X-Message-Number: 16364 Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 22:01:18 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: Reply to Graham Hipkiss On Mon, 28 May 2001, Graham Hipkiss wrote: > I agree with you that your criticism, expressed on cryonet, mainly > directed against CI, which some find to be purely negative, is > probably constructive and may contribute to necessary improvements in > suspension proceedures. Thanks, but it wasn't my intention to reopen a discussion of CI procedures on CryoNet. I wrote one sentence for a UK mail list, reiterating an opinion that I have stated in the past. Almost all my recent posts on CryoNet have concerned Alcor and its dealings with UK members. Subsequently I did reply at some length to David Pascal, because I felt he mischaracterized my past statements. But right now I just want to wait and see if Yuri Pichugin's new affiliation with CI will bring about any changes. > However, I am still considering a transfer from Alcor to CI, although > I have been an active member of Alcor UK since 1994. Now that CI use > a ramped glycerol perfusion and we have a CI standby team being > organised, it would seem to be the best choice for people in the UK. Well, it's your ONLY choice if you are not "grandfathered in" with Alcor; and even if you are, the text that I read in Cryonics magazine seemed to imply that overseas Alcor members should have diminished expectations. Regarding your problem in the UK, I have felt from the start that for many reasons, your best solution is to do washout, perfusion, and initial cooldown yourselves, and then ship the patient on dry ice, to CI or any other organization which will offer a "storage on demand" service. Alan Sinclair has said that he developed a dry-ice transport box that was used twice, successfully, and was designed to maintain the low internal temperature for several days. The equipment that you would need for perfusion is not prohibitively expensive. Surgical skills are necessary, to cannulate blood vessels, but I believe you have a mortician who has already done this in at least one case. You would (I think) be taking a substantial risk if you merely do blood washout and then ship the patient in water ice. All it takes is an unexpected delay at customs, and the patient arrives with all the ice melted, and an unpleasantly long period during which deterioration will have occurred. At one point Mike Darwin made an offer to give CI some equipment that would enable better data collection, more reliable measurement of edema, and some other enhancements. CI refused this gift, but maybe people in the UK would accept it, if Mike still has the spare equipment. This of course is an issue you should discuss with him directly. > Maybe, Alcor is the superior because they use stabilising medications > which should be advantageous and CI, at present, do not, but they are > useless unless you have people around to apply them quickly. And, vitrification procedures are not so simple; and since vitrification means that the entire patient becomes a solid, brittle object that fractures easily under thermal stress, higher-storage temperature is desirable, which is not a trivial problem. If I were in your position, I would try to implement the kind of relatively simple glycerol perfusion that Alcor used in the 1980s, as developed by Darwin and Leaf. However, like you, I would prefer to see other people comment on this, since there may be factors of which I am unaware. The bottom line is that if you would prefer a more sophisticated set of procedures immediately following pronouncement of death, it should be within your capabilities to do this yourselves. If you can manage this, then the discussion of CI's postmortem protocol becomes irrelevant, since you would be using your own protocol, instead of just hoping passively that the CI-affiliated mortician will know what to do. Your choice. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=16364