X-Message-Number: 15517 From: "Jeff Grimes" <> Subject: Re: questions to and answers from doctors and cryonics orgs Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 17:30:22 +0000 Dan has made some interesting points here, and I appreciate his thoughtful style of addressing them. > But many doctors will never explain why a solution is diluted with > Mannitol instead of water, because you'll never find out about the > Mannitol in the first place so you can't even pose the question. Well--yes and no! It depends on three factors: The patient, the doctor, and the procedure. Some patients actually don't like to know the details, and they trust the doctor blindly. But I think this attitude is more rare now than it used to be. Some doctors refuse to talk much about their procedures, but others will tell you everything. As for the procedure, if I was going to have a splinter taken out of my finger, I wouldn't ask a lot of questions, but if I was in for a heart bypass operation, I would want to know all the details. And if the doctor didn't have time or inclination to tell me, I would go online and search for information there (the Merck manual is completely available online, for instance). Or I would join a discussion group for patients with a similar condition. As I said in a previous post, I have been at a cancer conference where some of the patients were better informed than the doctors! Some people really do get busy researching their condition, if it is life threatening. Now how do I apply this to cryonics? Well, first there is no Merck manual, so far as I know. There is NOWHERE to get "standard" information about procedures, because each organization has made up its own procedure. But, there IS a discussion group for patients suffering from the same life threatening condition (the condition of the aging process leading to death) and this is called ... CryoNet! The difference here between "real" medicine and cryomedicine is that some of the people who provide the procedures are available on CryoNet, giving answers to questions. This is a great advantage and I do appreciate it. I also appreciate the time these people take. On the other hand, they keep telling me, "Oh, we have nothing against people asking questions." So it's not as if I am badgering people who have said, "It is NOT our policy to answer questions here." They offered, so, I took up their offer. It's just as well that they are here, because, unlike a medical discussion group, the consumers of cryonics don't seem to know much about the procedures which supposedly will save their lives. This is the part that really puzzles me, and led me to suggest that cryonics consumers maybe should take more responsibility for their own treatment. So, I agree that there are differences between cryonics and ordinary medicine. Some of the differences are caused by the lack of any agreement on how patients should be treated. Some of the differences are due to the smallness of cryonics, and its experimental nature. But the real difference is that many cryo people, unlike the medical patients I have met, seem strangely apathetic and have not asked the obvious questions. Since cryonics is MORE experimental and chancy than even a heart bypass operation, I have to wonder why people here aren't more concerned. Jeff Grimes. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15517