X-Message-Number: 7637 Date: 04 Feb 97 08:17:22 EST From: DOLINOFF <> Subject: Re #7625 of Mr Charles PLATT Hi listers ! It is certainly pretentious of me to write this because nobody cares my opinions, but I want to emphasize how much courageous, honest, fair and thus efficient is Mr Charles PLATT's message # 7625. I am between those who have a big sympathy towards Ms Olga VISSER and I dont doubt, after what I have not seen but read, that there were circumstances and conditions into which she succeeded, and several times, to bring back to life a rat heart having been frozen. (This is not a reason to patent all the organic chemistry, but this is an other problem !) I understand very well what happened with her when she made her demonstrations of Saturday 31 and Sunday 1 februar 1997, because a similar thing happened with me when I organized at my home the Jubilee of my fellows of my class at University, when I was tired and nervous : I miscarried the photographs, the most facile tricks and much others things ! Ms VISSER was certainly tired, nervous, and frightened of her responsibility to succeed in her experiments before numerous and important for her attendies. She thus lacked of precision and thoroughness in experiments that, to the contrary, work only under the top conditions, when all the parameters are matched. Wanting perhaps to work too quickly, not beeing sufficiently careful in the parameters as the thickness of the cotton, the duration of the immersion into LN2, the precise location of the probe and others I ignorate, not having the necessary great concentration to succeed in such delicate experiments, she has been out of the ideal and necessary conditions. This only proves how much it is important to match for every frozen cell the wanted parameters : speed of decreasing in temperature, increasing of the cryoprotectant concentration, nature of the cryoprotector or of the mix of cryoprotectors, and is a very good new explanation of the fact that only small biological samples of a few grams can be reversibly frozen, at the exclusion of human organs nor the entire human organism, and this conclusion has not changed since 30 years of research. It is why I have here the occasion to comment a figure given by Mr PLATT in his message # 7390 of december 31, 1996. He estimates the chances of success to revive a man frozen by the present best technique to 10~ -4. I think that nobody can tell any figure but I remark that here, he is precisely near the limit making the operation valuable on a material standpoint. Assuming that 95 % of causes of death are ageing and illnesses, a revived suspended can hope to live 80 . 100 : 5 = 1,600 years. The present gross national product is in the average $ 26,000 per man for a year. I assume that those interested to be suspended have a 10 times upper income. Thus, the value of a reversed suspension is 2.6 x 10~4 x 10 x 1.6 10~3 = $ 4.16 x 10~8 . And if the price of a suspension is $ 1.2 x 10~5, the operation is materially valid if its probability of success p is greater than 1.2 x 10~5 = p x 4.16 x 10~8, from what p has to be greater than 4 x 10~ -4. Of course, the value to enjoy life is much greater than the value of the goods you can afford. Thus, the equilibrium is in the case for much littler values of p. But what is it ? Nobody knows. I think that to tell p is in the order of 10 ~ -4 is Faith and that the greater you take n in p = 10 ~ -n , the closest to the reality you are. In a not living organism, that is to say in an organism deprived of the innumerous and depending the ones of the others biological reactions that ARE the life, the problem for the imaginated nanomachines is : to reach one after the other each of the 10 ~ 23 atoms or so out of the 10 ~ 28, that are displaced, in a thawed organism, that is to say in an organism having suffered of new traumatisms but having neither blood circulation nor nervous electrical impulses ; to have the suitable motor and the necessary energy when it is not big ! to detect what is the reparation to do ; to have the necessary atoms and a laboratory of chemistry to do the job ! to put at the right place the right atom ; and to leave the repared organism. Please : approach this problem with the same honestness and the same courage (if not you are exposed to big and costly mistakes) as has shown Mr PLATT in his relation of Ms VISSER's experiments of the february 1 ! To be FOR anything blindly, without any question and by principle can lead to mistakes. We are in front of a lottery of which the ticket costs a house and that is perhaps without prize, as has very well told a french cryobiologist. The conclusion is : what do we risk ? The answer is : a house. It remains that I consider the Aim of the CRYONICS movement as of greatest importance and interest. The only problem is that no progresses have been made in the credibility of its realization since 30 years. The Ms Olga VISSER's method does not change the weight of the biological organ it is possible to reversibly freeze. I still dont have the answer to the question whether to let be frozen or not to let. It is why : long, long life, as tells very well our friend Thomas ! Anatole Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7637