CryoNet #32691 - #32693

CryoNet - Fri 9 Jul 2010

    #32691: Brain vitrification where the patient is. [Jonano]
    #32692: "Until Cryonics Do Us Part," by Kerry Howley [MARK PLUS]
    #32693: Rejuve without cryo? [RAMole]

Rate This Digest: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32691%2D32693

Administrivia

To subscribe to CryoNet, send email to:
    [email protected]
with the subject line (not message _body_):
    subscribe
To unsubscribe, use the subject line:
    unsubscribe
To post a message to CryoNet, send your message to:
    [email protected]
from the same address to which you are aubscribed.
Send questions, comments, or feedback to [email protected]
with "CryoNet" or "cryonics" somewhere in the Subject line.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #32691
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 16:19:55 +0200
Subject: Brain vitrification where the patient is.
From: Jonano <[email protected]>

Hi,

I believe brain vitrification should occur where the patient is dying,
not in Alcor Head Quarter.

Some research should be done for that. To see if it's easily possible.

For me, the hottest topics in cryonics are:

1) Personal Alarms
2) Perpetual Assets/Trusts
3) Brain Vitrification on place, and one day, whole body vitrification.

--Jon

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32691

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #32692
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 07:28:03 -0700
Subject: "Until Cryonics Do Us Part," by Kerry Howley
From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/magazine/11cryonics-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32692

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #32693
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 17:25:03 EDT
Subject: Rejuve without cryo?

Hi all:
 
The cryo scenario has always been die, get frozen, get thawed, have brain  
put into new young body. But recent progress in growing organs suggests the  
interesting possibility of skipping all steps but the last. Maybe we can be 
 rejuved while we still live.
 
 
The Wall St Journal just reported researchers have created a functional rat 
 lung from a cadaver-lung-scaffolding plus stem cells. Recently, others 
have  done a beating heart, a liver, bladders, corneas and more. It appears the 
organ  making business is going very well. 
(_http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704227304575326913608488480.html_ 
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704227304575326913608488480.html)  )
 
The cryonics idea is to preserve the brain in the hope it can later be  
restored and put into a new, young healthy body. We always assumed it would be 
a  hundred years before the body was possible. But at the rate they are 
going, they  may be able to give us significant new organs in ten years, and 
maybe a whole  new collection of organs (AKA "a body") in twenty or thirty. 
This is very good  news for cryonics. Indeed, even without cryonics, some of us 
might live to have  our brain plugged into a new body, "from warm to warm".
 

There has been no research in whole-brain transplants, but in the 1950's  
the Russians transplanted a head, which lived for a while. (One dog, two 
heads.  At the time we thought it was pointless and cruel and typical of mad 
communist  scientists, like something out of Gulliver's Travels. But now it's 
more  interesting.) Later someone did a monkey head. Perhaps we could grow a 
new body,  transplant the old head and spinal cord, and get the peripheral 
nerves to  connect, maybe with the help of stem cells.
 
Or maybe we don't need a complete body. Everyone assumes a complete new  
body with an old brain would be youthful, because all the organs would be new. 
 But maybe we need only one or two regrown organs.
 
There is support for this, because long ago researchers attached the  
arteries of young and old rats and the old rats lived about twice as long. They  
even did a two stage experiment where they let the young rat grow old and  
then replaced it with a new young rat -- and, as you might expect, the old 
rat  lived three times as long as usual.  So some substances in the blood of 
the  young rat let the old body be healthy. (Just like a vampire movie -- I 
*knew*  those Twilight kids were on to something! ) So we don't need a new 
body or  organs, just new blood -- or some of its components. (Joining 
bloodstreams is  called "parabiosis", but if you google it don't be put off by the 
fact it's also  used by new-agers for one of their doctrines. I have a paper 
copy of the paper  from the 50's but can't find an online reference.)
 
More recently someone replaced the ovaries of an old rat with those of  a 
young one, and restored youth and longevity. 
(_http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/esoh-otr062810.php_ 
(http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/esoh-otr062810.php)    or see copy below) Hmm... how would this 
work for a man? :-)
 
We might suppose that most of the organs of an old individual work well,  
and there are only a few that put things into the blood. (I.e. muscles,  skin 
and eyes have other functions, while organs like the liver, pancreas and  
thyroid make hormones and do chemistry.)  So if we replaced just one or two  
organs that might have the same effect. (Or if we found the substances and  
injected them.)  This is interesting because they've regrown mouse livers  
(sort-of) already: _http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-154174178.html_ 
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-154174178.html)  Plus,  you can remove part 
of the liver and have it regrow, and maybe the new part acts  young.
 
Assuming that in 5-10 years they can regrow most organs, we might just grow 
 a new liver and transplant it, and rejuvenate the subject. We might never 
need  cryonics at all, nor brain transplants. I never thought about this 
before,  because ten years ago there was no promise of growing organs. I did 
correspond  with some people about parabiosis and blood factors, but whole 
organs seemed  impossible.
 
Alan
 
   

 
 
 
Ovarian  transplantation restores fertility to old mice and also lengthens 
their  lives





 

Rome, Italy: Scientists have discovered that when they transplant ovaries  
from young mice into aging female mice, not only does the procedure make the 
 mice fertile again, but also it rejuvenates their behaviour and increases 
their  lifespan. The question now is: could ovarian transplants in women 
have the same  effect? 
Dr Noriko Kagawa will tell the 26th annual meeting of the European Society 
of  Human Reproduction and Embryology in Rome today (Tuesday) that 
successful  ovarian transplants increased the lifespan of the mice by more than 40%. 
"At  present ovarian transplants are performed with the aim of preserving a 
woman's  fertility after cancer treatment for instance, or of extending her 
reproductive  lifespan. However, the completely unexpected extra benefit of  
fertility-preserving procedures in our mouse studies indicates that there 
is a  possibility that carrying out similar procedures in women could 
lengthen their  lifespans in general," she said. 
A very small number of women in the world have had ovarian transplants, and 
 some have been more successful than others. Dr Kagawa stressed that there 
was  still a lot of research to be carried out before it would be known 
whether  ovarian transplants had similar, rejuvenating effects in women, 
particularly as  it would involve waiting for many years until the patients became 
older. 
Dr Kagawa, Associate Director for Research at the Kato Ladies' Clinic in  
Tokyo (Japan), told the conference that she and her colleagues had conducted 
two  mouse experiments. In the first, both ovaries were removed from young 
female  mice (about 140 days old), and transplanted in to six older mice 
(aged over 525  days) that were too old to be fertile any more. In the second 
experiment, only  one ovary was removed from the young mice (about 170 days 
old) and transplanted  into eight aged mice (over 540 days old). The average 
normal lifespan for this  particular breed of mice (C57BL/6J) is 548 days, 
and they normally reach a mouse  "menopause" at about 525 days old. 
All the mice that received transplants in both experiments became fertile  
again, while control mice that had not received transplants did not. In the  
first experiment the mice resumed normal reproductive cycles that lasted 
for  more than 80 days, and in the second experiment, they lasted for more 
that 130  days. 
Dr Kagawa said: "All the mice in both experiments that had received  
transplants resumed the normal reproductive behaviour of young mice. They showed  
interest in male mice, mated and some had pups. Normally, old mice stay in 
the  corner of the cage and don't move much, but the activity of mice that 
had had  ovarian transplants was transformed into that of younger mice and 
they resumed  quick movements. Furthermore, the lifespan of the mice who 
received young  ovaries was much longer than that of the control mice: the mice 
that had  received two ovaries lived for an average of 915 days, and the mice 
that had  received one ovary, for an average of 877 days. The newest of our 
data show the  life span of mice that received transplants of young ovaries 
was increased by  more than 40%. 
"The results show that transplanted normal ovaries from young mice can  
function in old, infertile mice, making them fertile again, but, in addition,  
extending their lifespan. Women who have ovarian tissue frozen at young 
ages,  perhaps because they are about to embark on cancer treatment, can have 
their  young ovarian tissue transplanted back when they are older. Normally we 
would be  doing this simply to preserve their fertility or to expand their 
reproductive  lifespan. However, our mice experiment suggests that this 
might also improve  overall longevity. Further research has to be conducted 
before we can know  whether or not this is the case." 
Dr Kagawa said it was not known why the ovarian transplant increased the  
lifespan of the mice, but it might be because the transplants were prompting 
the  continuation of normal hormonal functions.  
She and her colleagues have been collaborating for the past six years with 
Dr  Sherman Silber, from St Luke's Hospital, in St Louis, Missouri (USA), 
who has  performed a number of successful ovarian transplants in women, either 
because  they were about to be treated for cancer or because they had not 
yet found the  right partner in life. Their future collaborative research 
will include  investigating whether it is possible for a woman to have a 
transplant using an  ovary that is not her own and with minimal drugs to suppress 
the body's natural  immune response to what it perceives as a "foreign" 
body. They are also looking  at culturing follicles in ovarian tissue in the 
laboratory in order to obtain  mature eggs that can be used for IVF. 
In the meantime, the researchers believe it is very important for doctors 
and  patients to know that women have options when faced with cancer 
treatment that  could destroy their fertility. "We have been successful in getting 
frozen  


 Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32693

----------------------------------------------------------------------

End of CryoNet Digest
*********************