X-Message-Number: 3156
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 1994 23:58:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: 
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Comments needed!

Date sent:  17-SEP-1994 23:48:31 

>Path: 
bionet!agate!spool.mu.edu!caen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!usenet.coe.montana.edu!news.u.washington.edu!hardy.u.washington.edu!rbradbur
>From:  (Robert Bradbury)
>Newsgroups: sci.med,bionet.molbio.ageing
>Subject: Cryopreservation in life extension [was Re: Tortoises & cryonics]

>Summary: Medical techniques to preserve tissue are important to life extension.
>Keywords: cryonics, life extension, genetic engineering
>Message-ID: <>
>Date: 27 May 92 19:01:22 GMT

>References: <> <1992May21.111046.1967 
> <> 
<>
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>Followup-To: bionet.molbio.ageing
>Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
>Lines: 89
>Xref: bionet sci.med:26918 bionet.molbio.ageing:259
>

>In article <>  
writes:
>>
>>In article <> Gordon Banks writes:
>>> There is a good chance that within a century or so we will have the 
>>> capabilities of engineering germ cell lines to the point that almost 
>>> any characteristic could be programmed into the individual.  It is here 
>>> that the most likely promise of "immortality" lies, not in cryonics.  
>>> By the time the technology to revive these frozen fossils is in place 
>>> (if ever), those who would be doing the reviving may look upon the 
>>> frozen specimens as genetically hopeless and have no desire to resurrect
>>> such poor specimens.
>>
>>Yes, any approach to immortality other than improving the germ line by 
>>introducing improved repair and error correction mechanisms into our
>>DNA is an exercise in futility!  Once this is understood, one begins 
>>to question the current direction of medical research which, at best, 
>>will extend our lives by only a few years.
>>
>
>I agree with Larry that our current medical research (most of it) is
>misdirected.  This is beca.
>use as he points out it increases our life for only
>a few years and most importantly increases those years at an ever increasing
>cost per additional unit of lifetime.  This reaches the point (as it
>did with my grandmother) where the final years of her life cost society
>(the state of Massachusetts) more than she made in her entire lifetime.  
>Another example would be the recent case, I think it was in Pennsylvania,
>where a man in his 30's or 40's was about to undergo his 3rd transplant
>operation (due to failures of the first two).  In that case I would bet
>his health care costs would exceed his future lifetime potential earnings.
>
>In my opinion medical research funding and health care coverage should
>be directed directly towards efforts which will provide the greatest
>benifit for the lowest cost (invoking the principle of utilitarianism as well
>as good economics).  The politicians and the medical community need to start
>making it clear to people that if we are going to use "public" monies they
>should be used to provide the greatest benifit to the greatest number of
>people possible.  However this in no way should preclude individuals from
>investing/spending their own monies on life preserving/reanimation
>technologies.
>
>Now, one must ask where cryonics fits in.  If one accepts that in the long
>term we will engineer ourselves to have longer lives then one has to agree
>that the major cause of unplanned death will be accidents.  In situations
>such as this the ability to lower the body temperature to allow extended
>microsurgery, to pull replacement organs out of a freezer or keep a person
>in a "suspended state" while a new organ is cloned and grown will play
>critical roles in preserving life when it would otherwise be impossible.
>The only way around this is to argue that we can engineer "instantaneous"
>regrowth of vital organs or we will have replacement "machines" for all
>bodily functions.  I have to believe that the first is unlikely and the
>second would probably be more.
> expensive and less effective than "real organs".
>So one can see an important place for cold storage of tissues with varying
>degrees of "aliveness" in the general scheme of life preservation.
>
>This leads us to look at where cryonics funding is today.  If people go
>down to their health sciences library and pull out "Cryobiology" they will
>find many articles done by "real" scientists researching things like blood and
>organ preservation and the effects of cold storage on tissue samples preserved
>for long term research.  The HIV labs at major research centers have large
>numbers of lymphocytes from patients preserved in LN for the purpose of
>studying disease progression and drug efficacy.  To argue that funding for
>this type of research is irrelevant is to ignore the threat posed by HIV.
>
>Research in cryobiology is progressing rapidly considering how little funding
>there actually is for it.  Lymphocytes properly frozen can be preserved for
>years and thawed out with 70%-80% viability.  Obviously these will need to
>be improved for nerve tissue but numbers in this range are probably fine
>for young liver, kidney and muscle tissue given that one probably loses 
>20-30% or more of these cells over a normal lifetime anyway.  It is also
>worth noting that this type of research will end up lowering the costs
>of blood and organs by allowing their long term storage.
>
>So to argue that cryopreservation is "irrelevant" or "futile" is to ignore
>the current uses for the technology and the pace at which it has advanced
>over the last 20 years.  To argue we shouldn't be doing this type of
>research one needs to offer alternate forms of research which would
>provide equivalent benifits at a lower cost.  And finally to argue that
>cryonic preservation of human tissue with its potential reanimation is
>never going to work is akin to arguing that we will never get 1 billion
>transistors on a chip.
>
>From where I stand (a moderatly well informed programmer/biologist)
>I would guess freezing organs by 20.
>00 and the 1 billion transistor chip
>by 2005.  The cloning of an individual may not be until 2030+ and the
>ability to realize brain transplants/nanotechnology 2050-2100(?).
>This makes me think that the current "flaw" in the whole cryonics
>preservation game is that of preserving only the quiescent heads.
>These non-talking heads :) will have to wait much longer for reanimation
>than those who go the whole body route.


I came across this discussion on WWW. I would appreciate users opinion 
on it. Jan (John) Coetzee.

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