X-Message-Number: 8403
From:  (Joseph J. Strout)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Succesful Cryonics?
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 08:47:02 -0700
Message-ID: <>
References: <5qlt5s$2jd$>

In article <5qlt5s$2jd$>, Richard Hawkins
<> wrote:

>Hi, I wonder if someone could help me. I just wondered if anyone know if 
>there have been a successful attempt at freezing an animal for a period of
>time and then resucitating it (being in good "working" order). Could someone
>briefly explain how it works?

Some lower animals, like the Antarctic nematode, can be frozen to liquid
nitrogen temperatures, rewarmed, and go about their business just fine. 
But these animals are particularly adapted to the cold.  No mammal has been
frozen and revived; we don't have the technology today to repair freezing
damage.

This is not a test of whether cryonics works, of course.  Cryonics works if
the patient's condition is stabilized in a state that *future* technology
can repair.  Tests of this are currently underway -- check back again in
100 years or so to see how these tests come out!

There is much cause for optimism, though: humans and other animals have
been successfully cooled to near-freezing temperatures, their blood washed
out and replaced with a perfusate solution, and restored to normal life and
health (do lit searches on "deep hypothermic surgery").  And the freezing
procedures used appear to preserve brain structures in good order, which is
what would be required (at a minimum) for successful repair.

>Also, what's the difference between cryonics and cryogenics.

"Cryogenics" is an incorrect term for cryonics which is often used by the
media to let you know that they really haven't done any research into the
topic at all.  The same applies to laypeople as well, of course -- if
someone tells you they're convinced cryogenics can't work, then you can
tell immediately that they actually know nothing about it.  Rather
convenient, really...

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|               http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/  |
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