X-Message-Number: 15407
From: 
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 16:17:57 EST
Subject: Johnson/Drexler

David Johnson (#15400) writes in part:

>I am curious if Dr. Drexler has had any comment on cryopreservation 
>techniques and their likely assistance or not for future molecular-level 
>repair?

In his first book-length exposition of nanotechnology, ENGINES OF CREATION, 
Dr. Drexler wrote:

>The cryonics community's cautious, conservative emphasis on preserving 
tissue >function has invited public confusion, though. Experimenters have 
frozen whole >adult mammals and thawed them without waiting for the aid of 
cell repair machines. >The results have been superficially discouraging: the 
animals fail to revive. To a >public and a medical community that has known 
nothing about the prospects for >cell repair, this has made frozen biostasis 
seem pointless. 

>And, after Ettinger's proposal, a few cryobiologists chose to make 
unsupported >pronouncements about the future of medical technology. As Robert 
Prehoda stated >in a 1967 book: "Almost all reduced-metabolism experts . . . 
believe that cellular >damage caused by current freezing techniques could 
never be corrected." Of >course, these were the wrong experts to ask. The 
question called for experts on >molecular technology and cell repair 
machines. These cryobiologists should have >said only that correcting 
freezing damage would apparently require molecular-level >repairs, and that 
they, personally, had not studied the matter. Instead, they >casually misled 
the public on a matter of vital medical importance. Their statements 
>discouraged the use of a workable biostasis technique. 

And:

>As molecular technology advances and people grow familiar with its 
consequences, >the reversibility of biostasis (whether based on freezing, 
fixation and vitrification, or >other methods) will grow ever more obvious to 
ever more people.

The whole book is available on our web site.

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

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