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.

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