X-Message-Number: 32149
References: <>
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2009 08:10:19 -0800 (PST)
From: 2Arcturus <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32137 - #32140
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>>>Message #32140
Subject: Cryonics and organ transplants
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:49:01 -0500
From:
3. If a), then the patient's organs would be medically unusable for transplant.
We cannot prove (think 100 million dollars or more) to the FDA and various
medical boards that our particular combination of fluids is "safe and effective"
for living patients. No transplant team in the United States would accept such
organs.
It seems to me kind of a problem that there is such a discrepancy between
cryonics stabilizing perfusate and the organ preservation solutions used for
organ harvesting, especially when they are intended to do much the same thing -
keep the organs in a maximally viable state.
It was my understanding that the Alcor solution is a variation based on a
standard organ preservation solution - correct me if I am wrong. If the cryonics
solutions are better at preserving viable organs, that out to be demonstrable
by experiment. If the organ preservation solutions used by organ donation teams
are better, as verified by experiment, then why aren't cryonics sp's using them
instead? Unless I am missing something, there shouldn't be a huge contradiction
between the two.
>>>5. In order for the transplanted organs to be viable, the procedures would
have to done to hospital standards -- which today and perhaps for decades means
the procedures would have to be done AT a hospital.
I don't see why a local organ transplant team could not be teamed with Alcor's
standby teams wherever they go, which I gather is sometimes a hospital or a
nursing home near a hospital. And why are cryonicists afraid of hospital
standards?
In my opinion, the upside for cryonicists would be that we might get hospital
buy-in on the urgency of cryonics stabilization - if doctors saw it combined
with organ harvesting, it would provide more of a context for understanding it
(just harvesting another organ, except one that will be preserved for the
original donor not someone else), and also for understanding the urgency of
stabilizing the patient, instead of seeing cryonics as a bizarre post-mortem
exercise left to pathologists and funeral home directors.
And as has already been mentioned, it would put cryonicists' intentions in a
better light.
>>>6. This would require immense amounts of education and training of both
hospital and cryotransport personnel so that they would be willing to cooperate,
in order that both the organs for transplant AND the patient's head/brain were
handled to maximum best effect.
It doesn't seem a bad idea to me that cryonicists might not retain at least one
licensed surgeon for neuropreservations who could work with organ harvesting
teams. Such a surgeon trained for cryonic sought already to be retained; and the
organ transplant team optimally would not have to do anything different - just
share the operating room and follow a protocol that optimized stabilization of
the brain. It might be that solutions optimized to stabilize the brain might not
be the same as those optimized to stabilize other organs, but it doesn't seem
obvious to me that they might not also be adequate for those other organs, which
is something cryonics researchers ought to be able to demonstrate, especially
when they are making claims about being able to stabilize whole-body patients -
if there is no medical evidence for what cryonicists are doing, why are they
doing it?
In my opinion, the goal should be to close the gap between medical practice and
cryonics, not to accept it as an inevitable gulf.
I agree organ donation should not be an urgent, immediate goal for cryonics, but
I just felt like responding to the broader issues you raised, which relate to
other problems of cryonics today.
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