X-Message-Number: 2264 Date: Tue, 18 May 93 01:37:48 CDT From: Brian Wowk <> Subject: CRYONICS Reply to Art Quaife Art Quaife: > If it is ever possible to attach a revived head to a cloned body, > that head (brain) is going to be in for quite a shock... Neuropatients (and possibly today's wholebody patients) will be revived by regrowing a new body around the repaired brain in a nutrient bath. Body growth in this synthetic "womb" will resemble natural fetal development, except that the process will begin with a brain instead of an egg, and will be carried through to adulthood. Revival of neuropatients will not be anything so crude as sewing a head onto a body! > Whether the consciousness that emerges from the old brain adapting > to the new body is close enough to the original consciousness to > count as "identity preservation", I do not know. Well, a lot of people *do know* the answer to this question --first hand. There are many people around today who have endured multi-organ transplants and spinal cord transections at the level of cervical vertebrae. (Some possibly even both). While none of these people are happy about their disabilities (an artifact of today's primitive medicine), they do not deny the continued existence of their life and identity. Indeed, many of these people express gratitude that they are *still alive*. We can quibble about the technical details of revival, and about whether revived neuropatients will remember how to play the piano, or even walk. But it is plain dishonest to claim we "do not know" whether saving the brain can save a person's life as that word is presently understood in medicine. Clinical experience overwhelmingly proves that it can. > Whole-body patients are an odds-on bet to come out of suspension > long before neuro patients. I'll take that bet. Today's cryonic suspension methods are so intensely damaging, it is quite possible that whole body patients will be revived by regrowing them new bodies. Growth of new bodies is a process that *already exists* in nature, and that can in principle be modified to suit the needs of cryonics patients. On the other hand, repair mechanisms for extensive cryoinjury do not exist in nature and will have to be designed from the ground up. There is another interesting aspect to this question I would like to hear Art comment on. Reversible organ preservation technologies such as vitrification necessarily involve completely removing the brain and storing in a vitreous solution. (Otherwise ice crystals in the rest of the body would propagate and devitrify the organ). When this technology becomes available, will Art choose to have his brain preserved as a discrete organ in perfect (reversible) condition, or continue with the option of having his whole body frozen using today's highly damaging techniques? > Some neuopreservation advocates claim that Dora Kent is still in > suspension today *only* because she was a neuro patient, and > could readily be moved out of the coroner's harmful way. I > disagree. As I heard the story, the coroner's office only got > involved in that case because they were notified that Alcor > (another cryonics organization) was attempting to dispose of a > headless corpse. Nonsense! Dora Kent was a Coroner's Case from square one by legal definition because her legal death was not pronounced by a state-licensed physician or nurse before her cryonic suspension began. If her body (sans head) was not available for examination, the whole package would have come of out of suspension without a doubt. --- Brian Wowk Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2264