X-Message-Number: 780
From: "Christopher Penrose" <>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 92 21:13:32 EDT
Subject: Re: Brain Transfer

>Hey, what do you think of Tim Leary's intention to have his head
>frozen and grafted on to a robot at some point in the future?

He certainly has taken enough acid to handle such a nervous system trauma :)

Excuse the pun, but I am extremely leary of the contemporary practice of  
cephalic isolation (decapatation) as a means of reducing cryonic
body storage costs; Alcor, a consortium of cryonic suspension
advocates has already stored isolated and stored human heads at low
temperatures.  Disposing of most of a patients body can only increase
the emotional and neuronal shock that patients receive upon revival.
Couple this with the implications of artificial heart technology
successes and a scenario like the following is easily imaginable:

Friday May 13, 2034, 10:34am:  Elizabeth Taylor was declared brain
dead today after a grueling cryonic revival.  Elizabeth's isolated
head was revived 18 months ago (October 26, 2032).  She regained
consciousness in April 4th, 2033 after remaining in a deep coma.
She complained repeatedly of phantom body sensations and begged for a
"real" fleshy body.  She experienced multiple strokes, and became
violently catatonic in late December 2033.  She never regained
consciousness, and finally died of a massive stroke this morning.

I really know nothing of this field, however, it seems obvious that
the odds of a successful revival are higher if a patient's entire
body is preserved.  Perhaps medical technology may eventually surpass
the reliability of natural body mechanisms -- however, such
technology seems far away.  Developments in nanotechnology may make
it possible to maintain and repair existing bodies indefinitely -
such an accomplishment should be far easier with an existing body,
rather than coercing an organically developed person to neuronally
and emotionally adapt to a foreign body.  Decapitation is one of the
greatest traumas a human being could perhaps experience.  To do worse
to a human being, you must lesion the brain itself.  Believing that
people can be successfully revived, physically and emotionally, after
this extreme lesioning, without ANY neuronal or physical record of
their body, is utterly insane.  The nerves of the body are an
integral to a person; they have corresponding receptors in the brain.
Alcor should do whatever they can to store entire bodies such that
revival shock is minimized.

It may be desireable to have the ability to adapt to different (or
even "virtual") bodies, but it seems psychologically unsound to force
such drastic change upon human beings.  How do we expect these human
beings to adapt to such a drastic loss even if they are revived
without other physical complications?

Christopher Penrose


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