X-Message-Number: 4923 Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 12:45:48 -0500 From: (Brian Wowk) Subject: Straight Freezing The feasibility of reviving patients frozen without cryoprotectant ("straight freezing") is actually a trivial observation. With technologies capable of general analysis and repair on the molecular level, you could revive patients after virtually ANY injury. The non-trivial question is how much will the revived patient resemble the original person. All the evidence supporting cryonics today is indirect. There is still no definitive evidence that freezing (cryoprotected or otherwise) preserves the essentials of memory and identity, and there will not be such evidence until we either a) Improve the technology to the point of at least reversibly cryopreserving brains. b) Learn to repair the damage we cause by freezing, and see to what extent revived animals (or animal brains) "remember" who they were. The medical/scientific community today regards cryonics with great scepticism because of the damage caused by even our very best cryopreservation methods. If we go into the business of DELIBERATELY selling and performing straight-freeze cryonics, we will be taking a procedure with already questionable defensibility and making it even more indefensible. It is theoretically possible that straight freezing may not only be ultimately reversible (as it must be if we ever get advanced NT), but that it might also result in the recovery of the original patients and be truly life saving. This is why cryonics patients sometimes are straight frozen, but ONLY WHEN THERE IS NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE. In my opinion, the dubious benefits of offering straight freezing as a formal cryonics care option are outweighed by the damage such practices would cause the\ image of cryonics. In other words, whatever compassionate or humanitarian goals would be served by the procedure would be thoroughly undermined by the added risk of lawsuits, consumer fraud charges, and howls from the physicians and cryobiologists. Cryonics *as a whole* would suffer. The above observation applies *in spades* to permafrost interment, dessication, mummification, and chemopreservation. Cryonics in recent years has begun to get a fair hearing from some scientists. This has happened both because of Drexler's popularization of nanotechnology, and because cryonicists have been *pushing the technology envelope*. We are showing the world that we are approaching the biostasis problem in a rational, scientific manner. Mummification and chemopreservation are certainly not in keeping with this spirit of progress. IMHO, they are just plain nuts. And if I as a cryonicist think they are nuts, you can imagine what government regulators and consumer protection groups would think of these ideas if they were ever sold with the advertised intent of future reanimation. Brian Wowk President, CryoCare Foundation Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4923