightforward)
> carotid/jugular system in the neck for either perfusion or drainage or both,
> if the femorals cannot be used. I recently used such methods to perfuse to
> vitrifiable cryprotectant concentration in the field, so even this can be
> done by these methods.

> Elsewhere, at the main facilities at both Alcor and CI, the standard has
> been perfusion via aortic arch in the chest, with right atrial drainage, as
> in standard bypass. This is easier if one is willing to open the chest, but
> people have been less likely to want to do open-chest procedures in the
> field. It's possible to teach, but it's even more of a mess,

Having done this a few times, I agree.  There is no graceful way.
It's bad enough to do a femoral  washout in someone's living room.

> I think that part of the solution is to teach neck cannulation as a backup
> to femoral cannulation for field washout procedures.

I would like to see how this is done and learn it.

snip

 > It remains unsolved; for the money available, it may continue to
remain at least partly unsolvable.

This is really on target to the practical and economic issues of cryonics..

Keith

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Message #32688
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:35:11 -0400
From: [email protected]
Subject: The source of "the famous text"

  Jonano has been informed many times by many
people that the Ebola virus piece was simply
a collection of CryoNet messages compiled
by LONG LIFE (formerly THE IMMORTALIST)
editor John Bull:

http://www.cryonics.org/immortalist/november05/ebola.htm

http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=27135
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=27138
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=27108
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=27112
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=27296
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=27154
http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=27169

Jon blames the Cryonics Institute for this piece,
but the Immortalist Society and its magazine
are actually separate organizations (although
IS material is published on the CI website).
The Immortalist Society is responsible for
what is published in its magazine, not the
Cryonics Institute (although both CI and ACS
have regular columns, and cryonics news is
a major part of the content).

Even if the original piece as published in
THE IMMORTALIST were removed from the archives
of that magazine, there would still be other
websites retaining the material:

http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Sci/sci.cryonics/2005-11/msg00002.html


http://osdir.com/ml/culture.science.cryogenics/2005-09/msg00026.html


    -- Ben Best

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Message #32689
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2010 01:43:50 +0000 (UTC)
From: Melody Maxim <[email protected]>
Subject: Response to Steve Harris Message 32685

X-Message-Number: 32685
From: "sbharris1" < [email protected] >
References: < [email protected] >
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32684
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:40:50 -0700


STEVE HARRIS: >>Cannulation in medicine for femoral bypass is done on patients with a good blood pressure, and this is true even if the patient is intended to be cooled later. That means the arteries are pulsatile and pinkish white, the veins properly blue and fat with pressure, and everything looks like an anatomy diagram."<<

MY RESPONSE: Does Harris really believe femoral cannulations, in conventional medicine, are always performed on patients with "good blood pressure"? If so, he needs to think again. Patients with "a good blood pressure" are usually cannulated via the right atrium and aorta. Femoral cannulations are usually reserved for urgent cases (such as patients undergoing cardiac arrest, who have little-to-no pressure), or other special cases (such as "re-do's"). Many times, I've seen patients who were either brought to the cath lab already in cardiac arrest, or who suffered cardiac arrest while undergoing procedures in the cath lab. I've witnessed these patients undergo femoral cannulation, so they could be placed on a CPS device, (a portable perfusion circuit). The professionals who performed those c
 annulations, (on patients with little-to-no blood pressure), performed them skillfully and within minutes, unlike SA's Catherine Baldwin, who recently hacked away on CI-95, for hours, without being able to accomplish any type of cannulation. (Luckily, a funeral director came along, and did it for her.) If Harris had to testify in a courtroom, or in front of a regulatory agency, medical experts would dismiss his claims that vascular surgeons would not be able to locate the femoral artery and vein, more easily than anyone currently working in cryonics, (even in a cadaver).

STEVE HARRIS: >>In cryonics, femoral cannulations are considerably more difficult...In such circumstances it's surprisingly hard to tell veins from arteries. I think most surgeons would be shocked, but I doubt that many vascular surgeons have ever tried it...<<

MY RESPONSE: Is Harris' argument that, because femoral cannulations on patients with no blood pressure are "considerably more difficult," they should be performed by laymen who have received minimal training on pigs and/or dogs, (and maybe a few cryonics cases), rather than by competent medical professionals who have competently performed hundreds, or maybe thousands, of vascular cannulations? That's ridiculous. Harris may have trouble telling veins from arteries, but most vascular surgeons, (and other professionals, who may assist them, such as physician assistants), would not, even under the worst circumstances. Most vascular surgeons started with dissecting out the femoral vessels of cadavers, in med school, and cardiovascular surgeons are likely to have many experiences cannulating pat
 ients with little-to-no blood pressure, over the course of their careers.

It's beyond ridiculous for the leaders of cryonics organizations to keep defending sending unqualified persons to perform critical medical procedures. The three people Platt sent to the June 2007 ( CI-81) case, (something I wrote about, in the post Harris is responding to), were not only totally lacking in medical training or experience, they had no cryonics experience, and as far as I could tell none of them had any real interest in cryonics, other than their paychecks. If it had not been for medical professionals leaving IV lines in place, they would not have been able to even administer their medications, and if it were not for a helpful funeral director, they would not have been able to perform their washout procedure, (something I believe would have been a GOOD thing, since SA's case 
 report and addendum strongly indicate CI-81 (a stroke victim) was subjected to inappropriate perfusion pressures). Again, I ask, with Kent and Platt's combined 47+ years of cryonics efforts, (and the input of numerous "experts," like Harris), was that the best they could do??

I'm not going to take the time to dissect and refute the rest of Harris' post, line by line, but I think it's important to examine Harris' possible motivations for defending Suspended Animation, and to endorse laypersons performing medical procedures. We can't be sure who is working with Harris, at CCR, since they don't maintain a website, or keep the cryonics community informed about their activities. When I was working at SA, (where CCR was jokingly referred to as the "Critical Care Relatives"), I was told their four staff members were Steve Harris, his wife, his mother-in-law, and the mother-in-law's significant other. According to LEF's Form 990's, Critical Care Rearch (CCR) received $984,500 in 2008; $840,000 in 2007; $770,000 in 2006; $700,000 in 2005; $911,500 in 2004; $569,917 in 2
 003; and $770,000 in 2002. That's a total in excess of $5.5M, over the course of seven years, and I think it would be safe to assume at least half of that went toward the salaries (along with associated taxes and benefits), of CCR's staff. I haven't seen anything very impressive come out of CCR, considering the time and money that has been invested, there, and I have concerns, regarding their dog experiments. (See links, below.)

When I first started criticizing certain cryonics activities, (specifically those at SA, where I had been an employee), Steve Harris, (who didn't even know me), posted numerous blatant lies about me, and my work at SA, (which he had no firsthand knowledge of), on the Internet. (Both SA and CCR are funded by LEF.) When I asked him to apologize, he responded with, "So, sue me, baby." He didn't apologize, but Charles Platt who was working with him at the time, (and who was the obvious source of the lies posted by Harris), did. Approximately two years later, after the Johnson book was published, and Alcor needed to appear in a more positive light, Harris did issue an apology, claiming he thought he had already done so. In his apology, he stated he wanted to know the truth about the secondhand 
 lies he had posted, so I offered to enlighten him, if he would email me, privately. He never bothered to contact me, so I tend to think his apology was insincere, especially considering the timing.

According to former Riverside County Coroner's Investigator, Alan Kunzman, Steve Harris is a physician who signed multiple copies of a death certificate for Dora Kent, which falsely stated she died in a residence, when she died at an Alcor facility, in an industrial park. Kunzman maintains that Harris admitted to knowing the documents he signed were inaccurate, and only defended himself by claiming he didn't bother to read the documents, stating he had just signed what he was asked to sign, (presumably by someone associated with Alcor).

Harris, and others, have claimed the 200mg dose of propofol, in Alcor and SA's medications protocols, is for the purpose of "keeping people dead." 200mg of propofol isn't enough to keep an average-sized person unconscious, for more than a few minutes, much less dead. When I pointed this out, Harris publicly recommended SA and Alcor include an additional dose of propofol, to administer to people undergoing stabilization procedures who showed "signs of awareness." Signs of awareness are signs of life, and I believe that administering a dose of propofol to such a person, and then continuing to cool them to a point, where they will stay dead, probably meets the definition of an illegal euthanasia. It was extremely foolish of Steve Harris, (Alcor's Chief Medical Advisor), to make such a recomme
 ndation, especially given past accusations, made against Alcor. It's also inappropriate for Harris to be willing to place such a drug in the hands of laypersons who, (as far as he knows), could have issues with substance abuse, or be engaged in criminal activities. Most medical professionals working in hospitals would never be allowed to have access to propofol, yet Harris doesn't seem to have any qualms about making it available to laypersons he knows little-to-nothing about.

STEVE HARRIS: >>Nobody could afford (medical professionals for cryonics standby, stabilization and transport), even if they could find three surgeons willing to travel for a week at a moment's notice, and then sit at some hotel doing shiftwork someplace else. SA has had exactly that problem. It remains unsolved; for the money available, it may continue to remain at least partly unsolvable.<<

That's absurd. No one needs to send three surgeons to a cryonics stabilization procedure; they only need one person capable of competently performing a cannulation, one person capable of safely performing perfusion, and a couple assistants. Out of the thousands of competent medical professionals capable of performing vascular cannulations, I'm sure there are people who would love to have one of those LEF-funded salaries and benefits packages, and who wouldn't mind living in sunny Florida, (especially considering they would probably only get called out for a few cases a year). CCR's budget, alone, would be able to support the competent professionals I've been suggesting. Combine that with SA's budget, and cryonics organizations could have quite a few competent care providers, (maybe two wor
 king full-time, (taking on administrative duties), and quite a few "semi-retirees" on call). I think Harris, and some of his peers, have a vested interest in making sure most of the people they advise are laymen, (people who won't know to object to any of the equipment, protocols, or research projects). Without a doubt, he and some of his peers have played roles in establishing the poor public image of cryonics.

Please see the links, below.

Melody Maxim


Some of Steve Harris' Internet posts: http://cryomedical.blogspot.com/2008/03/sas-new-director.html

Steve Harris on use of propofol: http://cryomedical.blogspot.com/2010/03/steve-harris-md-drops-bombshell-on-cold.html

CCR's dog experiments: http://cryomedical.blogspot.com/2009/03/critical-care-research-incs-ccrs-dogs.html

CCR's lack of progress in liquid ventilation: http://cryomedical.blogspot.com/2007/12/progress-or-empty-promises.html

Harris et. al.'s sloppy patent work: http://cryomedical.blogspot.com/2010/03/patents-in-cryonics.html

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