X-Message-Number: 17428 Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 07:33:40 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #17422 - #17427 Hi everyone!! No, I wasn't aware of plastination until Charles Platt's message. Plastination might even work, but a good deal of effort is still needed to verify that. The main problem is that we want not just a set of cells which looks like the originally living cells, but cells containing enough information to make others which are actually like the original living cells. This most importantly involves their chemical behavior, which may have been wiped out entirely by the plastination treatment. That chemical behavior, in its turn, could easily turn out to be crucial to our memory. I'm not even asking that the original body be revived. The critical point here is that of how our brain stores information. If we store it in ways which plastination affects, then we can forget plastination. If the reverse, we may have a better treatment than cryobiology. (I will add that working out how memory works IN DETAIL may ultimately give us better preservation methods, but right now that does not look as close as vitrification at all). Ultimately, whether plastination is someday shown to work or not, we will use methods other than cryobiology. Even so, right now at least 99% of our efforts should go into perfecting vitrification. Later methods can wait, but we want AT LEAST ONE method which we know works. Then at least one issue about cryonics (but far from the only one!!!) will have been settled. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17428