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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4266