X-Message-Number: 15657
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 10:46:10 -0500
From: Paul Antonik Wakfer <>
Subject: Re: #15653 - Alcor and Dog Brains + more
References: <>

>Message #15653
>Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 22:55:06 -0500
>Subject: A Formal Apology And Some Informal Remarks
>From: 

[SNIP]

> Alcor performs (or did perform) tests on
> dog brains rather than sheep brains.

Correction: As far as I know "Alcor" has never done any cryopreservation
of dog brains.
Before 1992, this was done by Cryovita Laborites, and after 1993 by
BPI/21CM.
In addition, the use of live healthy dogs in fully controlled settings
as the starting point of procedures is hardly comparable to the use of
sheep heads obtained from a slaughter house.

>Technically, it is not the water inside cells, but the water outside and
>between cells that causes the most damage in freezing.

This will only be so if and when there is more water outside than
inside.
However, microgram for microgram, ice formation inside cells is far more
damaging than outside.

[SNIP]

>Heck, throwing people directly into vats of liquid nitrogen would
>probably cool fastest of all!

No. In point of fact, this would not be nearly as fast to all tissues as
is possible with perfused perfluorocarbon cooling methods. Furthermore,
the large temperature differences between different parts of the body
during such cooling would almost certainly be massively harmful to the
patient.

[SNIP]

>>> When I contacted Alcor, they told me they have not done any
experiments using perfusates on dogs for many years. <<
>
>Really?  Did they mean that they had not done any tests at all for many
>years, or that they had just not done any on dogs for -- er, how many
>exactly years?  Or did you not bother to ask? 

As stated above, except for the use of one or two dogs for cryotransport
training, as far as I am aware, "Alcor" never did any research with dogs
or any other animal. All such research was done by Cryovita Laboratories
before 1992 and by BPI/21CM after 1993.

>Given that numerous such heads are selected at random, and that the heads
>are roughly similiar in age, free from disease and abnormality, etc., it
>seems to me that a control situation does exist.

No. This is not at all equivalent to a controlled situation in a
scientific experiment where initial conditions are all specified and
timings are taken with sufficient training to get very similar times
between each part of the procedure from live animal to end of procedure.
Such an "experiment" on slaughterhouse obtained sheep heads would quite
rightly not be publishable in any reputable journal.

> But more important, it
> seems to me obvious that if you want to find out what happens to brains
> under real-life conditions, you try to simulate those conditions as much
> as possible.

This would only make sense *after* controlled experiments were done to
establish a base point of comparison.

> The fact is, no human being is anesthetized in good health
> and then perfused, which is how virtually every non-CI study has been
> run.  It just doesn't approximate what really happens.

But it will be the case once suspended animation it perfected and
implemented by the medical establishment. That is the goal of the
research and that is why research by INC and 21CM is done that way.
Thus, there is really no comparison between CI research and that of
INC/21CM because the goals and intents re not the same.
It is Alcor who should be doing research on "real" patient situations,
but they are not, likely because to do such research effectively is very
expense, and cannot be accomplished in the fashion which CI is
attempting.

> Human beings die
>in bad shape.  That's why they die.  To try to approximate what you are
>actually dealing with seems to me to be to be a sensible thing to do.  I
>do not say that other sorts of research are pointless or uniformative. 
>In fact I try to keep up with them.  But it seems to me that real-life
>applications are the main business of cryonics providers.  The simple
>fact is, we're not multi-million dollar research labs.  We're people who
>have to deal in crisis situations with dead and dying and often deeply
>injured people surrounded by grief-stricken relatives; we work like hell
>to provide the best care possible in the teeth of laws and prejudices and
>obstacles that make providing good care nightmarish.  We don't lose
>people in labs -- we lose them on autopsy tables and in five-car
>pile-ups.  All that we can offer is the best we can; but that much we
>*can* offer, provided we have something that is deliverable in concrete
>terms.  Hyper-expensive, hyper-complex, 'laboratory' cryonics generally
>is not. 

This is all very true. But it is also the reason that Mr Ettinger should
not attempt to us the results of CI "research" to knock down the
importance of the vitrification results of INC/21CM which Alcor is
attempting to adopt.

>In our sly sneering way, CI's amateurs then rewrote the
>company rules to take in CryoCare's patients

Both of CryoCare's patients are now at Alcor.

-- Paul --

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