X-Message-Number: 10372 Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 10:51:13 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #10363 - #10366 To Charles Platt: If you have never seen Bob Ettinger give citations, then you have not read his book which does give them. Furthermore, hamburger does NOT look on light microscopy anything like healthy beef muscle tissue. There is considerable disarrangement with freezing, yes, and much more is visible on electron microscopy, but comparing such tissue with hamburger still seems extreme. I say this not because I think the damage with present suspensions is trivial (it certainly is NOT) but because both your postings on this subject have been quite unfair and biased themselves. The central question (which remains unanswered) about whether or not those suspended with older --- or even present --- methods will be revivable is that of preservation of the required information. That information may remain despite considerable internal (and external!) disruption of our neurons and glial cells. It may NOT remain, too. But the simple fact that on light microscopy such tissues seem (at first) to be OK tells us something. It is INFORMATION. And if you needed to be suspended tomorrow, then you are talking as if you'd be just as happy if your brain were ground into hamburger and THEN frozen. Not only that, but many cell structures necessary for the metabolism of the cell might be destroyed completely without destroying the information required to recover a patient. I say here, openly, MIGHT; I do not claim to know just which ones. But we can list those which may be totally destroyed and are unlikely to affect memory at all: mitochondria play no role in memory. Some large part of the cytoplasmic reticulum. Large parts of the cell nucleus and the DNA it contains. (Random destruction of the DNA would have to leave, collectively but not individually, enough information reconstruct the genes of the patient from his/her cells). Lysosomes (their absence may actually be favorable). The Nissl bodies. Most of the ionic channels through the outer cell membrane. Large parts of the outer cell membrane, so long as no actual severing of the neuron occurs. Some unknown number of synapses (synapses between two neurons usually are multiple, unlike the case of electrical circuits). I give these examples not because I think we have an unbreakable case that our patients still survive, but as examples showing how extensive destruction MIGHT be without affecting ultimate survival of the memories and genes of someone suspended by present or past methods. The mere fact that freezing causes terrible destruction means nothing at all unless you bring in knowledge of just which structures and biochemicals play a role in the preservation of that person, as a static form of information, and which play a role in metabolism (which when not frozen, of course, preserves the person). Just as we know we can dispense with our bodies, if necessary, during cryonic suspension, we know that we can dispense with lots more. It's not that such structures play no role at all, but that the necessary INFORMATION remains. And the proper response of a cryonicist to the state of neurons after freezing is not shock but cool examination to see what may survive and in what form. Certainly that is much harder, emotionally, but how did you feel when neuropreservation (freezing only the head) was proposed? Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10372