X-Message-Number: 21400 From: "Trygve Bauge" <> References: <> Subject: Re: Apologies (from the journalist that wrote the Boston Globe article) Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 20:24:15 +0100 To Reilly Capps (freelance reporter for the Boston Globe), The cryonic suspension of my grandfather is not an ideal one. But it is the best that could be done in face of the obstacles that have been present. I have consistently been open and straight forward with the media about all the problems involved, as to his age, cause of death, damage after death, the straight freezing and the storage temperature etc. and all the various threats to his suspension as these have arised from my sister, the authorities etc., Most of the about 100 people presently frozen have not been suspended under ideal circumstances. And even those frozen and maintained with the presently best avialable techniques have experienced a lot of cellular damage that we presently do not know how to reverse. But there are two ways of looking upon this: One can say: this body will not be alive but like hamburger meat if we just thaw it out, thus it is a failure, and make fun of the attempts at bringing back a 89 year old with hearth problems that then soon would die from other causes, or we can say as I do say: What can we possibly do with what we have preserved to secure the highest degree of continuation of what that once constituted my grandfather at his best? At the time of his death we couldn't do anything. But we anticipated the possibility of cloning. Know cloning of adult cells have become a reality. We presentlty are awaiting the development of techniques for cloning or restoring DNA from dead organisms. Serious research is presently beeing conducted to restore the Tasmanian Tiger and the Mammut from specimens stored in alchohol and in the permafrost respectively. It is no question in my mind that such techniques will be developed, maybe in my life time. Then we could actually clone my grandfather and restore to the clone as much information about him as can be taught by conventional teaching techniques. The clone would not be a 89 year old but a baby in a healthy new body, similar to the body my grandfather had when he originally was a baby. Thus my attempt is not one of bringing back a 89 year old body with hearth failure as you implied. What else can be done with what we have preserved to secure an even greater degree of continuation of my grandfather? A clone might eventually be used as a blue print together with nano technology, to repair individual cells and organs in my grandfather's original body. And who are to say that the future might not come up with even other techniques: Certainly we would over time get a better understanding of what that constitutes a human being or its consciousness, and what we actually have to preserve and repair so to accomplish the survival of one's own sense of being one-self . Maybe we only have to preserve or repair the brain or parts of this, maybe we could just clone or grow individual organs or the rest of the body, so that the question basically becomes one of growing a brainless clone and inserting a rebuilt older brain into a clone that has been grown without a brain? Some people are born naturally with little or no brains (no pun intended). It should be possible to find out what genes has to be turned off to create a clone without a brain but otherwise healthy. The cloning part seems possible in our life time, and with this approach the nano technology part is reduced basically to repairing individual brain cells and growing a brain from such. The sliding scale then goes from reparing only one older brain cell to repairing all the older brain cells, and the degree of continuation of a human being would then dependend upon the brain's deterioration and our ability to rebuild brains. If we have a cloned brain as the blue print, and we do have all the building blocks of the older brain, we could possible rebuild the older brain from its individual atoms. The same atom might not be where it was before, but a similar one would be. If the blue print brain has been taught as much about the original human being as we can, then its synapse connections would give a similar mental experience as was in the original brain, thus the repaired brain rebuilt after such a cloned and educated copy, would when awakened have a similar mental experience to what was there before death. Alternatively: If we use the building blocks from the old brain (pluss what else might be needed), and build a young uneducated brain (using a cloned uneducated brain as the blue print) and then teach the rebuilt brain as much as possible of the information that once was in the old brain, then that too would be pretty close to restoring Bredo. Of course this is still not the same as not dying in the first place. But it is pretty darn close. And certainly a giant improvement over just becoming dust. Do we have to have an unbroken line of live cells or repaired and revived cells, to actually continue to be ourselves? And is our survival of ourselves dependent upon that as many of our brain cells as possible are kept alive or repaired and revived? And how much repair or changes can there be for the person still to be the same? Well it is a question of degree, any improvement above that found in a clone would be a step in the right direction. Maybe somewhere along the way we find out that one's sense of being one self is more a function of the information put into a brain than a function of the continuation of specific cells in the brain, and that for all practical purposes with proper teaching a clone could not be distinguised from the original? Anyway the sense of continuation would for an onlooker be greater if still more of the older brain is carried on into the clone. But if the rebuildt structure ends up being similar to the older structure, there might not be a need for each atom or molecule to be in the same place, as long as each older molecule is replaced with a similar molecule. maybe all that is needed is for the cell pattern and the synapses to be similar, so that it doesn't really matter if the molecules are moved around a lot. It seems to me that there are many ways whereby one can restore human beings, ways that could be used to even restore those that have become dust: All it would take is to look at their off spring and recalculate their DNA/genome, and calculate theoretically what their DNA/genome would have been like. Maybe some day we can create new embryoes that fit any desired theoretical DNA/genome. Then one could restore all the various human DNA or genome combinations that have ever lived. Of a person's mental content, much is human all to human or shared with all human beings, a lot is shared with many that lived at the same time and location, and can be restored from open history records, Some is personal but can be restored from diarys, family albums etc. And even the part of a human being that is specific to just it, can easily be recorded or restored: if one takes the time to gather an overview over that person: what motivated it, its aspirations, wills, goals, philosophy, moral system, legal system, profession, ventures, achievments and way of life. We have preserved a lot of this from my grand father's life. Thus the odds are that we at one point once it becomes technically possible to clone DNA from dead tissue, and legal and affordable to clone human beings, that we then will be able to create a clone that for all practical purposes is so close to him that it itself would look upon itself as being a continuation of him. This is something that we very well might accomplish thanks to our present preservation methods, and something that is not dependent upon freezing a body in such a way that it will walk once you just thaw it out. The latter would be nice too. But there are different ways to accomplish similar results. My grandfather's case is a pilot case, it has and will contine to lead to improvements that will benefit many others. Some of the problems we have faced and overcome are: cryonic organizations that did not accept post mortem sign ups, political opposition from local town board etc. The INS and the protectionism still so prevalent in the United States is still preventing me from getting back to the United states and there developing my Rocky Mountain Cryonic facility, along the plans published in the immortalist in 1993. However, I am still present in Colorado by Proxy: My icebathing club (the Boulder Polar Bear Club) just celebrated its 20th anniversary with 450 icebathers on new Year's day, the Nederland Area Chamber of commerce just had its second annual Frozen Dead Guy days, Bo is still adding dry ice on my grandfather, and sooner or later someoone will probably pick up on the fire proof, earth quake proof, storm proof and nuclear war proof design and technology of my unfinished cryonics facility, and create a business out of building such houses. Every year thousands of houses burn down in the Western United states due to forest fires, and someone is probably bright enough to see that these would not have burnt down if they had been built with the technologies I was the first to combine. It would have been nice if you had focused on what I actually am trying to accomplish, the actual rationale that is behind my actions, the value my pilot project has to other later cryonic cases (opening up for better routines and more rights respect), the valueable aspects of my unfinished state of the art facility.How life-extensioin and entrepreneurial liberty go hand in hand. The harmfull effects of protectionisme, and the importance of deporting the border patrol, when it comes to greatly extending the human life-expectancy. --- Reilly, you wrote a fun article, like the Beeck sisters made a fun movie. But both they and you have shown a large disregard for the facts of the case, and in many ways misrepresented what we actually are doing. It maybe looks funnier that way and sells better. But the reality of the case is actually that what we are doing is a rational attempt at preserving my grand father's dead body, And that the odds of actually restoring him to close to his own peak health is quite good. I would have liked you to focus your article more on the rational techniques whereby this possibly can be done, Sincerely, Trygve Bauge Ps. I am posting this response to the Cryonet letter circle, since many of its readers might have read your article that appeared in the Boston Globe on Tuesday the 11th of March 2003. ----- Original Message ----- From: "rodrigez rodrigez" <> To: <> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 11:58 PM Subject: Apologies > Tryvge, > > I want to apologize to you for not getting back to you > sooner. I've been away from home and haven't checked > my messages. When I did, I was shocked to find so many > messages from you, expressing problems with the > article. I was trying to write in the spirit of the > festival, which was lighthearted and fun, and I'm > sorry if I offended you. I admire your spirit and > dedication to life extension, even while I'm unsure > about your methods perhaps made light of them. Again, > the festival was a fun thing, and I tried to write a > fun article about it, something that would make the > readers of Boston laugh. Sorry if you took offense. > > Thanks for all the help with the article, > > Reilly Capps > > __________________________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online > http://webhosting.yahoo.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21400