X-Message-Number: 4144
From: 
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 22:44:01 -0400
Subject: SCI. CRYONICS repair

Mike Darwin (#4137) said a couple of things on which I'd like to make a bit
of comment.

First, he said that cryothermic damage is much more important than
hypothermic damage. Of course I fully agree with this and have said this for
many years. This doesn't mean that his efforts, and those of others, to
reduce hypothermic damage are without value--far from it. But I think it does
mean that we are justified in being more cost-conscious in this area than in
others. (Eventually, as I have said before, Cryonics Institute may offer a
full range of options, including the most expensive for those willing to pay
premium prices for marginal benefits.)

Second, he pointed out the often severe damage seen at the electron
microscope level with current methods--while cautioning that the apparent
damage may include artifacts of preparation for the microscope as well as
thawing damage. I would add emphasis to this reservation, and also remind
readers that we have apparently solved the problem of gross cracking of
tissues. 

Third, in expanding on ultrastructure damage, he used a metaphor of high- vs.
low-altitude photography in assessing damage to a city by earthquake or
bombing etc.; the closer you get, the worse it looks. But this could be a bit
misleading:

Carrying the analogy further, you walk through the ruins and see rubble,
along with occasional standing or semi-standing buildings. But even the
rubble for the most part is not dust or vapor; it is bricks and doorknobs and
shards of glass and twisted girders and so on. This is NOT total chaos, and
with enough patience and ingenuity you might be able to put most of the
jigsaw together again. Remember: virtually all of the original atoms
(excepting mostly some water) are still there and still near their original
sites.

Further, you don't NEED to piece together ALL of the original material. Much
of it is generic; you can replace a window with a new window instead of
trying to glue the shards together. If you are concerned with reconstituting
a favorite room just as it was, you may get help from photos or other
records. Of course, if you especially value a particular piece of antique
wooden furniture and it has been burned up, then you are out of
luck--although even then we can't rule out the efficacy of a substitute. 

Mike tends to put little trust in what he can't see or do himself, and that
is a very useful and conservative attitude--in some ways and some
circumstances. But it can also be limiting and defeating--after all, this
same attitude, carried to extreme, is what keeps the medical and biological
establishment so much against cryonics. 

I don't want to encourage the magic-nanotech-will-fix-everything attitude
that encourages complacency, as Thomas Donaldson so often says; but it would
be equally self-defeating to deprecate the probable capabilities of future
technology, which are CERTAIN to be VASTLY beyond ours (if civilization
survives). Mike acknowledges this of course, but sometimes gives the
impression that he does so only pro forma.

A couple of more reminders. First, even though there is much ultrastructural
damage after thawing from liquid nitrogen temperature with present
procedures, there is also much retention of structure, including
synaptosomes. The literature also includes fair to excellent retention of a
number of physiological markers (e.g. dopamine uptake in the nucleus
accumbens) under conditions much worse than most of our patients experience. 

I didn't intend to ramble on so long, but I may as well say another word
about memory, including declarative memory. Unlike some others, I don't
consider it the sine qua non of survival, but it is certainly important. It
may also be potentially among the easiest of repairs or reconstructions
(relative to future capability!), since it can be "read in" after being
inferred from external records, or external records in the context of
 remaining internal structure. If we have ample material in the patient's
archives, it should be possible to conclude (to a satisfactory approximation)
what his corresponding experiences must have been, and insert them. (Am I
sounding like an uploader?)

To recapitulate, my basic point is very simple: don't concede ANYTHING. Don't
fall into the complacency trap; but, that said, don't fall into the pessimism
or failure-of-imagination trap either.

R.C.W. Ettinger
Cryonics Institute

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