X-Message-Number: 33453 From: Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:32:33 EST Subject: Message #33451 Message #33451 From: "Chris Manning" <> References: <> Subject: Re: All About Evil, Part 2 Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:23:55 +1100 Well just as one small example, here is what happened when I made a suggestion to CI. The Nov-Dec 2009 issue of 'Long Life' magazine had an article about the annual inspection of the CI premises carried out on behalf of the American Cryonics Society. The article contained a photo of Andy Zawacki manually measuring the level of the liquid nitrogen in each cryostat. I posted the following to the CI group: 'I was surprised by the method of measuring the level of the liquid nitrogen in the cryostats. I had assumed there was some automated process with gauges connected to floats (like in a car) and you just go around and read the gauges. Surely something like this could be done.' I will take the liberty of quoting Andy's reply: 'The method we use to measure the liquid nitrogen level is simple, accurate, foolproof and inexpensive. Floats and gauges can and do give false readings. The more complicated things are, the more chances you will have for a failure. Why would you want to change our measuring methods and increase the risk to our patients, even if the risk may be small?' The response seems perfectly reasonable to me - my suggested change *was* unnecessary - and I will be happy for CI to continue using the method it uses now. And I will be happy for the cryostat I eventually occupy to have its level measured in this way. MD: The most valuable resource any enterprise has is the productive capacity of its people. The value of good people to an organization even trumps money. While there is nothing "wrong" with manually checking the LN2 level in cryostats using the dipstick method (I did it for years), it is boring, time consuming and becomes increasingly unsupportable the more units you have in operation. Mostly, it is a poor use of human resources. In theory, you could shift this work to a local volunteer, a retiree perhaps - someone who lives nearby and wants to help... But in reality such "work" is a waste of that person's time as well, because any volunteer with that degree of agility and diligence can be put to other, more useful tasks - *in particular tasks that a machine cannot do.* Of course, if LN2 level monitoring were an exotic or costly technology, or one that was failure prone or unreliable, that would be a different matter. But such is not the case. Nor is it necessary, or even desirable to use "floats" or similar mechanical devices. As is the case with boiling water, there is a large and abrupt discontinuity in temperature between the boiling liquid nitrogen and the vapor above it. Thermocouples have the advantage of being fail-safe, in that they will not provide a believable reading in the event of a malfunction. They are also inexpensive. There are other ways to measure to liquid level that are similarly robust. The Dwyer Magnahelic differential pressure gauges, that are to be seen on the sides of the Alcor dewars, are not connected to floats. Rather, they measure liquid level by monitoring the pressure in a column (tube) of gas submerged in the LN2. Again, this system is robust, and reasonably fail safe. There are even ultrasonic systems that are quite elegant, albeit a bit a pricey. If you look at the photo here: _http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/IMG_2845.JPG_ (http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/IMG_2845.JPG) you will see the infrastructure CI uses to access the cryostats for liquid level measurement. I have clambered up and down the ladder and catwalk at CI, and exposing personnel to the risk associated with doing that with increased frequency on an year in, year out basis, "even if the risk may be small" is not a good trade-off IMHO. If CI were located in a litigious state with (comparatively) strict workers' compensation regulation, like California, they would likely see the increased risk to workers posed by this procedure and infrastructure in the form of increased workers' compensation insurance premiums. In fact, the access ladder employed by CI, which is a conventional "stepladder" that has been attached to the catwalk farming would be an OSHA violation in some states, but not all! In many states, a fall-arrest system is required, as called out in ISO 14122-4:2004. The point is, climbing up and down a ladder and across a catwalk with a (hopefully) increasing number of cryostats, in order to check LN2 levels is neither efficient, nor good practice with respect to worker safety, in the long run. > This is also an artifact > of CI President Ben Best considering himself an expert in just about > every > technical area of cryonics, with the added handicap of being unable to " > weight," scale, or do cos- benefit analyses on various technologies - as > well as also frequently lacking the necessary experience base to > understand > them. While I can't think offhand of any specific examples, I don't get the impression that Ben claims expertise that he doesn't have. I don't know what is meant by 'unable to "weight," scale, or do cost-benefit analyses on various technologies'. MD: LOL, well, maybe you just haven't dealt with Ben enough; I suspect Andy might have a view contrary to yours;-). Please also understand that I think Ben is a very good guy - sincere, hard working, and an utterly committed cryonicist. I'm sure he'd say the same about me - and have many criticisms as well - a fair number of which would be justified! > It is only necessary to look > at CryoNet, to look at Cold Filter, and to look at the reams of internal > criticism of cryonics BY cryonicists TO other cryonicists, to understand > that the vast majority of people signed up simply don't care. They are > informed of the screw-ups, the incompetence, and the often grotesque > errors, and > THEY SIMPLY DO NOT CARE. One of the really good things about Ben Best's > nightmarish CI case reports, are that they constitute due diligence > documentation to CI members, to prospective members,and to the public, of > just what a > mess they can expect to have made of their care. I do read every CI case report, with the same layman's approach as described above for reading the posts made here. I would not describe them as 'nightmarish', I certainly would care if I thought they were, and I don't get the impression that they make a 'mess' of members' care. MD: Notably, you don't ask for chapter and verse as to why I believe otherwise. Sigh. That' probably just as well. I am intrigued by the fact that Mr Darwin has the *time* to post these many long emails. I assume he would say that the time spent composing them is justified by the importance of setting the record straight (as he would see it). MD: Wow, this is a weird statement. Information processing and communications technology are advancing at a rate that simply blows me away - and I'm not easily impressed. If medicine were progressing at 1/10th, or maybe even 1/100th the rate that is being sustained in these areas, we'd all be immortal already. You might as well have asked me how I manage to find the *time* to post so much, given that using a hammer and chisel to carve my words into stone takes so long. And that's a good place to end this post, because it returns us to where we started out: the intelligent use of technology to improve the utilization of the most valuable resource in the world: human intelligence and productive creativity. -- Mike Darwin Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33453