X-Message-Number: 7485
Date: 11 Jan 97 20:10:15 EST
From: Michael Darwin <>
Subject: Darwin death and cryonics


I want to thank Steve Bridge for a  thoughtful post.  I  agree with much of what
Steve has to say.

First, my apologies to Steve about saying his post was untruthful regarding
signed-up cryonicists not frozen in the 90's.  I could argue with the

arbitrariness of confining the discussion to the 90's, but I won't.  I was wrong
in what I said about Steve's post. 


Regarding the Certificate of Religious Belief, I could not agree with what Steve
says more.  When the Certificate was first touted by Jack Zinn (then of ACS) I
was not impressed with it.  It seemed hokey to me and likely to be summarily
ignored by ME's.  I was wrong.  I suggest every cryonicst sign one, and

preferably sign ones for all six states.  It would be very nice of Alcor if they
could send copies of the certificates to other organizations, or better still,
post them to their web site so that people even THINKING about signing up can
fill them out.

Steve writes:

>I agree the balance is out of proportion; but here is *why* -- We 
>cannot do much research without MONEY and INTERESTED RESEARCHERS.  >Public
relations is absolutely necessary to promote several improvements that 
>lead to more research: (lists reasons)

Steve's reasons are at first glance good ones.  But I don't think they hold up
upon consideration of history (cryonics and otherwise). First, I never said

cryonics should not be promoted.  I just think the emphasis on promotion and the
WAY it is promoted should change radically.  Paul Wakfer has done an admirable

job of seeing this and changing the character of promotion.  I think CryoCare in
particular will be radically altering how they promote cryonics in their
literature in the coming year or two.  More balanced discussion of the
"nonapparent costs" and other problems inherent in cryonics, and more focus on
technical progress will, I'm given to understand, be two major changes in
approach.

Steve also says:

>But cryonics progress is moving at a glacially slow pace.  Even the 
>$50,000 a month that Mike Darwin says is going into 21st Century Medicine 
>and Biopreservation research is incredibly small for serious research.  
>And that is a factor of ten more than Alcor was able to spend this year.  

I don't think this is an incredibly small amount.  And I don't think the reason
more research has not gotten done in cryonics is due to lack of money.  It's a
funny thing, but you get done what you WANT to get done.  Alcor did some
incredible research for nearly NO money in the 1980's.  Look back over CRYONICS
magazine through 1987 and you'll find a plethora of technical and scientific

advances that are STILL mainstays in cryonics as practiced by Alcor, ACS and BPI
(and are pretty impressive science, too):

*Recovery of dogs from 4 hours of asanguineous perfusion at 2-4 C in the mid
80's!
*Recovery of dogs from 2 hours of anoxic perfusion (and consequent discovery of
important information about the mechanisms of injury in cold ischemia.

*Development of a good base perfusate as a result of the above two achievements.

*Discovery of fracturing injury in cryoprotected human cryopatients and animals.
*"Discovery" of silcool and its application to cooling cryopatients.
*Pioneering ultrastructural studies on cryopreserved mammals which uncovered
many problems we are still struggling to solve (pericapillary ice holes, tears
in the neuropil, lack of permeability of glycerol, especially in myleinated
tracts....)
*Development of a workable CHEAP cryogenic pump.
*Development of low cost hollow fiber oxygenators (dialyzers) which made a lot
of the CPA/freezing work affordable.
*Effectiveness of pulsatile perfusion in minimizing edema during CPA perfusion
in ischemically injured patients.

(I might add that a mainstay of HEXTEND (TM) which has raised millions of
dollars for BioTime is high molecular weight HES which was first applied by
Jerry Leaf and me (most credit goes to Jerry) in asanguineous perfusion of dogs
in the early 80's.) 

I could go on and on.  I believe that had work not been interrupted by legal
problems, and later by a very real change in priorities from research to PR and
politics (the Donaldson case being a $100K example) much more work would have
gotten done.


Finally, a qualification.  Yes, it is true that 21CM is spending $50K a month on

"research."  But a significant fraction of this expenditure is to do things that
could be done with FAR greater efficiency if cooperation were possible between
organizations:

1) We are tooling as we go to apply advances to HUMANS in near real time.  The
capital equipment costs for some of this are staggering.  Simply staggering.
Centralizing patient processing for ideal cases would spit costs among
organizations.

2) There are very fine engineering minds and capabilities in other
organizations.  Hugh Hixon is a great craftsman and pretty damn good engineer.
I miss his skills a lot, and I pay a PREMIUM to get inferior work from
contractors.  Fred Chamberlain would be incredibly useful for some of the work
(theoretical and practical) we are doing right now.  We are also faced with the
need to due extensive and very costly fiberglass/insulation fabrication on a
novel whole-body human "vitrifier" which I know Andy Zawacki of CI could do far
cheaper and far more elegantly than the contractors I will soon be using.

3) More to the point, our time (not just mine) is not used well in having to
spend MANY hours looking for contractors, educating contractors, and doing
engineering work instead of RESEARCH.

4) Inability to disclose openly WHAT we are doing is very frustrating and slows
things down a lot.  

5) By way of example: I have interest in using the Langendorff technique for
evaluating cryoprotectants and cryopreservation regimes in hearts and we will

probably lay out big bucks for a top of the line system soon as opposed to using
the primitive equipment we have at hand (non recirculating, incapable of doing
preload and cardiac output evaluations).  Alcor presumably is freezing hearts
routinely now.  I'd love to skip Langendorff tooling and send Alcor compounds
and protocols to evaluate which we've found promising in slice models.  We have
SIX extremely exciting new cryoprotectants I'd love to see evaluated as
monoagents in hearts, and we have over two dozen glass forming mixtures we'd
like to see similarly evaluated.

6) We have enormous costs in regulatory overhead.  Because of hostile elements
(perhaps some within the cryonics community) we have been subjected to intense
regulatory scrutiny.  Part of this is simply a result of doing animal research
on a large scale with multiple species -- including "hot button" species like
dogs.  This is NOT something I would recommend other groups try to reduplicate.

Our basic operating "nut" (just to run the place with no research) is about $18K
to $20K a month.  Every penney over that allows for more RESEARCH to get done.

No organization will be able to reduplicate that infrastructure without
experiencing the same basic costs.  And working with organs obtained from a
slaughterhouse is NOT the same.  It just isn't.  I get  tremendous amounts of
information from survival experiments and I am STILL working out the bugs of
liquid ventilation cooling so that it can be used simply and cause no injury to
the lungs.  Right now we are doing three survival dogs every 7-10 days to iron
out the bugs (we're largely through with our acute work demonstrating heat
exchange rates, gas exchange, mechanics of loading, etc.).  The survival dogs
are teaching me things I would never have seen (and did not) in acute animals.
And the elimination of baro and volutrauma to the lungs of healthy dogs will
make application of this technique to the injured lungs of dying cryopatients
possible, where it otherwise might not have been.

7) I guess my point here is that the cryonics organizations now extant have
developed special niches and skills.  We (BPI and 21CM) have less than  ZERO
desire to deal with the media, and Alcor is quite good at that.  We have ZERO
desire to start working with fiberglass and epoxy resins, but CI is quite good
at that.  

And never the three shall meet...

Mike Darwin


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