X-Message-Number: 2258
Date: 16 May 93 20:21:12 EDT
From: "BROOK H. NORTON" <>
Subject: CRYONICS; Deanimation Procedure

My name is Brook Norton.  I live in Riverside County and have been 
following Cryonet for 6 or 8 weeks now with great interest.  I've been 
thinking about the deanimation procedure and wondering if the following 
method had been considered.

In 'Cryonics - Reaching for Tomorrow', a scenario is described where 
nanomachines enter the frozen patient, stabilize most of the loose 
molecules with support structures, substitute fluids within cell interiors, 
then thaw the patient and perform repairs at temperatures above the 
freezing point of water.

This scenario could certainly be made to work.  However, each of the steps 
mentioned above is very complex and the procedure as a whole requires 
repeated interaction between nanomachines and the individual molecules, 
slowly transforming the damaged frozen patient into a healthy one at 98.6 
deg.  And once the patient is raised above the water freezing point, the 
procedure must progress as planned and on a tight time schedule since 
molecules will drift and oxidize if given a chance.

How about an alternate method as follows?  With the patient still frozen, 
download to a computer the location of each molecule (or atom if required) 
in the patient.  This information could perhaps be obtained without any 
nanomachines with some type of energy scanner such as a sophisticated x-ray 
or Magnetic Resonance Imaging.  If that's impractical, nanomachines could 
burrow throughout the patient, dislodging the molecule ahead of it, 
recording its position, advancing forward, and replacing the molecule in 
its original position, until all molecules were accounted for.  Finally, if 
that's impractical, the nanomachines could simply disassemble the patient, 
molecule by molecule, until you were left with a big pile of molecules and 
a record of where they came from.

At this point the patient is fully described in the computer.  This doesn't 
mean the patient is conscious or functioning in the computer, simply on 
record.  So far the procedure is a straight forward, brute force method.

Now you can apply the Artificial Intelligence algorithims to the recorded 
patient data, identifying cracks, damaged membranes, etc and decide how the 
patient should look after repair.  This AI proccessing could take days, 
years, or decades; no strict time schedule is required.  On the computer, a 
fracture across the entire brain is as easy to fix as a ruptured cell 
membrane.  After this step a record exists on the computer of where every 
molecule will be in the repaired patient.

Next, dumb nanomachines could take generic matter (not from the patient's 
body) and put each molecule in place as determined in the AI process.  The 
repaired patient would be rebuilt in the frozen state, so there is no 
stabilizing of loose parts to worry about.  Although in a frozen state, the 
patient would be rebuilt with normal cells (not dehydrated) and without 
cryoprotectants (cryoprotectants aren't required since the cells are 
rebuilt in an undamaged state).  If the patient was unsure that being 
rebuilt from generic matter would retain his or her "true identity", the 
added step of using the patient's original matter could be done, where each 
original molecule from the damaged patient could be mapped into its 
repaired location.

Finally, the patient could be thawed, ready to go.

The strengths of this process are:
1) Nanomachines are not required to stabilize or tag molecules and they 
don't have to make decisions about what to do.  They simple move molecules 
and record positions.
2) The repair process is completely handled on the computer, without 
interaction with the physical patient.  There is little pressure for a fast 
solution.

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