X-Message-Number: 7589
Date: 29 Jan 97 02:53:44 EST
From: Paul Wakfer <>
Subject: Re: Scope/Definition of Cryonics

     While Fred Chamberlain's long two-part posting contains many excellent
ideas, he largely misses the central point that Brian, I and others have
been trying to communicate. No one is saying that we should right-off
anyone who is currently suspended as *hopeless*. Nor is anyone saying that
we should refuse to cryopreserve anyone for whom the costs (as well
described by Mike Darwin) are not too high no matter what condition they
are in (except that in many cases the "costs" and the "patient condition"
*are* relevant to each other. eg. Should a relatively poor family scrape
together the funding necessary for a whole-body cryopreservation of a
relative in very poor postmortem condition, rather than fund a less costly
neuro cryopreservation). In fact, CryoSpan through its provision of long-
term cryonic care services for the American Cryonics Society has taken
several postmortem patients which could not be perfused and may be marginal
with respect to their potential for restoration with memory and other
mental faculties intact. CryoSpan's view is exactly as Fred has enunciated.
At this time we simply cannot say how much damage either premortem,
postmortem/precryopreservation or cryopreservation will remove from these
patients any chance for restoration. So the conservative thing to do, and
the irrefutable idea that is behind cryonics, is to cryopreserve them given
that the cost/benefit is not too high. *No one* is trying to change that
definition of cryonics.

     *However*, it is both true and fundamentally correct that people or
organizations or ideas are judged by the *best* that they aspire to, not by
practices (consistent with their philosophy) of lessor perfection which are
beyond their control, or even by their all-to-human failings. Brian and I
want cryonics to start emphasizing research and to produce tangible and
publishable research results leading to perfected suspended animation not
because of its *PR* value (although that will enormously benefit the
cryonics movement and even the current patients), but because of the
*legitimate scientific credibility* which will accrue from this and the
enormous benefits which will accrue from that mainstream acceptance.

     With respect to doing and promoting cryonics, it also seems that we
have been misunderstood. There is a major difference between, on the one
hand, continuing to cryopreserve those who are signed up or come to us
(even postmortem) when all else has failed, and on the other hand, actively
spending energy, time and money seeking new adherents. Instead our
priorities should clearly be in the following order: 

1) look out for our currently frozen patients.

2) serve our membership by:
   a) being able to cryopreserve them when/if they need it.
   b) by working to develop reversible preservation methodologies in order
      to give them the possibility of a damage-free cryopreservation and a
      full restoration.

     With due respect to Hugh Hixon, I think that it is very clear that
suspended animation by cryopreservation is the *only* near-term (without
nanotechnology) method that has a good chance of being perfected, becoming
an elective medical procedure, and gaining for us scientific respectability
and the immense benefits which that will bring. I also think that it is
abundantly clear that nanotechnology is itself too far off and too non-
mainstream (especially in its announced time-scale and in its "physical"
form) for any thoughts that chemopreservation or other non-
physiological/functional preserving methods respect serious consideration
as alternative avenues for research.

     With respect to "just" vitrification, while the development and use of
vitrifying cryoprotectants for cryonics patients which are at least no more
toxically damaging than currently used cryoprotectants would be of enormous
benefit to the physiological restoration potential of those being
cryopreserved, I believe that this would not have any major benefit on the
size, strength, and credibility of the cryonics movement and, therefore, on
the chances that all patients will arrive in the future intact and have a
chance for restoration.

     Finally, I have not even included in the above priorities Fred's ideas
on research to "look for molecular markers which support the feasibility of
repairs necessary in cases of substantial, even extreme, compromise" or "to
actively explore the levels of structure which we can expect to preserve at
every level of compromise we are willing to treat with any degree of hope
whatever, and we need to develop models which permit us to more and more
reliably impute the recovery of whatever levels of memory and identity
would be possible, under those conditions", or any other kind of research
towards assessing the state of patients or their possibilities for
restoration (accept as such will be necessary for the purpose of achieving
perfected suspended animation). I maintain that the overall benefits to be
gained by a concerted, single-minded drive to perfected suspended animation
are so enormous, especially with respect to the probability of its
attainment, that all such other research efforts should be shelved until
that goal is reached. Let us solve the problem for patients who come to us
in the *best* of circumstances before we begin to worry about those who
arrive already *compromised*. Furthermore, as I have explained elsewhere,
if we achieve a universally acceptable, medically approved suspended
animation procedure, the number of patients which will become compromised
before preservation will be drastically decreased. In fact, I maintain that
the very best thing that we can do in order to *diminish* the compromised
condition of patients who present for preservation is to perfect suspended
animation and thrust it into the medical mainstream.


-- Paul --

Paul Wakfer
email:  phone:909-481-9620  pager:800-805-2870

HELP TO ACHIEVE - PERFECTED SUSPENDED ANIMATION WITHIN 20 YEARS!

Check out the Prometheus Project web site at URL:
http://www.prometheus-project.org/prometheus/


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