X-Message-Number: 14409
From: 
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 19:13:36 EDT
Subject: Update on remaining work?

Greetings All:

I have at last digested Paul Wakfer's update and the responses it set off, 
and developed another set of questions, if everyone is not too tired to 
answer them.

The reason I'm behind, BTW, is that the unmoderated newsgroup deteriorated to 
teeny-porn postings and for reasons unknown it took several tries to get 
subscribed here.

Well, two years ago vitrification solutions were unsatisfactory and it was 
estimated to require $10 million and about ten years to perfect whole-body 
preservation.   Now (per Paul) all the major breakthroughs have been made, 
fortuitously at very little cost. 

So what will the new cost be? (I realize the $10 million was a very round 
number.  But can it be refined -- if the new best-guesstimate now is in fact 
less, it makes the plan more attractive.  Obviously some wealthy entity 
should become interested somewhere between ten million dollars and 
twenty-seven cents...)

And what remains to finish the job?  Is it mainly proving that brain tissue 
functions after immersion in vitrification solution and freezing and thawing, 
and is the next step full brains and then slices of other tissues and then 
full organs -- and then, of course, organisms. Or? 

What is the timetable, what are the costs?

Has anyone been inspired by the time and cost saving exploits of Craig 
Ventor?  Can automation techniques cut the costs way down?  Might it be  
better to rethink plans in terms of the latest techniques than to try to 
raise money? (That's what Ventor did, and cut the genome completion from 
something like 15 years (or five years from when he started) and five or ten 
billion to something like ten months and 0.2 billion.  The Government people 
he beat were not exactly slouches -- they used the best techniques available 
when they started ten years earlier, but Ventor used the best from the time 
he started, just a few years later, and he annihilated them.

The more plan details and research needs are published, the more likely 
someone, some sophomore biology student somewhere, will make a suggestion 
that cuts time and costs  in half. Or so we may hope... 

Cheers,

Alan Mole

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