X-Message-Number: 26221
Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 21:43:59 -0500
From: The NanoAging Institute <>
Subject: Suspended Animation Release
News from Suspended Animation
Number 2
May 22nd, 2005
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New Facility Nears Completion
Our new facility in Boynton Beach should be ready for us
by the end of this month. Drywall, basic electric, and basic
plumbing are complete. Additional air conditioning has been
installed, requiring major roof work and duct work. All the
new walls have been painted, and the ceilings should be
finished within the next few days. Carpeting and floor tiles
will follow.
The combination of office, laboratory, and warehouse space
measures 5,500 square feet. A floor plan and photographs will
be placed online before the next issue of this newsletter is
distributed.
Inevitably, topics relating to our upcoming move have
occupied most of our attention during the four weeks since
the previous issue of this newsletter.
Goals in Research and Development
In the long term Suspended Animation will pursue ambitious
projects such as rapid cooling and the development of a
transport vehicle capable of moving a vitrified patient
across the country at a constant temperature below -100
degrees Celsius.
In the short term we see many opportunities for smaller, less
impressive projects that are nevertheless essential as we try
to improve all aspects of emergency intervention. In this and
the next two issues of our newsletter we will summarize some
of the relatively unglamorous tasks that we have been working
on while we were tracking the progress of our new facility
and getting ready to move.
Portable Ice Bath Prototype
Water-ice remains the method of choice to provide immediate
surface cooling after cardiac arrest, and a portable ice bath
is the obvious tool for the job. Early versions in the
history of cryonics used segments of PVC pipe which plugged
together, but the assembly process was time consuming and the
bath itself was not aesthetically pleasing. Also, it was
insufficiently robust.
Subsequent designs failed to reconcile the conflicting
demands of high strength and lightweight portability. Since a
bath must carry a patient weighing as much as 200 lbs plus
ice weighing an additional 200 lbs, but must be air
transportable (ideally weighing less than 62 lbs empty to
satisfy airline regulations), the design is an interesting
challenge.
Here at Suspended Animation our initial ice bath included
several desirable new features, such as legs that brought the
bath up to the height of a typical gurney and a seamless
vinyl liner that minimized the possibility of leaks. An
additional two-layer cover provided patient privacy while
reducing the risks of contagion and liquid spills.
Two of these baths were supplied to The Cryonics Institute and
the Cryonics Society of Canada, while another two are
maintained at our facility. In addition we have three
Michigan Instruments "Thumpers" specially modified to rest on
the rails of the bath while providing cardiopulmonary
support. This Thumper design is smaller, lighter, and more
stable that the traditional Thumper. It can accommodate a
wider range of chest sizes than the Swedish LUCAS (which has
a similar design predating ours) and also provides oxygen to
ventilate the lungs, while the LUCAS does not.
The biggest problem with our current ice bath is that it
requires a substantial amount of time for assembly. Early
this year we started work on a revision that will stand at
the same height, will remain compatible with the modified
Thumper, and will continue to use the existing vinyl liners
while being more easily transportable and much easier to put
together.
When we investigated the options for sending the design out
for fabrication, we found that local stainless-steel welding
shops were mainly occupied building kitchen equipment. They
were poorly qualified to tackle a complex structure that
folds in three dimensions. After some discussion we decided
it should cost less to build it in-house, so we bought a Miller
Syncrowave 250 DX TIG welder and hired a crafts person to
operate it.
The folding legs for the bath have now been completed, and
perform as planned. They collapse from a framework measuring
23" x 51" x 26" to a bundle of struts measuring approximately
12" x 12" x 24". The structure is fully integrated, with no
loose parts, locking pins, or accessory items that are liable
to be lost. Pictures will be placed on our web site in the
near future.
The bath itself will be detachable from the legs, and we
hope to begin work on it immediately after our relocation.
Compared with a truly challenging field such as cryobiology
research, the development of a new ice bath is a trivial
matter; yet fewer than a dozen of them exist in cryonics,
and all of them are less than ideal. The need for a better
design is obvious.
Patient Lifting Sling
A very familiar problem associated with ice baths is the
difficulty of moving patients into them and out of them. To
address this problem, Suspended Animation created a simple
design and took it to a local marine craft shop that has an
active sail-stitching department.
Using nylon straps and nylon webbing, the sling weighs only
about 1 lb. It rests directly inside the liner of the bath
without interfering with the sump pump which we use to
recirculate icewater. We have commissioned the sail stitchers
to make three additional slings within the next couple of
weeks.
A Very Simple Experiment
In April we performed a simple experiment to measure the
melting rate of water-ice during a simulated transport of a
cryonics case. We wanted to compare different types of
insulation, and we wanted to know how much ice is really
necessary.
A short paper has been written, describing the results of
this experiment. It is now online at www.suspendedinc.com.
Although theoretically Suspended Animation is a for-profit
corporation, for the foreseeable future we are making the
results of our R&D freely available on the principle that
everyone who has a serious interest in human cryopreservation
should benefit from shared information.
In the next two newsletters:
Modifying the Air Transportable Perfusion device
Functional aesthetics of standby equipment
Resolving some questions regarding surface cooling
Automating some processes in standby work
Standby kit packaging
Dry ice vs. water ice
Visitors at Suspended Animation
At the request of Alcor Foundation we welcomed their new
transport coordinator, Bill Voice, for five days of
instruction in January of this year. Bill is an experienced
paramedic and firefighter who has taught emergency medicine
and told us that he is contemplating becoming a naturopathic
physician. He made some suggestions to us regarding equipment
such as the Combitube, which enables relatively unskilled
people to intubate patients with minimal risk. We provided
him with historical background, case histories, research
results, and other information relating to cryonics, ischemic
injury, resuscitation medicine, and cryobiology. At the
conclusion of his visit Bill took away with him a binder
containing more than 300 pages of assorted informational
materials. We hope that his visit was of some use to him as
he starts to train regional Alcor standby teams.
Soon after Bill was here, we were visited by one of the two
principals of The Cryonics Society, which is pursuing grass-
roots outreach in a more systematic way than has ever been
attempted in cryonics. We're looking forward with great
interest to the results that The Cryonics Society may achieve
from its direct-mail strategy. They are online at
www.cryonicssociety.org.
We also welcomed Bruce Klein from the Immortality Institute.
Bruce was passing through Florida with his camcorder, taping
interviews for a documentary film project which is scheduled
for release in November of this year. He taped a segment in
our warehouse/workshop area. For more information please
visit www.imminst.org.
Former Alcor employee Todd Huffman spent several days with
us, looking at our equipment and talking to our employees.
Todd has a degree in neuroscience and has played an important
role in Alcor standby/transport work. We invited him to write
a report discussing our goals and our strategies for
achieving them, and we gained some useful insights from his
perspective.
Three times this year we have been visited by Sandra Russell.
Sandra is an Alcor member who has participated in surgical
procedures in many cryonics cases, has assisted in standby
work, and has worked with Steve Harris, MD and Joan O'Farrell
at Critical Care Research, the California laboratory from
which we license the medications used in case work.
Sandra advised us on issues relating to equipment,
medications, and procedures, and she worked hard to
reorganize our warehouse and review our standby inventory.
Following her suggestions, we have acquired items such as
Biomedicus cannulas and pulse oximeters that use an ear-lobe
attachment to yield readings that we believe are more
reliable than the simpler finger-mounted type of sensor.
We're extremely grateful to Sandra for the very hard work she
has done here on our behalf.
Personnel
Earlier this month our staff received training in topics
including intubation and medications. Last week we provided
some training of our own, including an overview of cryonics
and some familiarization with our equipment, for paramedics
and others with some background in emergency medicine. After
we have relocated we intend to provide many more training and
practice sessions while we increase our base of personnel who
are available for remote standbys.
Currently Suspended Animation can call upon a variety of
people for assistance in standby/transport work. Some of
these people are full-time employees, some are volunteers,
and some are independent contractors. Their level of
availability and experience ranges from part-timers who have
not participated in any cryonics cases to fully trained
medical professionals who are thoroughly familiar with all
phases of intervention, from the bedisde to the operating
room. The list includes:
1 EMT (Florida)
1 nurse (Florida)
2 paramedics (Florida)
2 former nursing students (Florida)
1 biologist (Florida)
1 surgeon (Florida)
1 MD (Florida)
3 former Alcor Cryotransport Technicians (Florida)*
1 technician with relevant cryonics experience (Florida)
2 partially trained volunteers (Florida)
3 persons with lab/field/O.R. capability (California)
1 MD also with extensive surgical experience (California)
1 team leader with extensive field experience (California)
1 team leader with extensive field experience (Texas)
Total: 21
*we are identifying these three people as "former" ACTs
because Alcor has indicated that Suspended Animation
employees may not be part of the ACT network.
New Employee
Last month we welcomed Kelly Kingston, a full-time office
assistant whose duties will range beyond her job title. While
Kelly is taking evening classes for an eventual degree in
forensic pathology, she will be maintaining our standby
inventory, working on our book keeping, organizing our
relocation, and assisting with Open House and training
events. Kelly is also very interested in participating in
standby work.
Suspended Animation now has a staff of six:
Charles Platt (general manager)
Aschwin de Wolf (CFO)
Robert Pruss (mechanical engineer)
Jay Wasserlauf (surgeon and research associate)
Kelly Kingston (office assistant)
Greg Criswell (crafts person)
...not forgetting our CEO, Saul Kent, who presides over the
company while shuttling between California and Florida.
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