X-Message-Number: 9421
From: Ettinger <>
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1998 16:17:51 EDT
Subject: Platt & procedures

Charles Platt's questions and misstatements will all be answered, but not all
today. I have many other chores, duties, and obligations. 

Today I will focus on his principal misstatement, repeated many times--that
the work of Dr. Pichugin and colleagues did not constitute validation of the
Cryonics Institute sheep head procedures, because they used glycerine in
ramped-up increments and we did not.

Possibly Charles is confused because there were several different reports from
the Ukraine, at different times, related to different projects with different
objectives.

The first project was precisely to repeat the CI sheep head work, as
faithfully as possible, and to evaluate the results in more detail than we
could do, using light and electron microscopy. They DID verify that our
procedure produced no cracking and gave relatively good results. The key
(third) report was in THE IMMORTALIST for November, 1994, pp. 7-12. Some very
brief excerpts from the report (by Dr. Yuri Pichugin and Dr. Gennadi
Zhegunov):

"Washing out and perfusing the sheep heads were carried out according to your
instructions." (This is from the first report, in the August 1994 issue of THE
IMMORTALIST.)

"Visible examination of the thawed glycerolized sheep head did not [show] any
cracks."

"Under a light microscope any microcracks and microruptures of the brain
tissues and pituitary body were absent in all the biological samples studied
by us." [No cracks shown by the light microscope in any of the tissues
examined.]

"It is clear that the structure of the cytoplasmic organelles [in a nerve
cell, under the electron microscope] does not exerience drastic alterations,
though an increased vacuolization of the cytoplasm and some changes in the
mitochondrial crysts are found. The nucleus bears no injuries, chromatin is
regularly distributed in karyoplasm."

It is extremely clear, from the series of reports, that the current CI method
is a very large improvement over uncontrolled freezing--and in some respects
over previous controlled methods--even though there remains also a large
degree of room for improvement. 

Answers to all of Charles' other questions and misstatements when I find time.
But now I want to take a few minutes to comment on another strange attitude
Charles has.
---------
Recently Platt has been very downbeat, perhaps in part because CryoCare has
had years of slow growth, no growth, or negative growth. But as president of
CryoCare, it is hard to understand why he would say on Cryonet that he
believes a patient under IDEAL circumstances has only about a one in ten
thousand chance of rescue.

If I were a newcomer to cryonics and Cryonet, I would ask myself, first, why
is this fellow in cryonics if he thinks it will almost certainly fail? Why
does he devote major energies to this nearly hopeless project? Does he have
such a morbid terror of death that he will grasp at the frailest straw? Why
does he suggest that we should make cryonics a religion and demand tithes from
members? Is he completely disconnected from reality? Do I want to be mixed up
with people like this?

That would be a harsh and hasty judgment, certainly, but that is what he is
inviting.

For all of you relative newcomers: Some of us think the chance of rescue is
pretty good--and can be made much better by our combined and continued
efforts. Please see the CI web site (address below) for more details on
evaluation of our chances.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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