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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15256