X-Message-Number: 14037 Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 02:56:52 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: comments re 2 recent postings Hi everyone! Some comments on various messages in Cryonet: 1. For John de Rivaz: I must point out that the work done by 21st Century Medicine strongly suggests that we can have adequate and reversible cryonic suspensions some time before nanotechnology of ANY kind reaches its full abilities. To understand this, you need to read more about what these researchers have been doing. There are now at least 2 papers in CRYOBIOLOGY (B Wowk et al, CRYOBIOLOGY 39(1999) 315-227 and B Wowk, G Fahy et al, CRYOBIOLOGY 40(2000) 228-236). If you want to find out more, you can buy the videotapes of the 1998 Seminars; I would suggest that you contact Brian Wowk at These methods won't deal with those already frozen (of which I do not believe you are one :-) ) or with those who for some reason in the future had to be frozen by methods others than the best (which is likely to continue happening for an indefinite time). It is cases of this kind that will need much more work. Nanotechnology alone won't help; we'll need to understand more about how brains work, too... particularly how our different kinds of memory work. Moreover, since repair will need to work out the connections between many different neurons, it's unlikely that nanomethods ALONE would even allow repair, though we might have a computer devised to get information from nanorobots, work out just what the connections were in the badly damaged brain, and then give directions to other nanorobots to each repair their own small part of the brain. (Yes, the computer need not use current technology, but some more evolved kind). As for the FORM such nanotechnology may take, I myself believe it is much too early to commit ourselves. Biotech is one form; and there has been work with NONbiotech methods too, actual experimental work, not theoretical. 2. Because the recent comment about nerves growing up to replace others which had been lost was far too brief to form any independent conclusions, I got hold of the original article, by SS Magavi, BR Leavitt, JD Macklis, "Induction of neurogenesis in the neocortex of adult mice", NATURE 405(2000) 951-955). This paper did NOT verify that all connections, especially of the dendrites of the newly grown nerves, matched the connections of the former neuron which it replaced. Basically it verified that the high order connections went to the same location. This remains very interesting, but does not prove that such new neurons will also recover MEMORY ... which by the current best theories, consist of the fine connections of our neurons. I hope to discuss this paper in more depth, together with other scientific work, in the next PERIASTRON. And yes, it remains interesting, but does not show that our own problem ... retrieving not only our body and brain, but also a substantial proportion of our memories, will be solved by this means. Work of this kind MAY still show that the connections of our neurons can be recovered, all of them, but it's now much too scanty to draw that conclusion. (Yes, such a possibility IS fascinating). Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14037