X-Message-Number: 24533
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 10:02:03 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: yes, I DID give a reference

To "Basie" once more:

In case you haven't noticed I did provide a reference on the damage
of freezing, particularly of brains. I will be more explicit this
time: Appendix II, "A 'Realistic' Scenario for Nanotechnological
Repair of the Frozen Human Brain", by Greg Fahy, in the Alcor 
publication CRYONICS: REACHING FOR TOMORROW, 1991, Alcor Life
Extension Foundation. This is the discussion of cryonics which
preceded the later one authored by JB Lemler, which did not 
discuss the damage of freezing (perhaps because by that time
Alcor was moving over to vitrification). In his appendix, Greg
Fahy gives a detailed discussion of the different kinds of
damage freezing causes to brains.

As for nanotechnology, it looks to me that it may very well give
us lots of very local maps of the damage to a brain, including
the chemicals present (particularly if before then we've found
them to be marker chemicals ie. chemicals which give info about
what was attached to what else. We would then take this information
and put it in a computer, all of it, and the computer would
work out the most likely connections between all the pieces. I
very much doubt that this could be done by any individual nano-
sized repair machine (the problem is too big). If you insist,
at the cost of lots of extra machinery, we could turn all the
repair machines inside a brain into such a computer, but it
looks to me much more efficient to pull out that info and 
analyze it separately. Of course, nanotechnology right now has
lots of interest to computer makers, who realize that unless 
they use some new fundamental method (other than tiny electrical
circuits) their ability to miniaturize and thus increase the power
of their computers will run into a wall. (I'll even say that 
from the papers I've seen in SCIENCE or NATURE, that's presently
the main reason for interest in nanotechnology itself).

In any case, I did give a reference. And if Alcor still has
copies of that book, they can send it to you (or just a photocopy
of Appendix II). 

              Best wishes and long long life to all,

                   Thomas Donaldson

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