X-Message-Number: 2757
Date: 14 May 94 00:49:15 EDT
From: Paul Wakfer <>
Subject: CRYONICS Nanotechnology & Cryonics

To: CRYONET

General:

    Again, to emphasize, I didn't say that supporting and working in
nanotechnology was in any way a bad thing to do.  It is a great think
to do, as good or better than many scientific projects.  With my
background in Electronics, Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science,
I would love to have time to work in that field myself.  I find it
extremely interesting and exciting.  However, there are also dozens of
other fields of science about which I feel the same way and I don't
have the time to do all that I want to do in my standard lifetime. 
Therefore, I believe that my best overall course of action is to
abstain from doing any of those things until I ensure (or least raise
the probabilities considerably) that I will have the time to do them
all.
    I certainly hope that I never have to be cryopreserved and I
believe that even at my age, 56, because of my excellent health, my
continuing studies & actions to preserve that health, and the genes
passed on from my long living forbearers, there is some chance that
biological research and/or nanotechnology will solve the aging problem
soon enough for me.  However, because misfortune could strike at any
time, to make my future life more certain, I still need cryonics.  But
I need a working cryonics that I can be reasonably sure *will*
preserve my mind.  I have chosen to spend my efforts on cryonics
because so little effort is being put there that my relativity small
input can be crucial to its success.  Whereas, with respect to the
various approaches to anti-aging, while they also need a lot more
support than they are getting, my individual contribution will not as
likely have a major effect and is not as likely to be needed for
success.


Reply to CRYOMSG #2742 by Keith F. Lynch:

>The best way to tell how irreversibly damaged brains are or aren't,
>is by restoring suspended patients to life and health.  Until we can
>do that, how can we *ever* really tell whether a patient is being
>sufficiently preserved, or whether a proposed change in suspension
>protocols which causes less damage of one type but more damage of
>another type, is a positive or a negative change?

    I totally agree, but it is all a matter of which will come first. 
I believe that cryobiological research can achieve an important step
in this direction much earlier than nanotechnology.  I am in constant
contact with "a well-known organ cryobiologist" and hope to begin
brain cryopreservation research with him in the fall.  He is
convinced, and has convinced me, that, given sufficient support ($1M
per year, perhaps less), we can achieve fully reversible
cryopreservation of the brain within 5 years.  Yes, without the I/O,
demonstrating that the brain is "alive" will not be very direct.  But
showing normal physiological parameters, normal EEGs, and using
various indirect neurological ways of showing that memory is preserved
and that the brain is reacting as it did before it was cryopreserved
should convince the scientific community.  This alone might well make
cryonics "respectable", leading to unprecedented acceptance and
growth, thus, ensuring the future of cryonics.

Secondly, I believe that long before we will be able to fully repair
and restore those patients cryopreserved with today's technology, we
will have halted, or reversed aging and most other diseases.  Cryonics
will then be unnecessary except for the most extreme cases and
possibly in remote places, such as outer space.


>I don't agree that 200 years or 50 years make no difference.  LN
>preservation is precarious.  Every year, there's some chance of
>government banning cryonics, of any given cryonics organization going
>bankrupt, of the economy going belly-up (e.g. a 1930s style
>depression, or a hyperinflation, or a repudiation of the federal
>debt), terrorism, war, or other calamity.

This is such a well known factor, that I didn't bother stating it.  I
simply put the conditional, if I come back, on my statement that I
didn't care how long it would take.  But you are right, I fully
acknowledge that nanotechnology may have an important role to play in
hastening a patient's return and therefore lessening his/her time in a
perilous state of existence. (BTW, as a libertarian/anarchist I
believe that repudiation of the national debt is the only way out and
would be a good thing.  If we could only instill that fear in the
financial community at large, big government would come to an end that
much sooner.  Personally, I have never bought and will never buy
government securities.)


>Also, nanotechnology may have the potential of making cryonics
>unnecessary for many of the younger cryonicists, whose current
>life expectancies are 40 to 60 years or more.

Agreed, and I sure hope so.


Reply to CRYOMSG #2743, by Jeffrey Soreff:

>As one previous message on this mailing list put it, time in
>cryopreservation is time at risk.  .......

This was answered above.

>Development of nanotechnology also provides an alternate path to many
>desirable medical technologies.  Simply having the ability to do
>brute force copying of healthy cells and mechanically putting them in
>the right places solves a lot of medical problems.  Development of
>nanotechnology can fail, but so can development of more traditional
>medical technologies I would like to have parallel paths available,
>so that they act as backups for each other.  If, for whatever reason,
>biomedical techniques capable of reviving cryopreserved patients are
>not developed, development of nanotechnology may still permit their
>revival.

As I have tried to point out, I *did not* argue against this line of
reasoning.  I sincerely hope that nanotechnology *does* help the 
biomedical sciences to end aging and disease.  However, having lived
through the last 30 years when almost yearly, computer scientists have
stated that a computer will be chess champion of the world in 5 years,
and such a relatively simple task has still not been accomplished
(Although, even *I* agree that it will *now* happen within 5 years.),
I am somewhat reluctant to place any faith in the nanotechnology
devotee's time-scales.  As so many scientist do, especially those
without a strong biological background, I believe that they grossly
(and arrogantly) underestimate the complexity of biological mechanisms
and especially of the human brain.


>I would like to argue for the rationality of my course of action.  I
>am not looking at it from the point of view of cryonics, but rather
>from the point of view of maximizing my expected lifespan.  Either
>successful cryonics or nanotechnological cell repair machines or 
>biomedical anti-aging treatments would assist me.  Given my
>particular skills, attempting to assist nanotechnology, which can
>favorably affect the first two possibilities, seems like a rational
>way to spend my time.

I hope you are right, but I don't give it much chance.  In any case,
it does not assist cryonics, if we aren't currently even preserving
the mind.  BTW, there are many projects in cryonics research which
would be both interesting to an electrical engineering/computer
scientist, and would be extremely valuable to cryonics.  I haven't had
time to do them partly because my other skills have been more needed
for day to day operations.


>                                               If we could get
>pre-mortem cryopreservation legalized we could avoid a great deal of
>ischemic damage which we also have to avoid in order to be revived.

I believe that this is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.  As one
who in the late 70s put several years of his time and all of his
financial resources into Canadian Libertarianism, I *know* that this
is impossible until we have, through research, demonstrated the, at
least partial, workability of cryonics.
    While, I gave up on trying to get rid of Big Government here and
now.  One of the reasons why I want to live for 1000's of years is to
get ahead to a future time when human society has evolved or otherwise
generated more individual freedom.  As I always say, if you get frozen
either things will be better when you come back, or you won't come
back.


Reply to CRYOMSG #2744 by Ben Best:

>My point was that no practicing cryonicist can consistently take the
>extreme anti-repair viewpoint.

And my point was that *nobody* is doing this!


>And, moreover, that the issues are not
>altered one iota by substituting an alternate repair technology for
>nanotechnology. Faith in "Biotechnology" could as easily lead to lack
>of interest in improved preservation techniques as faith in
>"Nanotechnology". To practice cryonics today, it is necessary to
>believe that SOME repair technology is possible -- and this
>NECESSARILY entails the danger of such smug faith in that repair
>capability that little concern is given to improved preservation.

This point is very well taken.  According to Mike Darwin before
Nanotechnology, it was faith in "Our Friends of the Future".



>But this "trouble imagining" not only affects "nascent cryonicists",
>it affects at least 95% of the scientific establishment who dismiss
>cryonics as being pseudo-science. These people cannot get it through
>their thick heads that ANY repair is possible.

This is an important positive point for nanotechnology which I had
forgotten.  I only wish it *were* having a major positive effect.


>Suggesting that current cryonics methods might not be preserving the
>biological basis of consciousness might be a way of convincing
>cryonicists to support research, but it will only convince
>noncryonicists that cryonics is bunk.

I'm not suggesting that we communicate this to non-cryonicists at
large (although I believe that except when you have a government, or
other, gun to your head, honesty is always the best policy), but when
it comes to communications within the cryonics community, I believe in
the Mike Darwin, let it all hang out, ruthless honesty approach, so
well expressed in CRYONICS magazine under his editorship and sorely
missed since.  In any case, that we might not be currently preserving
the mind is simply one of the many factors in one's estimation of
whether cryonics will work.  Unless, someone demonstrates that we are
not preserving the mind, I'll remain signed up and I believe that it
is rational for others to sign up.  For a chance of extended life, its
better than rotting or burning.  If someone *did* demonstrate
conclusively that we are not preserving the mind, then I, for one,
would *not* remain signed up, but would work even harder (if that is
possible) to generate a preservation method which *might* preserve the
mind.


-- Paul Wakfer --

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