CryoNet #33183 - #33187
CryoNet <[email protected]> 4 Jan 2011 10:00:01 -0000
| Newsgroups | gmane.culture.science.cryogenics |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
CryoNet - Tue 4 Jan 2011
#33183: Re: Just a thought [David Stodolsky]
#33184: Re: CryoNet #33178 - #33182 [Gary Kline]
#33185: pre-mortem suspension [Jeff Davis]
#33186: Re: [LongevityReport] Ray Kurzweil's water woo [sbharris1]
#33187: Other forums? [marta sandberg]
Rate This Digest: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33183%2D33187
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Message #33183
Subject: Re: Just a thought
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 12:33:10 +0100
References: <[email protected]>
On 3 Jan 2011, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:
>
> David Stodolsky wrote: We don't have to help them [our ideological opponents] by advertising non-existent problems.
>
> I am nobody important and I am flattered that you think something I write on a cryonics forum might affect government policy.
>
> The issue isn't whether overpopulation is an issue, but whether future governments may *think* it is.
Governments don't 'think' anything. Governments follow the dictates of the population, ideally. When you or anyone else promotes the idea of 'overpopulation', it is influencing votes and thereby government policies.
In most cases, the inputs of individuals plays a minor role. However, when government policy is totally at odds with the facts, then even a single person pointing out the contradiction can have a dramatic influence.
dss
David Stodolsky
[email protected] Skype: davidstodolsky
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Message #33184
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 12:15:51 -0800
From: Gary Kline <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33178 - #33182
References: <[email protected]>
On Mon, Jan 03, 2011 at 10:00:02AM -0000, CryoNet wrote:
>
> Message #33179
> From: [email protected]
> Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2011 10:31:33 -0500 (EST)
> Subject: more on mortuaries
>
> I've lost the text, but I recall that Brian Wowk noted some possible
> problems with use of morticians for standby, including availability of equipment.
>
> Those objections do not seem valid to me, for a very simple reason, namely,
> that any company like Suspended Animation would face the same problems,
> and using morticians would in almost all cases be cheaper and quicker and
> more reliable.
>
> As previously noted, when Mae and I lived in Arizona, we trained and
> equipped the local mortuary people, and paid an annual retainer for an annual
> practice run.
>
> I think Brian specifically said that if an actual bedside standby were
> necessary or desirable, maybe lasting several days, this would preclude use of
> mortuary people. Not so. The mortuaries not only often have sizable staffs,
> but they always have potential additional staff through cooperation with
> other morticians in the vicinity.
>
> I acknowledge that some members travel a lot and would find a fixed local
> set-up impractical, but these are in a small minority.
>
> Robert Ettinger
>
This is the biggest hole in the concept on suspending those of
us who realize that the future of technology will almost
certainly be able to revive a human being in from 50 to 250
years. Even if the dying person's family has agreed and even
if the person is in a hospital or nursing home or at home
receiving hospice care--the time of death is key (modulo five or
ten minutes).
Most of us die in a hospital or facility that would allow for
post-mortem prep. But it still has to be an ideal or near-ideal
situation for everything to be done correctly. As the Boomers
age toward their final years this movement will gain currency,
but it isn't far enough along yet from what I've seen out in the
real world.
I do mention cryonics briefly in my ebook and am still working on
essays that promote the concept. I am doing what I can do
because, simply put, I want a second chance. The fact is that
we all have a just a few more miles to go ... .
gary kline
--
Gary Kline [email protected] http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix
Journey Toward the Dawn, E-Book: http://www.thought.org
The 7.97a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org
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Message #33185
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 14:23:03 -0700
Subject: pre-mortem suspension
From: Jeff Davis <[email protected]>
For about tern years I have been wanting to submit this post. For
whatever reasons, I have not.
The whole notion of waiting for a patient's "natural" death before
performing his/her suspension is monstrous, illogical, bizarre,
incomprehensible, and outrageous (Feel free to add your own favorite
characterizations.). The suffering of patient, family, and
care-givers is enabled by this requirement, where it would be
eliminated by pre-mortem suspension. The quality, and with it perhaps
the effectiveness of the suspension is clearly compromised by
"requiring" the patient to deteriorate to the point of death. Add,
then, to the deterioration which leads to "death", the absence of
robust circulation, which might facilitate perfusion, and the
inevitable ischemia arising from the inevitable time lag between
declaration and initiation of cryonic procedures.
If cryonics practice adopted the patient care/patient rights standards
of conventional medicine, then each patient would have the right to
decide the nature and timing of their medical care and what procedures
are to be carried out, and when, so as to maximize the quality of the
outcome. You do recognize that I'm pointing out the most fundamental
of human rights here, don't you?
I acknowledge the legal context which "forces" those currently
providing suspension services -- and those currently seeking those
services -- to wait until "natural death", but that is no excuse for
the entire cryonics community to act as if this were the right and
proper thing to do. Waiting to die before initiating the medical care
you need to save your life is grotesque.
The entire cryonics community -- IN MY VIEW -- should declare
pre-mortem suspension the optimal practice, designate it the standard
of care, and campaign vigorously for the legal right to choose same.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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Message #33186
From: "sbharris1" <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [LongevityReport] Ray Kurzweil's water woo
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 14:42:08 -0800
This pH nonsense was the part of Kurzweil's book and outlook that I criticized him for in 2004, back when this book was just coming out. This nanowater clustering is crap. The pH of unbuffered water means nothing (it's the amount of buffer that counts). Organic acids like citric acid, lactic acid, and even including carbonic acid, have no effect on your body or urine pH when you ingest them, because they're metabolized into CO2 and excreted through the lungs and that's the end of them metabolically and pH-wise (the amount of carbonic acid you get rid of in CO2-form dwarfs everything else by several orders). If you take organic carboxylic (COOH) acids in metal-salt form (example: potassium citrate or lactate) they count as BASES, because they are metabolized down to bicarbonate, which nee
ds buffering with a metal cation (Na+, K+, Mg++, Ca++), in the urine. The same is true if you ingest simple carbonate or bicarbonate salts of these metals. So in that sense, these salts rais
e the pH of urine (making it more basic) and help to counteract the mineral acid load that comes from diet (sodas with phosphoric acid) and from metabolism (phosphoric acid from DNA and RNA breakdown, sulfuric acid from sulfur amino acid metabolism).
Basically, if you eat a mixed diet (including some meat) your urine will be mildly acidic, due to having to get rid of the phosphoric acid and sulfuric acid from your metabolism and diet. There is a grain of truth that phosphoric acid in sodas make this harder, but the easy way to avoid that is not to drink soda. Most of the rest of what you eat provides your body with an acid load that it is well equipped to deal with, without severe consequences. No, you won't get cancer because your urine pH is 4.5.
If you do want to raise the pH of your urine so it's not so acidic (or even is alkaline), there's a moderate amount of evidence that doing this helps your body retain calcium and magnesium, since there's a limit to how acidic your urine can be, and if you exceed a certain mineral acid load, you need to extract basic calcium and magnesium salts from your bones and excrete the mineral acid as partly neutralized acid (this process puts more calcium and magnesium in your urine).
HOWEVER, drinking Kurzweil's silly alkaline water is not going to help you with this, because its buffering capacity is nothing compared to the buffers in your food, or the buffering capacity of just one capsule of a metal salt of an organic acid. This could be sodium bicarbonate, but since a sodium load is not good for everyone, and since potassium organic acid salts are not available in pills (for complicated reasons) that leaves you with magnesium.
If you have insufficient stomach acid, the insoluble magnesium salts (oxide, carbonate, hydroxide) will not affect your pH because they will pass through your digestive system unabsorbed (magnesium needs to be in soluble form to be absorbed). Otherwise (if you have lots of acid), these salts are fine, and will alkalinize your urine (they neutralize stomach acid, and this allows your body to excrete less acid into the urine).
Magnesium chloride is expensive, but it's not a base and has no effect on pH, so Slo-Mag only works as a magnesium supplement, and not a good one at that. Magnesium sulfate is cheap, but also has no pH effect (and is a worse laxative than other salts). Magnesium bicarbonate in theory would work as a base (and it's fairly soluble, even without acid to help) , but I've never seen it as a supplement. Somebody needs to make it.
That leaves just a few compounds like magnesium citrate, which is an excellent urinary alkalinize agent and a pretty good magnesium supplement also. More expensive but just as effective (per mg of total salt) is magnesium lactate, which is also available. A single magnesium organic acid salt pill (for example, a tablet of magnesium citrate) has the buffering power of gallons of Kurzweil's alkalinizing water (and thus a comparatively larger effect on your urine pH), and is far cheaper.
I got an advance copy of _The Singularity is Near_ at the Accelerating Change conference in August 2005 and (http://www.accelerating.org/newsletter/2005/6sep05.html) and I also got to see _Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever_ then, as I recall. I think I even got to see some advance e-copies of some of the health advice before the book was published (I cannot swear to this, but have the idea that I saw all this in time to help fix it). I was horrified at some of the health advice. It wasn't dangerous, but on the other hand, it wasn't providing any health and it was expensive and would do Kurzweil's reputation harm. The acid-base misconceptions and alkaline nanowater nonsense was, of course, in the Fantastic Voyage. I attempted to tell Kurzweil (gently) that this part of his
health advice stuff was baloney, and why. Despite the fact that I have a medical degree (and a B.S. in chemistry also) when I spoke to Kurzweil on these issues at the conference, he paid abs
olutely no attention to what I had to say. I gather that he didn't solicit too many opinions from nephrologists (who really know this stuff), either.
So, here we are. A lot of Kurzweil's good and perfectly valid ideas about the future have been diluted by a new-age approach to some health issues that doesn't even take into account the simple chemistry that we DO know. It doesn't take nanobots to know about citrate metabolism. And Kurzweil is paying the price. The people who notice that his notions of homeopathy and acid-base balance are quackery, will assume the same about the rest of his ideas, which isn't true. But books are judged (unfortunately) by the worst of their judgments, not their best.
Steve Harris, M.D.
----- Original Message -----
From: MARK PLUS
To: [email protected] ; [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2011 6:26 AM
Subject: [LongevityReport] Ray Kurzweil's water woo
Is Ray Kurzweil Into Homeopathy?
By Jonathan Parkinson
http://www.science20.com/predatory_gastropod/ray_kurzweil_homeopathy
--
Mark Plus
Life is short: Freeze hard!
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Message #33187
From: marta sandberg <[email protected]>
Subject: Other forums?
Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 10:53:07 +0800
--_b03915a1-7704-4172-8134-c7cba6de90bf_
Hi anybody,
I wondered if I could tap our collective cryonics knowledge.
I have recently been contacted by a person who is very interested in cryonics and I am trying to convince him to go the extra distance to sign up.
One of his problems is that he feels isolated from other cryonicists. That's why I have suggested he join the CryoNet as well as an Australian cryonics chat line organized by the CAA (Cryonic Association of Australasia).
I'm not recommending Cold Filter or other abrasive groups. He might find them himself eventually, but they give the wrong initial impression of cryonics.
Now comes my request. Can you think of any other chat groups or similar things he should be joining? Does the Venturists have a 'net presence and is it something a potential cryonicists would be interested in anything else.
Thank you.
Long life,
Marta
--_b03915a1-7704-4172-8134-c7cba6de90bf_
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