X-Message-Number: 791
Date: 02 May 92 09:36:53 EDT
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: cryonics: #780 - #786

Hi everyone:
With respect to the message from "Penrose": I would point out that 
it contains a fundamental error, although a very excusable one. The idea
of neuropreservation does NOT require construction of a "new body" out
of nanotech machines, computers, or any other "new devices". For it to
work successfully, it requires:
EITHER
1. Understanding of nerve connections sufficient to attach another body
   (without head) to the revived (but still unconscious) head of the
   patient. Since some question about availability of bodies follows on
   use of this possibility, it also involves finding a way to grow 
   headless bodies from single cells taken from the patient.
OR
2. Understanding of growth and development sufficient to allow us to force
   the growth of a body from the revived (unconscious) head of the 
   patient. This would be similar (but obviously far more technically 
   ept!) to the growth of bodies that flatworms do.
Neuropreservation patients would NOT (repeat NOT) have to ever be aware
or conscious while either one of these processes was going on. Of even more
importance, right nfow (1992) our understanding of how growth and develop-
ment take place has increased a great deal. I think BOTH of these
possibilities will turn out to be easy to implement. Making valid nerve
connections to repair injured spinal cords is ALREADY the subject of 
intensive medical investigation.

It is true that most medical people, or people connected with biological
science, tend not to speculate on the outcome of their own research ---
this is their character fault. Physicists and "engineers", however, seem
temperamentally more willing to look into what their proposed (or  
developing) technologies will allow. But that is a statement about two
groups of people which historically may not even remain true for much 
longer: one major event going on right now is the infiltration of many
people from the "hard sciences" into biology and medicine--- and with them
a much more farsighted attitude toward what techniques of the kind I have
just described can achieve. AND an understanding of the power of the many
ideas already implicit in construction of living things.
				Best
					Thomas
PS: I personally differ on many points of detail with the scenarios 
sketched by Drexler or Merkle. However I would also point out that every
living thing right now gives an example of just what control of matter at
a nanoscale level can achieve. We need not look very far. The low-level
machines, for those who may not know, are now called enzymes. So in that
broad sense both Drexler and Merkle are not only correct, but tell us
that we need only open our eyes to see that they are correct.

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