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. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2258