X-Message-Number: 8878 Date: Mon, 01 Dec 1997 03:05:05 +0000 (GMT) From: (Randy) Subject: Cryonics fodder for Hollywood yet again Newsgroups: sci.cryonics Just got through watching an episode of the Outer Limits TV show where cryonicists got ahold of a man who donated his body to science. They freeze him and then revive him. Unfortunately the process gives him only a short. tortured existence. The cryonicist doctor (Faust/Dr Frankenstein embodied) basically keeps this poor guy alive against his wishes and in return gets his just desserts ( the scriptwriter moralized thusly: "what dark angels we conjure when we try to beat death...we fail to realize the value of life... yadda yadda.") The script was surprisingly well-informed, tossing off cryo-jargon like "cryoprotectant...perfusion...glycerol" etc. Sounds like they snooped around on the net as research. I thought it raised an interesting point, however. The Outer Limit cryonicists got their research subject from the morgue, a man who donated his body to research. (From what I have heard it is not particularly easy to donate your body for the purpose of scientific research.) I don't know how to approach this diplomatically, so here goes: As I understand it, one of the big problems in cryo-research is the lack of human subjects that can be cryopreserved and then examined to test protocol efficacies. Could cryonicists not find a few subjects willing to donate their bodies for this purpose (assuming of course that thr body/brain donors received promises that a proper cremation would follow the freezing process and none of that evil Frankenstein stuff, either :-)? I realize that the vast majority would never go for this, but surely there would be a few.... Randy Cryonics: Gateway to the Future? http://members.wbs.net/homepages/c/r/y/cryofan1.html *********************************** Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8878