X-Message-Number: 2212
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: cryonics: #2206-#2209
Date: Fri, 7 May 93 11:29:05 PDT

Hi!

This time the net has sent me 2 messages worth comment.

1. Neuropreservation: Cloning a body is inefficient and might well raise
ideological problems, too. The efficient thing to do is to make the head
grow another body (the head would remain unconscious through this period, hook-
ed onto pipes etc to provide nutrients and controls).

Just to be REALLY troublesome, when we consider just what happens in growth and
development the question of whether or not those frozen now require "general
cell repair machines" becomes a bit shaky. Embryonic brain tissue has withstood
suspension (ie. LN2 freezing) already. When we become adults (or even after 

birth) we lose that ability; but if the cells already know where they're        
supposed to go, independent of whether they happen to be there or not, they'll
have a considerable ability to fix themselves without lots of extra help.
(This is more than a speculation, but I wouldn't want to trust my life to it!).
The real issue here is that of whether we are repairing a machine which has
no ability to repair itself at all, or whether we are repairing life forms, 
which generally have considerable self-repair abilities.

AS for "general cell repair machines" that's obviously neither necessary nor
sufficient. It's not sufficient because we still aren't sure, in many patients

frozen under the worst conditions, that their memories (as biological 
structuressomehow coded in the brain) still EXIST. It's not necessary because 
(something
easy to see!) nothing requires us to use only one kind of device during repair.
It WILL require an ability to access particular cells, or all of the cells, but
we can just as easily imagine very simple machines (even single molecules no
more complex than enzymes) sent in to do specific tasks as one more complex
machine to do it all.


I personally imagine repair to happen something like that: a variety of 
devices,consisting in fact of the establishment of a new creature of which the 
patient
is a part (think about all the different kinds of cells of which we are made).

This creature will repair whatever needs repair, move whatever needs moving, 
etcand then afterwards withdraw. It would be a repair SYSTEM. In terms of 
putting
a computer into something the size of an ameba (which may already contain a
simple computer) that may turn out to be quite unnecessary. The issue is how 
the metabolism of this meta-creature that does repair is to be guided.

Incidentally, the cryonics problem of RECOVERING memories in suspended patients
takes in much more territory than simply that of understanding how memory works
in healthy patients. It's just like the issues in archaeology: it certainly
helps to know how the buildings were put together, but reconstructing them 
takes more than that. Among other issues, you have to work out just what 
building was there in the first place.

On Australian conditions and laws: As someone who lived there for some time
and may even choose to live there again, Australia is not a paradise. (Neither
is California!). Earthqquakes HAVE occurred in Australia, though I don't
know of any really serious ones. Right now the economy is somewhere around the
bottom of the tank in the mud. Australians generally will put up with more
government regulation than will Americans; the average tone of politics is more
to the "left" there, if that means anything. The Australian cryonics society
has just as much trouble finding members as do any here.

The current President of Alcor Australia is Robert Cardwell. He can be reached
at  as his (or his employer's, so be circumspect)
email address. 
			Best and long long life,
				Thomas

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