X-Message-Number: 6132
From: 
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 17:57:51 -0400
Subject: SCI. CRYONICS amateurs

Jean-Yves Sireau (Cryonet #6044) seems to suggest that only a genius with a
full formal scientific education is likely to have a chance of "discovering
anything," and therefore the present research efforts of the cryonics
organizations don't mean much. 

At risk of appearing condescending, Mr. Sireau's remarks are very ill
considered and poorly informed.

First, there are many examples (a) of people without formal educations making
important contributions, and (b) of people with formal educations and lots of
prestige--including certified geniuses--making gross errors. 

Second, many important contributions were made by people who later had full
formal education and prestige, but at the time of the significant work were
mere students. 

Third (and a bit redundantly) the IMPORTANCE of a contribution is not
necessarily proportional to its DIFFICULTY or intellectual level of
achievement.

In cryonics/cryobiology specifically, we have many examples of "experts"
making false and ignorant statements. One of the most notorious is Arthur
Rowe's one-liner that reviving a frozen person would be as difficult as
reconstituting a cow from hamburger--in the face of the fact that many
specimens, inlcuding lower animals and a few mammalian organs, have been
revived after freezing, none after grinding. Another is Kurti's pronouncement
that a rewarmed brain would be "mush"--stated with confidence by an"expert"
who has never seen a frozen brain, and in the face of the fact that we have
photographs and micrographs proving otherwise.

Contributions by "amateurs" and by cryonics organizations in this field? The
list is modest, but not by comparison with those of the"experts." Alcor has
instituted many improvements. Mike Darwin at BioPreservation is one of those
lacking formal training, who nevertheless has verifiable and notable
contributions; Jerry Leaf was another.  Paul Segall, Hal Sternberg, Harold
Waitz et al at BioTime DO have formal training (doctorates), but not in this
precise field; nevertheless, they also have made significant contributions.
At the Cryonics Institute, Andy Zawacki and I--totally innocent of formal
training in biology--have worked with sheep heads and developed procedures
that eliminate cracking, which had been thought a serious problem. The
Cryonics Institute then subsidized work by Dr. Yuri Pichugin and colleagues
in the Ukraine which verified our results. (Innocent of formal engineering
training, Andy Zawacki and I also developed cryostats that by some criteria
are better than any commercially available.) 

Dr. Pichugin also went on to rewarm rabbit brain pieces from liquid nitrogen
temperature, and obtained both spontaneous and evoked COORDINATED bioelectric
activity (BEA) in networks of neurons, thus going beyond the work of Suda,
Kito & Adachi with cat brains in the sixties. (From this one could argue,
although not conclusively, that some of our patients in cryostasis NOW are
essentially alive by PRESENT criteria, in that, if rewarmed, we could expect
"EEGs" of a sort.) See reports in THE IMMORTALIST.

Going back to the question of "real scientific breakthroughs," I remind Mr.
Sireau once more that the importance of a discovery or of an advocacy need
not be related to its intellectual difficulty or to the formal training or
status of the individual. Thomas Edison was not an academic. Eric Drexler was
only a student when he began his push for his version of nanotechnology. I
envisioned cryonics--and several other amateurs did also, although they were
less effective in promoting it--long before the experts got the picture.
(Most of them still can't see the forest for the trees.) 

The MAIN point for Mr. Sireau, and others like him, to consider is not
whether "amateurs" can make important contributions to science in the
abstract, but whether the existing cryonics organizations offer a real
chance, right now, for him to improve his chances of indefinitely extended
life. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society


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