X-Message-Number: 24528
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 10:24:22 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: for various commentators

Here we go, again:

To Yvan Bozzonetti:
      
Perhaps I did not explain my point well enough, so I will repeat my
explanation. First of all, the molecules making us up are comparatively
mobile and changeable as individual molecules. They form into large
scale patterns, and these are what makes us up. A molecular scale
map of our brains would be like a map of the clouds in the sky
over Paris at a particular instant. There may well be order in the
clouds over Paris, but a single map is unlikely to show any order
at all.  Furthermore, to the extent that we might make a map of 
the structures in a normal undamaged brain, a brain damaged by
freezing may be hard to decipher knowing only the form taken by an
undamaged brain. In the very first place, our memories will make
our brains differ from anyone elses, and our memories are just 
what we want to recover. Even the connections between neurons
(synapses, and the axons and dendrites which connect neurons) occur
on larger scale than molecular. They are the things that can be
torn apart on freezing; and virtually all present students of
memory IDENTIFY those connections with our memories --- not the
large ones which connect different anatomical areas in our brains,
but the smaller ones between individual neurons.

To provide a molecular scale map of a human brain would be like
providing a map of the clouds over Paris on Wednesday 18 August 2004.
If you want to work out how a damaged brain formerly connected
together, maps are the last thing you want. What you really want
to get is an understanding of the molecules which make up our
brain and their birth, behavior, role, and disappearance. 

I'm not AGAINST nanotechnology. I just think that using it wrong
will get us nowhere at all. Anymore than trying to make a map of
the clouds over Paris. It's not that there's no order in the 
clouds over Paris, but maps just aren't the best way to work out
what that order is or tell that it's somehow gone wrong and needs
fixing.

I'll even say that close scrutiny of work on brains and how they work
suggests to me that we might well be able to get enough information
to reassemble most of a brain broken by freezing. And when I notice
such information I do so in a SCIENCE REPORT in PERIASTRON. We want
to work out how pieces of a broken brain once fit together; the 
evidence we'd use doesn't necessarily bear any obvious relation to
memory and how it works. To give a simple example, synapses will
take with them their receptors for different neurotransmitters, and
we know from knowing how brains work that some neurons mostly use
serotonin, others glutamate, and so on. Some areas may have many
neural processes crowded together, all broken; such information
eliminates the possibility of piece A being connected to a whole
class of other pieces using different neurotransmitters. And yes,
that preliminary step of working out which pieces associate with
which neurotransmitters would very likely use some form of
nanotechnology. NO map of the brain but an understanding of brains
would be used here.

I'll add here, just as I did in my last message, that it would be
better if we didn't even have to take all that trouble. And that's
what vitrification aims to do: prevent any problems with broken
neural processes at all.
         
      
For Basie (I don't understand why you call yourself that):

Fine. You say it is hooe. So far the only reference you've given
deals with single cells, which by now as single cells are almost
always quite freezable and revivable afterwards. (Sure, we want
to improve our methods, but that's not the same). It's a real pity
that some things seem to be forgotten very fast: Greg Fahy, though
at the time he could not openly go by his real name, wrote a good
piece in an Appendix to the PREVIOUS survey of cryonics put
out by Alcor, not the one by Lemler but the previous one. As you
know, Fahy is currently researching vitrification with the support
of the 21st Century Medicine Foundation. And yes, he gave details
about just what happened to brains on freezing, even with the
cryoprotectants of that day. I have a copy of that document
and if you pay my postage and photocopy costs, and send me your
address, I'll send it to you.

If you only want to bleat hooe to me on this question, too bad.

              Best wishes and long long life for all,

                 Thomas Donaldson

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