X-Message-Number: 4266
From:  (Brian Wowk)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Cyroprotective Proteins ?
Date: 19 Apr 1995 19:58:28 GMT
Message-ID: <3n3q14$>

References: <3muhq6$> 
<3n20ku$>

In <3n20ku$>  (Jim0123) writes:

>     What you seem to want is a tiny 
>     pseudo-biological machine which can sniff along torn cell
>     membranes and physically repair the damage.

	Exactly.  There is a book you really need to read called
"Engines of Creation" by Eric Drexler (1986).  It outlines
how present trends in protein engineering are leading to
very general capabilities for molecular manipulation, and
what these capabilitities will mean for technology in
the next century.  With your obvious science background,
I think you would appreciate it very much. 

>     When you say how "Corporations, Universities, and 
>     Governments are starting to take this emerging 
>     technology seriously in their long-term planning" ... you
>     try to make it sound as if it is something *real* - 
>     something almost ready to use (for your purposes).
>     That's salesmans talk - not science-speak. 

	Molecular nanotechnology (general abilities for molecular
characterization and synthesis) are not yet real yet, but
they are vitually inevitable.  They are inevitable because

a) They are in principle possible. (Nature already demonstrates
   very broad capabilities for molecular recognition and
   synthesis.) 

b) There are overwhelming scientific and economic incentives
   to develop them.  (The process is already well underway.)

To paraphrase Peter Medawar:  "It is the great glory of science,
as it is the threat, that anything which is possible in
principle can be achieved in practice if the intention
is sufficiently resolute."


>     Oh yes, as for those 'patients' ... the term is 'corpses'
>     unless you can keep them frozen for probably another
>     hundred years (or two, or three) AND someone finally
>     bothers to make these rather specialized bits of bio-
>     nanotechnology. 

	Medicine has a long tradition of caring for unconscious
patients with uncertain prognoses.  The ethical maximum
in force here is: Don't call anyone DEAD unless you are
absolutely sure.  Always give the patient the benefit of the
doubt.  Cryonics is very much in keeping with this high ethical
standard, and as such is the medically CONSERVATIVE course
of action.  Burning and burying potentially-salvagable patients
like garbage, all the while telling them that cryonics has no
scientific basis, is in contrast the epitome of medical genocide.
(If you will pardon my zealotry.)

	Cryonics has a scientific basis because:

a) 	Freezing with even present techniques may preserve some
	essential elements of memory and personality.

b)	Technologies for tissue regeneration and molecular-level
	brain repair are clearly foreseeable (albeit distant).

	Finally, I am curious, how would the development of
perfected brain preservation change your view of cryonics?
(A realistic possibility in the next few years given that
the kidney appears to be licked.)  Medicine and *law* today
upholds brain activity as the gold standard for the presence
or absence of human life.  Seems to me that not implementing
a procedure that would indefinitely preserve the potential 
for brain function would be passive euthanasia.  Moreover,
terminating the cryopreservation of such a patient would
be MURDER under present law.

	You should carefully consider the social and legal
impact that advanced cryopreservation procedures will have
in the 21st century before you so casually dismiss the
prospects of today's patients surviving the long-term.
Any progress in cryonics research that advances the
medical and social acceptance of cryonics will as a
corollary reinforce the whole general idea of cryonics.
Legal protections and social mores pertaining to patients
preserved with advanced techniques will in all likelihood
come to encompass patients preserved with older methods
as well.  After all, if Father is frozen and coming back,
then maybe Grandpa too someday.  Only time will tell.

---Brian Wowk 


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