X-Message-Number: 15365
From: 
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 10:30:33 EST
Subject: Wakfer quickie

On Wakfer's # 15361--

Wakfer's stuff lately--i.e., the factual parts--has not been bad, differing 
from mine only in nuances or hair-splitting ways, as careful readers will 
surely have noticed.

The name-calling parts I can shrug off.

He quotes me, referring to Fred Chamberlain's article:

>What would be new in the Hallelujah sense is confirmed vitrification of 
>mammalian brains, examined after rewarming from long term storage 
temperature 
>and showing minimal damage from at least three standpoints--histology 
>(microanatomy), physiology (chemical functions), and electrophysiology 
>(neural net function). 

and then he goes on to say, in part:

>Here Ettinger once again shows a complete lack of understanding of (or a
>willful disregard for) the meaning of vitrification........... From the 
above statement, >Ettinger is clearly confusing vitrification with fully 
perfected suspended animation.
>This confusion in the minds of many well-meaning but unskilled
>cryonicists was why I made my original post - to somewhat tone down the
>unrealistic notions of the worth of vitrification. It is a leap forward,
>by all means, but it does not mean that we can now rest easy. It does
>not means that we are now all "saved" and can stop worrying and working
>hard to perfect suspended animation. 

Wakfer's main problem here is that he gives the reader credit for very little 
sense, besides putting his own spin on my sense and motives. I was talking 
about "vitrification" in the Hallelujah sense--remember, this was all about 
Alcor's claims and articles. Fred Chamberlain did indeed, in my opinion, come 
close to saying that their current procedure is an approximation to suspended 
animation. In particular, he said that there may be no need for 
nanotechnology of repair, only pharmacology. Again, I leave it to the reader 
to decide whose reading and whose writing is clearest.

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

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