X-Message-Number: 15724 Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:42:16 -0500 From: James Swayze <> Subject: Painless best for cryonics self deanimation procedure References: <> In response to Damien Broderick's request of how to safely deanimate to insure the best condition of the body and brain or cryonic suspension I came up with the following from my own life experiences. Hypothermia causes you to want to sleep. If it weren't for the shivering one would gently drift off to sleep the deep deep sleep. I know this from having come dangerously close once. I didn't have any shivering difficulties because one, I am paralyzed and two had been drinking and so didn't feel the cold creeping up on me. Fortunately a friend came along and caught me just dozing off. It felt wonderful though, like how you feel when you are comfortably sleeping and don't wish to wake up. Now as regards the shivering and pain of extreme cold. Before I was paralyzed I once had a dentist that thought he was hip. He had a stereo in each room with speakers located right behind the patients head so you could rock out or jazz away or whatever you needed to relax. He also used Nitrous Oxide to make one's experience painless. Now this was the late seventies so you can draw the same conclusion I did that he was catering to the drug culture. So he puts the Nitrous Oxide mask on me and leaves to attend to someone else for a while. He didn't come back for a long time--too long. So long that I overdosed. To this day I remember and have often described only being able to feel the tip of my nose when he finally came back. In fact during the procedure he managed to dislocate my jaw and I didn't discover this till hours later whereupon I had excruciating pain and driven mad from it had to sock myself in the jaw to put it back in place. The point here is Nitrous Oxide would alleviate shivering and feeling the extreme cold. As Mr. Ettinger, whom I also consider my friend, rightly points out barbiturates are used in mass doses to avert swelling and other damage in trauma and other brain injuries. They too cause unconsciousness and lessen sensation of pain and cold. Utilizing hypothermia also means getting a head start on the cool down process expected any way for the upcoming suspension while the Nitrous Oxide and barbs make it painless and pleasant. Unless Nitrous Oxide or the barbs cause some unforeseen problem with purfusates or suspension procedures that I have no knowledge of I think this is a recipe for planned self deanimation to ensure optimum conditions for cryo suspension. Two things must be said however. One is that like my friend Gary Tripp I feel one should and must exhaust to the extreme all other alternatives first before choosing to do this. New cures arrive every single day it seems! However, like my friend Phil Rhoades I can imagine several cases where one would want to halt degradation of the body and mind and get on with being suspended while one is still oneself and/or in control of oneself. Alzheimer's used to be a prime candidate for considering planned self deanimation but now as per my friend Gary Tripp's admonition there is likely a cure so sufferers of this should be cautious about a hasty choice. However, I don't think there is a cure yet for Mad Cow Disease, though I may be wrong. I understand this monster acts fairly rapidly so if there is not yet a latest breakthrough cure for this then one may not have the luxury of waiting. These are tough and serious choices. Lastly, provided careful consideration has been respected and a choice to deanimate via this method is chosen it must be considered that one needs to be able to implement this recipe in a manner legally safe for all involved under current laws. Again Mr. Ettinger has some good suggestions as to how to skirt the legal system so I will focus on non assisted suicide. Obviously this recipe would be difficult for a terminal patient to implement unassisted. Perhaps someone keen on law could answer the question as to liability for those that might simply set up the proper conditions and machinery. How liable would one be? If it is illegal to procure drugs for overdose would ice water be likewise considered? First a bath of ice water. Here I'll defer to the experts on how much and how cold it should be to when combined with the Nitrous Oxide and barbiturates cause a peaceful deanimation and to have also lowered the body to an optimal temperature to begin suspension procedures. Now some logistics are needed. Obviously if one is loaded on Nitrous Oxide and barbiturates, enough to not feel the shock of the cold, it will be difficult without aid to climb into a tub of ice water. So I am imagining a machine that can sense when a person has become unconscious and could then dump the ice water in onto the patient already lying in the tub and hooked up to Nitrous Oxide. Care must be taken not to drown and thereby fill the lungs with ice crystal causing water as it would be impossible for the deanimated/ing person to cough it out of the lungs. Going on the size, weight and lung capacity of an individual surely someone could figure out how long it would take for the Nitrous Oxide to take effect enough to be safe to trigger the ice dump. In other words it needn't be too complicated. The barbs could be taken a certain amount of time ahead of beginning as they would come on slower from digesting them and one would want them thoroughly digested and into the system before shutdown so full benefit is realized. Timing of all three aspects would be the crucial matter but I don't think all that formidable a problem. One last thing. Let's not forget this whole thing we are involved in is about LIFE--unbounded life--so please try not to think me so macabre for thinking this up. James Swayze -- Some of our views are spacious some are merely space--RUSH Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15724