X-Message-Number: 17428
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 07:33:40 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #17422 - #17427

Hi everyone!!

No, I wasn't aware of plastination until Charles Platt's message.

Plastination might even work, but a good deal of effort is still
needed to verify that. The main problem is that we want not just
a set of cells which looks like the originally living cells, but
cells containing enough information to make others which are
actually like the original living cells. This most importantly
involves their chemical behavior, which may have been wiped out
entirely by the plastination treatment. That chemical behavior,
in its turn, could easily turn out to be crucial to our memory.

I'm not even asking that the original body be revived. The critical
point here is that of how our brain stores information. If we
store it in ways which plastination affects, then we can forget
plastination. If the reverse, we may have a better treatment
than cryobiology. (I will add that working out how memory works
IN DETAIL may ultimately  give us better preservation methods,
but right now that does not look as close as vitrification at 
all).

Ultimately, whether plastination is someday shown to work or not,
we will use methods other than cryobiology. Even so, right now 
at least 99% of our efforts should go into perfecting vitrification.
Later methods can wait, but we want AT LEAST ONE method which we
know works. Then at least one issue about cryonics (but far from
the only one!!!) will have been settled.

		Best wishes and long long life for all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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