CryoNet #33157 - #33161

CryoNet - Thu 30 Dec 2010

    #33157: Re: Just a thought [David Stodolsky]
    #33158: Cryopreservation since 1990 [Brian Wowk]
    #33159: Non-grandfathered pricing and insurance [mugsim2]
    #33160: Mark Plus on religiosity and sham [Ettinger]
    #33161: Dr. Death and his loving couple arouses indignation [David Stodolsky]

Rate This Digest: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33157%2D33161

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.

Since all CryoNet messages are archived and accessible via WWW,
including search engines, make certain that your postings
reflect how you want the world to see you.

To retrieve past messages, send email to:
    [email protected]
with the message numbers in the subject line.
(Message 0003 describes the advanced syntax.)
You also can retrieve them via the CryoNet web page at URL:
    http://www.cryonet.org/

For administrative or other questions/suggestions, send email
to me at "[email protected]" with "cryonics" in the subject line.
    - Kevin Q. Brown


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

Message #33157
Subject: Re: Just a thought
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 12:23:54 +0100
References: <[email protected]>

On 29 Dec 2010, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:
> 
>> From and to David Stodolsky:
> 
> chris: There are many possible scenarios in which revival from cryopreservation
> will be technically possible but problematic for other reasons, e.g. revival may
> be outlawed due to overpopulation.
> 
> dss: This is fallacious and considering it would be a concession to our
> ideological opponents.
> 
> Reply: Our ideological opponents may get into government, where they aren't
> already.

We don't have to help them by advertising non-existent problems.


dss

David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33157

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

Message #33158
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:21:21 -0800
Subject: Cryopreservation since 1990
From: Brian Wowk <[email protected]>

   Mike Darwin wrote:

> Finally, the quality of cryopreservation most patients  are now receiving
is dismal and has, on average, deteriorated since 1990.

    While personnel presently doing cryonics field work may not have
the same background as Jerry Leaf and Mike Darwin in the 1980s, this
statement is not supportable.  The single greatest change that has
occurred in cryonics since the 1990s is the switch to higher
concentrations of cryoprotectants, which has a dramatic effect on
structural preservation as shown at the bottom of this page

http://www.alcor.org/AboutCryonics/index.html

Acknowledgments go to Mike himself for one of the studies in the 1990s
that showed this.

http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/braincryopreservation1.html

This suppression of ice formation is so beneficial to structural
preservation that it overwhelms any other change in cryonics care that
could have conceivably occurred since that time.  For any change in
field stabilization procedures since 1990 to be so bad that it
counteracts the benefits of these improved cryoprotectant solutions,
it would have to cause the *whole brain* to be perfused with a
cryoprotectant concentration equivalent to less than 3 Molar glycerol.
 By the metrics of observed brain dehydration and venous effluent
concentration, there is no evidence for that in most patients who
receive cryoprotectant perfusion with a vitrification solution.

     Nor are the effects of incomplete perfusion with vitrification
solution as bad as Mike fears.  Attempting to vitrify small tissue
pieces with sub-vitrifiable concentrations of cryoprotectant is very
bad because rapid cooling can cause them to freeze intracellularly.
However human heads are so much larger than tissue pieces that even
when cooling a head at the maximum possible rate, that rate in the
brain is not much faster than the canonical 1 degC per minute that
allows an average cell to dehydrate in response to growing
extracellular ice and thereby avoid intracellular freezing.  In other
words, it appears plausible if not probable that the effect of poor
perfusion or incomplete equilibration with vitrification solution in
human cryopatients is freezing of those tissues in a manner similar to
that seen with low concentration glycerol in the 1980s.  While an
ideal vitrification protocol is equilibration with a vitrifiable
concentration of cryoprotectant followed by cooling as rapidly as
possible to near or below Tg, departures from this in large tissue
masses have less severe consequences than in small ones.

    Cryonics may indeed be "dismal" compared to what it could be if it
were supported by mainstream medicine with all attendant
infrastructure, personnel, and cooperation.  However the quality of
cryopreservation has certainly not deteriorated since 1990, not for
patients recovered sufficiently quickly to receive perfusion with
modern cryoprotectant solutions.

---BW

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33158

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

Message #33159
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:31:00 -0600 (CST)
From: [email protected]
Subject: Non-grandfathered pricing and insurance

Grandfathering prices provides some assurance to new members that they will not need to purchase additional insurance, which is good.  However, because of the cross-subsidy from new members to grandfathered members, it increases the price for new members, which is bad. Further, if growth is slow in the first place, then grandfathering has a significant impact on the price faced by new members and further retards growth.

As Rudy Hoffman will attest, if grandfathering were eliminated (at least prospectively) there are ways for new members to deal with it.  One way is through a paid up addition rider.  Under this rider, a portion of the annual premium is used to purchase a paid up addition that increases the death benefit each year.  The paid up addition can be sized so that the death benefit grows fast enough to beat likely inflation.

Mark Mugler

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33159

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

Message #33160
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:45:46 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Mark Plus on religiosity and sham

The following was posted by Mark Plus on Cold Filter:
_Walking Santa,  Talking Christ 
Why do Americans claim to be more religious than they  are?_ 
(http://www.slate.com/id/2278923/)  

Two in five Americans say they regularly attend religious  services. Upward 
of 90 percent of all Americans believe in God, pollsters  report, and more 
than 70 percent have absolutely no doubt that God exists. The  patron saint 
of Christmas, Americans insist, is the emaciated hero on the Cross,  not the 
obese fellow in the overstuffed costume. 

There is only one  conclusion to draw from these numbers: Americans are 
significantly more  religious than the citizens of other industrialized 
nations. 

Except they  are not. 

Beyond the polls, social scientists have conducted more  rigorous analyses 
of religious behavior. Rather than ask people how often they  attend church, 
the better studies measure what people actually do. The results  are 
surprising. Americans are hardly more religious than people living in other  
industrialized countries. Yet they consistentlyand more or less uniquelywant  
others to believe they are more religious than they really are. 


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

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33160

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

Message #33161
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Subject: Dr. Death and his loving couple arouses indignation
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:27:02 +0100

http://ibyen.dk/kunst/ECE1152522/dr-doed-og-hans-samleje-lig-vaekker-forargelse/

Translation:

<http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=da&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fibyen.dk%2Fkunst%2FECE1152522%2Fdr-doed-og-hans-samleje-lig-vaekker-forargelse%2F>


Translation, including my corrections:


The loving couple are part of the exhibition, which Experimentarium shows next year. The figure will be shown in a closed room. - Photo: Institute for Plastination. - Enlarge image

http://multimedia.pol.dk/archive/00507/WBP_Akt01_002_path_507402a.jpg


Dr. Death and his loving couple arouses indignation

Gunther von Hagens displays his dissection show 'Body Worlds' in Denmark.

By Peter Wivel, Europe Correspondent, Berlin


A Siberian cold has buried eastern Germany in snow, so it's no easy feat to reach Guben, a small town on the banks of the Oder. 

The city's former center lies on the other side of the river in Poland, but it was completely destroyed during the War. With the German part of Guben, it is not much better. Everywhere one sees ruins of an industry that did not survive the GDR's collapse in 1989. 

In this godforsaken place, the German businessman and former anatomy professor Gunther von Hagens has opened the doors to the latest of his three centers for plastination. 

Plastination is a technique by which von Hagens makes the soft parts of dead people's bodies stable. In an unprecedented way, he has created the preconditions by which our body's anatomy can be illustrated for scientists and other interested people. 

30 million visitors 

You have to cross a parking lot for trucks to get to the Center, a partially renovated former factory building. The atmosphere is unadulterated East German. Over the entrance hangs a red square plate with white letters says that says this is the 'Plastinarium'. 

A second, smaller sign on the wall indicates the open hours. Otherwise, it betrays nothing, absolutely nothing, of what awaits the person who enters through the doors. The address on Uferstrasse is certainly not one that can be encountered by chance. 

Nevertheless, it is here, with the German sister institution in Heidelberg, that Gunther von Hagens' sensational exhibition, 'Body Worlds,' goes from strength to strength around the Globe. From Istanbul, where this fall it has been visited by a quarter of a million people, to the Experimentarium in Hellerup, in January. 

It is estimated that 'Body Worlds,' since its World Premiere in Japan 15 years ago, has been seen by more than 30 million visitors - all in countries that belong to modern Western civilization. 

An alternative show, 'Bodies Revealed', created using the same principles as von Hagens', was shown in Copenhagen at Tivoli Gardens two years ago. But neither 'Bodies Revealed' or other competing collections, which also make use of von Hagens' inventions, is based on a donor program, as is von Hagens' collection, and that is an absolute prerequisite for any public anatomical collection. This means that the characters exhibited in these other collections may be from people who have been executed, including in China. 

Dr. Death's Corpse Show

It does not mean that von Hagens' 'Body Worlds' has been beyond reproach. Invective has hailed down from medical colleagues, from lawyers, from newspaper editorialists, from priests and god, and every man. Von Hagens' exhibition is referred to constantly as "Dr. Death's Corpse Show' in the German morning newspapers. 

It would be wrong to say that von Hagens himself has kept a low profile. An example: In 1983, when his preservation technique was still lying on the safe side of anatomical orthodoxy, Catholic clergy in Germany asked von Hagens to plasticize one of the church's relics, a foot bone that stemmed from the sacred and miraculous Hildegard of Bingen (1090 - 1179). 

This task encouraged von Hagens to propose to the Vatican that he plasticize the papal body, immediately after Pope John Paul's death in April 2005, so it could be preserved for posterity. According to von Hagens, negotiations took too much time and the project failed. 

Intercourse between two cadavers 

As an exhibition to enhance von Hagens' provocations, it will no doubt put his competitors to shame. This last object of outrage is a show with different variations of intercourse between two cadavers. 

The variation, which also Experimentarium guests will enjoy, shows two skinned and scrawny human bodies in a sexual intercourse position. Both in Guben and in the Experimentarium this Act is exhibited in a special cubicle. 


Experimentarium director, Asger Hoeg, told Politiken: 

'It is exhibited in a separate chamber. We write that you should be aware that there may be provocative details here. 

Scientific? 

Can't we say that von Hagens staging is unscientific? 

"He does it in a very scientific way - are you crazy! The exhibition is filled with text and details and pictures, which means that one can not help but be interested in reading about it and become wiser" answers Asger Hoeg. 

During the exhibition in the disused factory in Guben, you pass two large dissection rooms. At operating tables, there are human bodies, wrapped in opaque plastic. Visitors can follow, through panoramic windows, the smock-clad young staff working laboriously on the parts of the body that sticks out from under the covering. 

Massacre Preparations 

With glances, which alternate between an opened anatomical atlas and the body part, the young people are working on, they attach the muscles, arteries, and tendons to the cleaned bones, with a maze of small needles, while keeping the product moist with a formalin sprayer.

Photo Here

Gunther von Hagens always appears with soft black hat, so he is confusingly similar to the great late German artist Joseph Beuys. Photo: Institute for Plastination
Enlarge image

Another cleanses intestines removing small fatty lumps. At the end of the process, the designers are busy with the extremely difficult work of fixing the preparation in the desired position. 

The visitors see a sequence of dissections and animations, whose final result is the organs and bodies presented at an exhibition. This happens, for example, in the form of human bodies, which naturally show an 'explosion diagram' of a human skeleton and all the organs and muscles that once kept the person alive. 

Von Hagens presents these anatomical plastinations as a contrast to the dead human bodies medical students must dissect as part of their training. Decomposition of these corpses is blocked by formalin. Students call them, according to von Hagens, 'massacre preparations'. 

>From the inside out 

In an effort to create products that students and others interested in anatomy could identify with more, he got the idea in 1977 of changing the way of preventing the human body from decomposing after death. 

Until then, scientists had preserved organs or limbs to be used for teaching and research in formalin, alcohol, or other liquids. Von Hagens preserves specimens by getting chemicals into the cells and thus stabilizing them from the inside, instead of from the outside. 

His first product was a kidney, which he had preserved in formalin. He removed the body fluid with acetone. The acetone dissolved the fat and was later pulled out of the preparation with a high vacuum and replaced by various synthetic materials, including silicone and epoxy. 

As a Lego toy 

In this process, von Hagens created a complete copy in plastic of the tissue to be preserved. This copy is as indestructible as a Lego toy. It does not rot and it poses no risk of infection. 

Von Hagens patented his inventions in 1978 and later. He managed to cure the silicone and, in a most complicated process, shape the preparation into a sculpture that can best be described as 'science fiction'. 

By the 1990s, his technique became so advanced that even a human body's finest veins could be restored as permanent preparations. Now not only bones, but also tissue to help support the preparation and shape it into natural positions, could be preserved. The previously soft tissue is transformed into a solid plastic. 

He could now show how a human body, deprived of skin, looked in all sorts of positions and situations. When the skin is gone, the figure is completely anonymous. All his preparations have the same facial expressions and are equally slim. That this does not correspond to reality, is evident from the carcasses, his students sit and work with on at the operating tables in Guben. 

The Last Supper 

At his office in Cottbus Strasse in Guben, just on the other side of the railroad line, the local Protestant pastor, Michael Domke, is angered by von Hagens' activities. When von Hagens  opened his Plastinarium here four years ago in the small abandoned town, Domke organized a protest movement, but he is now wiser. 

"We have suspended our activity," he says.'We shall have no more actions, because von Hagens' company leverages our protests to increase its taboo breaking. They are constantly trying to provoke and challenge us. Von Hagens has in particular said that he would like to do 'The Last Supper'. He wants to promote protest. And that is a role we will not play."

But exactly why is Domke opposed to 'Body Worlds'? The priest explains: 

'This is about marketing human bodies. It is bad. We are in a legal gray area. There is legislation about funerals and the use of cadavers for pathological purposes and research. The exhibition serves no scientific purpose. It is about making money. " 

"In my opinion, a human life does not end at death," continues Domke. "The dead have a right that their body is not worked on as a material. It is a very long cultural tradition that goes back further than Christianity. The dead must be buried. Here we see the human corpse as a material one can work. It represents a brutalization. 

Plastinates are educational 

Not surprisingly, Michael Domke's views are not shared by Gunther von Hagens himself. Politiken via e-mail asked the creator of 'Body Worlds' a series of questions. Von Hagens writes in one of his answers: 

'Plastinates shaped in dynamic and athletic positions show the principles of anatomy and physiology in an exceptionally educational manner. The presentation of the sexual act is specially designed for this exhibition. Sex is a part of life. The decisive action which precedes conception is a part of human life '. 

'Plastinates here represent the most human of all human actions in a learning context that gives the visitor a never before seen insight into the human body, procreation biology, and sexuality. With donors' approval, we were able to present this aspect of the human saga' wrote von Hagens. 

Lady Gaga and 'anatomy art' 

Last summer, it emerged that the American pop singer Lady Gaga would use some of von Hagens' plastinates as a backdrop for one of her upcoming shows. Von Hagens explains the cooperation as follows:

"We both demand high aesthetic standards. As the inventor of plastination and creator of genuine aesthetic anatomical teaching preparations, it will be a challenge for me to combine Lady Gaga artistic performances with my scientific preparations, the anatomical plastinates. This combination is what I call 'science art'. " 

It is no coincidence that Gunther von Hagens always appears in clothes that are confusingly similar to those of the great late German artist Joseph Beuys, including soft black hat and a leather vest. Von Hagens believes that he has much in common with Beuys, but unlike him he is not an artist, but an inventor - of  'anatomy art'. 

The exhibition in Guben is designed exactly like the traveling exhibition 'Body Worlds', following plans developed by von Hagens and his wife, Dr. Angelina Whalley. The visitors are gradually  led into the world created by using plastination. Whalley is "Body Worlds'' director and designer. 

Donates the body 

The requirements were approved by an ethics committee, appointed by the California Science Center in 2004. The Committee included theological, ethical, and medical expertise. A bioethics authority, Professor Hans-Martin Sass from the Institute for Cultural Research at Heidelberg University, concluded the same year that all exhibited plastinates were derived from bodies donated for this very purpose. 

Von Hagens writes to Politiken: "Our Institute for Plastination asks our donors specifically, whether they will sign a consent form. They must answer yes or no to the question about their body being used for public exhibition, or whether it may only be used for private medical education'. 

Confirms director Asger Hoeg, Experimentarium: "There is a will from each of the persons whose body will be presented at the exhibition. It shows that the donor bequeaths his body to the exhibition. 

A development 

In the Plastinarium in Guben, before one comes to the rooms with plastinates of entire human bodies, you go through a few halls, where anatomy's history is summarized. Here we see that von Hagens' preservation idea goes back to the Egyptian mummies and reached a provisional climax during dissections up to and during the Enlightenment. 

The German anatomist is not taboo breaking. He represents a step in the development of illustrating the human's physical structure. The next step will undoubtedly be the Network's many opportunities for an interactive graphical representation of our insides. 

Peter Holm-Nielsen, an associate professor and specialist in anatomical pathology at the Institute of Anatomy, Aarhus University, says in an interview on von Hagens' impact, that his show is fantastic.

Transverse and longitudinal slices 

The plastics anatomical structures will not only be an asset in teaching, but also as training material, for example, in specialist courses, which increasingly are sought by clinicians, he says. 

"I can vouch for the anatomical. It is a unique technique," says Holm-Nielsen. "There are many perspectives on it and also some moral issues. But if the story is in order, as is apparent from von Hagens, one can say that it is a great way to see the human organism under conditions that normally can not exist. " 

"Von Hagens has many unusual preparations, both transverse and longitudinal slices of people, including individual organs. Some say that it is to popularize it all and that it is all money and business. But from an anatomic view, it must be said that he makes anatomy much more accessible than the normal preparations do, "said Holm-Nielsen. 

"For self-promotional"

Prof. Dr. Friedrich Paulsen, who is chairman of the Anatomical Society of Berlin, broadly agrees with his Danish colleague. He says to Politiken: 

"Generally speaking, the public is very interested in the anatomical collections. So, from that standpoint, Mr. Gunther von Hagens' has a good collection, although it basically is just plastic. It is visited by many people. " 

"It shows that there is a tremendous need for people to know more about anatomy. Personally, I find, however, von Hagens' exhibition exhibitionistic and too self-promotional."

"You should not make these dead people's bodies as chess players or riders. We should focus directly on the anatomy and structure, without shaping them. But broadly, I would say it's good. It contributes to some extent to making people better educated and getting them to deal more with their own bodies," says Professor Paulsen. 

For Sale 

The Guben collection is also a sales exhibition. Here, professional buyers choose between products, showing everything from human fetuses to smoker's lungs, to hearts whose chambers consist exclusively of the tissues of blood vessels. A special technique has also made it possible for von Hagens to cut the human body in millimeter-thin slices. 

Von Hagens says to Politiken that these products are only sold to "qualified users', i. e. universities, schools, museums, or hospitals that need them for teaching and research purposes. 

In addition, his company manufactures so-called 'anatomy art'. "These are reproductions of slices of both humans and animals," said von Hagens. 'These articles are made for collectors or people outside the medical world with an interest in anatomy'. 

Acquitted 

Besides the aesthetic and psychological resistance to Gunther von Hagens' plastinates, he also faces barriers in our legal culture, our piety, and in our religious traditions. Corpses must be buried, in principle. It is required not only by health authorities, but also by ecclesiastical institutions, for whom body and soul belong together. 

Some German states prohibit long-term public display of corpses, unless it serves a special medical purpose. Von Hagens compares plastinates with "dry corpses", such as Egyptian mummies,  archaeological mummies, and skeletons that have always been exhibited, and even carried in processions through German cities at religious festivals. 

In Germany, there have been attempts to ban 'Body Worlds' using the laws concerning graves and human dignity. But either the indictment has been dropped or von Hagens has been acquitted. 

---------  Fact B ox  --------

Title: Body Worlds
Location: Experimentarium
Address: Tuborg Havnevej in Hellerup
Date: 11 January until 8 August.

Gunther von Hagens

Born in 1945 as Gunther Gerhard Liebchen in the German part of the current Poland. The family fled to Greiz, West of Dresden. He grew up and received his medical training in the GDR.

In 1969, he tried to flee to West Germany and was sentenced to a prison sentence. His former prison cell is displayed in the building in Guben. The Federal Republic bought him free in 1970. Received a Medical doctorate in Heidelberg in 1975.

In 1977 he invented the plastination technique on which he has since taken a number of patents.

Married for the second time in 1992, with a former student, Dr. Angelina Whalley. She is currently the driving force behind the exhibition 'Body Worlds'.

Established the first Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg in 1993. Later followed a similar one in Dalian in China. It prepares especially large animals like elephants and giraffes. In 2006, he opened his center in Guben on the Oder River on the border with Poland.

In 2002, von Hagens performed the first public dissection in 170 years in London.

In 2009, he exhibited for the first time two plastinates having sex. Gunther von Hagens has been visiting professor at Dalian in China and at the Dental Faculty at New York University.

11,000 people have bequeathed him their dead bodies. 792 of them have died.




David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33161

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

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