X-Message-Number: 1290 Date: Fri, 9 Oct 92 22:16:48 CDT From: Brian Wowk <> Subject: CRYONICS:Culture cells from suspendees Tim Freeman: > Leaving the rhetoric aside, there is one alleged fact in the article > that disagrees with what I have heard elsewhere. The article claims > that existing technology would be unable to culture living cells from > a suspendee, but I vaguely remember being told that this would be > possible and (shame on me) I have been repeating the hearsay without > verifying it. Certainly one of the cryonics supporters in the sci.med > debates claimed that it was possible. Has anyone tried? Do the > existing cryonics organizations claim that live cells could be > cultured from suspendees, and do they have evidence to support this? Evidence indeed! Almost every cell type in the body can be successfully frozen and thawed with protocols similar to those used by Alcor to suspend patients. Large tracts of cryobiology literature are devoted to the successful LN2 freezing and thawing of cell cultures. Culturing of cells from properly frozen tissue is *not* a problem; recovery of integrated organ function is (due to damage of cell-to-cell relationships). An extensive summary of scientific literature documenting successful freezing and thawing of brain tissue can be found in the Alcor monograph, "The Cryobiological Case For Cryonics." This monograph is reprinted in its entirety as Appendix A in "Cryonics, Reaching For Tomorrow"-- a book no cryonicist should be without :-) As far as I know, no one has attempted to culture brain cells from cryonics patients. Then again, there is little scientific motivation to do so since existing cryobiology literature leaves almost no doubt it could be done. Of course there is the PR aspect, but that is another question. I personally have strong reservations about the use of out-of-context scientific facts in promoting cryonics. (Survival of individual cells is neither necessary nor sufficient for cryonics to work.) Then again, what do we do about an opposition tbat resorts to outright lies? --- Brian Wowk Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1290