X-Message-Number: 2213
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From:  (Matt Parker)
Subject: Hibernation
Message-ID: <>
Date: Fri, 7 May 1993 03:22:20 GMT

A few questions and a proposal for the sci.cryonics cognoscenti:

Does anyone know anything about the physiology of mammalian hibernation?
Does the body temperature go down?  I know that metabolism is slowed
significantly.  

It seems to me that a better approach to long-term survival and increased
chances of revival would be the following:  Devote intensive research into
achieving human hibernation, i.e., slowing down of metabolism to 3 or 4
heartbeats per minute, perhaps lowering of body temperature (I'm guessing
somewhere between 4 and 20 degrees C, but as I said, I don't know what
happens during hibernation.)  After all, bears can't be that much different
from people.  Perhaps feed the patients with glucose intravenously.  (No
need to fatten up beforehand.)  Legal problems of doing this to someone
before they die would be avoided, because they aren't being "killed."  It
should be relatively easy to revive someone from such a state.  The goal
in doing this would be to prolong the person's life for perhaps a few
decades, until techniques are developed to freeze them to liquid N2 temps
without damage.

The whole reason for this scenario is that the technology to achieve
human hibernation will probably be easier to achieve than the technology
to freeze people to 77 K without damage.  In fact, with current advances
in biotechnology, human hibernation would seem to be at most a few decades
away.  Comments?

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