X-Message-Number: 10425 Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 17:11:01 -0700 From: Paul Wakfer <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #10417 Vitrification & Optimism or Fraud? References: <> In Message #10417 on Sat, 12 Sep 1998, Fred Chamberlain wrote a typical cryonicist obfuscation of the goals of others with whom he is currently not on good terms: > until "vitrification" was a reality - until patients > with average degrees of premortem damage and deterioration, > after average legal delays in access, and taking into account > average difficulties of fielding a competent team in the field, > could be medicated, cooled and cryoprotected in such a way that > their temperatures were lowered at rates in excess of 1 Deg > C/min into a glasslike zone of questionable stability at around > -140 Deg C and then held here without long term degradation until > we found out whether or not they could be recovered. Neither 21CM nor myself have "vitrification" as our goal. "Simple" vitrification is only a first step which will greatly reduce damage in the most optimal cases. In point of fact, we could vitrify everyone who is perfusable right now and the only reason that we don't is because the concurrent toxicity and cell degradation might be worse than the ice damage. Our goal is fully real-time reversible suspended animation. Vitrification is likely to be the technique which achieves that goal. However, even there you appear not to understand (or are deliberately being misleading) what vitrification means and what is necessary for its achievement. "Vitrification" does neither requires a high cooling rate nor suffers from the limitation of a "zone of questionable stability". It is perfectly conceivable that cryopreservative concentrations can be raised to such levels that there is ZERO instability at any point in the cooling, storage, rewarming procedures. Either due to ignorance or deceit you are smearing a straw man by you attack. Furthermore, as I have describe many times, and you and others simply refuse to acknowledge the possibility of, once perfected suspended animation is developed, proven in clinical trials on humans, and established at major medical centers, the number of patients suffering significant "premortem damage and deterioration" and "legal delays in access" while waiting for "a competent team" (by ambulance - air if necessary - from the nearest medical center) will be drastically reducible. > If, on the other hand, repair and recovery of persons frozen today *does* turn > out to be possible, then all of those who held back due to the persuasive > pessimism of those who scoff at the possibility of such repair and recovery > will have gone into oblivion unnecessarily. As one who values life enough to > reach out for it, even in the face of terrible uncertainties, And you think that I and others who demand more research do not?? > I would rather > that history label me as an overhopeful optimist, for having tried to save > lives and failed, than a monster for having discouraged those who might have > wanted to make the attempt and died needlessly as a result of that influence. So are we to understand that charlatanism, fraudulent exaggeration, deceit, errors of omission, and a do-nothing-wait-for-others-to-prove-the-product approach are to be recommended as valid sign-up tools and operational directives for leaders in cryonics? -- Paul -- Voice/Fax: 909-481-9620 Page: 800-805-2870 Institute for Neural Cryobiology - http://neurocryo.org Full Length Life Society - http://morelife.org Prometheus Project - http://prometheus-project.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=10425