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From:
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 02:57:53 EST
Subject: Melody Maxim's Distorted Reality 2
On Maxim's Distotions & Cryonics Expertise
February 10 2009 at 12:42 AM _Mike Darwin_ (mailto:)
Mike Darwin (Login _mgdarwin_ (http://www.network54.com/Profile/mgdarwin) )
Veteran Member
____________________________________
The problem with some of Ms. Maxims arguments and, more seriously, with
her overall position is that it distorts the truth, creates polarizing and
emotional argument where it is not needed, denies that there is a large body
of cryonics professional knowledge (experience and expertise), and
effectively denies that there was ever a time when cryonics patients were
perfused,
both in the field (total body washout, TBW) and during cryoprotective
perfusion both competently and without iatrogenesis.
Her position also denies the reality that cryonics once had both a
professional perfusionist and a licensed hemodialysis technician (with
extensive
CPB experience) setting the standards and determining the technology used on
cryopatients and that both these men used the medical model and, wherever
possible, well vetted conventional medical equipment in delivering
cryopatient care. Perhaps most perniciously, her position denies the remarkable
and
successful research accomplishments attained during this period by these
two men, and others working with them, using dogs in a survival model of
CPB. This does not refer to single or one-off experiments, but rather to many
surviving animals over a period of two decades using what are unarguably
the most challenging and difficult to master models in CPB (e.g., recovery
from prolonged deep hypothermic asanguineous perfusion and recovery from
prolonged (~16 min) global (whole body) normothermic cardiac arrest).
This is not only an insult, and arguably a slander to me (Im still alive),
it is doubly so to Jerry Leaf who *was a professional perfusionist a
clinical (human) perfusionist* and who made an enormous contribution to
cryonics. It is also deeply unjust (and deeply wounding, at least to me) to see
Ms.
Maxims comments when it was Jerry and I who, when we encountered cryonics
in exactly the state Ms. Maxim is complaining about, did EXACTLY what she
is and has been advocating here. I think Jerry Leaf summed it up best in a
1986 interview he gave for Cryonics magazine (then a very different
publication than it is today). Im going to give a very brief history of Jerrys
involvement in cryonics and then quote him from his 1986 interview. Please read
that quote carefully.
In 1977 perfusionist and biomedical researcher at UCLA, Jerry D. Leaf,
became involved in cryonics and began two organizations with the express mis
sion to develop, validate, and standardize evidence-based procedures for
every aspect of cryonics suspension using a medical model. The mission of the
non-profit Institute for Cryobiological Extension (ICE) was to educate the
cryonics community on the scientific basis of cryonics (cryobiology) and to
generate and fund research aimed at achieving improved methods of both
organ cryopreservation and cryonic suspension (which Leaf referred to at this
time as human suspended animation ). The second organization, Cryovita
Laboratories, Inc., was to conduct basic research in cryobiology, with
particular focus on achieving reversible cryopreservation of the mammalian
heart in
order to facilitate broader application of cardiac transplantation.
Jerrys active involvement in cryonics began when he attended a meeting
sponsored by Trans Time in the greater Los Angeles area. During the course of
this meeting Leaf agreed to do a dog experiment at the Trans Times facility
in Emeryville (in Northern California). The purpose of this experiment was
to attempt to replicate the work of Klebanoff, et al. (Klebanoff G,
Phillips J. Temporary suspension of animation using total body washout and
hypothermia: A preliminary report. Cryobiology. 6:121-5;1969. and Klebanoff G.
Infectious hepatitis complicated by coma: principles of management including
the adjunctive use of asanguineous hypothermic total body perfusion.
Resuscitation.1:327-33;1972.). Klebanoff had demonstrated that it was possible
to
completely replace the blood of both animals and people with a synthetic
solution in conjunction with the induction of profound hypothermia.
Jerrys description of this experience in a 1986 interview is instructive:
"I did the first cryonics dog TBW up at Trans Time in 1977 in which the
dog lived for 17 hours. All the equipment and supplies I took up in my van,
except for some material which I relied on them to provide. That was
partially a disastrous decision I made (laughter) because the main things I
relied
upon them to provide were inadequate. This was my first experience in
seeing what was actually available for cryonics. I was really surprized at the
inadequacy of their equipment and at their misconceptions about how to
carry out extracorporeal perfusion. The degree of their isolation from the
mainstream of medical knowledge was particularly surprising. They had very
little insight into what was going on in clinical medicine. They had a little
insight into low temperature biology and physiology, but they had essentially
no equipment that I considered to be useful at the time for actually
accomplishing extracorporeal circulation of blood or cryoprotective agents in a
manner which would insure proper perfusion by any clinical standards."
Before Cryovita was fully operational Jerry was co-opted to perform the
cryonic suspension of a Trans Time client, Samuel Berkowitz in July of 1978.
Subsequently Jerry entered into a formal agreement with Trans Time to
provide cryonic suspension services for them as a subcontractor. However, Jerry
remained primarily committed to research and during the next 3-years became
almost exclusively focused on validating and extending procedures for
cryonic suspension. During this time Leaf began communicating with me (a long
time cryonicist then living in Indianapolis, IN, who had a similar
commitment to research and interest in improving and validating cryonic
suspension
techniques). In 1981 I relocated to California and merged the for-profit
research company, Soma, Inc., which I had started with Jerry's Cryovita
Laboratories. Jerry recalled these events in the same interview:
"In 1980 I had the occasion to make personal contact with Mike Federowicz
(neeDarwin), who I had corresponded with before. Mike had transported a
Trans Time patient to Southern California and then stayed on to help with a
second suspension which came on the heels of the first. Mike had been working
in a cryonics group in Indianapolis, Indiana for a number of years. At
that time I tried to open the door as far as doing what I could to persuade
him that Southern California offered an attractive alternative to the
difficulties he was experiencing in Indiana. I needed someone else out here to
work with who had a background in clinical medicine, such as Mike did, and he
himself had begun to move toward clinical models of perfusion -- using
roller pumps and so on. I felt that he and I working together would allow us
both to accomplish a lot more than if we were working alone. He was the only
one else in the world who seemed to be aware of the fact that something
needed to be done to upgrade the level of care -- and to realize that that
meant medical technology."
The collaboration between Jerry and I Leaf which began in 1981 lasted
until Jerrys sudden cardiac arrest and cryopreservation in July of 1991.
Subsequently, I created BioPreservation, a cryonics research and service
company,
which continued the mission of improving and validating cryonics
procedures until I discontinued the operation in 1997 in part to focus my
attention
on a new biomedical research and development company, 21st Century
Medicine, which had been jointly founded by Paul Wakfer, Saul Kent and I. This
16-year period was characterized by the first comprehensive and scientifically
rigorous research to both validate and improve the techniques used in
cryonics from care of the patient prior to medico-legal death through to
indefinite storage in liquid nitrogen. Patient case histories were extensively
documented and data obtained in the course of carrying out the procedures was
evaluated to improve care in subsequent cases. Unacceptably slow rates of
cooling with ice packs during CPR, as well as the ineffectiveness of CPR in
maintaining viability, lead to the development of a stirred ice water bath
(Darwin), the rapid in-field use of extracorporeal oxygenation and cooling
(Leaf), and eventually the development of intrapulmonary cooling using
chilled perfulorocarbon (Darwin).
In short, Ms. Maxim is attacking the very people she says she feels are
essential in cryonics while at the same time effectively denying that they
once existed *and that a high standard of care (the same as a patient
undergoing CPB in hospital at that time) was once the reality, at least in
cryonics as practiced by Alcor at that time.*
Why is Ms. Maxim doing this? I honestly dont know. Perhaps it is due to a
complex mixture of things, including ignorance of what once existed in
cryonics, lack of understanding of how cryonics differs from conventional
perfusion, and lack of understanding of the fairly large body of knowledge that
has been accumulated which is unique to cryonics cases. Here I am speaking
of not just of technical and biomedical issues, but of legal, ethical,
financial and even philosophical issues which 40+ years of cryonics have
generated knowledge about. Ill explore a few examples of the technical issues
directly.
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