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


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