X-Message-Number: 12184 From: "George Smith" <> References: <> Subject: Re: Brain-only preservation. Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1999 21:13:16 -0700 Just wanted to add a couple points to the discussion. (1) In the military where I assisted in autopsies almost daily for three years, the brain was always removed and only in the rarest of circumstances was it replaced in the body due to extreme religious preferences on the part of the service member or family (it was placed into the abdominal cavity). Never heard any negative feedback regarding this issue from any family member during those three years. I would suspect that the situation in the civilian world is probably not all that different - especially if there is an autopsy performed. At the funeral there is nothing different to notice, of course. In this sense there probably is little social concern over the brain being removed for preservation. The deceased' face and body are there to be "viewed" in the funeral as usual. The family's needs are met well by this. (2) Part of my military pathology work was to remove the brain for later sectioning and slide preparation. The greatest damage to the brain in this procedure came from the initial opening of the skull with the electric saw during which sometimes the brain was also cut, and the need to sever the spinal cord to permit extraction sometimes was difficult as well with peripheral damage resulting. Of course there is the obvious issue of what additional trauma is imposed from simply handling the brain in its removal, and I cannot speculate on the degree of damage which might result though I suspect it to be quite minimal. (3) Removing the human brain is, however, a relatively quick (five minutes usually) procedure and one which at least military pathologists are accustomed to performing. While the attitude of a pathologist toward "dead" tissue samples is less than that of a surgeon in dealing with a living surgery patient, neither is it careless. Pathologists do not want to damage the organs they remove for evaluation in an autopsy and are quite careful. This fact alone causes me to consider a brain-only preservation more reasonable than not. Again, it is an issue in my mind of expediancy and not merely cost. It is the cultural issues which are paramount here, in my opinion. If the culture gives you too much trouble because the choice is too "alien" to customary funerary practices, you can end up not getting frozen at all. That's the major reason I feel that the whole-body approach is the very, very best. It clashes the least with what is acceptable in our culture. Removing and preserving the brain, however, does seem to run a close second in terms of what is acceptable. After all, i can assure you that far, far more brains are extracted and preserved in formalin than the few humans suspended cryonically. Head-only makes much scientific sense but is probably one of the most difficult hurtles to overcome from a cultural standpoint. Just some thoughts. George Smith Cryonics Institute member http://www.cryonics.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12184