X-Message-Number: 15320
From: 
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 11:28:31 EST
Subject: Platt/Wakfer/Toxicity

Patience and calm. I feel for the average bemused reader, maybe sometimes 
annoyed by the redundancy and bad temper, maybe sometimes confused by real or 
apparent contradictions. But the only remedy I know is to stick to it, play 
out the string, and hope those interested have equal patience.

I have repeatedly asked Platt why he attacked me for criticizing overblown 
claims for Alcor's current "vitrification" procedure, but has been totally 
silent concerning similar criticisms by Paul Wakfer.

In his message # 15311 today (yesterday as you read this), Platt writes, in 
part:

>I didn't bother to reply to your quote of Wakfer because I wasn't
>addressing anything about Wakfer, I was addressing statements made by
>Robert Ettinger which seemed misleading...........Why do you try to change 
the >subject? 

The primary subject of my recent pieces has been Alcor's hype. It is Platt 
who has tried to change the subject.

Platt has repeatedly claimed that his main aim is to illuminate the facts,  
not just to attack an individual or an organization. The central fact at 
issue in this recent thread is whether Alcor's claims are hyped. Platt says 
my criticism was misleading, and he attributes that to my bad motivation. It 
was surely reasonable and pertinent for me to point out that Paul Wakfer, who 
does not share my pro-CI bias, made similar criticisms of Alcor's claims, and 
I quoted some of Wakfer's public criticism. 

I now quote it again:

>First, being able to vitrify by cooling does not necessarily mean that 
>specimens can remain ice-free or otherwise damage free during rewarming. 

>Second, we have always been able to vitrify, but this was not done because 
>the toxicities involved (even some disintegration of cell membranes) were 
>clearly not tolerable to restoring life. The current vitrification procedure 
>does still not leave the tissue viable, but the toxicity is low enough that 
a 
>decision has been made by someone (perhaps partly for promotional reasons) 
>that toxicity damage is "better" than ice damage. Since we currently have no 
>method of restoring from either kind of damage, this decision is at best a 
>"guesstimate" rather than a decision based on scientific research. To take 
an 
>extreme example, long-term preservation in embalming fluid has always been 
>possible (and without ice damage!), but no one ever proposed it because no 
>one ever thought that life could ever be restored from that state, or even 
>that the mind was fully captured and preserved. Thus, until we actually 
>finish the necessary research to restore to life a person who is preserved 
in 
>a manner which allows no deterioration over a long term, I think that it is 
>premature to say what kind of technology will or will not be necessary for 
>that restoration. 

And I repeat the question to Platt. Is this relevant to Alcor's claims, or 
isn't it? If he thinks it is wrong, let him show us where and how. If he 
thinks it is right, let him say so.

Platt goes on, now on the topic of toxicity of CPAs:

>And now you claim that you never never suggested that Alcor's
>vitrification solution might be more toxic than the CI glycerol solution.
>You invite me to go back and check what you wrote, but, typically, you
>DON'T CITE IT. Should I spend the next happy hour digging through the
>CryoNet archives for the relevant phrase? If you had a real interest in
>clarification, you would CITE your phrase and explain in what way it was
>misunderstood-not only by me, but by two scientists who read it and both
>interpreted it as I did. However I suggest your concern is not to clarify,
>your concern is to obfuscate. And this is what I have found hard to deal
>with all along.

It is not I who have been obscurantist. I have referred not once but several 
times to the question of toxicity of Alcor's current solution. I have no way 
of knowing which message Platt quoted to his "two scientists," or which they 
read, but he should know. In any case, I show again a relevant passage, this 
one from my post #15222:

"In the 4th quarter 2000 issue of CRYONICS, Alcor's magazine, Fred 
Chamberlain's article says that Alcor, through BioTransport, has licensed a 
variant of 21 CM's "low toxicity vitrification formulas." It also says that, 
as evidence of this low toxicity, a LESS concentrated formula resulted in 53% 
viability--presumably meaning of cells. This test apparently used only a 
single criterion of viability, the potassium/sodium ratio--with rat 
hippocampal slices, not whole brains." 

As I have said, I will meet every point Platt wants to make--not with 
evasions or changes of subject, but head-on. 

So, once more--

21CM and INC and Alcor have done good work, and they have good people. But 
Alcor's claims about its current "vitrification" procedure--as in the current 
issue of CRYONICS and on Alcor's web site--are clearly overblown. The 
evidence presented is partial, indirect, based on very small samples, and not 
confirmed by independent investigators. In particular, there is no report of 
any mammalian brain being vitrified to long term storage temperature, then 
rewarmed and examined. 

The procedure itself is secret, so there is no way that CI, for example, 
could take a small piece of brain tissue and test their method, which we 
could easily do, and will do when and if their secret information is 
released. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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