X-Message-Number: 7645
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7604 - #7608
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 22:57:41 -0800 (PST)

Hi!

To Mizuho Hirose and Kaburage:

I will also say that a cryonics society in Japan would be a very good idea;
we want not only to dream but also do what we can to bring about our dream.
As some one who has actually visited Japan I will add that I know very well
how hard it will be to get cryonics going there. We can try to give you some
support, but you yourself know the obstacles which do not exist in the US.
If you want to console yourselves, such obstacles aren't just present in 
Japan: cryonics runs into lots of problems in France, too, and the Canadian
state of British Columbia, though not all of Canada, has also forbidden
cryonics societies explicitly.

As for uploading yourself, I personally doubt that will become possible 
until some time after those frozen now have been revived. My understanding of
how brains work, particularly how memory works, have led me to that 
conclusion. Naturally I'm happy to explain further (and give scientific
references to the many papers which convinced me of this).

The one thing I would say, if you try to set up a Japanese cryonics society,
is that you should not give up regardless of the obstacles. Keep looking for
a way around them and you will find it.

To JW Coetzee:

If you wanted to really take part in the issue of Visser's methods versus
others, you might have attended the Alcor Cryonics Technology Conference just
this last weekend. Visser was there and tried 3 times to freeze and revive
a rat heart, failing each time. This does NOT mean that she is simply wrong:
it is hard to do some of these experiments. But it does mean that before 
she has a USABLE solution, even to freeze hearts, she'll need to characterize
the exact composition of her solution (which may not be what she knows) and
also somehow make her successes much more consistent. As you may know, one
reason she came was because Alcor has tried to duplicate her results 
without success. It turned out that there was a difference between her 
solution and the one Alcor's people made following her directions.

I left the Conference feeling that several questions needed answering about
her experiments, but that at worst she was simply mistaken, not at all
fraudulent. The questions aren't just the ones I just listed, but also 
whether or not the successful hearts really were taken down to LN temperatures
and then revived (it's not enough just to immerse them in LN!). Linda
Chamberlain promised to send me a tape of one of her successful attempts,
which I will watch closely when I get it. Moreover, one issue not yet 
settled is that of whether or not these hearts can beat strongly enough
to support a load. While secrecy has done a good deal to cause distrust
and confusion, all of those (except Steve Harris, who apparently could not
come) who had raised questions about her experiments were there. Perhaps
their insistence on guarantees that the heart went down to LN temperature
were behind her failure (she did not think so). The questions asked have
all been quite reasonable ones to ask, nor did any of those who questioned
her insist on conditions for her experiments which automatically would
guarantee failure.

We shall simply have to wait and see whether she can adequately improve
her methods to satisfy all these questions and also revive the frozen
hearts. And whether or not you choose to believe this, everyone there
wanted her to succeed. It is just that unless you are careful, you can
fool yourself about what has happened.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7645