X-Message-Number: 5768
From:  (Brian Wowk)
Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension
Subject: Re: Death (was Donaldson MR and Miss Hindley)
Date: 18 Feb 96 18:57:27 GMT
Message-ID: <>

References: <> <>


In <> Marshall Rice <>
writes:

>In article <>
>            "John de Rivaz" writes:

>How about the nature and extent of intercellular disruption occasioned
>by (a) anoxia immediately prior to death (b) autolysis (c) the freezing 
>process (d) long-term lysing of DNA by background radiation?

(a)	Cerebral ischemic injury during several hours of deep shock
	preceeding cardiac arrest is a problem for some cryonics
	patients.  Cerebro-protective medications can help somewhat,
	but ultimately this problem can only be solved by making
	cryonics (or at least active euthanasia) a legal medical 
	procedure.  

(b)	Post-mortem autolysis is not a factor for cryonics patients
	attended by a cryonics transport team at the time of cardiac
	arrest.  In fact, *there is no post-mortem ischemic brain
	injury at all* under such circumstances.  Mechanical CPR
	and medication administration is typically begun within
	two minutes of cardiac arrest, and heart-lung bypass within
	20 minutes.  In fact, if anesthesia was not used, many
	cryonics patients would actually regain consciousness during
	the procedure. 

(c)	Freezing injury is the most serious injury that occurs to
	cryonics patients, but your comments suggest that you
	vastly overestimate it.  Check out

	http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/casecryo.txt

	to see how robust neural tissues (particularly synapses) are
	when subjected to freezing.  I'd love to show you some 
	electron micrographs.  Unfortunately this medium
	is not conducive to it.

(d)	Background radiation is not an issue.  Speaking as a 
	professional medical physicist, I can tell you that radiation
	injury depends strongly on diffusion of free radicals, and
	active division of cells.  (Rapidly dividing cells are
	precisely the ones that are most susceptible to radiation injury.)
	Millions of years of background radiation would be required
	to harm cryonics patients to any significant degree.      		 		  

>In the case of the brain, in particular, however sophisticated the
>thawing techniques which may be applied in future, all that will be defrosted
>is a porridge of disrupted cells. The damage will already have been done.

>Future technology may well be able to re-create a viable brain from the mush,
>but the organisation resposible for memory and being will have been destroyed.
>The impossibility (yes) of recovering (effectively duplicating) that 
>organisation can be demonstrated mathematically, but is obvious to anyone 
>with any knowledge of neurophysiology.

	"Mush?"  "Porridge?"  "...obvious to anyone with any knowledge
of neurophysiology?"  Rather sweeping statements from someone who has
evidently never seen micrographs or metabolic studies of glycerolized frozen
neural tissue.  Would it surprise you to learn that in fact much of
what is now known about human neuroanatomy and neurochemistry was 
learned by the study of frozen brain sections??  

***************************************************************************
Brian Wowk          CryoCare Foundation               1-800-TOP-CARE
President           Your Gateway to the Future        
   http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/

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