X-Message-Number: 15256
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 18:07:45 -0500
From: <>
Subject: trade-offs in choosing protocols
References:  <>

This is in reference to part of what Charles Platt wrote in
message 15246:

  Back in the early 1980s, Darwin and Leaf developed a closed-circuit
  perfusion system, using ramped concentrations ot glycerol, and
  conducted many fully-reported, properly controlled experiments
  demonstrating beyond any conceivable doubt that this system enabled
  more effective cryoprotection (better penetration, less visible
  damage in electron and light microscopy) than the old, primitive
  approach in which a mortician (or similarly unqualified person)
  forces high-concentration glycerol through the patient in a brief,
  uncontrolled, and relatively unmonitored procedure using an open
  circuit (i.e. no recirculation). I think anyone who reads the
  results of this work must agree that there is no room for
  dispute. The results are simply better.

  We have known this for more than FIFTEEN YEARS. Yet CI still refuses
  to accept the reality of the situation, and is still using the old
  open-circuit technique (at least, there have been no announcements
  to the contrary), while claiming that its results are mighty fine.

I think that for the first paragraph, a citation might be helpful, not
necessarily to a peer-reviewed article (because cryobiology in the
year 2000 may have as many biases floating around as psychology in the
year 1850) but to some website or other place where we can take a look
at the original work.  This would certainly make it more convenient
for readers.  (And any way numbers can be meaningfully assigned to
`better' would of course help, as well.)

This by the way is absolutely not to question the dedication and
effort of Mike Darwin or Jerry Leaf; i think we should cherish all of
the men and women who have toiled so hard for our future.

Now, i don't want to be unduly argumentative here, but one implication of
the first paragraph seems to be that morticians are unqualified to
operate machinery interfacing with a human body.  This is hard to
believe---morticians not only have to go through a degree program
(correct me if i'm wrong), but they also handle deanimated bodies all
the time.

Finally, i think http://www.cryonics.org/research.html should also be
cited to vis-a-vis the ramp-up question.  (I haven't reviewed this
yet, but i think it's clearly relevant in the decision making process
at CI that is referred to in the second quoted paragraph.)

dan

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