X-Message-Number: 15683 Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 17:14:27 -0500 From: <> Subject: dog brains and journals I was glad to read in Paul's message 15653 that Alcor has never done cryopreservation [research] on dog brains, that this was done by organizations at arm's length (Cryovita and BPI/21CM). Although experiments on live animals has been judged scientifically necessary by medical researchers, i think no patient-holding cryonics organization should do these sorts of experiments (at least on their premises) for several reasons: 1. There are people around (animal rights activists) who have very strong feelings on the subject. Live animal experiments at a cryonics org may lead to on-site confrontation and direct risk to patients. Activist take-over of labs has happened. 2. Tending animals such as dogs and later killing them may demoralize staff. 3. Tending animals and later killing them may tend to brutalize staff or render other, perhaps subtle, psychological damage to staff. After all, staff work very hard to save the lives of one group of mammals, some of whom are strangers---should they also have to slay an animal they raised from a pup? 4. It may discourage some people (Hindus, vegetarians, perhaps?) who might naturally be inclined to become cryonicists or to save their loved ones. 5. It's potentially bad PR. (Headline: "Cult of decapitation practices on puppies".) There are moral issues here but too complex to discuss briefly. Likewise, i don't want to discuss what our descendents who revive us may say (or do). Also, i explicitly am not discussing what happens at research outfits such as INC or 21CM. There are different constraints there, different choices, different trade-offs, different people. Now, this brings us to CI's perfusion/CPA research, which i conjecture might be done with sheep heads from a slaughterhouse for reasons something like those above. Using dead animals may indeed render it unpublishable, and in fact the purpose for the research---to improve human suspensions at CI--- may already be so unconventional and specialized that the work isn't publishable (in a peer-reviewed journal). But lots of research from all sorts of groups isn't published in peer-reviewed journals. For example, research from manufacturers may just circulate internally in technical reports. And i think the CI research is quite important, especially for the next 10 or so people to be preserved at CI. The research should be some predictor of what will happen when similar actions are performed on patients, because the sequence, the chemicals, and the actors are the same. This is not to say that it's a perfect effort; for example, if CI decides to test closed loop procedures, it's not so clear how to do it with a head. But given that there are non-scientific constraints in the soup, and CI's reasonable desire to try out competing procedures before actually using them on humans, it seems like their course of action is a sensible one to follow. dan Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15683