X-Message-Number: 220 From: Kevin Q. Brown Subject: Asilomar Conference Report (Part 1 of 2) Date: 7 Sep 1990 I attended the Aug. 24-26 Conference on Biostasis & Reentry at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, CA, which was sponsored by Lifepact and organized by Linda and Fred Chamberlain. I took (hopefully accurate) notes on the Saturday August 25 presentations, which I have turned into English and appended below. Please let me know of any mistakes or important omissions. - Kevin Q. Brown ...att!whscad1!kqb 9:00 AM "DEMONSTRATING VIABLE MEMORY AFTER CRYOPRESERVATION: RESEARCH DIRECTIONS" by Jerry Leaf, B.A. Greg Fahy filled in for Jerry Leaf, who was not able to attend, and presented a large number of intriguing insights, including the following. It would be a major accomplishment to show retention of memory (not just survival) after any kind of freezing, especially after cooling to dry ice temperature rather than just slightly below 0 degrees C, as was done in the experiments of Audrey Smith. Since memory is in the brain we would like to concentrate on successful freezing of the brain. The obvious approach is to remove the brain, freeze it, thaw it out, reconnect it to the body, and see if it works. Unfortunately, reconnecting a severed brain to the body is quite difficult. Another approach is to freeze the brain in situ, without severing the connections between the body and the brain and without freezing the remainder of the animal. This might be done by perfusing the brain with humidified helium. It may be that the greatest damage we see from freezing occurs during thawing, not during the freezing itself. We would like to see what the brain looks like (at the ultrastructure level) after being frozen, but not after being both frozen and thawed. Why are frogs and turtles freeze-tolerant and what can we do to copy what they do? We do not entirely know. The levels of cryoprotectants they produce do not entirely explain their ability to survive freezing. We do know, however, that frogs and turtles can survive long periods without oxygen whereas mammals cannot. Also, since some regions of the tissues of frogs and turtles are less sensitive to ice than others, the ice that does form can be concentrated in the less sensitive areas. Mammals do not have any such less sensitive areas, though, so they cannot take advantage of that survival technique. 9:30 AM "NANOTECHNOLOGY - THE AVENUE TO HEALTH AND WEALTH" by Ralph C. Merkle, Ph.D. Xerox PARC Ralph gave his usual excellent introduction to nanotechnology. Even for people who have read about nanotechnology, Ralph's presentation was useful for making clear the important concepts and distinctions. Here are a few that stood out for me. Today, fabrication limits technology. With nanotechnology the limits will be physical law and design capability. The three classes of medical treatment are (will be): (1) surgery - intelligent guidance with crude tools, (2) drugs - molecular tools without direct intelligent guidance, and (3) cell repair systems - molecular tools guided with surgical precision. Advanced nanotechnology will change our medical requirements. Currently, we require active tissue that can self-repair and thus must preserve tissue FUNCTION. With advanced nanotechnology we will be able to repair passive tissues and thus will need only to preserve tissue STRUCTURE. 10:00 AM "PERMAFROST CRYONIC INTERMENT" by Benjamin Best, BSc (Pharmacy), BSc (Physics & Computer Science), BBA (Accounting and Finance) Benjamin was not recommending that we abandon LN2 (liquid nitrogen) suspension in favor of permafrost interment, but, rather, was exploring an alternative. The advantages of permafrost interment are: (1) it stays cold without maintenance support of any human organization, (2) it's cheaper, (3) some people find it aesthetically pleasing (?), and (4) it is a backup to other methods of suspension. The obvious disadvantage of permafrost interment is that it does not seem to be cold enough to stop decay. Chemical preservation (with formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, and mercuric chloride) may help alleviate that difficulty by forming cross linking, etc. which, when combined with permafrost interment, may be able to preserve structure. 10:30 AM "REVERSING THE AGING PROCESS MADE EASY" by Gregory M. Fahy, Ph.D. This talk was one of the highlights of the conference; Greg was brought back for an encore later (9:00 PM, Saturday). In this session he showed several examples of reversing aspects of aging. Growth hormone - you lose 70% of your growth hormone between age 45 and 75 Giving growth hormone (at low levels) back to humans of ages 61-81 reverses some aspects of aging (Rudman, 6 month study). The thymus gland atrophies with age (and therefore the immune response and other parameters of aging), but the thymus can be regenerated with administration of growth hormone (with some other factors). Zinc is nontoxic, cheap, and important for health. We tend to develop zinc deficiencies as we get older. Elongation Factor 1 is needed for protein production and the levels of it decline with age (George Webster). The mechanism seems to be similar in both fruit flies and mammals. Centrophenoxine reverses the decline of Elongation Factor 1 in vitro. Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) - Greg Fahy helped popularize this in the U.S. (It had been taken safely in Japan for years.) CoQ10 is needed for energy production and is especially needed in the heart. Deprenyl blocks some metabolism-related damage and greatly increased the maximum life span in one experiment. 11:00 AM "LOW TEMPERATURE MEDICINE" by Hal Sternberg, Ph.D. Hal and his associates have washed the blood out of hamsters and replaced it with a blood substitute at low temperature for four hours and then successfully revived them. These techniques are useful in mainstream medicine - "bloodless" surgery, chemotherapy for cancer, multiple organ transplants, etc. Brain pathologies from freezing include edema and microvascular damage (EXCEPT in the cerebellum, which apparently does not suffer microvascular damage). Rewarming of hamsters in these experiments is currently done with a microwave oven; other rewarming techniques may cause less damage. 11:30 AM "PRO-DEATH MEMES AND POSSIBLE COUNTER MEASURES" by Jim Stevenson, Ph.D. Why do so many people think that God will give them immortality and so few look for a technical solution? For people to look for a technical solution: (1) they need an optimistic view of the future, (2) they need to believe it is possible, and (3) they need to be willing to think about death. (Death or thoughts of death generate a lot of anxiety. Thoughts of a God that will save us are quite comforting to some people.) Some people object that avoidance of death is not natural. One reply is that a century ago a 25% maternal death rate was natural. (Do you want that?) Sentence completion is a technique from Nathaniel Brandon (who had his own pro-death meme; he said that the finiteness of life makes one more productive). A person is given a choice of several endings for a stem of a sentence. For example, "Death means ..." Some people say "peace" or "an end to my struggles". Jim has had a hard time getting non-cryonicist volunteers to go through this experiment. Someone suggested using undergraduate college students (since they are the basis for many of today's psychology experiments anyway). He is working on a computerized version of the interview, since a computer may be less threatening than a human. If you know of any (non-cryonicist) volunteers, call Jim at (415) 494-1234. Near death experiences provide a meme that people use to support their spiritualistic beliefs. (A common experience is to see a light at the end of a tunnel and a figure in the middle of that light.) Since giving extra carbon dioxide to a person for 30 seconds produces the same effect in 1/3 to 1/2 of the population, the spiritualistic interpretation does not seem accurate. Apparently, yogis achieve this experience by building up their CO2 levels with breathing exercises. Also, the drug catemine (sp?) will produce this effect. 2:00 PM "MEMORY: ITS CURRENT STATUS" by Thomas Donaldson, Ph.D. Rather than try to reproduce what Thomas covered, I prefer to refer you to Thomas' informative handout which he made available. (Contribution appreciated.) Interested people may want to subscribe to Periastron ([Msg #205]), too, even though his handout will not be part of Periastron. Write to Thomas Donaldson at PO Box 2365, Sunnyvale, CA 94087 for more information. 2:30 PM "ADJUSTMENT AND READJUSTMENT IN CRYONIC REENTRY: CLOSURES AND BEGINNINGS" by Mae A. Ettinger, L.L.P., M.A. It is not what happens to a person that causes distress but rather the way in which it is perceived. Rational Emotive Therapy (Albert Ellis) recognizes the cycle: --> Event or Circumstances -- / \ | v Behavior Perception or ^ Interpretation | | \ / ---------- Emotions <-------- Before we do anything or decide anything ask: "Is this thought true? Is it rationally based? Does it get what you want quickly? Does it help you feel the way you want to feel? Does it keep you out of trouble you don't want? Does it lead you to protect your life?" If most of the answers are "Yes" then you are being rational. She suggested that we throw going away parties once a year (because we never know when we might go away). 3:00 PM "HOW TO SPEND THE NEXT MILLION YEARS" by Keith Henson Keith described the Far Edge Commission and beyond. He pointed out that our galaxy has about 100 billion stars and nobody can possibly visit them all in serial because most stars would burn out before you could get to them. The solution is to visit them in parallel by visiting a few, cloning the entire spaceship and crew, and proceeding along both branches in parallel. After about 32 branches and a quarter of a million years all the stars will have been visited and everyone will meet at the Far Edge of the galaxy for a big party. After that we will have to head for other galaxies. Since this is a long trip, uploaders will want to travel via their version of "warp drive"; slow down the clock rate and the rest of the universe appears speeded up. Keith pointed out that we will not be able to tell whether or not any intelligent aliens exist in our galaxy because, with advanced nanotechnology, anyone can send a rocket ahead of everyone else that will terraform a planet and bury fake dinosaur bones, create fake aliens, etc. that are indistinguishable from the real thing. He also has an interesting way to get into orbit without using rockets... --- End of Part 1 of 2 --- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=220