X-Message-Number: 5033
From: 
Date: Sat, 21 Oct 1995 14:12:43 -0400
Subject: responses

Brief responses to recent postings by Darwin, Harris, and Donaldson, relating
mainly to optimism/pessimism on the chances of cryostasis patients under
various circumstances:

First, there is sometimes a regrettable tendency to attempt to put the
discussion adversary, or his ideas, in the worst light. I especially resent
Dr. Harris saying or implying that at the Cryonics Institute we use "hope" as
an excuse for not trying to improve our technique. He ought to know better.
We may, in his opinion, be too slow to change, or too slow to agree with the
conclusions of some others, but our changes or lack of changes are never the
result of complacency or a Pollyanna attitude. It is always the result of a
good faith effort to  evaluate, project, and balance costs, capabilities, and
probable results. 

We are subsidizing research, studying the results of the research of others,
and--as previously noted--in due course expect to offer even the most
expensive of promising procedures as higher-cost options, while squeezing
ever more effectiveness into our minimum cost procedures. And there is no
contradiction between our continuing efforts to improve procedures and my
personal opinion that the big picture is hopeful even in bad situations. 

It is even worse when Dr. Harris implies our attitude is "Deliver them to my
door cold when you feel like it."  This is suggesting that we tell our
patients or their relatives that delays don't matter. I am certain he knows
this is about as far from truth as one can get, and doubtless he was just
carried away in the heat of argument. Such statements tend to reduce my
regard for his opinions. (On balance, however, that regard is still very
high.)

Perhaps I have also, inadvertently, sometimes given an impression of putting
people down unjustifiedly, as Thomas Donaldson's remark suggests when he asks
if I was comparing Mike Darwin to those who believe in ESP. I only said that
honest and intelligent people, usually credible, can nevertheless either be
mistaken in their observations or draw the wrong conclusions. This was in the
context of balancing a few observations against established theory.

In summary of the generalities: A generalized optimism based on my view of
the big picture does NOT imply any complacency or foot-dragging regarding
research and practicalities and details. Likewise, a primary focus on
research and current knowledge does not necessarily imply total rejection of
other considerations.

Now just a few specifics:

Dr. Harris implies that all the revival-after-drowning cases were in ice
water, and asks which CI patients had quicker cooling and where is the
documentation.

I don't have the references handy, but I am almost certain that NOT all the
drowning revival cases involved ice water. At least one was in the ocean,
cold but nowhere near ice temperature. In a few of the CI cases ice packs and
ice cold water were used within ten minutes of clinical death--in Andrea
Foote's recent case within two minutes. Remember also that there was forced
circulation to help the cooling, followed soon by internal cooling; and there
was lung action, whereas in some of the drowning cases, even under Dr.
Harris' assumptions, circulation must have stopped or become very feeble long
before rescue, and there was no lung action. I repeat my conclusion that
these comparisons are hopeful with respect to these patients' ischemic
damage.

Regarding CI's limited publication of case histories, I repeat what I have
said several times before: We publish everything we believe will be useful to
others, as time and resources permit. If that fails to  satisfy, then it
fails to satisfy. As far as I am aware, we have not withheld anything
seriously useful to others. The Ukrainian work we subsidize of course is
published in toto, reserving nothing. 

Finally, regarding the details of various kinds of damage occurring to people
and other animals under various circumstances of warm ishcemia, cold
ischemia, cooling, freezing, etc.: Darwin and Harris cite many disturbing
observations; that's fine and useful, but not necessarily balanced or
decisive. In Greg Fahy's deposition in the Kent case, for example, he cites
many reports in the literature of amazingly GOOD preservation of structure,
and even several kinds of function, in humans and other animals even when
cooling did not begin until several hours after death. 

As for Dr. Harris' soap bubble analogy, or generally the alleged
impossibility of retrospective inference in extreme cases, based on supposed
quantum randomization, I again remind readers that trajectory-tracing is not
the only means of reading history. Suppose, for example, that the revived
patient does not rememer what his wife looked like, and the (known in future)
brain structures representing her visage are hopelesly degenerated.  However,
we have photos of her, or even her herself. Then it is not--in principle,
given highly advanced future technology--a huge step to "read in" the
appropriate brain structures that will provide the memory, consistent with
all the other structures and information, internal and external, that have
been saved or can be inferred.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society


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