X-Message-Number: 16078 Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 08:08:45 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #16070 - #16077 Hi everyone! Yes, OK, someone has treated human cells so that they survive for long periods because they are dried out. Someday we may see that done with whole brains, but it's still important to work on much closer technology, the methods for storage worked out by Greg Fahy ... some version of vitrification. It will do us no good if dry storage is developed 100 years in the future, and something closer deserves much more attention. As for the "measure of log human history", which Mike Perry likes, I will say a little bit too: first, it's much less obvious that everyone will someday come back, even after billions of years. For that to happen a lot of assumptions must hold, and some of them now look very weak. As for methods of storage, yes, again, we may well someday be stored solely as the structure of our brain, which isn't the same as a brain at all. That structure could be stored in a computer or some descendant of computers, or in any other way which preserved it. However this form of storage currently remains purely theoretical... perhaps more theoretical than storing a brain dried out. Why more? Because we'd still have to learn a lot about the structure of brains on levels above those of single synapses but several orders below those of current X-rays or other methods. Dried brains, however, though they have lots of problems of implementation, could conceivably work OK even if we don't yet know so much about the structure of brains. Both of these methods may someday have a use. However for now it looks to me that the very first thing we should try to do is to work out how to vitrify brains. And if the Cryonics Institute has its own methods, they deserve work too (it will be interesting to see what happens when Pichugin starts working with CI). It looks to me to be the only methods which have any chance of working within the lifespans of anyone reading this message ... even if they're in their teens. Best wishes and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16078