X-Message-Number: 5789
From:  (Brian Wowk)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension,uk.legal
Subject: Re: Death (was Donaldson MR and Miss Hindley)
Date: 21 Feb 96 05:10:03 GMT
Message-ID: <>

References: <> <>


In <> Marshall Rice <>
writes:

>> I wonder if Marshall Rice would like to tell us what he thinks would be a 
>> critera for there to be no longer any possibility of recovering the 
>> information required (to revive a person). 

>The criterion is the ONSET of tissue death which, in the case of the human 
>brain, usually occurs about three minutes after disruption of the blood 
>supply.

>Let me draw an analogy. Imagine a shelf of books. Imagine that you began 
>tearing out the pages and throwing them on the floor, then tearing the pages 
>into individual sentences, then the sentences into words and finally the words
>into letters...

	In formal debating, this particular tactic is what is known as
the BIG LIE: a lie so outrageous, yet told so forcefully that one's
opponent is left speechless and in shock.  Having already 
dazzled us with his deep knowledge of central nervous system cryobiology
(i.e. frozen brain = mush), Mr. Rice now treats us to further
authoritative discourse on another subject about which he obviously
knows nothing: cerebral resuscitation.

	We are apparently to believe that after three minutes of
(warm?) ischemia, the brain undergoes a magical transition called
"death" which is accompanied by the immediate and total disintegration
of its constituent cells into jumbled atoms and molecules.  This
extraordinary assertion will no doubt come as a great surprise
to cerebral resuscitation researchers who for years have been
laboring under the assumption that mere ion pump failure and
leukocyte plugging was responsible for the "no reflow" phenonmenon
after 3 to 5 minutes of cardiac arrest.  I suggest that Marshall
Rice submit his own revolutionary theories to a journal immediately,
accompanied by an explanation of how anti-coagulants, calcium
channel blockers, and free radical scavengers have in recent
experiments allowed recovery from warm ischemic insults 10 minutes
beyond his ominous "ONSET of tissue death." 

	Cerebral ischemic injury is in fact a far more subtle
and complex process than instantaneous disintegration after
three minutes.  Live neural cells can in fact be cultured
HOURS after clinical death (see the Cryobiological Case for
Cryonics at our Web site).  I also suggest reading 
The Pathophysiology of Cerebral Ischemia by Mike Darwin in
Services --> BioPreservation section of our page.  Cell death,
brain death, and personal death are long and very complex PROCESSES,
not discrete events that occur at any specific instant in time.  

	Finally, just a reminder that this is all academic to
most cryonics cases, because breathing and circulation are
restored in LESS than three minutes after cardiac arrest.  

***************************************************************************
Brian Wowk          CryoCare Foundation               1-800-TOP-CARE
President           Your Gateway to the Future        
   http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/

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