CryoNet #33222 - #33229

CryoNet - Fri 14 Jan 2011

    #33222: URL for Call to Action [M2darwin]
    #33223: Hypertonic saline for brain edema  [M2darwin]
    #33224: digital ghosts, sexual braggadocio comeuppance, and willful i... [un person]
    #33225: New FM-2030 website [MARK PLUS]
    #33226: Re: CryoNet #33214 - #33221 [David Stodolsky]
    #33227: Advancing cryonics [david pizer]
    #33228: Re: Advancing cryonics [Brian Wowk]
    #33229: Intracellular Freezing & Vitrification [M2darwin]

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Message #33222
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 05:42:16 EST
Subject: URL for Call to Action

The URL for the document I posted to the Immortality Institute Forum  is:
 
http://kryodelphi.com/manifesto-v2.3.pdf

Mike  Darwin


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Message #33223
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 06:17:00 EST
Subject: Hypertonic saline for brain edema 

Doug asks about hypertonic saline for cerebral edema in cryopatients. The  
most succinct answer is that we don't know the answer. However, I think I 
can do  a little better than that.
 
As the papers Doug cites indicate, hypertonic sodium chloride (typically  
23% sodium chloride (NaCl): saline) is far superior to anything else for  
controlling cerebral edema from a variety of causes, including traumatic and  
post-ischemic brain injury. It is more effective than mannitol, urea, 
glycerol,  or even, very interestingly, other simple salts of sodium. The same is 
true when  the chloride anion is combined with cations other than sodium. 
There are a  couple of credible theories as to why this strange state of 
affairs should  pertain, but there is very little doubt that hypertonic saline is 
the most  effective acute treatment for cerebral edema - in critically ill 
patients who  are noromothermic, or only very slightly hypothermic. 
 
And the latter is a very important qualification. In cryonics patients, any 
 sodium chloride given will stay in the patient. This is in sharp contrast 
to  what happens in a living, actively metabolizing patient where the excess 
NaCl  will be fairly rapidly excreted via the kidneys. This will not happen 
in  cryonics patients because the induction of profound/ultraprofound 
hypothermia  will abolish active ion transport in the renal tubules. Even if 
blood continues  to flow under adequate pressure, all that will issue from the 
kidneys is an  non-concentrated plasma ultrafiltrate. Thus, most of sodium 
(and chloride) will  remain 'on-board' in the patient.
 
Unfortunately, two of the principal drivers of cellular edema in both  
ongoing cerebral ischemia, and in profound or ultraprofound hypothermia, are  
sodium and chloride. The molecular weight of NaCl is only 58.44, roughly half  
that of glycerol. Both of the ions that comprise sodium chloride transit 
across  the cell membrane with comparative ease. Under normal conditions, 
these ions are  actively pumped out of cells at a considerable cost in energy 
expenditure -  in fact, about 30% of the cell's resting energy requirement is 
spent just on  regulating ion homeostasis (and thus, in large measure, water 
balance). In  theory (and in the laboratory) adding large amounts of 
additional sodium  chloride IN THE ABSENCE OF ACTIVE ION PUMPING results in much 
increased cellular  edema under conditions of deep hypothermia or continuing 
hypoxia or ischemia. 
 
In the event that cryonics stabilization technology evolves to the point  
that extracorporeal support can be virtually guaranteed as a RAPID (30-60 
min)  follow-on to closed chest cardiopulmonary support, hypertonic saline may 
prove  invaluable. Under such conditions, blood washout could be initiated, 
or  hemodilution with concurrent extended moderate hypothermic perfusion 
might be  used. Under such conditions it is possible to 'dial in' any 
electrolyte  concentration deemed desirable by adding a hemofiltration device to the  
extracorporeal circuit.
 
Having said that, under no circumstances would I suggest hypertonic saline  
be used in cryopatients until it has been thoroughly validated in a 
RELEVANT  animal model(s).
 
I hope that provides some perspective on this question. And BTW, Aschwin  
deWolf and I have agonized over just this issue for onto 3 years now - and 
maybe  more. Well over a decade ago, I had the privilege of attending one of 
the first  comprehensive presentations on the clinical use of hypertonic salin
e by Rocha e  Silva - leader in the field. Since that time, I have been 
intrigued, if not  mesmerized by its potential for improving cerebral perfusion 
following ischemia.  If I ever get into the laboratory again, that would be 
one of the many things  I'd like to investigate.
 
Mike Darwin


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Message #33224
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 06:07:59 -0800 (PST)
From: un person <[email protected]>
Subject: digital ghosts, sexual braggadocio comeuppance, and willful i...

M2darwin@aol wrote:
" That kind of undertaking does not become possible until
 some  reasonable 
 (even if quite small) cross section of the cryonics
 community becomes  aware 
 of the actual cost, or the actual damage being done by
 these creeps. Even  
 now, mostly what you will see is "let it run off you like
 water off a duck's  
 back." Of course, that is easy for people who are only
 digital ghosts, to 
 say.  "




Digital ghost? Li'l ol me? Damn straight. I aint giving any of the online freaks anything on me.


M2darwin@aol wrote:
"Let THEM wake up in the morning and find that if
 their current or 
 potential  employers Google them, they will find they
 are called 'fuck pipes,' 
 sexual  deviants, or are labeled as professionally,
 personally, technically and 
 morally  bankrupt."




Well, now, to be fair, back in "the day," you yourself did from time to time brag about your sexual exploits on cryonet. Amirite, amirite, or amirite?




M2darwin@aol wrote:
" So, what was my  reason? Simple, I recently learned
 that some of the most 
 important people in  cryonics were becoming so
 demoralized and beaten down by 
 these broad-based  attacks on cryonics  that they
 were thinking of throwing 
 in the towel. "





"Some of the most important people" in cryonics? I'm guessing you are perhaps referring to Ben Best, who has come into the crosshairs of some of the online miscreants, and maybe Platt as well. I sure hope cryonics isn't riding on the shoulders of just 3 people, and after more than 40 years. The fact that this is even remotely plausible after 40 years, given the potential of the cryonics idea, shows how much of a failure the nerd-centric approach for selling cryonics has been.

And "broad-based  attacks"? Please don't exaggerate. A couple of stupid websites is not a broad-based  attack.

M2darwin@aol wrote:
"Perhaps this fact will put the attacks from
 Maxim, et al.,  
 in a different light, because it should now be apparent
 that without any  
 recourse to governments or courts, these creeps were (and
 arguably still are) 
 on  the verge of depriving us of one of our most
 precious resources; our most 
  competent and fair minded people. And that is only the
 harm we see. I know 
 they  are causing a great deal of additional harm
 because I am starting to 
 get emails  from friends and colleagues in the
 critical care community 
 asking me, "What's  going on?" and worse still, "Is
 any of this stuff true?" 
 That means, inevitably,  that good people are being
 put off of cryonics, and 
 that our credibility and  reputation are suffering.
 That will in turn 
 translate into losses and damage in  every area
 cryonics.  
 That this is  inevitable is not in doubt; Chatsworth
 had exactly this 
 effect, and for the same  reasons in the late 1970s
 and early 1980s - indeed into 
 the mid-1980s. "





Oh please. So all these tens of millions of potential cryonicists calmly and coolly evaluated cryonics and then rejected it because of the chatsworth thing? What a joke. Ya know, when I first came into cryonics, almost 20 years ago, I thought the things that you wrote were brilliant. You and the other leaders in cryonics. Your writings touched my soul and dared me to dream of immortality. Now I see massive gaps in your knowledge. Huge gaps. 

You have failed to grow intellectually. And you are not alone. I see an almost willful ignorance of large areas of human knowledge on the part of cryonicists. Which is really sort of ironic. Because to even have a chance of understanding the value of cryonics, one has to have a broad and general body of knowledge on a scale possessed by few.

But this is typical of modern american culture--people get sucked into a subculture, a quasi-tribe, and they then adhere to the mores, rules and expectations of that subculture. And in cryonics, we have this subculture that willfully ignores certain aspects of human behavior, e.g., pretending that humans in general evaluate cryonics rationally, objectively and consciously. But of course they do not.

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Message #33225
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:31:55 -0700
Subject: New FM-2030 website
From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>

http://www.fm2030.com/

Also an associated YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/FM2030Videos


--
Mark Plus
Life is short: Freeze hard!

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Message #33226
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33214 - #33221
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:41:10 +0100
References: <[email protected]>

On 13 Jan 2011, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:
> 
> 
> I think that people know what cryonics is, and what is more they may even consider it to be a medical, rather than funerary, procedure. 
> 
> However they rely on their medical advisors for medical advice, and when that advice is to accept their eventual demise they take it.
> 

The effect of advice from doctors is so minor it can be considered non-existent according to the Badger results. 
> 
> Religious hypotheses about an after life don't come into it, as they could equally apply to the aforementioned stressful period of medical tests followed by surgery, which could possibly be disabling .
> 
This is an oversimplification. Medical tests and surgery are seen as part of life. Death is seen as unavoidable and attitudes toward it are influenced by religious belief. 

Religiosity has the strongest effect on attitudes toward life-extension technologies according to both the Badger and Australian data


dss


David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

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Message #33227
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:00:38 -0800 (PST)
From: david pizer <[email protected]>
Subject: Advancing cryonics

Stodoloski in a recent post said:  "One reason I mention structural reforms is that the need for high quality publications and discussion forums has long been recognized." 

One of the reasons cryonics is not growing like it did "back then" is because of the more defensive attitude the cryonics service providers (Alcor and to a lesser extent CI) feel they have to take when asked about cryonics by new interested people.

In the old days, the old black and white (and small) "Cryonics" magazine was a joy to receive with exciting articles including some that told the members (& prospective members) what the (real) current problems were and what Alcor was doing to solve them.  We were kept feeling as part of the team (even though we were miles away), through the magazine.

That exciting magazine was a key to the better growth rate cryonics had back then (along with a lot of other things that have changed).  Nowadays there is almost nothing exciting (in a positive way) being conveyed to the cryonics members and prospects.

In those days, Mike Darwin was an exciting, and interesting, writer that kept us all informed and supportive of the "movement."   The "movement" sorely misses that type of action.

David Pizer

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Message #33228
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:44:23 -0800
Subject: Re: Advancing cryonics
From: Brian Wowk <[email protected]>

David Pizer wrote:

>That exciting magazine was a key to the better growth rate cryonics had back
>then (along with a lot of other things that have changed).  Nowadays there is
>almost nothing exciting (in a positive way) being conveyed to the cryonics
>members and prospects.
>
>In those days, Mike Darwin was an exciting, and interesting, writer that kept us
>all informed and supportive of the "movement."   The "movement" sorely misses
>that type of action.

      I agree 100% with that.  The monthly writing in Cryonics
magazine in the 1980s, especially by Mike and followed by private
correspondence with Mike, was an incubator that drew many people into
cryonics who are active in the field today.  They include myself,
Steve Harris, and both present leaders of CI and Alcor.  It also
contributed to a 30% year-over-year annual growth rate over four
years, ten times the present growth rate.  There isn't anyone who can
communicate like that in cryonics today, especially anyone who can
attract and mentor technical people.

      As to my defensiveness, well, Dave, after being repeatedly asked
if I deny beating my wife, yes I've become defensive.  Granted, Mike's
criticisms were not in that league, but coming on the heels of so much
else lately, they felt that way.  (Didn't someone recently say
something about almost nothing positive being conveyed in cryonics
these days?)  Many of Mike's criticisms are well-taken, but others
lacked fair context, and some were factually inaccurate.  For example,
I privately provided Mike with photographic evidence that his belief
that glycerol solutions don't significantly supercool before freezing
was incorrect, which means that his concern about the effects of ice
blockers in Alcor's vitrification solution is not obviously correct.
Also, the listing of claimed case errors didn't disclose that they
were apparently culled from 100 cases over 20 years, including the
time of the Alcor/CryoCare split, and involving people many of whom
are no longer involved in cryonics.  Finally, under Jennifer's watch,
Alcor did become much more aggressive in its standby deployments,
achieving a near 90% standby rate for cryopreservation of members
known to be ill in 2010.  That is comparable to the Darwin/Leaf era,
and at a much higher case volume.  I think she and her team deserve
credit for that.

---BW

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Message #33229
From: [email protected]
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:56:09 EST
Subject: Intracellular Freezing & Vitrification

A couple of weeks ago I made some comments in correspondence that were  
subsequently translated into a posting on Cold Filter.  I'm not a  
cryobiologist, and I've never claimed to be one, but I do try to answer, and to  ask 
questions that I feel confident have a good basis in fact. I don't always  get 
it right, and this is a case in point.
 
A long standing concern of mine has been that it is almost certainly case  
that the 'average' cryonics patient subjected to vitrification protocols 
(Alcor  or CI) are not completely vitrifying. This is very likely to be the 
case because  warm and cold ischemia cause multiple infarcts, or defects in 
circulation that  prevent adequate distribution of the vitrifying agents - in 
this case  cryoprotective chemicals (CPAs) that depress the freezing point of 
the solution  ('colligative' CPAs). What this means in practice is that 
there will be islands  of tissues that will have a considerable amount of CPA 
present, but not enough  to vitrify. A potential problem arises, especially 
when ice growth inhibiting  molecules are also present, in that such tissues 
will tend to supercool far  below their true freezing point, and then 
undergo more or less instantaneous  freezing. When that happens, the ice that 
forms, forms inside the cells, and  that is highly destructive - far more 
destructive than if 'conventional'  extracellular freezing had occurred resulting 
in cellular dehydration and  subsequent vitrification of the intracellular 
compartment.
 
However, theory does not always map reality, and it seems that in the case  
of tissues loaded with very high concentrations of CPA that do undergo 
freezing  at low temperatures, other factors are in play. Brian Wowk was kind 
enough to  take a considerable amount of time to tutor me on this matter. And 
while I  confess that I still do not fully understand the mechanics of what 
is going on,  I do understand enough to realize that the situation is not as 
cut and dried as  I once thought, and that indeed, experiments I did myself 
in collaboration with  others at BioPreservation many years ago have a 
direct bearing on this  problem.
 
In the dog experiments we conducted in the mid and late 1990s the animals  
were perfused with a 7.5 Molar (M) glycerol solution, which has a  
concentration of ~69% w/v glycerol, and then frozen to ~ -90 deg C. They were  then 
warmed up to -6 deg C and reperfused with fixative. What Brian pointed out  
to me is that a 7.5 M solution of glycerol has a melting point of ~ -50 deg  
C.Thus, even if tissues containing 7.5 M glycerol solution nucleated  
perfectly upon passing below their melting point during cooling, all the  ice 
growth would take place at deep subzero temperatures where the mobility of  
water (and cell membrane permeability to water) is putatively low. An added  
complicating factor is that 7.5 M glycerol solutions are virtually certain  to 
supercool well below their thermodynamically ideal freezing point - and  
indeed to do so by tens of degrees. This will be even more true of glycerol  
solutions at these temperatures because of their very high viscosity and  the 
resultant decreased mobility of water in the solution.
 
As Brian points out, if you carefully examine a vial of such a solution  
being slowly cooled to well below its freezing point,  what you  notice first 
is the presence of a few scattered large ice balls in the  solution. These 
are the points in the solution where nucleation and  subsequent ice growth 
first began, and they will typically have formed and begun  growing at between 
-50 deg C and -60 deg C; at the warmest temperatures  that ice
can form in a 7.5 M glycerol solution. These sentinel ice balls  almost 
certainly occur as a result of the presence of bacterial ice  nucleating 
proteins that are present just about everywhere in the environment.  Indeed, one 
species of bacteria, Pseudomonas syringae, is so good at producing  ice 
nucleating proteins that it is actually grown, en masse, and used as an  additive 
to water sprayed through cold air to make artificial snow for skiers.  It 
is marketed as a product called SnoMax.  
 
Brian further notes that these initial ice balls (several millimeters in  
diameter) grow as large as they do because they have lots of time to do so  
during slow cooling. However, what is easy to miss, or at least not to  
understand, is that as the rest of the rest of the 7.5 M glycerol solution is  
further cooled, it will grow cloudy. This cloudiness is due to the  formation 
of millions of microscopic tiny ice balls that refract the light.  Those 
microscopic ice balls were areas in the solution that nucleated  LONG after 
those few big ice balls formed, in fact, tens of degrees C later,  when the 
solution was much more viscous. As a result, those tiny ice balls  couldn't 
grow much before the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the  solution was 
reached, which in the case of 7.5M glycerol, is ~ -100 deg  C. In other words, 
the ice that makes the solution milky which  is most of the ice that will 
form in a 7.5 M glycerol solution - is ice  that formed in a deeply 
supercooled state.This happens even in the absence of  ice blockers because this is 
how concentrated cryoprotectant solutions behave  when cooled slowly to below 
their freezing point. Thus, ice formation in  supercooled solutions in 
cryonics patients is not a new phenomenon that began  with vitrification. As 
Brian points out:
 
"It should also be clear from this that idea of nucleating high molarity  
glycerol solutions externally would not have achieved anything because such  
nucleated ice, like those ice balls in the flask formed near Tm, could only 
have  grown a few millimeters into the solution before cooling was complete. 
The  same goes for any ice that nculeated at higher temepratures inside the 
patients  in poor perfused areas. In parts of the brain that experienced 
good  equilibration with the high concentration solution, the penetration of 
ice from  other
areas would be minimal, and most of the ice that formed in  well-perfused 
areas would be formed under conditions of deep  supercooling. You can bet 
whatever "blasted areas" or ice holes were seen  in your 7.5 Molar 1995 canine 
brains were areas hit by ice that started growing  in a very supercooled 
state."
 
What I take away from this is that ice will still form and grow  
extracellularly under conditions where the colligative CPA concentration is very  high 
and the solution is very viscous. Where nucleation and ice growth occur  
close to the melting point of the solution (Tm), the ice formed will be 'large 
 mass' ice, and likely mechanically disruptive. Where ice forms well below  
Tm, it will likely be in microscopic domains that still begin forming 
(nucleate)  outside of cells and consequently do little damage.
 
Mike Darwin


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