X-Message-Number: 16505 Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 02:28:10 -0400 From: James Swayze <> Subject: Thanks to everyone, To Scott Badger, Roberrt Ettinger and Mike Perry My Cryonics friends, I wish to thank everyone for their genuine concern for my situation and future. I am again overwhelmed as I was also when I first became acquainted with you all after my first posting to cryonet prompted like concern and an outpouring of generosity. Just as then I will accept any help I can get. Also just as then I want you to know I will keep trying to do whatever I can to pull my end and more hopefully if possible. I happened upon a thought the other day and have been considering it carefully ever since. It might be total nonsense or not necessary but here goes. I wondered had a human body ever been purposely put through the process of cryonic suspension left suspended for a reasonable time for whatever final state suspension causes to occur and then purposely removed from suspension either in whole or in part for dissection so as to study the actual state damage or otherwise that suspension causes to human tissue as opposed to any other test species. Owing to the fact that the goal of every organization is preservation of their patients I thought it might not have been done purposely for research. Would this even be of value? Are other species good enough to extrapolate the possible condition that a human body would be in? To me it seems an actual human body would be best for researching every possible type of tissue. This would allow the planning of a repair strategy. In so doing it would be possible to design repair systems directly for specific tissue types knowing ahead of time what actually needs repair. Parts could be kept suspended until newer systems became available to periodically test on the preserved tissues for comparative analysis with living tissues of donors of the particular time. Various methods of suspension could be applied via amputation of limbs before suspension for separate suspension by alternate means to the different limbs. I'm sure more thought on this could derive any other possibilities for research. I think you can guess where I am going with this. My body has suffered many insults. These include atrophy, diabetes, heterotrophic ossification and nerve damage. If I were suspended and one day reanimated it would probably be best to scrap it and clone a new one or if possible regenerate one. However, I think many of the tissues are healthy enough to be of use for study of the kind mentioned above. The ability to trial test repair of tissue types should be valuable up until the time when the first total reanimation is attempted. In exchange for neuro suspension I would be willing to donate my body for the purpose described above. I would consider also but would want to get some input first from experts as to the safety of it, allowing a very small sample of brain tissue to be extracted from the frozen state providing it won't be terribly missed by me. This way the most possible types of tissue could be studied. I would want the information to benefit cryonics in general and so would hope, if this is even a worthy idea, that all the existing organizations work together or separately on distributed samples but coordinated and ultimately shared. I realize that cadavers donated to science might substitute for this, however, it's unlikely they would undergo suspension immediately upon death and under ideal conditions as all cryonics patients hope for and this is an important research variable as I see it. I realize too that anyone choosing simply to have a neuro suspension could donate their bodies and I would encourage them to do so as the more research samples the better. The only thing I can offer above that is the sampling of my brain matter, something others may not be so readily willing to do, though I could be wrong. Aside from all this, I had always intended to donate my body to science for study of the unique bone disease of which I am as far as I know still the worst case known. Because I wish to further the science of immortalism I pledge to donate my body to cryonics, if it would be welcome, regardless of whether I get funded for suspension or not. Why not if I had already intended donating it to mainstream science? It would still be possible for my hip joints, the worst locus of the disease Heterotrophic Ossification, to be studied by mainstream science by having whoever of cryonics science that received my body excise the hip joints. As I said this whole idea may not be of value. That's fine if it is not. Ideas are cheap. Easy come easy go. I toss it out for discussion. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scott Badger, Like John your post of your mother's passing deeply touched me. It was the song that got me. I wept after I read the part, "It's not that we were friends ... It's that we never will be.". I can so relate to that. My mother is alive and she works tirelessly even at age 64 to provide for and care for me. She shouldn't have to but I did something incredibly stupid once and gave her no choice. Worse yet she had to witness me do it. I'll never get over that guilt. I see her every day. I love her very much and she me but friends? I couldn't say so. We differ over something so stupid and to me trivial as belief. It's not a war but it seems to get in the way of intimate conversation...the apprehension that the dreaded subject will come up again. I can't bear the thought I will loose her one day because she will have put her faith in what I consider uncertainty. I can't bear that I can't save her and all the while she probably feels the same back at me. Sometimes I feel deep remorse for adopting my rational beliefs and becoming such a disappointment to my deeply religious family. I can empathize what they must feel. There's no going back though. Your post made me empathize with your loss and project hypothetically to my own inevitabilities. I must try to gulf the breach. I must appreciate her more while I can. Scott, thanks for the tears. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Ettinger, Thanks for looking out for me. What more can I say? Thanks so very much for your efforts. Let me know what you think of my idea above. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Perry, Thank you for your concern and appeals on my behalf. I would be willing to do anything short of anything illegal of course to improve my financial situation. I fear I don't have any marketable skills. I didn't finish college because of medical problems. I was studying to be a psychiatrist so I majored in Premed with a Psychology emphasis. I did well enough, 3.5 gpa, but I've only two years and some change to my credit. I'm quick with computers but totally self taught and that's the problem, no accreditation. My biggest obstacle is needing so very much medical coverage and attendant care. I need the income of a Congressman to be free my shackles. The suggestion has been made before about becoming one but realistically...I inhaled. ;) In other words that's a real pipe dream (no pun intended), few would vote for me. For these and more reasons than I wish to burden this list with I've pinned my hopes on my inventiveness. I have a few inventions or rather I should say ideas for inventions. I hope one day someone with the means to will find merit in one and help me get it patented and produced. I would gladly share equally with them and I wish to, if my wildest dreams came true, invest in supporting cryonics and immortalism by any means I can. So the invitation is there for anyone interested or anyone that knows someone that might be. James -- From the point of ignition To the final drive The point of the journey is not to arrive --RUSH Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16505