X-Message-Number: 17794
From: 
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 14:32:32 EDT
Subject: Re: CN #17792 - #17793 limits of research /new topic life monitors

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Charles, thanks for your lucid and explanatory answer to my question.  I 
understand your concerns about the differences between human and animal 
brains, and the frustration that researchers must feel due to moral dilemmas.

Charles comments in part:
> Still, we felt that the idea of taking
>a small sample from a patient was disturbing--even though it would have
>yielded very valuable information. It would have been the first and only
>time, so far as I know, that anyone would have had a chance to find out
>what the brain of a patient looks like after a well-controlled glycerol
>perfusion and cooldown to liquid-nitrogen temperature.

Of course, one could take a brain from a non-cryonics suspension agreement 
whole body donor human cadaver, suspend it for a time in situ, and then 
perform autopsy to verify different protocols.  However, the moral dilemma 
is, well, perhaps enough to make one uneasy.    Since you now have a 
suspended person, do you have the right to defrost them and perform autopsy?  
Perhaps the person didn't choose death, but was uninformed about the 
possibilities of suspension.  At any rate, not a happiness maker.  And of 
course the cost for the procedures is not trivial, and there would be no 
suspension fund for the patient. 

Also, I'm reminded of Thomas Donaldson's (If I remember correctly) point that 
"the definition of death is when the doctor doesn't know how to revive the 
patient."  So if you suspend a human cadaver, thus putting that person from 
the category of dead to potentially alive, are you then "your brother's 
keeper?"

I think that cryonics will work.  But will it work within a few relatively 
short years with good suspension protocols, or will it work in the distant 
future (defined as far enough into the future we can define now what we want 
but only have hazy ideas about how it might be accomplished) using 
nanotechnology and quantum physics and other undefined future technologies?

The answer is probably yes to both alternatives, so hopefully we'll overcome, 
outsmart, or empirically learn enough to verify suspension protocols in 
humans.

Some final thoughts for review or comment and a new topic:  Furthering 
research into suspension protocols is vital to successful, shorter term in 
the cooler suspensions.  Getting suspended ASAP following deanimation is 
equally as important for shorter term in the cooler suspensions.  Avoiding 
suspension by not deanimating is even better.

If you agree with the precepts above, live a healthy life, support research 
into suspension protocols, and three- try and figure out ways for people to 
be informed should you suddenly or unexpectedly deanimate.  I would love a 
wrist watch cell phone that monitors my life signs and beeps at me if it 
thinks I'm dead, and if I don't respond, it autodials and notifies my 
cryonics providers of my location and that I appear to be dead.  I read 
recently about the "life shirt" that does this sort of thing.  Using current 
technology it should be possible to have a small, unobtrusive, life 
monitor/cell phone/gps system real soon now.  And it doesn't have to be 
cumbersome, most cell phones weigh a lot because of the battery size. You 
wouldn't need a huge battery for this,  as it would only have to work for a 
few *critical* minutes.  And you could even set it to autodial your response 
center every 10 min and send a gps update, so you could be tracked in transit 
to hospital or mortuary. Or it could have a speaker so the response center 
could talk to anyone present with you while you were incapacitated.

The issue of false alarms would be serious, but, security industries deal 
with false alarms all the time- and usually charge you for the false alarm.  
But it might be worth it- esp for those with life threatening cardiac 
conditions or other may die unexpectedly at any time illnesses.   Does anyone 
have knowledge of a more updated device than the life shirt or companies that 
work with this sort of thing?

I wonder if Nokia could be talked into it?

Best,
Mike Donahue



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