X-Message-Number: 13670 Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 08:33:53 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #13663 - #13665 Hi everyone! For Ron Burns: Unfortunately the problem is not so simple. AT PRESENT WE DON'T KNOW FULLY HOW BRAINS WORK. This means that we have no good way to tell if our freezing methods will work, but as a general strategy we want methods which cause minimum damage. (Yes, even with minimum damage we might just destroy the critical information, but it becomes less likely than if we pay no attention to freezing damage at all). It's fine to think about the problem as an informational problem, and in one sense it is. However we are taking a carrier of information (your head) and freezing it WITHOUT KNOWING JUST HOW IT CARRIES THAT INFORMATION. If we could read off that information we'd have no problem and might not even be involved with freezing at all, but we cannot now read off that information and hence try to treat the brains of patients so as to cause minimum destruction of whatever information they may carry. Yes, information is not the same as the actual living cells, but there is an issue of degree: some kinds of suspension cause more damage than others (simply freezing a brain would count as one of the more damaging methods). Even if we don't know how to read off the information, it stands to reason that the more damage our methods cause, the harder it becomes to recover that information --- with its destruction as the limit of this process. There is actually a good chance that WITH FUNDING we could devise much less destructive methods, potentially methods which we KNOW preserve the information in a brain... and do that in about 10 years. However the money is critical here, and so far not enough has been raised to do that. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=13670