X-Message-Number: 6071 From: Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 16:48:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Trans Time newsletter SCI.CRYONICS \tt\newsletter\v5n2\vol5num2.asc THE TRANS TIMES Life Extension through Cryonic Suspension ---------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 5 Number 2 April 1996 [SECOND HALF OF NEWSLETTER] If you would like the printed version of this newsletter, please send me your street address by e-mail The Age of LIFE by Hal Sternberg, Ph.D. As the year 2000 approaches, life extension is becoming increasingly acceptable and attainable. The biotechnology industry continues to blossom with companies like Apollo Genetics and Geron. I am particularly pleased about the direction in which some research is going. There are two projects I believe are particularly important. One is to understand the nature and characteristics of membrane receptors, membrane components and membrane antigens of different cell types (including cancer cells). The other project which I deem important is understanding the phenomenon of apoptosis, programmed cell death. It is important to understand the external triggers which cause apoptosis and the molecular events which take place to re-program cells to die. I expect an understanding of apoptosis will help in the fight against aging. With aging, specific cells throughout the body are programmed to die. There is a loss of specific cells, in each tissue throughout the body, which lead to some tissue disorganization and some compensation (enlargement) by remaining cells. Learning to prevent apoptosis in specific cell populations may prolong health and life. Understanding the membrane components enables targeting of specific cell populations, including cancer cells, to induce apoptosis. Other normal cell populations (i.e. nerve cells) can be targeted to prevent or delay apoptosis. There is also very exciting research being conducted in connection with cloning. Recently, Scottish investigators have taken cells from a 100 cell stage sheep embryo and cultured the cells. The nucleus was taken out of some cultured cells and put into enucleated sheep egg cells. Identical sheep developed. The potential for cloning human tissues identical to our own is nearing. Lastly, attitudes toward life extension continue to improve. Since there is unlimited commercial value in life extension technology and a track record already to prove the market, I suspect fortunes of money to be invested in life extension technology. Evaluating Extraordinary Claims by Art Quaife, Ph.D. In some quarters, the claim that it will prove possible to reanimate frozen humans is extremely implausible. How do we assess the likelihood of such extraordinary claims being true? Consider a different example. Recently on the Cryonet, one participant posted the following: Telekinesis, for example, has been firmly established as an empirical truth--it is the _nature_ of the process that is unexplained, not whether or not it occurs. . . virtually any competent clinical experimenter with experience will admit (however grudgingly) that there is "something to it." This post brought replies from eleven Cryonetters. Eight of them generally labeled the claim as bunk. Three suggested references relevant to "psi" phenomenon that were at least worth looking at. No netter agreed with the unqualified endorsement of telekinesis. I found this somewhat reassuring; if a large number of cryonicists believe that telekinesis is firmly established, I would worry about the movement I am in. One netter mentioned the maxim that Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Regular readers of the TRANS TIMES know that Bayes' Theorem is a topic dear to my heart. This theorem provides the formal justification for the above maxim. Suppose that Joe Doakes claims that he has telekinetic powers--he can sometimes actually manipulate distant objects simply under the control of his mind. He agrees to demonstrate these powers under controlled experimental conditions. Let H be the hypothesis that Joe Doakes does have telekinetic powers. Let E be the event that in this particular experiment, Joe Doakes exhibits what appear to be telekinetic powers--he apparently causes an object across the room to move by thought alone. Let E* be the event that the experimenter reports that E is the case. The odds formulation of Bayes' Theorem applied to this case is: O(H|E*) = L(E*|H) O(H), where O(X) is the odds ratio P(X) / (1 - P(X)), and L(E*|H) = P(E*|H) / P(E*|~H) is the likelihood ratio. Here we see the formal basis of the above maxim. An extraordinary claim would be the claim that O(H|E*) is high even though O(H) is low. That would require a high value of L(E*|H). It is easy to show that [L(E*|E) - 1] P(E| H) + 1 L(E*|H) = ------------------------- [L(E*|E) - 1] P(E|~H) + 1 The overall likelihood depends upon the likelihood that the experimenter has correctly reported what happened, and even if that report is correct the likelihood that Doakes is telekinetic based on the experiment. Now assume that L(E*|E) and L(E|H) are both at least 1. Then it is easy to see that L(E*|H) <= minimum(L(E*|E), L(E|H)). We see that quite literally, an inference chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Now L(E*|E) is the likelihood that the report E* correctly reflects that E occurred. Most reports of "psi" experiments break down right here--usually there is a good chance the experimenter has been bamboozled by a trickster. For such experiments we need go no further, since this weak link (likelihood ratio not too much greater than 1) precludes us drawing any strong inference of O(H|E*). Suppose, though, that this experiment has been set up under the direction of James (The Amazing) Randi and other magicians, scientists, and skeptics. Suppose that Doakes demonstrates his abilities under their scrutiny, they are unable to explain the results as due to anything other than telekinesis, and Randi pays off the $10,000 reward he offers for such a demonstration. Under these circumstances, L(E*|E) should have quite a high value, say 50. Now P(E|H) is the fraction of trials in which Joe Doakes is able to demonstrate his powers. Suppose, for illustration, this is .5. P(E|~H) is the probability of the experiment succeeding even if Doakes is not telekinetic. If the experiment has been well designed, this should be a small number like 1/100. It won't be zero, because even these experts may have overlooked some way the experiment could succeed without telekinesis. Plugging these values into our chain inference formula, we get L(E*|H) = [approx.] 17. But we still need to consider the factor O(H). What is the likelihood of Doakes' claim being true *prior* to conducting the experiment? If we already know a lot about Doakes, our knowledge of his character will weigh heavily in our estimate. But suppose we know next to nothing about Doakes. His claims seems highly implausible on the basis of current physics--although the foundations of quantum mechanics are sufficiently murky and mysterious that it is hard to say for sure.(1) Different people will offer different subjective estimates of this value; for me 1 / 2000 seems about right. Under all these assumptions, we then have O(H|E*) = [approx.] .008. The odds are still strongly against Doakes being telekinetic. Note 1. For example, [1] describes a possible teleportation device based upon the experiments of Alain Aspect showing that action at a distance is possible. This is suggestive of telekinesis. If Doakes is a physicist who wants to set up experiment E like an Aspect experiment, my estimate of his prior odds would increase substantially. [1] Gribben, J. Schroedinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality. Boston: Little, Brown and Company (1995). BioTime Files Phase III Investigational New Drug Application For Hextend(trademark) BioTime, Inc. (BTIM - NASDAQ) announced that it has filed an Investigational New Drug (IND) Application with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requesting permission to initiate Phase III clinical trials for Hextend, a proprietary plasma volume expander. Hextend is formulated to minimize physiological imbalances when large quantities of solution are infused into patients to replace blood volume lost during surgery. The clinical trials are designed to test whether the use of Hextend during major elective surgeries such as orthopedic, urologic and gastrointestinal procedures, can prevent hypovolemia and maintain organ perfusion, thus improving patient outcome. Extensive blood loss during these surgeries commonly causes hypovolemia, a condition that results when there is not enough circulation of fluid to adequately support all the tissues of the body. When hypovolemia occurs, blood flow to organs such as the gastrointestinal tract, liver and kidneys, diminishes, resulting in damage to these organs. BioTime plans to use Hextend in these studies in volumes as needed to prevent hypovolemia. It is anticipated that such use of Hextend will result in improved organ blood flow, and therefore reduce postoperative illness. This should translate into healthier patients, shorter periods of intensive care and hospital stays, and lower hospital costs. Following appropriate regulatory and institutional review, these clinical trials are expected to begin at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, Dr. Paul Segall, president and chief executive officer of BioTime, stated that "these trials would be the first of a series which BioTime will conduct to assess the safety and efficacy of Hextend in a number of surgical procedures in which Hextend's unique properties may be of benefit." Additional studies are being designed to assess the value of Hextend as a priming solution in cardiopulmonary bypass, in extending the duration and improving the outcome of low temperature cardiovascular and neurologic surgeries, and in harvesting and transporting organs for transplantation. BioTime, headquartered in Berkeley, California, is engaged in the research and development of synthetic plasma and low temperature blood substitute solutions and technology for use in surgery, emergency trauma treatment, the preservation of organs awaiting transplant, and other applications. TRANS TIME owns stock in BioTime, and uses solutions based upon BioTime's formulations in the suspension of its clients. BioTime Update by Art Quaife, Ph.D. As we go to press, BioTime reports that it is now in discussions with the FDA concerning modifications of its proposed protocol. BioTime intends to optimize its protocol to maximizes the likelihood that upon successful completion of Phase III clinical trials, they will have met the regulatory requirements for filing the broadest possible New Drug Application for Hextend. In the 3-3/4 years since BioTime went public, its common stock fell steadily from $10 to $1-1/2. But recently its stock has taken off. The front page of the 4/2/96 San Francisco Chronicle business section has an article "Biotech Leads Area's Stocks". The article states "It was a ho-hum first quarter for Bay Area stocks. . . . The best performer was BioTime, a Berkeley company that hasn't reported any revenues since it went public in 1992. It's stock surged 172 percent in the quarter." The accompanying table shows it at the top of the list, its value having increased from $3-1/8 to $8-1/2 in the first quarter. In my opinion, a major key to achieving long term success in cryonics is to show that it is possible to make a profit offering cryonics services. This will attract entrepreneurs and money to the field. For several years in TRANS TIME's history, we did make a small profit on cryonics operations, yet not enough to attract much interest. But the initial private investors in the two low temperature medicine companies that our colleagues created, Cryomedical Sciences and BioTime, have done very well for themselves. And indeed, two cryonics-related companies have recently been formed to try to emulate BioTime's success in raising money for research. Have Something to Say? We invite our readers to submit cryonics-related articles for possible publication in this newsletter. The best way to submit is to send us the article in WordPerfect, on an MS-DOS diskette. Call us about other electronic formats you may use. We will also consider typed or handwritten submissions. A Query How often do you see or hear statements of the form "It may or may not be true that X?" What is the information content of such an assertion? Why do people frequently propound tautologies as if they were conveying information? [CARTOON OMITTED] Subscribe to THE TRANS TIMES! Please begin my subscription to THE TRANS TIMES. I enclose ___ $12.00 for one year (six issues) ___ $22.00 for two years ___ $31.00 for three years. (Add $4.00 per year if you reside outside North America.) 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