X-Message-Number: 7341 Subject: Re: My Senior Paper - Cryonics - Input requested (quick!) Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 15:28:14 -0600 From: Will Dye <> Brian Wowk writes: > can anyone guess how to turn hamburger back into > a cow with existing technology? Well, I suppose you could mix the hamburger into the feed of another cow, and thus recycle many of the original atoms. You could also produce (through various techniques) a cow that has much or most of the original cow's DNA, thus preserving an important pattern that was in the original cow's atoms. Analysis of the hamburger could lead to several clues about the original cow's diet, lifestyle, stress levels, heirarchy in the herd, etc., which could be replicated with varying precision in the new cow(s), thus preserving a few other patterns that were in the original cow. A little more detective work might track down where the original cow lived, thus providing many more opportunities to make the new cow(s) more like the original. Since none of this reconstructs stuff like memories of the original cow's torrid romance by the north feedlot last winter, I suppose that all these techniques would be little more than a consolation prize. But at least it shows that there's a lot of information that's still in a hamburger, and some original atoms, to boot. Since there doesn't seem to be any single little bit that definitively defines an individual, then it seems plausible that _every_ little bit would be of at least some importance in reconstructing someone. Emphasis, I believe, should be put on the bits that were historically stable, including historically stable patterns of changes. Bottom line: future "reconstruction specialists" will be more than fellows who talk about how to guess where the ice crystal pushed the atom. There will also be a lot of old-fashioned gumshoe detective work. Every little bit counts. --Will Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7341