X-Message-Number: 4923
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 12:45:48 -0500
From:  (Brian Wowk)
Subject: Straight Freezing

	The feasibility of reviving patients frozen without
cryoprotectant ("straight freezing") is actually a trivial
observation.  With technologies capable of general analysis
and repair on the molecular level, you could revive patients
after virtually ANY injury.  The non-trivial question is how
much will the revived patient resemble the original person.

	All the evidence supporting cryonics today is
indirect.  There is still no definitive evidence that freezing
(cryoprotected or otherwise) preserves the essentials of
memory and identity, and there will not be such evidence
until we either

	a) Improve the technology to the point of at least
	   reversibly cryopreserving brains.

	b) Learn to repair the damage we cause by freezing,
	   and see to what extent revived animals (or
	   animal brains) "remember" who they were.

	The medical/scientific community today regards
cryonics with great scepticism because of the damage
caused by even our very best cryopreservation methods.
If we go into the business of DELIBERATELY selling and
performing straight-freeze cryonics, we will be taking
a procedure with already questionable defensibility 
and making it even more indefensible.  

	It is theoretically possible that straight freezing
may not only be ultimately reversible (as it must be if
we ever get advanced NT), but that it might also result
in the recovery of the original patients and be truly
life saving.  This is why cryonics patients sometimes
are straight frozen, but ONLY WHEN THERE IS NO OTHER
ALTERNATIVE.

	In my opinion, the dubious benefits of offering
straight freezing as a formal cryonics care option are
outweighed by the damage such practices would cause the\
image of cryonics.  In other words, whatever compassionate
or humanitarian goals would be served by the procedure
would be thoroughly undermined by the added risk of
lawsuits, consumer fraud charges, and howls from the
physicians and cryobiologists.  Cryonics *as a whole*
would suffer.

	The above observation applies *in spades* to
permafrost interment, dessication, mummification,
and chemopreservation.  Cryonics in recent years has
begun to get a fair hearing from some scientists.
This has happened both because of Drexler's popularization
of nanotechnology, and because cryonicists have been
*pushing the technology envelope*.  We are showing the
world that we are approaching the biostasis problem
in a rational, scientific manner.  Mummification and
chemopreservation are certainly not in keeping with
this spirit of progress.  IMHO, they are just plain nuts.
And if I as a cryonicist think they are nuts, you
can imagine what government regulators and consumer
protection groups would think of these ideas if they
were ever sold with the advertised intent of future
reanimation.

Brian Wowk
President,
CryoCare Foundation


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