X-Message-Number: 5827 From: Ralph Merkle <> Subject: SCI.CRYONICS New Scientist article from 1992 Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 11:50:27 PST New Scientist published an article on cryonics in the September 26, 1992 issue (No. 1840, page 36) titled "Cold comfort at death's door." One quote from the article: "According to David Pegg, who was head of the Medical Research Council's now disbanded Cryobiology Unit in Cambridge, this a fantasy [sic]. He says cryonicists would first have to learn how to freeze a live healthy mammal for a long time, then thaw and revive it. Then they would have to cure whatever disease a would-be cryonaut had died of. And they would have to bring a dead person back to life." A second quote from the New Scientist article (not of Pegg in particular): "Biologists do not believe that a person frozen by present methods can be restored to life -- ever, by any technology." Prior to publishing "The Technical Feasibility of Cryonics" (see http://merkle.com/merkleDir/techFeas.html) I solicited comments from various individuals, including several cryobiologists. In general, the cryobiologists most critical of cryonics had little or no knowledge of nanotechnology. Pegg, in particular, responded to my request for comments and in one letter to me said: "It [cryonics] is literally fantasy, which does not mean that it cannot happen...." This is an intriguing usage of the term. He also said: "You say, in your introduction [to the Technical Feasibility of Cryonics], that you do not wish to consider the feasibility of nanotechnology in this paper, but that really is the crux of the problem. It is obvious that once one has dispensed with the idea of an intangible 'life force', and accepts that animals are composed of no more than an appropriate assembly of atoms, it becomes possible to conceive of the construction on[sic] an animal simply by placing the atoms in the right positions. Feasibility is the fundamental issue." He also said "As for your basic assumptions, there is no problem with the first, but the second seems very dubious." The "first" is the assumption that cryonic suspension does not cause information theoretic death, while the "second" is that the needed medical technology will be developed and used. As this second question requires an understanding of nanotechnology before it can be evaluated in any realistic way, and as Pegg has no acknowledged expertise in this area (and, indeed, has apparently read none of the relevant literature), then his opinion on this subject can safely be ignored. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5827