X-Message-Number: 21176
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 07:41:01 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #21167 - #21174

For Mr. Kluytmans, again:

I have read Drexler, but not Freitas. Your comments on respirocytes
are fine, but in no way answer my problems with them. My central
problem deals with their present ABSENCE. If you, or Freitas, or
Drexler actually makes a respirocyte (WITH systems to make many
more) then we can see how well they do in tests against our blood ---
not just our red blood cells, but all of it.

Let's suppose that you actually have such nanodevices. Fine. The 
very first problem that comes to MY mind is that of whether or not
such powerful devices will prove normally useful at all. Even if
you have them and they have passed all normal tests with flying
colors, they sound as if they would have abilities that in normal
living give someone nothing at all. Perhaps firefighters or space
explorers, yes, but not in normal life. The main reason our 
circulatory system has gone as far as it has is that to go further
wouldn't help anything at all. Again, we haven't become space
explorers, so someday we may need such abilities. I make this
point on the assumption that you don't run into problems making
them work in the first place. That sounds to me like a very strong
assumption.

Evolution has over millenia and millions of years worked to optimize
our designs. It is precisely because we can now overcome, with our
technology, all the things that killed people before they reached 
the age of 50 that elimination of aging begins to look useful. 
What other advances might do I don't know, but I would strongly
suggest that we'd do better to improve our thinking ability 
(which we must first UNDERSTAND, not now the case) than to 
improve our red blood cells or any other part of our circulatory
system.

As for providing means to remain without breathing for a much
longer time, the companies working on blood substitutes will
no doubt provide such means years before Freitas's respirocytes
ever come about. Doing so would not be a big step from making
WORKING substitutes for red blood cells, and to judge from all
the features you want to add to them, actually SMALLER devices.
(Normal metabolism does not contain computers. It uses enzymes
with shapes which allow them to react to changes with a change
in what they do. The individual devices are much smaller, but
it is their combination which does the job).

               Best wishes and long long life for all,

                      Thomas Donaldson

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