X-Message-Number: 23560
From: 
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 00:02:34 EST
Subject: Re: #23548 and #23554 'Miracle' boys defy death under the ice

To CryoNet
From Steve Bridge
March 5, 2004
Re: Scott's Badger's message #23554 

>Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 09:18:40 -0800 (PST)
>From: Scott Badger <>
>Subject: Re: #23548 'Miracle' boys defy death under the ice

>> From: "Aschwin de Wolf"
>><>
>> Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 12:04:44 -0500
>> 
>> 'Miracle' boys defy death under the ice
>> 
>>http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=238102004
>> 
>> CLARE CHAPMAN IN VIENNA
>> 
>> TWO boys who were clinically dead for more than an
>> hour after falling
>> through ice into a frozen lake in Austria have been
>> brought back to life.

>I don't profess to fully understanding the technology
>underlying cryonics, so correct me if I'm wrong but
>... does this story really have anything to do with
>cryonics?
>
>Every once in while I see an article like this posted
>to Cryonet. The poster usually appears to be trying to
>provide information that supports the idea of cryonics
>and give us all reason for optimism. But I fail to see
>what these low-temperature clinical death stories have
>to do with cryonics. After all, when I deanimate I'm
>not going to be reanimated by some paramedic's attempt
>to resuscitate me. The fact that mammals can survive
>the temperatures described in the story above seems to
>me to have little to do with our ability to survive
>the temperatures used in cryonic suspensions.

Bob Ettinger will probably answer this, too, since this topic stems from his 
book, *The Prospect of Immortality. *  But since I use events like this as an 
example myself, maybe my perspective will be a little different.

Survival in cold water drowning is unrelated to the long-term storage aspects 
of cryonics.  It has nothing to do with the temperature of liquid nitrogen.  
However, these stories are completely relevant to cryonics in three very 
important ways.

1.  The first block that most people hit in trying to understand cryonics is 
the "but, they're dead!" problem.  One answer we use is that a doctor of today 
who traveled back 100 years would discover many people being abandoned for 

dead because they were not breathing or lacked a heartbeat.  Today many of those
people are rescued by CPR and many other techniques and medications.  Nature 
didn't change; our knowledge did.  Those people were mislabeled as "dead" 100 
years ago.

In the same manner, most people would still give up on someone who had been 
under water for 30 minutes.  However, during the past two decades many people, 
especially children, have survived 30 minutes in cold water.  A handful have 
survived an hour underwater.  Labeling someone as "dead" today says little 

about what a doctor of the future would say.  At the time we take custody of our
patients, they may be in a condition completely reversible by future medicine.

This is an absolutely critical discussion point for any presentation of 
cryonics.  If you cannot get concession on this basic step, you might as well 

forget the rest of the conversation.  Cold water drowning is a dramatic example 
of 
the point that "clinically dead" or "legally dead" is not the same thing as 
"permanently DEAD".  In fact, it is a misnomer to use the word "dead" for any 
patient for whom the outcome is not yet certain.

2.   Then there is that "what happens to the soul?" question.  Many people -- 
still stuck on the notion that death is like turning off a light switch, 

instead of being a series of possibly reversible events -- have the notion that

the human soul floats off when the body dies.  So how could it return 100 years
later if the person is resuscitated?  Bob Ettinger had a brilliant answer for 
that in his book, using cold water drowning as the example.  He points out 
that "no one seems to make an issue" of where the children's souls went while 

they appeared to be dead.  They were just happy to have their children alive.  
He 
continues:

     "Why, then, should anyone be concerned about the souls of the frozen?  
The mere length of the hiatus can hardly be critical; in God's view, 300 years 
is only the blink of an eyelash, and presents no more difficulty than 2 1/2 
hours.
     "Except quantitatively, then, the problem is not new, and the religious 
communities have already made their decision.  They have implicitly recognized 
that resuscitation, even if heroic measures are employed, is just a means of 
prolonging life, and that the apparent death was spurious." 

3.  Finally, there is the issue of what we do to protect the patient's brain 
between the point of legal death and the time we can get them frozen or 

vitrified into an unchanging state.  The first priority is getting the patient's

brain temperature reduced as quickly as possible.  Cold water drowning is the 
one 
of the ways we can see that rapid reduction of temperature prevents brain 
damage.  There are other ways, of course; but these events are completely 
relevant to that point.

Note that cold water drownings are no longer teaching us anything new 

technically that transfers to cryonics procedures.  However, they are very 
important 
in persuading layman, scientists, and medical personnel that cryonicists are 
acting in a reasonable manner in pursuing cryonic preservation for people who 
have no other hope.

Steve Bridge


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