X-Message-Number: 4662 Date: 23 Jul 95 03:17:02 EDT From: Mike Darwin <> Subject: CRYONICS Sweep Part 2 >4. Mike says "the sweep of history tells us NOTHING about whether what we >want personally is achievable." This statement is so very strange that it is >clear he has no inkling of how I use the phrase. Maybe I don't write clearly >enough, but most people seem to think I do. Anyway, one very simple >application is just the observation that technology is advancing, >and--barring calamities--is likely to continue to advance. That is easy to >understand and difficult to refute. Mike himself is counting on that and >contributing to it, and yet he doesn't recognize it as part of the "sweep of >history." I admit I was wrong about the "sweep of history telling us nothing about whether what we want personally is impossible." I should have said it tells us plenty, and the majority of what it tells us isn't good. Technology has advanced before, and in fact and in fact far more importantly, culture, ethics and philosophy have advanced before: some would argue to higher levels than achieved right now. Few would argue, based on PAST experience (which is, after all, the sweep of history) that unbridled technological progress continues unabated. In fact, the usual pattern of civilization is to follow a quite distinctive rise and fall. One of the compelling reasons this may happen is due to underlying physical phenomenon which we only vagely understand. For instance, not too long ago there was an article in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN about researchers creating little sandpiles. Once the pile reaches a certain steepness, it's probability of collapsing back to a lower state increases. If you chart the patterns of build-ups and collapses you will find surprisingly wide variation even with the same grains of sand. The striking thing is that when you plot these cycles they look almost exactly like stock market behavior over long periods, or ( the admittedly more subjectively evaluated) rises and falls in human wellbeing/civilization. It could well be that this long (and unpleasant) pattern to the "sweep of history" is at an end. It could however, just as easily beargued that nanotechnology, technolgical advance in general, or social problems which emerge with a high level of civilization, are, singly or together, on the verge of returning us from the top of the heap to the bottom. >5. Mike was perhaps tired (not unusual) and irritated (not unusual) when he >accused me again of "blowing sunshine" where the sun don't shine, presumably >either to deceive the gullible or because I am gullible myself. He also uses >language sugesting that I claim success is guaranteed, which everyone knows >is very far from fact. In another part of the same posting he said, more >tactfully and more correctly, that honest people can differ in their opinions >and emphases. Mike Darwin, tired? irritated? Incredible! :) Sorry Bob, but I didn't intend to accuse you of ""blowing sunshine" where the sun don't shine, presumably either to deceive the gullible or because I am gullible myself." I don't think you're doing either, but I know of others who are. When I (and other too, I've observed) write a response to a post which deals with lots of complex issues, I often forget to seperate out GENERAL criticism of an approach or problem in the field from specific criticism of an individual or organization. I would say the CI literature I've seen is restrained, has a calm feel to it, and is not aimed at hyping the gullible. Similarly your written work and the few times I've heard you speak could hardly be classed as trying to distort things towards wild optimism. Yes, you are more optimistic than me, and more optimistic than I feel is warranted, but you are not practioner of what is call "Happy Cryonics" (with credit to Saul Kent for coming up with the name). You should take as my estimation (as I intended) of you the following quote from above: > In another part of the same posting he said, more >tactfully and more correctly, that honest people can differ in their opinions >and emphases. >6. On page 1 of part 2 of the cryonet message Mike dismisses one of my quoted >passages as "bizarre." He generally demands chapter and verse from others, >but here he seems to think his authority is all that is required, with no >further comment. Hardly an argument from authority! What I should have said instead of using the world bizzare (admittedly loaded, but necessarily so in the context I meant it in) was to say something I don't understand, or something incomprehensible to me. In others words what you were saying just didn't make sense. Maybe clarification would help. Also, to be utterly frank, I was hoping Donaldson would take that one on since he seems to understand these kinds of arguments better than I and generally restates and critiques them far better than I am able. >To put recent "history" into a little perspective again, cooperation between >organizations is improving, research by most organizations is increasing, and >public perception of cryonics is softening. As to cooperation: I hope so and I hope my prior communication didn't get your back up too much. It was not intended to do that. Public perception softening: most definitely, although I remain cautios about such changes. The public has a love- hate relationship with thechnology. >Adding to my previous post today, and responding to Mike Darwin's #4656: >1. For some readers, the main thrust of Mike's message will be his contention t>hat patients suspended by recent (and not so recent) BPI or Alcor methods >have a better chance of revival than patients suspended by CI methods. This >is based mainly on interpretation of micrographs as showing better >ultrastructure. However: >a) Mike agrees that there are many unresolved difficulties in intrepreting >these photos. >b) CI sheep brains showed no cracking. Cracking may or may not be very >important, but the CI results are the only ones to date clearly showing no >cracking after rewarming from liquid nitrogen temperature. (I understand from >Mike that he and Paul Wakfer are testing CI's cooling/warming protocol to see >if that is the difference.) If cracking is very important, then--so >far--possibly CI's patients have the better of it. (My own honest opinion is >that cracking is probably not a major issue, but some others think >differently, and we just don't know.) My bet is that cooling rates between 0C and -79C are irrelevant to cracking. The real issue is cooling to lower temperatures and maybe glycerol concentration. In that respect (i.e., slow cooling) as I've pointed out again and again, CI, Alcor and CryoSpan all use extended slow rates of cooling and have for sometime. As to Bob's statement: > For some readers, the main thrust of Mike's message will be his contention t>hat patients suspended by recent (and not so recent) BPI or Alcor methods >have a better chance of revival than patients suspended by CI methods... I really couldn't say. I suspect the best prepared CI patient (excluding the last one I did) are in much poorer shape than those being done by other methods. The point is, I don't know. The only way to find this out is for me to reduplicate the work more precisely. I have repeatedly pressed Ci for details such as perfusate composition, cooling curves and other necessary documentation so that I can indeed repeat the work. Having said the above I would go further and say that presence of positive evidence (good EMs and metabolic acrtivity which have also recently documented) constitutes real evidence which can be tested and verified or falsified. CI's patients and their actual condition represents a black box. For some, theoretical considerations, the sweep of history, information theory, cryptanalysis, lack of money, etc. may all be plenty good enough reasons to pick Door #2 instead of going with the display on the showroom floor.nm As I always, say, to each his own. >c) BPI or/and Alcor methods (at various stages of their development) may have >or may have had other problems. For a while, when Mike was there, Alcor >sometimes exposed its patients to alcohol, which they later admitted was a >mistake (and a not inexpensive one!). Also, if I remember correctly, Alcor >under Mike and Jerry Leaf for a while used DMSO; CI always used glycerol. >There is also the admittedly unresolved problem of glycerol toxicity, which >could cut either way; we just don't know yet. Here we need corrections of fact: 1) I have perfused exactly one patient with DMSO. It was done because family and consultants wanted it done. Massive edema was the outcome. 2) I have never perfused a patient with DMSO for Alcor or while working with Jerry Leaf. 3) Jerry perfused his first few patients with DMSO for a very good reason: he didn't know any better. He got involved in cryonics sort of haphazardly and had no prior experimental background perfusing cryoprotective agents. When I asked him why he used DMSO early on, he said and I quote him: "The Cryonics Society was handling that; I was just becoming acquainted with them and I was not responsible for perfusate composition, volumes or amounts." I might add that after seeing the massive interstitial edema caused by DMSO perfusion in ischemic patients he quickly came up the power curve and switched to glycerol. As to why DMSO was used: I think this dates back to the days of Art Quaife and Fred and Linda Chamberlain, Farrant, and the general idea that DMSO was more penetrative. 4) This remark about CI never having used DMSO (spoken from a position of great scientific and moral height :)) is particularly frustrating to me for several reasons: a) I know that CI for a long time WAS going to use DMSO and that CI provided DMSO for Mildred Harris' cryopreservation. In fact, Bob Ettinger couriered CI's supply of DMSO up to Nelson in Iowa and there was a rather dicey moment when one of the bottles broke (as I recall) and started to make the plastic luggage smoke and/or melt. (Lucky you weren't coming into LAX anytime recently Bob). b) I have it on very reliable authority that at least one and maybe two CI patients were perfused with a mixture of glycerol and propylene glycol. In at least one of these cases massive edema with a near halt in venous rerturn was encountered. 4) As to the old issue of alcohol it goes like this: Trans Time used alcohol to cool its patients when I arrived on the scene out here. They protected the patients from alcohol with plastic bags (or tried to) which leaked. Because the mucosa, lungs, etc. are not protected or sealed up, alcohol can come in direct contact with them. Again, this is not a big deal for short exposure, although you can bet its the end of the line (using contemporary criteria) for the lungs (again, to me at least, not a big deal). However, the problem came in when when people let patients SIT in alcohol and dry ice for many months or even a year! That allows for freeze-substitution and deep penetration of alcohol into tissues. This did not make me happy. What made me even less happy was its flammability, its potential for leaking into the burr hole in the head (which was not done prior to my arrival on the scene here) and saturating the space between the skull and brain, and its leaking into the sternotomy wound. Finally, the vapor from the alcohol was such that if you hung around it long enough (and you had to to add dry ice) to control the cooling curve) you got, sick, dizzy, high, or all three. Thus the change to silcone oil was a long, long time ago and MANY MANY patients ago. We have not switched back and forth, as Bob has some times alleged in the past, and finding something better and using it is not only not a bad thing, it is not even a sign of incompetence: in fact it speaks well of us. At least we had feedback in various ways which cued us to problems and caused us to act promptly to fix them. By contrast, as far as I can tell there has been little or no visible change in CI perfusion/cooling methods over the last decade. Further as to alcohol, I use it to cool my experimental dogs. I plug the esophagus with a giant foley cath ballon filled with water, plug the ET with a cap and fill the tube with saline and I put em right in the alcohol sans bags. Exposure time is less than 24 hours and the stuff evaporates off the dog quite nicely in our explosion proof -90C freezer. Yes, the fire hazard is still a concern, but we've founds lots of ways to minimize that as well as personnel exposure to vapor. >d) It is VERY possible that nanotech or equivalent will be both necessary and >sufficient to rescue patients suspended by ANY of the methods heretofore >used, and perhaps even by straight freezing as well. In that case, all >patients have roughly equal chances, regardless of what they paid. And it can be arugued that it is just as possible that such will NOT be the case! >2. The more important question, from the point of view of prospective >patients, is who will offer the best suspension and the best overall chances >in the future--ten years hence or more for most readers. I couldn't agree more and wonder who will survive and/or suceed myself. I don't think the odds is to goof for none of 'em. Jim Younts comments about keeping an eye open and working to MAKE things better apply strongly here. >3. How can individuals judge between various claims and interpretations? (a) >They can follow their noses or impulses or loyalties, and this is what most >will do. (b) Those so inclined can review the detailed history and indulge in >some amateur psychoanalysis. (c) Those so inclined and qualified can review >all the objective data and form their own opinions. (d) Those who can't >afford more than $28,000 can choose CI as the only available alternative, >whether or not they think it is also the best. (e) Those who can afford >anything and believe the premium price necessarily reflects the best can >choose the highest priced. So true, so true. But then everybody (probably including Bob and me were we alive then) knew that Marconi's transoceanic radio wouldn't work. The damn "fool" spent the modern day's equivalent of several billion dollars, with acres of metal sheets many square feet each hung inches from each other and dynamos the size of small buildings generating long waves. Maxwell already had shown that EM radiation travels in a straight line. Well, they were wrong: nonobody, not even Marconi knew about the heavyside effect or the ionosphere. He got rich, laterinvented/perfected shortwave radio, and creamed his more conservative and better educated competetiors and critics. And poor Columbus: he never did know he hadn't reached India! >4. Who among spokesmen is likely to be most objective and least likely to be >self-serving? The virtue of which I am proudest is my humility; I may not be >totally free of vanity or jealousy, but these have steadily diminished along >with my life expectancy. Also, having lived longer, I have probably made more >mistakes than other spokesmen. As Tevye said about being poor, making >mistakes is no disgrace but it's no great >honor either--yet it does tend to vitiate vanity, unless you are >psychopathic. Ho, Ho, Ho! Humility is a virtue which can never be ascribed to oneself. Rather , it issomething conferred by the judgment of others, and, however flawed, by the judgment of history. As to impartial people, arm-chair psychoanalysis, etc. Let's get rid of the need for such indirect, imprecise, and probably useless measures. When you go to find a good surgeon your interest is in primarly in OUTCOME not whether he's a nice guy. Until OUTCOME in human cryopreservation becomes objective and quantifiable we are all just stumbling around in the dark, perhaps with some moving closer to the light and others not. In any event, in MY humbleness :) I submit that everything else but OUTCOME is likely to be so much hot air or sunshine generated mostly by the heat of egos and organizations in competetion. Research. Results. Outcome. Reversibility Mike Darwin Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4662