X-Message-Number: 7574 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #7565 - #7569 Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 11:18:32 -0800 (PST) Hi again! I second parts of Mr. Benater's message, though not all of it. Visser should certainly get to tell her side of this story. We've already seen how the FDA behaves with new drugs and I would not be surprised at all if the total effect of getting an experiment approved by South African authorities, especially if you don't have the holy credentials, would be years of delay. That does NOT make her treatment necessarily a good one. If we could get good ideas simply by opposing the establishment, the world would be flooded with creativity. As for her cryoprotectant, no amount of publicity will answer the questions we want answered. I think the Alcor people were strongly influenced by her experiment freezing rat hearts; that should influence anyone, regardless of her background. I can come to you and the MIT Faculty of Physics with tons of theory suggesting that I've found a way to control gravity, and after reading it they may (quite rightly) dismiss me and my ideas. BUT if I came to them with little theory, but an antigravity machine which I demonstrated would actually WORK, and passed their own rigorous tests, then my ideas and claims become something else entirely. And if they decided to believe me, they would have the best of reasons. Unfortunately it looks more and more that Visser's cryoprotectant simply won't work with the large organs, especially brains, we wish to preserve. Frankly our chemical understanding of it makes that unlikely enough that it's probably not worth a test. Naturally I want to hear what Olga Visser says about this too, of course. And in the worst case, deliberate fraud, magicians (who of course never claim they know any magic) such as Uri Geller have fooled established scientists in the past and will probably do so again. Visser should be watched very carefully by her audience (the usual magical technique is to distract the audience from what you're really doing). And if Steve Harris had witnessed her experiments at Alcor, fraudulent or not, I'd bet that he too would believe her. Best and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7574