X-Message-Number: 2673 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: CRYONICS Re: Brain & Facial Damage Date: Sat, 2 Apr 1994 11:14:48 -0800 (PST) About brain damage and facial damage: First, the superficial point. One major thing to understand about cryonic suspension (and one which will probably not go away even if our methods dramatically improve) is that we are focussing on survival of personality while most morticians try to prepare bodies so that their APPEARANCE remains the same. Just because your face looks awful doesn't mean that you have no chance of revival, or that any significant damage has occurred. Second, the deep point. Yes, Ralph Merkle's article did NOT prove that memory would survive. A reading of the last version of it (I mean his nanotechnology article) shows that he proved a far weaker point: that it was possible to read the location of every molecule in the DAMAGED brain into a computer. A little thought will suggest that this latter point isn't even particularly spectacular. Yes, your memory and personality are the major things you want to either survive undamaged, or survive well enough that they can be recovered after fixes, done by all available means. Furthermore, cryonicists themselves have done very little study of what happens to brains under their procedures. They do have something of an excuse, which is simply that such studies cost a great deal of money. But that excuse has begun to wear thin, even now. Fixing the brain damage may take very little, particularly if the neurons retain the needed information elsewhere. Sorting out a cracked brain, particularly with crack sizes extending down to nanometers, and corresponding motions of the cracked pieces, AND no further information (!important assumption!) can easily make a problem unsolvable by any computer less than or equal to the total universe in mass (nanotechnological or not ... in this case, if you use nanotechnology you merely multiply by a relatively small factor). If and when you join ANY cryonics society, you may wish to add your voice to that of others who know this problem and are urging research to resolve it. One major avenue of work to solve these problems consists of finding a way to vitrify the brain rather than freeze it. (Vitrification refers to a condition in which the solution surrounding the cells has turned into a GLASS rather than a collection of crystals). A second major avenue (notice how I called out the major assumption in the previous paragraph) would be to understand brains well enough that we could put the cracks together with the other information which remained. It is right to decide on cryonic suspension over simple death. But you should understand very well that our current methods need some improvements NOW which cannot be provided AFTER you have been suspended. I hope that when and if you join, you help support such research, which is badly needed. And yes, I know many other things are also badly needed. Alcor, my cryonics society, has only recently fought off the California State Government in the attempt of Californian regulators to destroy them. (I refer to the Dora Kent case and the years of legal action following it). Yet this need for research specifically into brain preservation still hangs over us all. - Thomas Donaldson, Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2673