X-Message-Number: 15417
From: 
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 10:42:04 EST
Subject: Grimes & procedures

Yesterday's messages from Jeff Grimes (#15408, 9, 10) offer me several 
opportunities, including the opportunity to improve my communication. I have 
never claimed to be good at anticipating the reactions of other people, so 
surprises are educational. Let's take it point by point.

First, on the general question of whether CI's web site is too self-serving 
and doesn't offer enough exposure to the views of others, Alcor especially, 
as Mr. Grimes seems to think.  Obviously, any house organ is going to feature 
most prominently its own views, and we need not apologize for that. But the 
information is always factual, to the best of our knowledge, and the views 
are honest. We include links to Alcor's site, even though this is not 
reciprocated, as well as to the sites of other organizations, so the reader 
can easily compare and judge for himself.  

Now, the question of specification of CI's procedures. I have already said 
that we will soon add to the site a new summary of the current procedure in a 
form that will be detailed enough to satisfy any reasonable demand and yet 
succinct enough to be easily digested. This will appear both on our 
"Comparing" page and on our sheep head research page. There is no mystery, 
and never has been, but this will improve ease of access and save time for 
some readers.

Now about the term "temporary standard," which seems to bother Mr. Grimes. 
All it means is that our procedures are subject to change, and our 
accelerated research is almost certain to produce change this year and in 
future years. The current "temporary standard" is based on the same sheep 
head work done several years ago and reported on our web site, with earlier 
evaluations in the Ukraine and recent evaluations in Canada. 

Next, Mr. Grimes asks about differences between the sheep head procedures and 
those with human patients. There are no differences in principle, although of 
course with human patients it is always necessary to make adjustments for the 
specific conditions. The new summary will mention some of those variables.

Next, Mr. Grimes writes:

>>"Nevertheless, I have written recently about CI procedures by reporting the 
new evaluations done by a >>Canadian lab using light and electron microscopy."

>Yes, but there's no way of knowing what the differences are between the lab 
work and the treatment of human >patients, especially since the lab work used 
three different procedures. Which one is the same as you use on >people? Is 
any of them the same? 

Again, either I wasn't clear when I thought I was, or else Mr. Grimes (and 
therefore very possibly other readers also) was too hasty and careless in his 
reading. We reported very clearly (I thought) that the lab did blind testing 
on all the specimens submitted, and these specimens included some done by our 
standard procedure and some done by other procedures, including some 
untreated controls and some using glycol ethers and some using stepped 
glycerol. The results using our standard were better than all the others, 
except that stepping 10%-20%-40%-75% might, for some sub-specimens, have been 
just a shade better. 

Next, Mr. Grimes objects to my "changing the subject" and writing about 
Alcor's procedures also, instead of talking only about CI procedures. Really! 
Any writer is free to talk about anything he chooses, and when the overall 
topic is about a choice of procedures, anybody's procedures are relevant.

Next, Mr. Grimes asks for certain additional specific details, and says I 
impugned his sincerity. 

Further details will be posted soon, as previously noted. And while I do 
indeed think that, in some cases, a demand for more and more detail is just a 
debating ploy, that is not true in all cases. What does remain true, however, 
is that the details have very limited relevance, for the reason I mentioned. 
If someone thinks some aspect of the procedure would be better if it were 
different, what can he do? He can suggest additional experiments, and 
suggestions are welcome, and we have a whole raft of additional experiments 
lined up. Or he can just use his intuition or any available reports in the 
literature and come to a theoretical decision, which he is free to do but 
which is just gambling or guessing. The remaining alternative is to judge by 
the actual professional evaluation of actual results, which is our approach.

Finally (for today) he selects some passages from our web site for criticism. 
I don't agree with his criticism, and the reader isn't always right, even if 
he is unbiased, but any half-way reasonable criticism suggests that another 
look and improved exposition might be in order. We will give those passages 
another look.

And I remind readers that it is generally better to couch comments/criticisms 
in objective terms, without the use of pejoratives or imputation of bad 
motives. We try to write and respond objectively, but when there are personal 
attacks it is not always possible or even tactically correct to keep our 
responses impersonal.

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

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