X-Message-Number: 18635 Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 10:01:06 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: once again... Bob Ettinger, whose skepticism regarding vitrification remains undiminished by countless explanations, reports, and photographs, writes: "It may turn out that the best feasible 'vitrification" procedure (or something approaching vitrification) is not much better than the best feasible freezing procedure." On what evidence is this statement based? What is the value of speculation that exists merely to create as much doubt as possible? Presumably it benefits CI, because CI doesn't offer vitrification. But does it benefit cryonics, and the potential willingness of this community to support cryonics research? "Further, the questions of cost, and of laboratory vs. field conditions, may make 'vitrification' available only in theory and seldom in practice." There are many wealthy people in cryonics who might value the opportunity to be preserved without significant ice damage. Incidentally, why the quote marks around "vitrification"? The term has been defined countless times, in academic journals among other sources. Are the quote marks intended to make the procedure seem more speculative, less valid? "To elaborate slightly on that, we recall reports that rabbit kidney vitrification failed to achieve viability--after many years of effort--because a sufficiently uniform perfusion had not been achieved." As Bob is well aware (assuming he reads his own posts, which of course may not be true), the viability has been expressed as a percentage figure. There was a long debate over this very point, where Bob turned out to have made an incorrect assumption. To say now that the kidney was "not viable" is a grossly misleading statement. The kidney was certainly capable of functioning as a kidney, as I recall. By what measure does Bob claim that this made it "not viable"? "These were tiny little organs in healthy young animals. We are working with human brains, very much larger and more complicated, from people usually old and sick, with impaired circulation." This of course is true. I regret it was preceded with the half-truths. --CP Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18635