X-Message-Number: 6879
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #6871 - #6877
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 15:18:33 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Kevin! and anyone else, too.

I note that you may be a reader of Cabell. I've always found him amusing --
though he hardly constitutes sf, his fantasies, I think, will survive, if
only because they satire human foibles so much and so well.

As for the issue of backbiting, I note that the screams for the audience 
seem to have quieted that down a bit. Or maybe they just got tired.


Finally, about Visser's work:

Charles Platt made a valid point, and it's central to how we evaluate this
work with rat hearts. Basically the problem is whether or not the Visser 
method will scale up to larger organs. If it requires very rapid freezing
(as the witness reports suggest) then that will get harder and harder the
larger the organs you try to freeze. This is a PHYSICAL problem rather than
a strictly biological one: it's just harder to cool larger objects than
smaller ones, most especially if you want to do it rapidly.

I understand from Steve Bridge that Visser and her coworkers are presently
working on just that issue, using pig hearts. Just how well their work goes
is crucial to the usefulness of their ideas, even for simple transplantations,
not to mention brains. 

As for Prometheus, as I understand it, Prometheus is not specifically 
committed to any particular research path toward reversible brain suspension.
We just want to choose the one which looks best. 

I await scientific articles on the Visser method, and in particular reports
of work toward scaling it up. If she can reversibly freeze adult pig hearts
then she will have much stronger arguments than vitrification that her
methods will work for our brains.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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