X-Message-Number: 9577 Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 03:48:48 -0400 From: Saul Kent <> Subject: About RCWE's comments on 21CM Research From: Gregory M. Fahy, [72124,1173] RE: About RCWE's comments on 21CM Research ( The following comments are made in response to Robert Ettinger's comments (9562) concerning Twenty-First Century Medicine's Research ) Saul Kent asked me to respond to your concerns regarding the likely value of Twenty-First Century Medicine's planned research. Your first concern had to do with the interaction between the university-based hippocampal slice research and research being undertaken at 21st Century Medicine. Without going into details, an agreement in principle exists between 21CM and the university-based research that eliminates conflicts of interest between 21CM and the university and the Institute for Neural Cryobiology. The only reason it is an agreement in principle and not in practice is that certain pending documents between the university and INC have not yet been signed. With regard to supporting 21CM research itself, you make essentially two negative points, as follows. First you say "our own research here-and-now is not necessarily the be-all and end-all." The fact is that present day research is the key to future results. You have to start somewhere. Here-and-now is prelude, not the end in itself. Maybe we will be disappointed in some ways by short-term results, but whatever we learn will build a stronger foundation for what follows. If 21CM research is not to be the be-all and the end-all, what research will? There is no comparable group of researchers on the planet. There is no one on this world with a better chance of success with whole organ cryopreservation than the 21CM staff, and this is based on published results, not conjecture. Further, there is no other horse to bet on, because, to my knowledge, 21CM is the only laboratory in the world that even intends to do viable whole organ cryopreservation research. As Ronald Reagan said, if not us, who? If not now, when? Your second point was essentially that early breakthroughs can't be guaranteed. This is true. But how fast will breakthroughs be made if nobody tries to attain them? The chance of a major breakthrough is related to the amount of work that is done, which is to say, to the level of funding that is available. If you want to benefit from breakthroughs, the work that will lead to them has to be funded. It's that simple. You based your worry that "small results may well continue for decades" on your interpretation of global historical events rather than on actual information pertinent to where we are today and why we believe substantial progress is possible in the near term. For example, you mention that "some cryobiologists" in the early 1960's thought "major organ cryopreservation was just around the corner." = But we now have a much better understanding of organ cryobiology than did those early cryobiologists, and we have much more promising approaches than they did. Furthermore, many of those cryobiologists *succeeded* in cryopreserving major organs! It was lack of sustainable funding and lack of interest on the part of the transplantation and cryobiological communities in cryopreserved intestines, cryopreserved spleens, cryopreserved ureters, cryopreserved uteri, cryopreserved frog hearts, and cryopreserved fetal hearts, rather than failure on the part of the cryobiologists doing the work, that prevented those successfully-preserved organs from coming into widespread use and stimulating more work on organ cryopreservation. You also mentioned that "ten years ago, leaders thought major organ vitrification was just around the corner." But the problems that arose = with vitrifying organs 10 years ago have nearly been overcome since then, as documented in many published abstracts, and, as I mentioned in Phoenix, = very direct avenues are now available for attacking the few remaining problems. You implied that 21CM researchers are unlikely to be able to accomplish much because even the totality of the work that has been done in the entire field of cryobiology to date has led to only "relatively small results." In contrast, the general cryobiological community has consistently attained numerous major successes in all areas of cryobiological endeavor that the community has been interested in. You simply appear to consider these successes to be "relatively small" because they don't generally involve cryopreservation of something as dramatic as an organ. The problem is, the general cryobiological community is simply not going to pursue organ cryopreservation. If you want "big results," you have to recognize that they won't come from summing up a lot of "small results" in unrelated (or even in related) areas, no matter how excellent those "small results" may be. Instead, "big results" can come only from direct attempts to attain "big results," and only 21CM will pursue this. = It does no good to say that oranges can't be accomplished by some people because other people have only sought to accomplish apples in the past. My final and perhaps most important point is that you can't judge 21CM's research prospects unless you listen to 21CM's research staff describe its past accomplishments and its present and future plans. You had a chance to do this for several hours in Phoenix, but you did not avail yourself of this chance. Others I spoke to at the meeting indicated that 21CM's results and plans were highly exciting and promising, and far beyond anything they had seen in the past. I suggest you familiarize yourself with 21CM's research capabilities and track record before you judge them. = If you would like to visit the 21CM laboratories, I am sure the staff and management would be happy to welcome you and discuss research issues with you in detail. -- Greg Fahy, Ph.D. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9577