X-Message-Number: 2604 From: T.Freeman Newsgroups: sci.cryonics Subject: Re: Problem with Cryonics Message-ID: <> References: <2jjrfr$> Date: Sun, 13 Feb 1994 02:31:25 GMT In article <2jjrfr$> (Steve Petersen) writes: I heard that cryonic suspension has some problems. It damages skin cells. Kind of like the ad for Topol (sp?) tooth polish. Actor inhales from a cigarette, exhales through a handkerchief, which is left a disgusting shade of yellow. The actor says "... and imagine what cigarette smoke could do to your teeth!". (My point is that he is disregarding what the cigarette smoke does to your lungs, which is much more damaging.) The damage to brain cells represents a much larger barrier to reanimation than does the damage to skin cells. Skin does not carry much information about who we are; burn victims who have skin replaced with skin grafts are more-or-less the same person afterward as before. So in principle a new crop of skin cells could be grown if even a little of it survives. If we ever figure out how to manipulate gene expression, new skin could be grown from any surviving cell. On the other hand, with present technology, there is some ice crystal formation in the brain when a person is frozen. Cryoprotectants are used to minimize this, but there is enough to make it likely that some reassembly will be required to piece things together. There's reason to hope this might be possible, but it isn't certain. Check out _Engines of Creation_ by Drexler for a sketch of how this sort of thing might be done. Not too recently a woman who payed to have her body frozen ran out of funds some years after her body was frozen. (This info was taken from "The Great Mambo Chicken") I read that but I don't remember it very well. I guess you're probably talking about the Dora Kent affair. Check out the FAQ. To get the cryonics FAQ, check out old messages in the sci.cryonics newsgroup or the news.answers newsgroup, or send mail to with the subject line "CRYOMSG 0018", or use anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu to fetch all files in the directory pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/sci/cryonics. Have any animals been re-animated? I think I heard a rumor about a dog once. Dogs have been recovered from 4 degrees C, but not from liquid nitrogen temperatures. I believe sperm and fetuses and so forth can survive being frozen to that temperature with the right preservation technique. There's more in the FAQ. -- Tim Freeman <> Do you call yourself free? I want to hear your ruling idea, and not that you have escaped from a yoke. -- Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2604