X-Message-Number: 23576
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 14:30:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: hypothermia, revised

It has been pointed out to me that my statement about
cold-water drowning victims omitted to clarify the important
role played by circulation of the blood. Therefore my initial
statement could be rewritten as:

1. They are living proof that postmortem brain damage can be
delayed by hypothermia, especially if cooling occurs
initially while the heart is still beating. This is an
important factor because blood circulation can withdraw heat
from the body and brain far more rapidly than surface cooling
alone, after the circulation has stopped. This should be
reassuring to members of any cryonics organization that
cools the patient promptly after legal death has been
pronounced, provided an ice bath is supplemented with
cardiopulmonary support to sustain some circulation of the
blood.

In addition it was pointed out to me that controlled
hypothermia experiments (which have typically used dogs)
provide better evidence than anecdotal case histories about
children falling into swimming pools or snow drifts. On the
other hand, when one is trying to convince everyday people
that life can resume after a period without any vital signs,
I feel there is no substitute for reasonably well
authenticated stories of children "coming back."

Often I have used such stories about children as a way of
evaluating the skepticism of the person to whom I am talking.
If the person says, "I don't believe it, that's impossible,"
I know I am going to have some difficulty presenting the case
for cryonics.

I once talked to a biologist who refused to believe Suda's
cat brain experiment even after I showed him a photocopy of
the original paper in Nature. (I had obtained the photocopy
from a medical library.)

--Charles Platt

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