X-Message-Number: 3075
Date: 07 Sep 94 01:28:19 EDT
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Ettinger

I made a serious error on my previous post about Greg's work.  When talking
about toxicity at -30xC and pointing out that VS solutions are still toxic at
this temperature. I MISTAKENLY put a (1) in front of the 30 making it -130xC!
This is an error.  It is NOT the case that vitrification solutions are toxic at

-130xC.  In fact, this is a sufficiently low temperature to inhibit toxicity and
allow for "indefinite" viable, virtreous storage.


Bob Ettinger writes:

>>But Mike's assessment, I think, cannot QUITE be taken at face value. Until
whole kidneys >>have actually BEEN processed in the proposed way and proven
>>viable, we  can't be sure. At CI we never take anything for granted. 

Basically, I agree with you in terms of being assured that the kidneys will
function.  However, insofar as being certain that the kidney's are
ultrastructurally well preserved and free of ice even though they have not been

been rewarmed en bloc (because of constraints on warming speed) I must disagree.

As I understand it, Greg has evaluated whole, vitrified kidneys for the presence
of ice and for ultrastructural integrity.  Ice was absent, ultrastructure was
intact.  This is still as big step forward.

I have a question for Bob: If we could remove any small portion of a vitrified
kidney and rewarm it to demonstrate good function, would this satisfy you that
the tissue (in this case the kidney) was preserved  viably even though fast
rewarming is not now possible?  Granted, there is still the issue of the
vasculature which might be microscopically cracked on rewarming or during
vitrification.  But here (and in my previous post) I was referring to tissue
ultrastructure. Sorry if I wasn't clear on this.

Bob also remarks again that the problem of kidney preservation has proven
intractable for many years.  Come on, Bob, you know better than almost anyone

WHY it has proven intractable!  The answer is that most of the research done was
pure crap, not of a serious nature at all.  And further more you know well that

funding for this area has been horrible!  Almost nonexistent!  Even incuding the

garbage research cryobiology is grossly underfunded and *you* have often said so
yourself.  


To my knowlege there has been, for the last 15 years, only three places in world
where organ cryopreservation was being "systematically" pursued: Armand Karow's
group at the Medical College of Georgia (they stopped work nearly 7-8 years
ago), David Pegg's group at the Medical Research Council (in the UK) and Greg
Fahy's group at the Red Cross.  Pegg's efforts were hardly of a focused nature

and much of his work was NOT related to cryopreservation of the kidney or of any
solid organ for that matter.  The kindest thing I can do in commenting on
Karow's efforts is not to comment.  That leave's Greg.  I talked with him two

days ago and he confirmed my estimate of about $2 million having been spent over
that lifetime of his work at Cross.

Keep in mind that the average low-end start-up biomedical R&D company is
capitalized in  $5-15 million range.  I think the prospects for research
yeilding good results in cryonics are excellent.  And I am not known for my
optimism about anything.

>>And Mike ought to know better than to keep trying to label me Pollyanna. I
>>have never minimized the problems of maximizing our chances, and if I ignored
>>the necessity of trying to maximize our chances I would be an idiot. The
>>research effort at CI has never been restricted by the philosophical view
>>Mike imputes to me--only by our finances and capabilities (which fortunately
>>are improving).

It was not my intention to label you as a "Pollyanna" nor do I think I do so in
my post.  However, it was and remains my intention to point out that there is a
large philosophical and practical difference between the approach to cryonics

patient care you consider acceptable and which you practice and that which I and
others practice and consider acceptable.  You have long been critical of the
kinds of "high tech" approaches  such as the use of bypass technology, 0.2
micron filtration of perfusate, use of medical grade  (pyrogen free) water for
perfusate preparation, gradual introduction of cryoprotectant and use of the
kind of emergent (i.e., at the time of legal death) extracorporeal support
technology which Alcor, BPI and others have employed as being of unproven
benefit and therefore not (presumably) cost effective.

These positions dovetail with your repeated public statements that patients
prepared simply and inexpensively using a mortician and simple perfusion
equipment and vascular access via the carotid or femoral with non-cannula
assisted venous drainage and a 75% glycerol solution (which the patient is
perfused with directly) are probably as well off as those treated by  "higher
tech" methods.

Please understand that I am not "criticizing you" or denigrating your approach.
You are free to do what you believe is best and as long as your clients
understand what they are getting (and I believe they have ample opportunity to
have such understanding; I have not seen any evidence of an intent or effort to
defraud or misininform anyone by either you or CI).  What I am doing here is

pointing out that there is difference in approach and that I believe (rightly or
wrongly) that philosophy underlies such a difference.

I believe that protecting patients from known (and in my opinion) significant
sources of injury such as plugging of capillaries with debris from unfiltered
perfusate, direct injury to cell membranes from contaminants in water and
perfusate components, protection of staff from etiologic agents through the use

of sterile technique, protection of the patient from bacterial overgrowth during
long periods of external cooling (when extracorporeal cooling is not available)
through sterile technique and use of parenteral antibiotics, and so on,
constitute good care.  Indeed, constitute the lower limit of care I consider
accceptable.

I do not believe that patients with autolytic injury from long periods of
unstabilized postmortem delay, compromised capillary beds, and so on will fare
as well as soon as patients better treated.

I am cautiously optimistic about the long term.  But I am ever mindful of the
history of cryonics and of the world at large.  Storage time is DANGEROUS time

for the patient.  When the US went through WWII there were no wars raging on our
own soil.  Nevertheless, that effort resulted in a country in which there were
no new appliances manufactured, no nylon stockings made, and in which fuel was
rationed.  In such an environment frozen patients would have fared badly in my
opinion.

Currently, a good hunk of the world is engulfed in chaos and poverty.  While

things are improving in many areas, it is by no means clear to me that we are on
the verge of utopia or even on the verge of a "stable" world order.  As best I
can see the world is mess and the prospects for things getting worse are at
least even with their getting better.


What I am saying here is that I do not blithely accept the liklihood of patients
remaining frozen for centuries.  I think we'll be doing very good to keep most

of those now frozen in cryogenic storage for 50 to 150 years.  Autolytic damage,
cracking, and the kind of injury we observe on freeze-substitution (and thus in
the frozen state) and after thawing may require very long periods of storage
time to develop the technology to reverse.  To the extent we can meaningfully
minimize this injury I think we should do so.  On this I do not think we are in
disagreement.  As to what constitutes a meaningful dimunition of injury --*
there* we have disagreement.  And I believe that such disagreement is strongly
influenced by philosophy.

I have not, to my knowledge, said anything negative about CI's approach to
cryobiological  research.  As far as I can see doing a survey of exactly what
kind of injury your cryopreservation technique results in is a good and logical
place to start -- and I commend you and thank you for it.  And it is in fact
what I did with Jerry Leaf in the early and mid-'80's and what I am doing now
myself here at BPI.

Finally, I meant no disrespect by my previous post.  You are the Father of
cryonics and, as I have often said, are owed a great debt of gratitude.

However, I do disagree with your position in a number of areas and I stand by my
remarks that your post did nothing to enhance the credibility of cryonics and
further that some of us do not share your philosophical conviction about the
"revivability of everybody."

To me, cryonics should remain within the domain of what we can envision as
possible within known physical law.  Sincewe have no reason to believe that we
are destroying the fundamental fabric of identity by cryopreserving people (and
some reasons for believing we aren't) it makes sense to proceed to do so and
*hope* for the best (since the alternative is certain loss).  But, and here is
an important difference in perspective, it is by no means clear to me that we
are suceeding cryopreserving sufficient information to allow us to infer the
healthy, functional state of the individual from cryoinjured state we render
them into -- even when we apply cryopreservation under the best of
circumstances.  You clearly do not share this viewpoint and it clearly has
influenced (in my opinion) your actions and approach to cryonics.  I found it
ironic that you require of Greg's vitrification technique that he first
un-vitrify and successfully reimplant a kidney befoe you'll "believe it" or

considered it "proved" cryopreservation.  Surely you will grant those of us more

conservative cryonicists the same reservations when it comes to the issue of the
recoverability of people cryopreserved with today's damaging techniques: we'll
*believe* it when we see it.  In the meantime we can perhaps be forgiven for
regarding human cryopreservation as an at best speculative and experimental
approach to survival.  Above all an *unproven* approach.  

Thus, we (those of us with such doubts) will feel better and better as the

cryopreservation techniques get better and better.  And we will feel beter still
when the cryopreservation techniques are *fully reversible.*!

Again, you are free to pursue a very different course *and I am in no position
to prove you wrong at this time.*  So, let's not impute evil motives where none
exist.

Only time will tell which of us (or our respective critics!) is right or wrong.

Respectfully,
Mike Darwin

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