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/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5768