X-Message-Number: 3217
From:   (Ralph Merkle)
Newsgroups: sci.life-extension,sci.cryonics
Subject: Evaluation of the technical feasibility of cryonics
Date: 5 Oct 1994 20:07:25 GMT
Message-ID: <36v11t$>

Those interested in evaluating the technical issues surrounding
the feasibility (or otherwise) of cryonics might wish to read:
"The Technical Feasibility of Cryonics," by Ralph C. Merkle,
Medical Hypotheses, 1992, 39, 6-16.

A longer version was published in Cryonics in two parts as
"Molecular Repair of the Brain," January 1994 page 16 and
April 1994 page 20.  It is available from URL
ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/merkle/techFeas.html

>From the abstract:

Cryonic suspension is a method of stabilizing the condition of someone
who is terminally ill so that they can be transported to the medical
care facilities that will be available in the late 21st or 22nd century.
There is little dispute that the condition of a person stored at the
temperature of liquid nitrogen is stable, but the process of freezing
inflicts a level of damage which cannot be reversed by current medical
technology.  Whether or not the damage inflicted by current methods can
ever be reversed depends both on the level of damage and the ultimate
limits of future medical technology.  The failure to reverse freezing
injury with current methods does not imply that it can never be reversed
in the future, just as the inability to build a personal computer in
1890 did not imply that such machines would never be economically built.
This paper considers the limits of what medical technology should
eventually be able to achieve (based on the currently understood laws of
chemistry and physics) and the kinds of damage caused by current methods
of freezing.  It then considers whether methods of repairing the kinds
of damage caused by current suspension techniques are likely to be
achieved in the future.

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