X-Message-Number: 12019 From: Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 14:30:15 EDT Subject: Just The Facts Mr Charles Platt -- whose happy voice and gigglingly bright optimism has for too long been missed on Cryonet -- decided to review a recent post of mine, and so waylaid it in the back alley of sci.cryonics. To lighten the hearts of those of us who have missed the twinkle in his dimpled cheeks, I wish to post my reply in both locales. Mr Platt began by upbraiding me on my understanding of drowning. He wrote: << First, coldwater drowning survivors are mostly children whose ratio of surface area to volume is high.>> This is the 'some success = no success' approach I so often see applied in cryo-debate. 'Mostly' children survive -- ie some adults survive. What does this refute? Or is he claiming that no adult ever survived coldwater drowning? <<Second, the processes of ischemic injury to the brain are extremely complex and not yet fully understood.>> Therefore -- what? This statement puzzled me too. Ischemia is complex, therefore everyone who drowns is irretrievably brain-dead? Well -- that's, um, not so. <<Third, under laboratory conditions which are NOT generally available to dying patients (certainly not those who are signed up in CI!) widely respected researchers such as Peter Safar have had limited success (to put it politely) resuscitating animals by applying external cooling.>> Do I take this to mean that Alcor and CryoCare members die exclusively in laboratory settings? I compliment them on their timing! I cannot compliment Mr Platt on repeating the above argumentative quirk in his subtle use of the adjective, 'limited', however. He might quite as truthfully have said, "Widely respected researchers such as Peter Safar have had some success resuscitating animals by applying external cooling!" Ah, but that might have given some poor damned soul in the cryonics movement hope. Ugh. And here too I feel to see his overall point. Is he saying that cooling doesn't retard ischemia? Strange position for a cryonicist. What's he suggest instead? Warming? <<READ SOME BOOKS OR PAPERS ON THIS TOPIC.>> Now Charles -- don't shout. You're a prose stylist at Wired, remember. Caps indeed. Did Goethe use caps? If you know of a good book or paper, just calm down and give the folks its title. We'll get to it. <<External cooling is an extremely slow and inefficient method of reducing body temperature. To imply that ischemic injury can be prevented by the external application of cold water is grossly simplistic and misleading, and suggests that you are at best uninformed, at worst deceptive.>> To imply that I made the flat-out stupid statement that "Ischemic injury can be prevented by the external application of cold water!", which I did not, and which wouldn't 'deceive' a five-year-old, much less the doctors, neurologists, and biochemists who read Cryonet is grossly simplistic and misleading in itself. And to further suggest that I am 'at best uninformed, at worst deceptive' -- that's a trifle over-harsh, don't you think? (Deceptive! As if I have really nothing better to do with my time than pull the wool over the eyes of the simple-minded cryobiologists and nurses and neuroscientists who poke through this list -- not to mention the trusting puppy-like gaze of Charles Platt himself!) I don't agree with you, Charles, for the reasons stated above, but I don't call you ignorant or or a willful liar because you don't agree with me. Give me the benefit of the doubt, eh? <<Positivism is only useful if you apply it sensibly. After you read your piece of paper every day, what do you do then? If your answer is, "I embark on a study program to educate myself in relevant fields, with the possible long-term goal of becoming a cryobiologist," I would have great respect for your initiative.>> My answer is, "Embark on a study program to educate yourself in relevant fields, with the possible long-term goal of becoming a cryobiologist." <<If, on the other hand, your positivism is merely going to lead you to make more long Usenet posts, I feel rather differently about it.>> Well, as the saying goes, if I had more time, I'd write a short post. Since I don't, I guess all I can do is, "Embark on a study program to educate myself in relevant fields, with the possible long-term goal of becoming a Usenetologist." But, of course, I won't. To assert that, since there are reasons for optimism about cryonic revival, everyone should immediately chuck one's entire career and go into cryobiology and shun Usenet -- well, that's silly. Charles can no doubt come up with several plausible reasons why man will land on Mars one day. Does he really need to chuck his Wired press pass and take a decade of exobiology at Berkeley to check 'em all out in micro-detail? I think not. <<You are misquoting Fahy, who (as a good scientist) has always been very cautious about any endorsement of human cryopreservation.>> I do not believe I quoted Dr Fahy at all -- much as I would love to, for I consider his court declaration on cryonics to be one of the great papers of the entire science. If his thinking has undergone a 180 degree turn and you have a fresh quotation from the man stating that, "ahhh, cryonics is a lotta bunk and it'll never work," let's see it. <<Drexler (whom I happen to admire) is still regarded as a fringe scientist, at best. No biologist that I know of takes him (or Merkle) seriously. Minksy is widely respected, but only in his field of expertise, which of course has nothing to do with biology.>> (Prize-winning MIT professor K. Eric Brexler is not merely 'fringe', note, but fringe 'at best'! I'm glad Mr Platt didn't do 'at worst'. There may be youthful virgins among the Cryonet readership.) To enlighten Mr Platt as to a biologist, however, I believe Ed Regis' book, Nano!, contains the names of several. To mention only one: William de Grado, whose du Pont group designed -- and built -- the world's first artificial protein in the winter of 87/88. De Grado specifically took Drexler's 'inverted approach' to reach a solution, and cited "Drexler 81; Pablo 83" in his paper. So now Mr Platt knows one biologist who takes Eric Drexler seriously -- and indeed made biological history -- confirming some of Drexler's ideas on the subject. As for 'Minksy'-- that's Marvin Minksy, folks -- to write a careless statement that seems to imply that Marvin Minsky, who is generally regarded at the father of artificial intelligence and whose spent his entire career studying and trying to imitate the cognitive functions of the human mind, knows nothing about the human brain, is ludicrous. Go read some books and papers yourself, Charles, starting with 'The Society Of Mind', and come back wiser and chastened. > Because life is nicer than death. Because detailed scenarios about > vitrification and cell repair are gaining general acceptance. Where? Citations, please. Certainly. 1. 'Life is nicer than death' -- Big Bird: Sesame Street (Jn, '91) 2. Vitrification. See Charles Platt's article on the latest 21CM conference -- available at the Cryonics Institute website, along with a link to CryoCare. If it was your contention in that article that 21CM's "breakthroughs", unquote, mean that vitrification is undergoing regress, not progress, and got general laughter rather than a receptive hearing from the medical professionals in attendance, I must be reading wrong. 3. As for cell repair, I believe that Dr Richard Smaller, 1996 Nobel Prize Winner for Chemistry, stated that he expected them to be in operation by 2010. Email Stockholm. <<Alcor has had a pamphlet written specifically for Christians, for at least ten years. It doesn't work any better than any other cryonics literature.>> Gee, I love the hidden assumption there -- did you catch it, everyone? -- that all cryonics literature doesn't work, period. Curious comment from a gentleman who's not only written some of it, but some of the very best examples of it. But, to look at it more closely: there are (according to the 1997 Information Please Almanac -- I want to get the citations down; this guy is a real stickler for details, folks -- )249,277,000 avowed Christians in North America. Now Alcor's web site does not boast 249,277,000 hits -- or any hits, so far as I know, since they still don't have a web counter. Ergo I deduce from this that most Christians haven't read this pamphlet and been thunderstruck by the light gleaming from the forehead of Alcor's resident theologian. True, in remaining unread, it does indeed resemble most cryonics pamphlets. Perhaps Alcor should try Direct Mail, or maybe just let people have it or download it for free, like CI does with its informational material. <<Before complaining that something has not been tried and does not exist, I suggest you should make elementary efforts to verify your supposition.>> If, Charles, you are claiming that the cryonics movement has gone out of its way to ingratiate itself to people holding religious views, you must be planning a return to science fiction. Alcor has written one (1) pamphlet. Which will cost the Christian Fundamentalist who miraculously stumbles onto a copy of 'Cryonics' in his pew in the Ozarks a two buck fee to mail-order. And you ask me to make 'elementary efforts to verify' why the 700 Club isn't breaking down Alcor's doors? Give me a break! <> Actually, the feeling's mutual. The Silicon Man was quite well done. <> Oh boy. Caps again. Charles! Take three deep breaths, put the ol' Mozart adagios on the CD player, and sit down and have a sip of port. << we run the risk of losing the tiny amount of credibility we have gained in the past thirty years.>> Well, to judge by your apparent estimates of it, that amount is not so much tiny but zero. Small risk there! But really: 'to ANY DEGREE': the notion that if I say, what, that CryoCare has 80 members when the number is really 79, then thirty years of all our blood, sweat, and tears will be reduced to Pompeiian dust in a millisecond -- well, it's ridiculous. I do not think our argument is about fact at all. (If it were, I expect Mr Platt's alert eye would have caught it out at once, and his tongue mashed me to a pulp for it, and rightly so. I'm not omniscient, and if I make a mis-statement, I will thank the guy who informs me of it publicly.) No, we agree on the facts: ischemia is bad, cooling helps, research is desirable, nano-techies assert this, mind uploaders that, etc. It's all out there, and it's all part of the public record. What we are discussing is not 'fact' -- that hypnotic abstraction -- but rather the interpretation of those facts, and the actions to be taken on that basis. The pure fact is only that there are intelligent, learned, informed, qualified scholarly people who think we have very good grounds indeed for thinking that someone placed in cryonics suspension today -- even after long periods of ischemia and even taken into consideration freezing damage -- has a very good chance of survival and restoration. I don't see anything particularly deceptive about pointing that out, or suggesting that people go read their books and papers and see for themselves. And I don't see how we 'risk our credibility' by pointing out that there are reasons for hope as well as despair. I mean -- there are! It's not like the cryonics scene today is one of utter and irrevocable blackness. Thirty years ago, vitrification, nano-scale engineering, brain cell regeneration, cloning, were sci-fi absurdities. Today they're *here*. How are we 'risking our credibility' by stating the fact? "Dr K. Eric Drexler, PhD, is MIT professor of molecular nanotechnology," is a fact; Drexler is 'fringe' is an (highly debatable) evaluation, and 'no biologist respects him' is simply a patently silly statement -- what, not *one* biologist *anywhere*? Have we polled the whole bunch? Or are we read minders now too? It's this latter of sloppy misstatement that 'risks credibility'. <<Also, any organization that can be accused of offering "false hope" to people near death runs the risk of being sued by relatives.>> Bad news for the Roman Catholic Church! Maybe we should send the Pope a letter. (Hey, and stick in that Alcor pamphlet & a $2 invoice, eh? You think Alcor takes Italian lire?) << This is not a remote possibility. Such suits have been filed. >> Asinine lawsuits have always been filed. This is why I take a small bit of comfort in the fact that five of the nine Directors of the Cryonics Institute have law degrees. I note that no cryonics provider has ever been successfully sued on that basis, nor has any cryonics member been ass enough to claim an absolute guarantee. I also note that a scrupulous avoidance of false hope doesn't entail offering no hope at all, much less going out of our way to belittle every conceivable possibility of hope, much less smear every 'fringe' PhD profiled by Time Magazine who flatly states that we have very good reason to hope. <<Maybe we should ask the Cryonics Institute to give us a more accurate estimate of its membership. Since it signs people for life, in exchange for a one-time payment, it has absolutely no way of knowing how many of its members still actively desire its services.>> I could ask, how many CryoCare members still 'actively desire' *its* services? But since Charles Platt can't read CC minds any more than I can read CI ones, the point's moot. The rest of his statement isn't, though: it's characterization of CI membership policy lacks the -- dare I say -- 'elementary efforts to verify supposition' that one of my favorite writer insists upon -- in others. Life membership isn't unique with CI. Alcor too has a Life Membership plan, does it not? (Come, let's gore the whole herd while we're at it, eh, Charles?) In point of fact CI has an alternative membership payment option which allows members to pay annual -- indeed quarterly -- dues. Which is one way CI knows they're there. The other way, of course, is by phone, mail, email, etc. CI has all its members' addresses (held in confidence, of course) and sends them holiday greetings, questionnaires, asks for suggestions, and so on. Or does Mr Platt think that CI signs up members without asking their address or phone number? Wrong there too. Check out the CI membership form after you re-read The Society Of Mind. << In the past, CI has been reluctant to give any firm estimate of its membership, partly for this reason.>> Which doesn't exist. <<If you have actual figures, I'd love to see them.>> 226. And rising. How's CryoCare doing? <<Also, I would be curious to know if you have informed your new members of the precise details of the treatment they are likely to receive after legal death, and the concomitant damage which is likely to occur.>> Sure. CI not only has several pages talking about its policies and procedures, plus posted research by Yuri Piguchin (who's with 21CM now, or so I believe). It also has links to every other cryonics services provider, to BPI's tech briefs, to cryobiology pages, to ACS, Alcor, Trans Time and CryoCare, indeed to the very Cryonet archives where Charles Platt's own corrosive commentary can be singled out by author, viewed, read, and assessed by the visitor to www.cryonics.org at length. CI hides nothing critical of it from its members or the public -- even when that criticism borders on the malicious or ill-informed or is just plain wrong, as are Mr Platt's remarks about lifetime membership above. However, to depart for a moment from the cheesy (but at least laughable and easily refuted) implication that CI is concealing anything, Charles has raised an important issue here. What he is referring to (O first-time readers) is a very evocatively phrased distinction he once made between what he called 'techno-radicals' and 'bio-conservatives'. Bio-conservatives, to paraphrase Mr Platt, feel that you have to do as little damage to a person as possible when performing a cryonics suspension. The less damage going in, the less damage to repair afterwards. Techno-radicals, by contrast, note that even the most ultra-sophisticated cutting-edge procedures produces damage on a scale that's not only sickening to contemplate but irreparable by any currently existing means; but not (thank God) irreparable in the light of certain technological research programmes and developments, most notably nanotechnology. Indeed scientists in that field have long argued that the ischemic and freezing damage done to cells even in crude freezing cases not only is repairable, but that the window of time allowing for such repair may be considerably longer than formerly thought. (Interested readers are directed to Ralph Merkle's Molecular Repair of the Brain essay at his Xerox PARC website.) Now Mr Platt is a bio-Conservative of positively Reaganesque purity; whereas CI, he notes with a shudder, seems to be in the techno-radical camp. He is -- for once -- right. The Cryonics Institute has taken a look at things with precisely the bitter realism that Mr Platt has long espoused, and it's noted clearly that all the painstaking procedures in the world won't prevent immense damage from happening to a cryonics patient; it has further observed that the high-ticket bells-and-whistles medical-esque approach of the bio-conservatives doesn't mean squat if the member of such a 'conservative' organization dies alone and undergoes hours or days of lengthy ischemia, or dies in an accident and faces mandatory legal autopsy, or indeed dies in a fire or of a gunshot to the head or departs in any one of the usual thousand-and-one ways which can make the bio-conservative approach a sad joke. Someone dying today faces the strong possibility of severe, severe ischemic damage. Period. Bearing all this in mind -- and bearing in mind too that scientific breakthroughs follow money, and that the nanotechnological ideas of 'fringe' MIT Professor Eric Drexler have led to an eighty billion dollar research effort funded by everyone from Kodak, Xerox, the National Institute of Health, the Army, Navy, Germany, Japan, etc etc, on down -- CI has reached the position that if there is any hope, it lies in the in the subsequent repair of ischemic damage, and therefore with the future of nanotechnology specifically. Not in the (arguably) only marginally less inept damage currently inflicted by bio-conservative technique, with its -- dare I say, 'false hope'-- that circumstances will just magically fall into place and that that technique will be applied in spic-and-span laboratory conditions. CI has also noted, with dismay, that the bio-conservative approach runs suspension prices up to the point where the elderly, the uninsurable, the ill, the 'poor' (if we can apply that word with a straight face to someone with under $120,000+ in pocket money), and indeed the average American and his family are simply written off as walking corpses and left to die like dogs. Writing off this majority incidentally cements cryonics into being a marginal enterprise, constricts it's ability to raise funds and so conduct research, etc etc. In short, the techno-radical position seems to have the financial edge, the scientific edge, the realistic edge, the marketing edge, and the humanitarian edge; so CI has gone with it. Be it noted! CI does *not* go around bad-mouthing 21CM or Greg Fahy or even Charles Platt; *nor* does it flatly reject the bio-conservative approach. CI supports and advocates research; CI too thinks you should get to a patient as quickly as possible and take as good care of him or her as you can, all things considered. But *all* things *have* to be considered. It isn't just a case of saying, "Well, in the abstract, under perfect laboratory conditions, technique A here is marginally superior to technique B." If Charles were trying to peddle cryonics to white lab rats, maybe that would be the way to go. But no human I know dies under laboratory conditions. You have to look at the real world of people's finances, and clogged air traffic, and relatives freaking out at the mention of neurosuspension and all that stuff, and give the person the best real-world chance, and the most plausible hope, that you can. For me, that means CI. That's why I'm a CI member. Not an officer, not a director, not a staffer; I don't get a paycheck from CI or make a penny off of them, I'm just a guy who's looked at all the providers, and I believe that, all things considered, my odds are a lot better with CI than any other provider. It's not that I've got one foot in the grave, or or can't make out them big words in cryobiology journals, or am old or sick or broke. I'm in my early forties, I belong to Mensa, and I could afford to fund a suspension with any cryonics orgaization -- hell, with all of them put together. I know exactly what happens when a CI patient gets suspended: I stood there and watched one take place from beginnning to end. And yes indeed, I've read the BPI briefs and weighed Charles Platt's acid critisms and looked at neurons and synapses in microphotograph after damned microphotograph. And I still believe that CI offers me -- and cryonics -- the very best real-world shot. Believe it, hell: I'm willing to bet my life on it. But more important than maintaining my own little ego, I support CI because I think it offers to the most people, to the 'poor', to the sick and elderly, to the 'average' men and women of this world who don't have the good luck to be Wired correspondents like Charles or yuppie consultants like me, the only realistic chance they have; and that CI's way offers the cryonics movement the only way to break out of the masturbatory self-centered technobabble elitism that's crippled and marginalized it all these thirty years. But while I think that CI is the *best* alternative, I want to *emphasize* that I am not *attacking* the bio-conservative approach. Research is good; painstaking care is wonderful; rapid response is excellent; all organizations should strive for it, and all members should applaud and support it. We should all open our pockets and fund 21CM night and day. Research is the Holy Grail, and though I expect the final breakthrough will come at Xerox PARC or the Zyvex Corporation rather than through perfusing some mutt in Scottsdale, it's *not an either/or situation*. It isn't like Mike Darwin is a divine guarantee of zero ischemia, and loping ogre Eric Drexler is some drooling 'fringe' dolt shunned by chaste and saintly biologists. Both sides have merit; both sides have substance; both roads are worth taking; travellers on either deserve praise and support, not blame and criticism. We're not enemies. We've got the same goals and the same hopes; we're just trying to reach them by different paths. What's wrong with that? Why not just go to the people and put our cases to them plainly and let them make their own decision, without cutting each other up? We need to make the best case *for* our position, not *against* some other guy's. You want funding? Write a fund-raising letter! Don't slam Eric Drexler or Ralph Merkle or Bob Ettinger. Hell, Bob Ettinger was thinking about the effects of ischemia on brain cells before Charles Platt *had* any brain cells to get ischemia with! Can't we grant that the man's views may have some tiny validity. Drexler has a doctorate in molecular nanotechnology from MIT! He's been profiled by Time, interviewed by Al Gore and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This is 'fringe'? Can't we allow that -- just maybe -- we might follow in the footprints of the Jonint Chiefs and listen to what he's saying, rather than judge him on the basis of some poll of biologists that never took place? What is so damned hard about walking up to people and saying, "Hi, I'm with CI/CryoCare/Alcor. I think cryonics is a good idea and I think the particular approach our organization has worked out is the best way to provide it. Other organizations have different approaches, of course. Why don't you take a look at what we think and do and why, and then take a look at what they say, and how they do it, and then make your own decision?" Is this so tough? For God's sake, there are five *billion* people in this world, but do we take our case to *them*? No, we get on our own private little mailing list and go on about how scholars and professors and researchers are 'fringe'. What a waste of misdirected effort. <<Sorry not to share your positivism about this.>> I'm sorry too. You know -- Charles Platt is a puzzle. Make no mistake: Charles Platt has done as much for the cryonics movement as anyone. He's joined up, he's written about it, he's stood up for it, he's served as an official, he's studied it, he's promoted it, he's gone out on actual suspensions -- everything. Commitment is not something you say; commitment is something you do. As an activist Charles Platt has done so much -- certainly so much more than me -- that I'm almost ashamed to criticize him. And I certainly understand how difficult his experiences have been. I once read a post by Charles in which he talked about a suspension case where the patient in question died in a accident and was autopsied horribly. After the frustration of seeing this pointless butchery performed, Charles and the guy with him had to drive back to their facilities carrying pieces of the poor man's brain is separate plastic bags. And yet Charles did the right and honorable thing, giving it the very best he could, even trying to keep things going with some gallows humor. Yet -- what horror. What abysmal, unnecesary stupidity. How is it possible not to lose hope sometimes, not to rage at the stupidity around you on every side, not to be give up in despair and disgust? Well -- Charles Platt has not. He works for cryonics, argues for it, writes about it, gives to it. We could do with a million men of this caliber. But his curse is that he's an artist; a gifted and talented writer, tipsy with the cutting power of his rhetoric, and with a weakness for overstatement -- and for despair. If you're fighting for critical recognition, it's a strength; if you're fighting to save human lives, it's isn't a strength. It's a weakness that -- forgive me, Charles -- can kill people. I dread the day that some dying old woman with 'only' $40,000 will click onto Alcor's web site, and look at that impossible $120,000 price tag and no mention of an alternative, and just simply turn away and die. Or the day some father whose kid's leukemia has left him with 'only' $120,000 reads a Charles Platt post and hears Charles give 'scientific' ten-thousand-to-one odds against success and -- gives up hope and lets the kid go. We need hope. We may none of us make it; but we may; and to do that, we have to believe that we *can*. And if there really *is* evidence to suggest that there is hope, and that we can make it? Bitter, pitiless, merciless realism suggests that we acknowledge it -- and smile. Positivism is not a blank set of facts; it is an attitude one holds towards facts. Sometimes it is, and has to be, a matter of will. Sometimes you have to deliberately choose hope and deliberately reject despair, regardless of how tired you are or how tempting it is. It isn't a matter of falsifying or minimizing unpleasant facts. Being negative can be as self-indulgent and sentimental as being positive, and being positive can be as hawk-like and precise and realistic as being negative. It's a matter of recognizing that understanding deepens and facts change. If the odds are not enough with us, we can change them -- through thought, effort, research, innovation, imagination. Cryonics is a science but it is also a will. But that will is as dependent on spiritual effort as that science is on research efforts. And both require entertaining, however grudgingly, the possibility of hope. Charles feels rightly that blind faith is blind and false hope is false; but not all faith is blind, and not all hope is false. Every criticism is not decisive, every hope is not deceptive. Let us all support cryonics like Charles Platt -- with our efforts. But let's not sink into hopelessness as we do it. The facts don't merit it. David Pascal www.cryonics.org www.davidpascal.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12019