X-Message-Number: 32768
Subject: Oberon's proposal to stimulate cryonics research
Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 01:01:18 -0400
From: 

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Oberon, I have no opinion about the specific science aspects of this proposal, 
but I am dubious that it will cause any change for other reasons.
 

For one thing, you unconsciously point out your own dichotomy when you push for 
"By pulling out all the stops, expense be damned," and then "There is one 
Canadian billionaire signed up for cryonics, but who is otherwise not active in 
funding research, and there are as yet no American billionaires that are 
interested. All this could change once the concept has been proven to work."
 

Chicken or egg?  How do you pull out "all the stops, expense be damned" without 
a lot of money, when you say money won't come until "the concept has been proven
to work?"  This is the essential problem of just about all research, not just 
cryonics.  Typically, any research direction limps along on meager funds and 
committed volunteers until some beginning of a breakthrough is seen, enough to 
convince a few more people (or government agencies) to invest.  That has been 
the direction of cryonics research (and organ preservation research in general) 
for decades.  If you are wealthy or can talk wealthy friends into supplying 
"expense be damned"-level funding, then get it started.
 

(As a side note, you should not assume that every person who contributes to 
cryonics research announces it publicly.)
 

Secondly, huge funding does not always bring immediate results - or any positive
results at all.  Some ideas simply won't work; but it might take decades of 
negative results to prove that.  We are pretty sure that cryonic suspension is 
likely to be workable in some fashion; but it is a long way from proven, your 
humble opinion notwithstanding.  
 

And then we have also discovered over the years that scientific breakthroughs 
take longer because of new problems that come up along the way.  For example, I 
thought that organ preservation would have been solved more than 10 years ago.  
Interestingly, every time one level of problem was solved, a new problem was 
found, requiring not just more experimentation but entirely new cryobiological 
understanding and new theories of how damage occurs.  Cryoprotectant toxicity is
just ONE of the hurdles that has to be overcome.
 

And even assuming that we can solve the basic cryobiological questions of organ 
preservation, we then have to solve the problems of memory and personality 
storage in the brain and prove that those necessary qualities survive 
cryopreservation, storage, and rewarming.  
 

Finally, no matter how much money is available, there are only a tiny handful of
trained people interested in the question.  If the 2,000 existing cryonics 
organization members were mostly scientists, maybe things would go faster.  
Having fewer than twenty scientists involved in looking at these ideas means 
both not enough people to do the work and, more importantly, not enough 
different brains to contribute new ideas for the hundreds of problems which will
need solutions.
 

A lot of money, all by itself, is an insufficient motivator to solve the problem
- and we don't even have that.  If you have some solutions that you can 
actually *accomplish*, you can help with some of these steps.  "Braveheart" 
battle cries to charge the enemy won't do much without a lot more weapons.
 
Steve Bridge
 
>>>>> 
Message #32767
Date: Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:38:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: 
Subject: a proposal to stimulate cryonics research
 
Up till now funding for fully reversible organ cryopreservation (of which 

cryonics is an offshoot) has been limited. Cryoprotectant toxicity has been the
primary roadblock to achieving this. However there are much less toxic 

alternatives to commonly used cryoprotectants. Unfortunately there is virtually
no possibility for commercial applications using these superior cryoprotective 
agents because they are too expensive. I submit that nothing succeeds better 
than success in stimulating further funding. By pulling out all the stops, 

expense be damned, and actually using these less toxic but pricey cryoprotective
agents such as ectoin, DESO, and KF7G; fully reversible liquid nitrogen 
cryopreservation of entire animals is IMHO quite possible right now. Even 
cheating a bit, and using a naturally freeze tolerant animal, would not much 
reduce the impact of such a success. Seeing on national television even a frog 
or snake surviving storage in liquid nitrogen would massively stimulate
further funding. 
 
With such an initial success then money would "suddenly" become available 

to research ways and means to reduce the toxicity of affordible cryoprotectants
so that fully reversible organ cryopreservation (and even human 

suspended animation) becomes a commercial reality in the near, as opposed to the
distant future. There is one Canadian billionaire signed up for cryonics, but 
who is otherwise not active in funding research, and there are as yet no 
American billionaires that are interested. All this could change once the 
concept has been proven to work. Even Bill Gates might take notice.
 



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