X-Message-Number: 972 Date: 09 Jul 92 00:49:18 EDT From: Steve Bridge <> CRYONICS AND THE ALCOR LIFE EXTENSION FOUNDATION Cryonic Suspension is an experimental procedure whereby patients who can no longer be kept alive by today's medical capabilities are preserved at low temperatures for treatment in the future. Although this procedure is not yet reversible, it is based on the expectation that the medical technology of the future will be able to cure today's diseases, reverse the effects of aging, and repair any additional injury caused by the freezing process. That superior technology could then resuscitate suspended patients to enjoy health and youth indefinitely. The field which deals with this procedure is called CRYONICS. (This should not be confused with cryogenics, which is the branch of engineering which is concerned with the production and study of low temperatures.) The people involved in cryonics hold widely varying views on religion, politics, and social issues. Their occupations include scientists, physicians, computer programmers, business owners, teachers, librarians, and secretaries. However, they all agree that being alive is a wonderful thing and that this technology may help them stay that way. Cryonics might best be described as experimental medical technology. This label may seem strange at first, since many people have gotten the mistaken impression that the individuals in cryonic suspension are dead. Cryonics is not a new way of storing dead bodies. It is a new way of saving lives. Cryonicists continue to refer to frozen people as "patients," because we firmly believe that they are, in a very real sense, still alive. People really are being frozen; it is no longer science fiction. Approximately 60 persons have been frozen since the first cryonic suspension in 1967. About 500 other people have made the financial and legal arrangements to be suspended in case they should become terminally ill or injured. However, any stories you may read about frozen people being revived are definitely imaginary. No human has ever been thawed out and revived (with the exception of human embryos), and it will be a long time before this happens. Medical technology has not yet advanced to the point where cryonic suspension is reversible; today's deadly illnesses and injuries are not yet curable; and even if these things had been accomplished, there is no point in reviving anyone until the aging process is fully under control. No one wants to be reawakened as an aged, infirm person. Cryonics is not yet accepted as a legitimate life-saving procedure by today's medical authorities. With our current technology we cannot prove that a frozen person can be repaired and revived (although a great deal of research suggests that this will be possible in the future). Unfortunately, this situation creates numerous medical, legal, and even political difficulties. For instance, if a patient were to be suspended while he was legally alive, someone might claim that the suspension process itself had killed the patient, creating the possibility of criminal and civil charges against the suspension team. Therefore, current cryonics practice is to suspend dying patients as soon as possible after cardiac arrest (stopping of the heart) and declaration of "legal death." This course of action can be seen as reasonable once one realizes that "legal death" is not the same as "biological death." A physician declares legal death when a patient's condition cannot be reversed with CURRENT medical knowledge and techniques. However, the process of deterioration which we call "dying" is not a sudden happening. It is much more like slipping into an ever deepening coma. Even several hours after declaration of death, most of the cells in the body (including those in the brain) are still individually alive and capable of resuming function. As late as the 1940's, people who stopped breathing because of heart attacks or drowning were routinely declared dead. Today thousands of people have survived heart attacks and other conditions which would have been fatal 50 years ago. Children have survived over an hour of "drowning" in cold water. Were those heart attack and drowning victims really dead fifty years ago? By today's standards we would say those people were still alive -- doctors just did not know what to do about it. In the same way, we expect that most people who are declared dead today would be called "alive" by doctors of the future. With that observation in mind, we think these patients should be considered potentially "alive" NOW, and we should do something to keep them that way so they can become the patients of the future. Even within the next 10-15 years, you are likely to be amazed by the amount of progress in recovering patients from strokes, heart attacks, and lack of blood circulation to the brain. Ultimately, it should be possible to recover patients as long as the basic structure --especially brain structure-- remains intact (several hours past the point at which today's doctors give up). In the next century, the medical knowledge of the 1990's will seem as primitive as the medical understandings of one hundred years ago seem to us. Cryonic suspension itself will cure nothing; but it buys time for the patient, keeping his body virtually unchanged until a future when his suspended state may be considered only an extremely deep coma. Even now there is solid evidence that cooling the human body to liquid nitrogen temperature (-320 degrees F), with the use of techniques to reduce freezing injury, can preserve fine structure indefinitely. There is no guarantee that cryonic suspension will ever allow for future revival. We do not know enough to state with certainty that this procedure is workable. However, the case for the possible future repair and revival of suspended patients grows stronger all the time. One important argument in favor of this possibility has been provided by K. Eric Drexler in his fascinating books, ENGINES OF CREATION (Anchor/Doubleday, 1986) and UNBOUNDING THE FUTURE (Morrow, 1991). These books detail the beginnings of the new field of "molecular nanotechnology" (also called "molecular engineering"). Nanotechnology is the next step smaller than micro-technology, and it will create industries which will operate by working with atoms and molecules one at a time. Among other astounding developments, this will lead to computers and cell repair machines one thousand times smaller than a human cell. Such devices could repair almost any disease or injury (including that from freezing) by working directly on the cells themselves. It must be pointed out that cryonicists are not people with some fixation on cold temperatures. None of us want to be frozen. We are simply people who like being alive, and who want to see the future and all of its wonders. As far as we know, the only means of preserving biological structures today is by means of low temperatures. For us, cryonics provides a safety net, a last-ditch attempt at life-saving which may give us the chance to see that future. Our cryonics organization, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, is a non-profit corporation, recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt scientific and educational organization. Alcor has a fully equipped and operational research laboratory, operating room, and patient storage facility in Riverside, California. Alcor was formed as a mutual aid society, where the members are committed to helping each other. All Alcor board members, officials, and suspension team personnel are required to be full suspension members. Alcor IS its members. All decisions on the safety of the patients and stability of the organization are made with the knowledge that they will affect everyone in the organization. If you would like further information, please call or write for a FREE copy of Alcor's 106 page introductory book, CRYONICS -- REACHING FOR TOMORROW, which explains the scientific and philosophical basis for cryonics. Additional copies of this book are available for $5.00 each. Alcor also publishes a monthly magazine, CRYONICS, with fascinating articles and discussion on the current state of cryonics, plus reports on scientific progress relevant to cryonics and life extension. A one-year trial subscription is $11.00 (12 issues); after the first year, the subscription rate is $35.00 per year. To order, please send a check or money order; no cash, please. Or telephone to use Visa or MasterCard. Make all checks payable to Alcor Life Extension Foundation and mail to: Alcor Life Extension Foundation 12327 Doherty Street, Riverside, California 92503 Telephone 1-800-367-2228 or 714-736-1703 E-mail to Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=972