X-Message-Number: 4666
Date: 25 Jul 95 01:35:10 EDT
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: DMSO and correction

Yesterday in my long response to Bob Ettinger I commented on the 10% Rule which
I implemented at Alcor years ago (it has since been abandoned).  There was a
typographical error of serious consequence in my discussion:


>My working assumption has always been that crises will occur.  One reason I put
>the 10% rule in place at Alcor when I was CEO (i.e., 10% of all >*NON*-
cryopreservation revenue went into the patient care fund) was because I
>anticipated problems based on my understanding and knowledge of history, and
>because I felt that >active provision should be made to deal with the issue of
the >costs of revival. 


In my original post I said "cryopreservation revenue" rather than
*non*cryopreservation revenue.  Obviously, much more than 10% of the money for
the patient's cryopreservation goes into the Patient Care Fund (PCF) or Trust.
The purpose of the 10% rule was to have 10% of all OTHER revenue flow into the
PCF or PCT.  This idea was taken with a grain of salt in its early days since
there was so little revenue,  period. 


 But, as I anticipated, it was the tiny acorn that grew into the mighty oak.  By
 
the time major changes were made to erode the 10% rule and finally eliminate it,
it was paying for a high fraction, and if I recall correctly, ALL of the
patients' cryogenic storage marginal expenses, allowing for the PCF to retain
and reinvest ALL interest.  I still think this is a sound policy and a way to
shore up the fund so that people who, as Bob puts it, are "a nickel short don't
not get frozen."  Further I still remain the pessimist about the sweep of
history and I would point out that while Bob was valiantly defending the free
world (and being seriously wounded for his trouble) during WWII, the United
states economy was almost completely dominated by war time production (and we
hadn't even been invaded!).  Nylon stockings became prized good, no tires were
made for civilian use, steel was a commodity rationed for consumer goods if
available at all.  


In England thigs were far worse.  Iron fencing was removed from public parks and
melted down for munitions.  Many years after the waw, sweets were still
rationed, and in fact, someone I know who reads this list can describe first
hand what growing up in postwar London was like: AND THEY/WE WON THE
WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!

My point here is simple: stainless steel, fiberglass resin, trust funds, and
liquid nitrogen to keep "corpses" frozen would NOT, in my considered opinion
have been a priority for a nation at war.  In fact, I would go so far as to say
that keeping patients in uninterrupted LN2 storage during WWII, even in the US
(forget about all of Europe and Russia!!!!) would not have been possible.  When
you can't buy Nylons or rubber tires, (or rubbers for that matter!) when
gasoline is severely rationed, LN2 is not going to be had for 50 cents a liter
-- or had at all.

Finally more words on the DMSO issue which Bob raised.  I realize that my
account was not thorough enough, and, since I am frequently asked by bright
young people coming into cryonics "Why don't you use DMSO instead of glycerol?"

perhaps now is the time to expand on that history.  A history, I might add, that
Bob Ettinger knows as well or better than I.

In the early days of cryonics, cryonics activity in terms of "freezings" (as we
called them then) was largely a bicostal affair.  Bob Nelson's CSC was in
California and Curtis Henderson and Saul Kent's CSNY was in New York.  

When the first man was frozen (James H. Bedford on 12 January, 1967) he was
"treated" (not perfused!) with DMSO.  DMSO was comparatively new as a

cryoprotectant and anyone who handled it was aware of its remarkable penetrating
properties.  A drop on your skin and a few minutes later you can smell it and
taste it.  Indeed, two of our staff here use the drug  for its antiinflammatory
effect and I can always tell when they've put so much as drop on themselves
(they are always astonished at my sensitivity: see below for reason I am so
sensitive).  DMSO has an odor I loathe, simply loathe.

Following Bedford's cryopreservation, CSC continued to use DMSO in part because
it was what their scientific advisors recommended, and in particular because it
was recommended by the Italian physician who cooked up the first human
cryoprotective protocol, a fellow by the name of Dr. Dante Brunol.

By contrast, in New York (CSNY) 5 gallons of DMSO had been acquired, but was
never used.  When CSNY's first patient, 23 year old Steven Mandell was perfused
in 1968, glycerol was used.  This was in part because glycerol was easier to
get, easier to handle (it didn't have annoying habit of melting things you put
it in or turning them into swollen sticky goo if it didn't melt them outright)
and in part because their scientific advisors favored glycerol: after Suda's
work. (I believe cred here goes to Paul Segall.)

However, on the West Coast CSC kept perfusing people with DMSO.  Marie Pheps
Sweet, 8 year old  Geniveve de la Poterie, Russ Stanley, Helen Kline, to name a
few.  In fact, to my knowledge NOBODY CSC did ever got perfused with glycerol.
Certainly the rotting CSC patients I cleaned up after or had contact with were
all loaded with DMSO.  There is nothing to imprint on your mind an odor like
crawling into a 30 inch wide space with two partially frozen, badly decomposed

(and in pieces) "patients" who were still somewhat recognizable as who they once

were (and with a space heater running to speed up thawing) and then sitting in 4
inches of pea-soup consistency run off aswhile trying to pull them out of the

bottom of the container.  DMSO and rotting flesh are, most assuredly, NOT Chanel
No 5. And not easily forgotten.

CSNY did several patients subsequent to Mandel, and they were all done with
glycerol.  Indeed, I "did" one of them Clara Dastal.

Meanwhile cryonics was catching its second wind and the work of a fellow named
Farrant had caight everybody's eye.  Farrant was able to preserve contractility
in strips of guniea pig taneia coli muscle by exposing the tissue to
progressively higher concentrations of DMSO *while (just as importantly)

simultaneous lowering the temperature* to stay just one or two degrees above the
freezing point of the DMSO solution (this mitigated toxicity and DMSO's
regretable feature of simply dissolving away capillary endothelial cells.

A cooperative correspondence then took place between Trans Time's Art Quaife,
Alcor/Manrise's Fred and Linda Chamberlain, Perter Gouras, M.D., Bob Ettinger,
Saul Kent, and others.  The purpose of this correspondence was to greatly
improve cryopreservation technology by using new perfusates developed for organ

storage (such as Collin's solution) and by the application of the Farrant method
to whole patients.  Indeed Fred and Linda even built a whole body sized subzero
perfusion apparatus circa 1974.

I think that because of the Farrant work, and supposedly successful recovery of
dog kidneys following DMSO perfusion as reported by a Canadian investigator
named Frank Guttman (NOt reproduciple by anyone else!), the West Coast decided
to stick with DMSO.  This was also Gouras' recommendation .Further, base

perfusate and other aspects of the procedure had been designed around DMSO (such
as using hydrometers to float in the venous effluent in order to tell your DMSO
concentration in the patient).  (For those younger scientists, this was in the
days when cryonics was VERY poor compared to now, and when refractometers were
VERY expensive because the Japanese were not yet selling them here!)

Thus, DMSO sort of was used by default.  The point here is that Bob Ettinger
actively participated in the debate, and had long stocked DMSO for use on
Cryonics Society of Micihigan  (CSM which later became CI) patients sjhould one
have needed freezing. It was alsoto be  used because its terrible side effects
were NEVER reported by the one man who HAD perfused people with DMSO: Robert
Nelson, CSC's president.

Alas, lucky Bob Ettinger, CSM didn't freeze anyone until long after we had some

up-close and personal experience with  DMSO perfusions.  NOT the ones Nelson was
doing, because Nelson never told anybody what the results were.  I later found
out from talking with Nelson's mortician, Joe Klockgether, (who did the
perfusions for CSC) that edema was a big problem and that in the case of little
Geniveve her head became so swollen he had to switch to femoral perfusion. Joe
reported similar results on other patients.  Nelson never told anyone.

By the time Jerry Leaf had done a few patients with DMSO he didn't need any
encouragement to go to glycerol.  Indeed, even before Jerry arrived on the
scene, TT had done a patient in the Bay Area flown in on ice from from
Wisconsin, and she too became MASSIVELY edematous.

When I arrived to do my first case with Jerry (a patient I had done standby on
and transported from Wisconsin) there was only one thing stocked and one thing
used: glycerol.  Every subsequent case Jerry or I ever did has used glycerol.

And, Bob well know this.

That's about all I have to say.

Mike Darwin


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