X-Message-Number: 9365
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 12:02:11 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Mr. Ettinger's Optimism

On Sun, 29 Mar 1998, Robert Ettinger wrote:

> CryoNet - Sun 29 Mar 1998
> As to the overall picture, as usual we can choose to emphasize our successes
> and potential successes, or our failures and possible further failures.

Personally I prefer to focus on deficiencies in our current capabilities,
because otherwise, there is little incentive to make improvements. I am
very wary of optimism in cryonics. I believe that in the past, it has
provided false reassurance.

> Now again on trade-offs. Our own experience suggests strongly that promptness
> of washout and perfusion is more important than the details of procedure.

Of course it's important to minimize ischemic time, but Mr. Ettinger's
statement implies (to me) that if you have two patients, one treated 
promptly with CI protocol, the other treated less promptly with 
BioPreservation protocol, the first patient will be better preserved.

In fact no comparison of this type has ever been done, with people or
animals. A somewhat different comparative study was done with dog brains,
where light and electron microscopy showed much more damage caused by
CI-type protocol than by BioP-type protocol when it was applied after a
short ischemic waiting period (about 10 minutes, as I recall). Admittedly
the study was done at BioPreservation, which may raise doubts about its
objectivity; but it was extremely well documented, and thus could be
replicated elsewhere. We published it in CryoCare Report several years
ago. This seemed to provide evidence that "details of procedure" are very
important indeed. 

> An obvious compromise would be to train and equip funeral directors at some
> reasonable level. This would probably cut costs AND improve the patient's
> chances, since response time would be on average much quicker and more
> reliable.

I agree. 

> there have been plenty
> of stable institutions selling services at far below "true" value. Consider
> churches, families, and armies, for openers. 

True, but I would prefer to think of cryonics as a business providing a
service. Religions, armies, and families are institutions that I distrust.
They may last a long time, but they allow very little self-correcting
consumer feedback. This makes them a high risk to adopt policies resulting
in disasters or even atrocities. I think any institution that depends on
labor donated by dedicated true believers is susceptible to fanaticism. 

As for "burnout"--it's kind of Mr. Ettinger to be concerned about my state
of mind, but I doubt it has changed much in the past ten years. At that
time, I thought that cryonics was a marginal activity with very poor
chances of success: about 1 in 10,000 under IDEAL circumstances, largely
because of uncertainties in the decades ahead. I still feel that way
today. 

Charles Platt

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