X-Message-Number: 5021
Date: 20 Oct 95 18:32:52 EDT
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: CRYONICS:CryoNet #5016 - #5017

Bob Ettinger writes:

>Audrey Smith's hamsters survived after about half the water in the brain 
was
>frozen, and seemed to show normal behavior afterward, even though there 
were
>no actual tests of retention of learned behavior. Of course, it is
>conceivable that the other half of the water--the half that was not frozen 
in
>the hamsters--was the important and devastating half, and that after this
>cut-off point some cataclysmic event(s) occur(s); but it isn't likely. 
More
>likely, completion of the freezing would do enough damage to be fatal by 
the
>usual criteria, but would still be far short of annihilation. Same 
remarks:
>we need to know, not guess--but meanwhile we needn't assume the worst.

Yup, you needn't assume the worst.  All I can tell you is that brains 
frozen to -0.5 C like those of Smith's hamsters don't look anything like 
either straight frozen brains or cryoprotected brains cooled to -79 C or 
196 C. Bob and others: you are free to assume anything you want, and 
certainly with current evidence being sketchy and outcomes not well mapped, 
no can argue that your assumption is not as good as the next guy's.

I am not nearly as well formally educated as either Bob or Ralph.  But one 
of the undergraduate courses I took was given by an invertebrate zoologist 
who I quite grew to admire (he had infected himself with several rather 
nasty third-world parasites to always have then at hand for his work, as 
their complex life-cycles required a human host). He started his class by 
writing on the black-board the seemingly infantile word game about the word 
assume.  When you assume in science, he said, more often you get what you 
deserve, and its right there in the word:

Ass U Me

Which translates: when you assume you are more than likely to make an ass 
out of U and me.  I have since discovered that this is a more widely 
applicable truth than just to hard science and yesterday, inside cryonics, 
watched a scene play out where various people assuming various things 
caused serious problems and could have (but thankfully did not) impact 
patient care.  I was as much at fault here as anyone.

Comparisons between cold-water drowning victims who have no prior ischemic 
insult and no underlying disease process which activates the 
immune/inflammatory cascade are like comparing apples and oranges. These 
people do not have high concentrations of marker enzymes for tissue injury, 
do not have blood clots present in major vessels before they die, and do 
not sit around with fixed mid-position pupils (the REAL position pupils end 
up in brain death: fixed and dilated is movie nonsense: this occurs only 
immediately after an ischemic insult and is "extended" in duration by 
administration of exogenous catecholamines like epinephrine given during 
resuscitation attempts).

>Hossmann's and Sato's cat survived and did not show unusual behavior after
>close to an hour of total brain ischemia. Later examination reportedly 
showed
>brain damage--perhaps related to some kinds of memory, a disturbing
>thought--but clearly the cat LIVED, which is the outstanding result. 

It is a largely meaningless result.  This kind of thing happens in biology 
all the time.  I've had stunningly good results which I could never 
reproduce.  Greg Fahy has had the same experience in spades.  This is why 
we do statistical runs.

But more to the point, in my opinion Hossman's cat "lived" but did not 
survive the one hour period of ischemia.  Unlike people, cats sheep, mice 
and to a lesser extent dogs (but still to a considerably greater extent 
than people) tolerate disruption of many key brain structures, including 
most of the cortex, without casually obvious signs of imparment that a 
human would note.  The cell counts in Hossman's cats' brains were dismal; a 
human would be in a persistent vegetative state given such neuronal 
carnage.

I have a dog right now that looks just fine.  But try a good neuro exam on 
him, try to teach him anything, section is brain, and you're in for a 
surprise.

One tip on the difference between beast and man should have been obvious 
earlier to me.  Dogs housed in community settings develop alpha males and 
sometimes rogue males or females who take what appears to be sadistic 
delight in slowly mutilating and killing other dogs (we even had a dog we 
called Killer because he would kill females in heat; he was a wonderful dog 
around people, very obedient and smart, but he had this little problem sort 
of like Jeff Dahmer had a problem).  Haloperidol (or Vitamin H as they call 
it in nursing homes) completely STOPS violent behavior in all or almost 
humans you give it to, in fact some say absolutely in ALL humans at a high 
enough dose.  There are long-acting drugs with similar pharmacology that 
can be injected in oil-based medications so they last 2 weeks.  These drugs 
are useless in dogs.  They don't stop violence, stress barking, or do 
anything other than make the dog drowsy for the first day of treatment.  
I've given high end human doses to 22 kg dogs with NO EFFECT.  A human 
would be am immobile zombie on such a dose.  

Our cortex is wired differnt, and I suspect that is why there are so few 
untaught behaviors in the hardwired human brain/behavior repetoir compared 
to those present in many other animals.  Chickens, for instance, need 
virtually no instruction on how to be chickens.

Recently Greg Fahy and I were talking with Peter Safar in Pittsburgh about 
his 30 years of cerebral resucitation work. One of the many critical 
questions we asked him was why he had recently gone to sampling nearly a 
dozen brain areas when we know that the hippocampus and the CA1 area in 
particular are hardest hit by ischemia and are "selectively vulnerable."  
Greg and I thought it excessive to look at all those areas largely because 
we were both thinking the same thing: God! What pain in the fanny to do, 
and what an expense!  Safar picked up on this quite quickly and with a 
twinkle in his old Austrian eyes said Ahh yes!  The reason is because we 
have learned that while the CA1 is certainly the hardest hit, ALL the areas 
we examine show injury (loss of neurons) and many show marked neuronal 
loss. He had the histograms to prove it.

Bob accepts as a critical element in his view of identity the idea of a 
self-circuit, which if preserved, constitutes the lower end cut-off point 
for survival of the individual.  I do not think this the correct model and 
while I certainly think survival of the circuitry for consciousness is 
important and necessary, it is NOT sufficient. This is an opinion which, 
regretably, we cannot resolve rigorously based on current knowledge.

>Our cryostasis patients are usually old and sick, but
>often they receive much quicker cooling than these drowning 
patients--cooling
>with ice or ice-cold water or other fluid and with forced circulation to 
help
>the cooling and a bit later with internal cooling....Again, we need to 
know
>more and more details, but meanwhile one need not choose to put the worst
>light on everything.

No you need not put the worst light on everything, but neither am I. I am 
simply saying that it is better (if you want certain results like advances 
in brain resuscitation and cryopreservation) NOT to assume everything is 
fine and good until you have evidence to support that position.  There are 
soundreasons for this.

Many in the cryonics community seem to exist in a dreamy state of optimism. 
 They are using cryonics as lotus eating or religion. this not the kind of 
cryonics I cut my teeth on at knees of Curtis Henderson ans Saul Kent.  I 
want more certainty, I want numbers, I want hard evidence wherever 
possible.  And further, as I have pointed out before here and elsewhere, I 
want the SOCIAL effects of suspended animation which will, I think, result 
in much improved chances for those now signed up and a vast change in the 
NUMBER of people saved.
 
>It is ironic that Mike Darwin and some others take ALMOST the same 
position
>as those physicians and scientists who refuse to admit the admissibility 
of
>unproven procedures even when there is no other hope, even when the 
patient
>is already clinically and legally dead--who refuse to place any burden
>whatsoever on the future. They are a bit like Charles Darwin's grandson 
who
>wrote THE NEXT MILLION YEARS, a book on the thesis that--despite "marvels" 
to
>come--we will never be able to sythesize food or establish world-wide 
habits
>of birth control, hence population will always outrun food in the long 
run.
>The author gives several cursory nods to progress and inventiveness, but 
they
>are obviously insincere or lacking in understanding, since he denies that
>relatively simple problems will ever be solved.  

This is true in part.  I have come to respect the SPECIFIC arguments of the 
critics of cryonics much more over the years. The laboratory has taught me 
that!  But that does not mean I've reached the same conclusion.

Darwin's first rule of cryonics is "Shun irreversible decisions."  Maybe 
things are black for current patients.  Still, you clearly have more to 
work with than you do if you burn or bury them. And, certainly, Bob and 
Ralph may be right in their optimism and I may be wrong in my pessimism. 
When you are in a burning building the only course of action that matters 
is the one that offers some promise of getting out! (Presuming of course 
you want to get out!).

So, in that sense I have remained a cryonicist.  And quite sensibly so, I 
think.

But I note that the while the building is on fire, odds are that it will 
still be awhile before it reaches me, or I am overcome by smoke.  This is 
(statistically at least) even truer for younger people.  Indeed, Bob 
himself is a good example of this: he started cryonics over 30 years ago 
and even now, well past the customary age for retirement, and near the 
"mean" end of life for people in his cohort inthe US, is still hard at work 
and has made significant advances in storage technlogy and in improving his 
own chances.  I remain biased towards the lower odds for today's patients.  
But this is not to say that they should not be treated or that the working 
assumption should be it should not be that it is reasonable to assume more 
structure is preserved with freezing than with cremation or rotting.  As 
long as the patient, or relatives or others acting for the patient, are 
informed of the uncertainties I think they are doing the right thing.  I 
may share my estimation of the odds with them, but that seems to have 
little impact on people seriously considering cryonics.  And I always point 
out what I would do personally, which generally would be to proceed.

Further, I note that despite my "pessimism" actions speak louder than 
words.  I am involved in heated discussion right now inside CryoCare about 
acceptance of "bad": cases such as the one I am currently struggling with 
(brain, 4 weeks post incomplete fixation, lots of autolysis, etc).  My 
position in these discussions has been relentlessly for acceptance of such 
cases under the right circumstance.  I note that two other cryonics 
organizations turned down this last case I've taken, and the case before it 
too, which I also took!  Believe me, these people did NOT get a lot of 
encouragment from me in making the decision to cryopreserve their loved 
ones :).

>All of this is probably another waste of time--except to those few people 
who
>might conceivably be swayed in a decision as to whether to sign up, or
>whether to freeze a relative. To them it could matter a great deal.

I quite agree.  What I would say to those people who are on the fence is to 
take the test:

a) How much do want to live or do you want your loved ones to live?
b) A variant on a) above:  if you can, quantify how much you are willing to 
spend versus given odds to survive (not just money).  This is complex and 
intensely personal.  Some people will say simply: "Any course of action I 
have the resources to allocate which yeilds a better than zero chance 
iswhat I want."  OK, I can live with that.  Others will have more complex 
situations to consider: dependent children and they themselves who's 
survival or well being must be weighed against the costs versus odds of 
revival in cryopreserving a loved one who did not make prior arrangements 
his/her self.
c) Do you think technlogy and human civilization will endure and do you 
think they will endure without catastrophe long enough to allow revival?
d) Can you live with gray states and long-term uncertainty?
e) Returning to a) above, do you really give a rat's fanny about odds of 
any kind if this is the only course of action that offers better 
conservation of "what's left" when the docotor gives up? If the answer is  
"No!", then go for it.

>Finally, I assume Mike Darwin was deliberately/humorously trying to needle 
me
>by comparing me to Plato, knowing that I share his low opinion of Plato, 
who
>had little conception of standards of evidence or standards of language
>usage.

Sorry, Bob.  I didn't know what you thought about Plato until this message. 
 Now that you mention it, I think I vaguely recall an article or two in THE 
IMMORTALIST that might have had critical things to say, but if so, it 
certainly didn't stick (at least at the conscious level). And,  at the risk 
of insukting you further, I don't read such articles carefully from you or 
most others; there just isn't time!  I don't like Plato much either.  There 
are few bits of wisdom there, but mostly dross.  On this we are agreed!

Over the past years I've discovered two things at least: 

1) If you want to insult someone, make it direct; they may not realize they 
are being insulted and, as the President points out in "Dr. Strangelove": 
"But Yuri, what good is a doomsday weapon if no one know about it?"

2) Never attribute to malice what chance or stupidity will nicely explain.

Mike Darwin


Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5021