X-Message-Number: 6632
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: A passel of replies
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 13:57:42 -0700 (PDT)

Hi again!

Some comments.       


1. First, about using high pressures to prevent crystallization. If I understand
properly, that's actually been tried, at least on small cell samples. It
   did not work --- a stronger statement than Brian Wowk's.


   Since it is an entirely rational idea, I'd vote that it be put with the FAQs.
      I do recall attempts to do this even being discussed on Cryonet, several
   years ago.

2. One book which says little about the science but lots about the philosophy,
   (and has also become hard to find, unfortunately) is THE IMMORTALIST, by
   Alan Harrington. If your library doesn't have it, welcome to the club.

   As for Ettinger's PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY, its science is now a bit outdated
   but it still remains the most thorough discussion of ALL the different sides
   of cryonics available: not just the technical side, but philosophy, what it
   would do to our societies, psychology, and a whole lot of other things. Yes,
   it would cause some readjustments of all of these things (what did you 
   expect????).


   Drexler baptized a particular field of investigation: all the ways scientists
      and engineers have developed and will develop to work with phenomena on
   a molecular or submolecular scale. Lots was going on there even when he
   wrote, but the name nanotechnology did a bit to unify all these separate
   efforts. A little bit of thought will tell you that at least some kinds of
   repair, after at least some kinds of preservation, will need lots of ability
   to do such manipulation at nanosized levels. The chapter on cryonics
   basically gives an overview of the thought of cryonicists about such 
   manipulation (even then we had not just folded our hands and decided to
   depend on future technology --- cryonicists were actively thinking about 
   just how repair could be done).

3. And following on about nanotechnology and Prometheus:

   In an earlier posting, I pointed out that good means to vitrify and 
   devitrify (ie. warm up) patients would not solve our suspension problems
   completely. Recently someone pledged to the Prometheus project, he said,
   "despite his belief that nanotechnology would be needed for repair" (I do
   not claim that is a direct quote, but it does capture the sense).

   He's raising an issue which really should be dealt with: can vitrification
   work at all, and will we need nanotechnology (leaving open just what KIND
   of nanotechnology may be involved). 

   I will let GF and others who are working in the area explain the merits of
   vitrification (I think they have a very good chance of working, myself,
   if by "working" we mean just the preservation of intact brains). However,
   there is a second point which should NEVER be forgotten. Sometimes people
   die in conditions which don't allow us to perfuse them with protective
   solution, even now. And those people aren't just nonmembers, but sometimes
   members of very long standing, and even activists.

   Lots of things can make that happen. Say there is an accident while you
   are alone, and you're only found 6 hours later; or you have one or more
   strokes (ie. blood vessels in your brain burst, and that kills you ---
   and also makes perfusing your brain difficult or impossible). Or you
   die of something else in a situation which makes it hard to reach you
   (even though I don't know of any cryonicist who has met this fate, I
   know of one guy who died in a fall while on a hike, and those with him
   could do no more than bring back his body ... which took several days.
   We can also meet with resistance from local officials, etc, but even if we
   don't, the world itself can make retrieving someone very hard. What if 
   there had been a cryonicist on that recent TWA flight?).  

   If we cannot perfuse a patient with a vitrifying solution, just what can
   we do? Well, ordinarily we freeze them straight, with no protection ---
   not because we think that's the best way to do it in abstracto, but because
   it is the only way we have to preserve them. And just how, then, are we
   going to revive such people (including those suspended before vitrification
   becomes widespread)? For that, we will need some kind of nanotechnology.

So Prometheus, once more, won't cover ALL the ways needed to revive suspension
patients. Sure, it will very certainly be an advance, and one worth many times
the amount Paul is trying to raise, but it will not be the end of the matter.
Not only that, but providing these brains with new bodies will require a
biotechnology orders of magnitude more advanced than our own, and biotechnology
(which works to design molecules, modify existing ones, etc) counts as one
case of nanotechnology. Moreover, any reader of the scientific literature
(including in biotechnology) will note that various microscopes able to view
atoms and molecules (the AFM, etc) are now in use in many biotech labs --- one
more instance of nanotechnology. Basically, we should be able to provide these
brains with new bodies by keeping them inside an artificial (much larger!)
uterus, while they grow their new bodies from a few cells. 

(I am not discussing other ways of dealing with intact, unfrozen brains
basically because other proposals do no more than wave their hands in one 
direction or another: reading off the memories, building new "robotic" bodies,
etc etc. The idea of regrowing limbs and ultimately whole bodies already has
a good model in how we grew originally: if we learn to understand and control
such growth and development, then we'll know one way to provide bodies).

So there is no conflict between Prometheus and nanotechnology AT ALL. And if
anyone reading this thinks that nanotechnology will be required, in one simple
sense he's already correct. What is biotechnology anyway? And even the
instruments now are nanotechnological ones; it is all around us, and even given
that we restore biological bodies, the means to do so and find out how to do
so with have nanotechnology woven into them. Both will ultimately be needed.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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