X-Message-Number: 11126
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: To Mr Platt, with a comment about identity
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 23:02:50 +1100 (EST)

To Mr. Platt:

Alcor has trained Australian people. We sent one person, Joe Allen, over
to learn about the latest techniques just at the end of last year. Right
now we're busy raising money to bring our equipment up to the current 
standard Allen learned of. Joe Allen was not the first Australian to come
up to Alcor for training, he was only the last one.

When I was a cryonicist in Australia, and one of the few, I looked in
detail at the issues involved in shipping someone --- and the other
issues involved in actually taking a dying (but still alive) person to the
US. Basically these issues are very close to those you meet with if you
need to be sent 500 miles; the only difference is that for Australia the
shipment must cross international boundaries. There is an incorporated
umbrella group of Australian cryonicists (CRYONICS SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA),
and we maintain a shipping container which allows us to do this. I
remember myself, years ago, writing lots of letters to make sure just what
we needed to do. It IS possible to ship bodies from Australia to the US 
without first embalming them. Many of my letters were involved in
verifying this. As I currently understand it, there are now about 10
cryonicists (with suspension arrangements) in Australia (one, the Swedish
wife of one suspendee, went away to Sweden afterwards, but may have 
returned).

I want to make clear that although we do have equipment for suspension, it
is not the latest. If a suspension became needed right now, it would be
done but not according the the latest procedures. But we are busy working
on that.

Furthermore, although doctors tend to be evasive when they discuss this 
issue in front of a patient, it turns out that as many as 80% of cases
have more than a week's warning of death. One Australian suspension was
done that way: the patient was physically moved to be near Alcor BEFORE
he died, though not long before. That 80% includes a significant number
of accident cases: people don't often die instantly, even though the 
statistics you might get from fiction suggest that. Often there's LOTS
of warning, although those caring for someone need to know just what 
that warning is. The percentage of those for whom death can be predicted
if anything has increased since the book on this subject was published.

Fundamentally, Australian cryonicists may not be as well set up as those
of England, but they are better set up than in most of the US. Finally,
you are correct that the large area and small population of Australia does
create problems, but they are not insuperable. The main centers for
cryonics now are in the ACT and in Melbourne; the patient who went to 
Australia for suspension lived in Western Australia.

As for other issues: just where did I say that PERIASTRON was the only
journal in which someone can find out about the scientific issues
involved? It is A source and I've never pretended differently. If you have
better sources, fine --- you might even tell them to me. (I will add,
though, that a single book by a single author is unlikely to settle
anything --- unless you've decided not to think about a subject).

Moreover, if we understood just how consciousness and memory work, that
understanding will be very important to us. I've discussed this issue
in PERIASTRON but will summarize what it means here: we will then know 
just which brain areas are involved in both. And from that information we
can conclude that OTHER brain areas are NOT. When your brain is damaged,
and we're trying to work out whether you are still in there, that 
information becomes VERY important. To be a bit simplistic, if your
cerebral cortex has been entirely destroyed, most of your memories will
be destroyed too. You will probably retain some memories in your
cerebellum, but as yet the exact content of those memories remains
unknown. At least in those forms Alcor members fill out, they state the
conditions under which they are to be preserved. So here is some
information bearing on such conditions. Furthermore, this information
also tells us brain areas we should take the most care to preserve.
(I'm being simplistic here just because it would take some time to discuss
this issue in the detail it really deserves).

Moreover, even the notion of brain destruction is affected strongly by
what we understand about how memories and identity work. Brains are both
electrical and chemical "devices", with each kind of message important.
And even now we can begin to use our knowledge of how neurons fit together
to get ideas as to how we might repair a brain. Again put briefly, not 
every kind of neuron connects with every other kind, and if we're trying
to recover connectivity, that fact is important. It may not improve 
the quality of a future suspension, but may mean a LOT for any suspension
occurring in the next 10 years (if we believe the estimates), and ALL
suspensions occurring in the past. If you aren't interested in recovering
those people (and perhaps even your own recovery! You, too, may find
yourself dying before current research bears any fruit) then I find it
hard to think of you as a cryonicist.

I will add that such knowledge remains important even when we try to 
work out how to better freeze brains. Why? Because freezing will involve
choices about just what we preserve best, and other things we spend less
attention on. We can no more expect to adequately preserve brains without 
some understanding of how they work on the biological level than we could
expect to preserve kidneys with little understanding of how kidneys work.

Yes, I would like much better preservation than we presently have. But
even if the efforts of 21st Century Medicine turn out to be completely
successful on their own terms, we still will be far from guaranteed such
perfect preservation in our own suspensions. Lots more work will be needed
to produce that. (Incidentally, I contributed to Paul Wakfer's project,
and plan to buy more shares in 21st Century Med when they become
available. You'd have to twist my words badly to present me as someone who
does not want such research).

Finally, as for references putting an end to discussion, please don't
twist my words. Scientific references do not function like bible
quotations. They settle nothing, but do provide a means to find out
more than can be put here about some question, and show that the person
citing them is not just making up what he/she says on the spot. 

Finally, to those still discussing identity: I think myself that we must
reconcile ourselves to the idea that the SUBJECTIVE side of identity isn't
scientifically approachable. However a lot is going on now to deal with
its objectively verifiable signs. These should be clearly distinguished.
Whether or not I lose my identity every 12th of a second sounds quite
unverifiable, but it's clear that normally there is at least as much
continuity as there is in any other growing, living thing (is a full
grown tree the same as the sapling you planted 10 years ago?). Yes, it 
may even prove useful to ANALYZE our notion of identity here: by doing so
we may discover other objective signs we had not thought of before.

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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