X-Message-Number: 863
Date: 29 May 92 02:36:25 EDT
From: Brian Wowk <>
Subject: Freezing Injury

To: >INTERNET: 
 
Alcor NY Newsletter: 
 
> So--who is going to write this difficult, specialized software? We can 
> imagine a future where the techniques theoretically exist, but programmers 
> are fully occupied with tasks that have a higher priority. Why spend 
> countless man-years figuring out how to repair and resuscitate a small 
> number of corpsicles from the twentieth century, when the same time could 
> be spent developing cures for disease?  
 
        While I agree we should strive to improve suspension technology, the  
above paragraph is a bad meme, plain and simple. 
 
        Apart from cryonics, freezing injury is a pathology that will have to  
be treated and cured like any other.  A hundred years from now, there will  
still be accidents were people freeze "to death."  (Life support failures in  
the outer solar system, for example.)  Such patients will either be treated  
with nanotechnology, or placed in cryonic suspension with injuries similar to  
those of 20th century patients.  While there may never be a large number of  
such patients, freezing is nevertheless an on-going medical problem that will  
have to be dealth with sooner or later, cryonics notwithstanding. 
 
        More importantly, there will be many, many patients frozen in the  
21st century under suboptimal conditions.  Vitrification, or other non- 
injurious suspension techniques will require a clear vascular system for  
cryoprotective perfusion.  This condition cannot be met in patients who  
suffer more than a few minutes of warm ischemia.  Thus anyone suspended  
following strokes, MI's, or trauma are guaranteed to suffer 20th century- 
style freezing injury almost regardless of the state-of-the-art when they are  
suspended. 
 
        Finally, and most importantly, there is the issue of WHO will be  
doing all this nano-medical research.  If cryonics is successful as a  
movement, then cryonics organizations will comprise a large part of the world  
economy in centuries to come.  (Probably larger than the life insurance and  
medical service industries today combinded.)  And cryonics organizations are  
organizations with a mission: recovering their patients.  Even if recovering  
20th century patients did require inordinately large resources, those  
resources will be there.  For it is not some 20th century-esque medical  
establishment "they" who will be doing 22nd century medical research, it will  
be US-- cryonicists --callling the shots. 
 
        This business about people of the future not caring to revive  
"corpsicles" is one of the most vapid objections to concept of cryonics.  The  
appropriate response can be summarized in two thoughts: 
 
1) On-going medical problems (read: market forces) will always propel  
medicine towards capabilities for utimately reviving cryonics patients. 
 
2) Large, dedicated cryonics organizations will, by their nature, possess the  
resources and determination to customize technologies as necessary for  
treating even the most severely compromised of their patients.     
 
                                                --- Brian Wowk 

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