X-Message-Number: 15395
From: 
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 11:51:53 EST
Subject: CI procedures

Jeff Grimes (#15392) complains that I have been talking about other people's 
procedures, not CI's, and that CI's are unknown or difficult to ascertain. 
Both complaints are misleading, but welcome, since every opportunity to make 
or reiterate  a point is helpful.  

1. In the recent exchanges (late December and January) I talked mainly about 
Alcor's current procedure and claims, because my stated purpose was to 
deflate the overblown claims.

Nevertheless, I have written recently about CI procedures by reporting the 
new evaluations done by a Canadian lab using light and electron microscopy. 
Parts of those reports are on our web site. The gist is that the CI 
procedures with sheep heads were compared to untreated controls and to 
various stepped additions of glycerol based CPA, among others. The conclusion 
of the lab (which did not know how the specimens had been treated) was that 
our procedure gives results much better than with untreated controls; and 
possibly, by a very small margin, on some types of tissue, not quite as good 
as using stepped addition of CPA.

2. There is no mystery about the procedures we have been using, no matter how 
many people with an axe to grind keep saying there is. (By contrast, there is 
indeed considerable mystery about the Alcor procedures, parts of which are 
still secret, which prevents us testing them ourselves.) 

On our web site are extensive reports by the cryobiologists/microscopists who 
repeated our sheep head work and evaluated it in the Ukraine a few years 
back, with a great deal of detail. 

In checking the site again, by the way, I noticed that the rabbit brain 
report was not there. It will be up there within a few days. That was another 
report by Dr. Yuri Pichugin a couple of years back--a landmark of sorts, a 
first, as best I can determine. Rabbit brain pieces were perfused with 
glycerol CPA, stored in liquid nitrogen, then warmed, washed out, and tested 
for neuronal activity. Coordinated electrical activity in networks of neurons 
was observed. Since neural net function is presumably one of the most 
important of all criteria of "viability" for cryonics purposes, this is 
highly significant and encouraging, although obviously far from conclusive. 
It may be more important than the K/Na "function" test used on rat brain 
slices at the INC project.

If anyone wants a summary of the procedure used on the sheep heads, which 
became the CI temporary standard, and doesn't want to bother with the detail 
on the web site, here it is in brief: The CPA is 75% V/V glycerol in a base 
of buffered Ringer's with Mannitol, at about 45 deg F. One pass. 

Let me emphasize this: I doubt that any critic, including Mr. Grimes, really 
does want to know the exact details, except to look for debating points. They 
certainly aren't interested in repeating the work. It is the results that are 
important, and these have been reported.

We, on the other hand, are very interested in testing the 21CM solutions, 
first on small specimens, which we can easily do, even if we are not yet 
equipped to do rapid cooling of large specimens. And when those solutions are 
no longer secret, we will test them.

3. Once more, to summarize the situation, especially for newcomers:

CI uses procedures which it has tested and which have been evaluated by 
independent professionals. These now include cryobiologists and microscopists 
at the Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine in the Ukraine 
(the world's largest cryobiology establishment) and professionals on the 
faculties of Canadian universities. See our web site for more details. 

Current Alcor procedures are not known in detail, remaining in part secret 
for proprietary reasons. Even the CPA is not known to outsiders. There has 
been, as far as we know, no evaluation of results--none whatever, by anyone, 
based on the actual procedures applied to Alcor patients. Alcor's claims 
("Vitrification arrives!" and nanotech maybe no longer needed etc.) are based 
on evidence that is partial, indirect, based on very small samples, and 
lacking confirmation by independent investigators. 

That doesn't mean it is worthless; it might even be a substantial improvement 
over all previous methods. (And believe it or not, I hope that is the case.) 
But the evidence is very sketchy--even leaving aside the point, very 
important in practical terms, that few patients are likely to be treated (and 
so far, none has been treated) under the ideal circumstances that best 
results require.

Finally, CI research is still shifting into higher gears, and the future will 
bring improved procedures, which may or may not be similar to those used by 
others. Maybe we will follow them, maybe they will follow us, or maybe we 
will all follow some presently unidentified outsiders, with respect to our 
preferred procedures. In any case, we remain committed to offering our 
members the best set of options, the most affordable prices, and the greatest 
stability and reliability that we possibly can.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15395