X-Message-Number: 24389
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
Subject: cryopreserving demented patients
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 11:09:31 +0100

From time to time comments are raised about the wisdom of cryopreserving
patients who have "lost their minds".

No one can be certain of the future, and to make a judgement that A or B is
incapable of restoration is making a judgement of the future. Certainly one
can speculate about probabilities, but they are just that -- speculations.
The probability that an already demented mind will ever work again after it
has been burned or rotted is a great deal smaller than if it has been
cryopreserved. Even if you think revival from present-day cryopreservation
is already small, two small numbers can still differ in magnitude.

The popular press is full of stories about people who have stored illegal
data on their hard drives, deleted it, only to have their PCs confiscated
and the data found. In the UK a high court judge has just been punished for
having illegal material on his PC. Rumours abound about using electron
microscopes and similar devices to recover data that had been over written
many times.  How much of this is real and how much is authority inspired
scare tactics I am not sure, but there must be some germ of truth in it. In
the early days of PCs it was certainly believed that once data on a hard
disk had been over-written that was an end to the matter. Criminals (and
writers of TV cop shows) now believe that the only way to effectively
destroy the data in a hard disk is to ***cremate*** the disk after removing
the metal outer casing. I know that human brains are not hard disks, but
changing predictions and realities as to what is possible over the past
couple of decades with hard disks may well have striking similarities with
regards to changing predictions and realities as to what can be recovered
from damaged brains in the future.

It is unlikely that anyone will know "for certain" that all the information
has been lost in a brain that is demented, at least within the next few
decades or even centuries.

-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

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