X-Message-Number: 15421
From: 
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2001 13:25:13 EST
Subject: detail

As I have said, CI's web site will soon have more details and clarifications 
concerning our procedures. But let me again explain some of the pitfalls.

For researchers, detail can be useful or even essential. But nobody is going 
to repeat experiments to test the current CI procedures. Who is going to go 
to that effort and expense? Certainly not some newcomer trying to educate 
himself.

What about newcomers trying to choose between organizations? For some of 
them, a lot of detail may seem comforting--"scientific" and "medical" and so 
on. Like photos of a lot of people wearing surgical masks and green gowns. 
(We usually use face plates and white over-suits, including shoe covers.) But 
what will they think and do when they see differences of procedure, or 
differences between CI procedure and something in the literature?

Suppose they read that CI uses X% of glycerol, whereas some report in a 
journal says that, in the context of a particular tissue type and procedure, 
there are better results with Y% of ethylene glycol, especially if you throw 
in Z% of DMSO. What is he to make of that? Should he try to guess which 
approach is best? Should he suggest that we do another series of experiments?

Suggest all you want. We already have plenty of new experiments lined up, but 
we will always look at new suggestions.

But as for guessing which approach is best, based on general background 
information, that is a potential snare. What counts, in the end, is the 
testing and the evaluation of the tests by independent professionals. We 
choose our experiments in light of what we believe to offer the most bang for 
the buck, and we make our final (always interim) decisions based on verified 
results. We have reported these.

On our Compare page are examples of what we don't do, and why. For instance, 
we don't drill holes in the skulls of patients, as I believe Alcor does. They 
do it to monitor edema. Fine--but we never get edema; on the contrary, we 
invariably get shrinkage. Furthermore, when we were doing sheep head tests by 
methods that did sometimes produce edema, that edema was always noticeable in 
the faces, so holes in the skull weren't necessary. Our human patients also 
show external shrinkage.

And once more: Maybe the current Alcor "vitrification" method is an 
improvement over previous Alcor methods and better than anything else 
currently available, at least under ideal conditions (which have never been 
realized so far). But there has been NO reported testing and evaluation of 
that procedure--none whatsoever, by Alcor or anyone else, as far as I can 
ascertain. 

Their choice was based on encouraging results with several different 
procedures and types of specimen, by different researchers. It was also 
based, in part, on information not yet available to us or others, so we do 
not yet have any way to test or evaluate it ourselves. If prospective members 
want to trust the judgment of the Alcor leaders, fine--they are good people 
doing their best. But don't pretend that you are making a choice based on 
verified results.

As for us, we will continue to do the research we think most promising within 
our resources, and to hire unbiased professionals to do the evaluations, and 
will report as appropriate.

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

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