X-Message-Number: 792
Date: 02 May 92 03:30:46 EDT
From: Brian Wowk <>
Subject: neurosuspension question

To: >INTERNET: 
 
        I'd like to briefly respond to Christopher Penrose's recent question  
about the merits of neurosuspension (head-only suspension).  As Christopher's  
question reveals, this is a complex and easily-misunderstood topic.   
Understanding neurosuspension and its attendant pros and cons requires at  
least a cursory understanding of cryonics as a whole. 
 
        As Christopher points out, "decapitation is one of the greatest  
traumas a human being could experience."  To do worse you must "lesion the  
brain itself."  But this is precisely what happens during cryonic suspension,  
whether you are frozen as a whole body or not.  Current cryonic suspension  
procedures inflict severe injuries on the brain, including gross fracturing  
into pieces.  (I am making this sound a bit more gory than it really is: the  
edges of the pieces can still be matched to those of adjacent pieces, like a  
cracked circuit board.) 
 
        The point is that current suspension procedures are extremely  
injurious.  Reversal of these injuries will require something close to  
complete atom-by-atom analysis of a patient, and extensive programmed tissue  
regrowth.  For example, there is a high probability that the easiest way to  
recover a whole body patient will be to remove and repair the brain, and  
regrow a new body around the brain.  (Growth of whole bodies from a single  
cell is a technology already demonstrated in nature.) 
 
        Perhaps the rationale for neurosuspension is now clearer.  If  
injuries incurred during cryonic suspension are so severe that the brain may  
be the only original organ worth salvaging, why not just preserve the brain  
(within the head for extra protection)?  Ever dollar of your suspension  
funding will then go ten times farther in ensuring the security of your  
maintenance. 
 
        Having said the above, no one who chooses the neuro option does so  
lightly.  Many issues have been glossed over here, such as the likelihood  
that critical motor skills such as walking will have to be learned over  
again.  These considerations have to be balanced against the increased  
security of a neurosuspension.  Also, as suspension technology improves,  
there is no doubt that the whole-body option will become more attractive for  
many of the reasons Christopher alluded to. 
 
        Finally, there is no way today's cryonics patients (whole-body or  
neuro) will be revived in 2035.  2135 is a better estimate.  Perhaps this  
timescale helps put the enterprise in better perspective: No medical  
technology able to reassemble a brain from pieces would be so ham-handed as  
to allow patients to die on the operating table from strokes! 
 
                                               --- Brian Wowk 

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