X-Message-Number: 15683
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 17:14:27 -0500
From: <>
Subject: dog brains and journals

I was glad to read in Paul's message 15653 that Alcor has never done
cryopreservation [research] on dog brains, that this was done
by organizations at arm's length (Cryovita and BPI/21CM).

Although experiments on live animals has been judged scientifically
necessary by medical researchers, i think no patient-holding cryonics
organization should do these sorts of experiments (at least on
their premises) for several reasons:

  1.  There are people around (animal rights activists) who have
      very strong feelings on the subject.  Live animal experiments
      at a cryonics org may lead to on-site confrontation
      and direct risk to patients.  Activist take-over of labs
      has happened.

  2.  Tending animals such as dogs and later killing them may
      demoralize staff.

  3.  Tending animals and later killing them may tend to
      brutalize staff or render other, perhaps subtle,
      psychological damage to staff.  After all, staff work very hard
      to save the lives of one group of mammals, some of whom are
      strangers---should they also have to slay an animal they
      raised from a pup?

  4.  It may discourage some people (Hindus, vegetarians, perhaps?)
      who might naturally be inclined to become cryonicists or to save
      their loved ones.

  5.  It's potentially bad PR.  (Headline:
      "Cult of decapitation practices on puppies".)

There are moral issues here but too complex to discuss briefly.
Likewise, i don't want to discuss what our descendents who revive
us may say (or do).

Also, i explicitly am not discussing what happens at research outfits
such as INC or 21CM.  There are different constraints there, different
choices, different trade-offs, different people.

Now, this brings us to CI's perfusion/CPA research, which i conjecture
might be done with sheep heads from a slaughterhouse for reasons
something like those above.

Using dead animals may indeed render it unpublishable, and in fact
the purpose for the research---to improve human suspensions at CI---
may already be so unconventional and specialized that the work isn't
publishable (in a peer-reviewed journal).

But lots of research from all sorts of groups isn't published
in peer-reviewed journals.  For example, research from
manufacturers may just circulate internally in technical reports.

And i think the CI research is quite important, especially for
the next 10 or so people to be preserved at CI.

The research should be some predictor of what will happen when similar
actions are performed on patients, because the sequence, the
chemicals, and the actors are the same.

This is not to say that it's a perfect effort; for example, if CI
decides to test closed loop procedures, it's not so clear how
to do it with a head.

But given that there are non-scientific constraints in the soup,
and CI's reasonable desire to try out competing procedures before
actually using them on humans, it seems like their course of action
is a sensible one to follow.

dan

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