X-Message-Number: 6901
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 11:03:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: More details

On Sat, 14 Sep 1996, CryoNet wrote:

> Message #6896
> From: 

> If Platt and Wakfer want to cut off their noses to spite there face they 
> will have to live whith that. Maybe you two should go and retire in the 
> Bahamas.

Please explain, John. I already emphasized that I would be happy to use
any valid results from any valid research regardless of who did it or
where it was done. I also expressed willingness to donate money to the
Visser-based research if I could get some information about how my money
would be used (and whether I will be allowed to benefit personally from
the results). Why do you have a problem with this? As a matter of
interest, are you planning to contribute money to the Visser work
yourself? If so, what do you hope to gain in return, and what is the basis
for your optimism? 

Bob Ettinger has now helpfully provided some basic information, which is a
good start. On the other hand, this information is not entirely
encouraging. I'm happy to hear you have good slaughterhouse connections,
Bob, but the idea of doing research on organs from this source does not
thrill me. Good science cannot be done without proper knowledge and
control of the procedures. How will you know precisely when the animals
were slaughtered? How will you know what exactly has happened to their
organs in transit to you? How can you be sure of the temperature that the
organs have been kept at? In the absence of this knowledge, it will be
hard for you to know whether tissue damage has occurred as a result of
decay processes, or as a result of freezing, or both. It seems to me you
will be working on uncontrolled test subjects that aren't much different
from a dead dog you may have found in the street. This means that other
people will not be able to duplicate your research meaningfully, because
data will be missing. 

If I am wrong about this, please correct me; my conjecture, above, is
simply derived from reading the very brief description that you have
posted so far. For all I know, you may have someone who can stand right
beside the sheep as it is slaughtered, and can seize the heart from the
warm body and thrust a thermocouple probe into it (attached to a laptop
computer that will record the data over time). The heart can then be
placed immediately in an ice chest and rushed to your lab. This would be a
scenario that would answer some of my objections; but since you haven't 
described it, I wonder if it can possibly exist. 

I would also like to know your reasons for believing that freezing and 
rewarming sheep hearts will teach us ANYTHING about the human brain.

Once again, these aren't quibbles, they are basic questions that anyone
should ask WHEN MONEY IS BEING SOLICITED. If I tried to sell a piece of
land in Florida, and I wouldn't tell you precisely where it was, or how
big it was, or whether it was a swamp; and I wouldn't let you inspect it
for yourself, and I wouldn't tell you whether you'll be allowed to live
there ... you would rightly accuse me of fraud. I feel similar standards
should apply where research is concerned. 

The Prometheus Project has already circulated a preliminary, tentative
plan that is a whole lot more specific than anything I have seen from the
Visser advocates. But even this I regard as totally inadequate if anyone
is going to ask for money. I certainly would not contribute to the Project
on the basis of the plan it has released so far, and I note that the
Project has not, in fact, asked for real money on this basis. If it did,
it would lose a lot of credibility as far as I'm concerned. 

If I refuse to give money to the Prometheus Project (yet), which has
circulated a clear outline for its research building logically on work
that has already been done in cryobiology, I'm obviously not being
partisan or prejudiced when I am reluctant to give money to other research
that does not seem to build on any previous work in cryobiology and has
not been clearly outlined at all. I am simply exercising commonsense.

Some years ago, there was a beagle named Miles who was maintained in a
state of bloodless hypothermia for an hour or two and then revived. This
was not a breakthrough in cryonics research; similar work had already been
done, and indeed the "Miles experiment" was clearly derived from that
work.  But because "Miles" was photogenic and his owners had no qualms
about making wild claims about the importance of their work, they appeared
on some talk shows, got into People magazine, and ultimately raised a huge
sum of money from investors--literally millions of dollars.

Supposedly the investment achieved some results, but I have not seen any
application of those results to cryonics, and the results are minuscule
compared with the investment. Worse still, the Miles episode detracted
from the respectability of cryonics research. In my opinion, it was a
stunt. It certainly did nothing to advance our understanding of freezing
damage and how it may be prevented in the human brain.

I now fear that cryonics history is about to repeat itself.

--Charles Platt


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