X-Message-Number: 5734
Date:  Wed, 14 Feb 96 20:39:24 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: re Neuropreservation Publication

Kevin Q. Brown, #5728, wonders
>
>Who was the first person to consider neurosuspension to be a
>viable variation on whole-body cryonics?
>

To the best of my knowledge, the answer is: Ev Cooper, writing in the 
September 1965 issue of his newsletter, *Freeze-Wait-Reanimate*. The 
breaking news of the day was that Isamu Suda & colleagues
in Kobe, Japan had just 
frozen a cat brain for 203 days then rewarmed it and gotten
brain waves (an amazing feat by today's standards too). 
This inspired Cooper to ask, "What does this mean for the freezing
and suspended animation of  humans?" His answer, in part:

"It means we have experimental results that indicate it is 
increasingly certain that the human brain can be frozen, stored, and 
revived. It may well mean that *something* of this injection process 
[injection of glycerol solution prior to freezing, as was done with 
the the cat brain] may be the best for humans.

"We shudder to think of our brain estranged from its cave, its home, 
its comfortable brainpan. We find it virtually impossible to imagine. 
Nevertheless, if our survival really depended upon it, many of us 
would submit to such an operation. Suda's research doesn't mean such 
a separation is absolutely necessary. It is, however, one alternative 
we should explore. It indicates a reasonable possibility for the 
storage of the human brain.
...
"If we let our imagination go way-out, we can consider the storage of 
the brain alone, to be reanimated later, and placed in a body which 
has been grown from one of the original body cells. This arrangement 
should be especially appealing to those who worry so much about space 
and the cost of refrigeration."

So, clearly Cooper had the basic ideas behind neurosuspension in 
mind (brain-only in this case). This was only 15 months after 
Ettinger's book *The Prospect of Immortality* was first published
by Doubleday, and well before anyone had been frozen, whole-body
or otherwise.

Mike Perry



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