152 replies to this topic

[cyborgdreamer]

Another reason I'd choose neuro is so I could still be an organ donor. If I have to die (or deanimate) I'd at least like to save other people in the process.

[forever freedom]

Another reason I'd choose neuro is so I could still be an organ donor. If I have to die (or deanimate) I'd at least like to save other people in the process.

Boy you really want to get ripped when you die don't you

Edited by sam988, 25 June 2008 - 06:37 AM.

[Heliotrope]

the debate may not be necessary in the future when cryo technologies get perfected, but then again even if they're perfected no guarantee it works , the brain has so many mysteries we don't know, and no guarantee after so many years of deactivation/ Brain-death it would work

if there's a compromise, i'd like my CNS (brain AND spinal column ) get preserved and some other nerves too, who knows, maybe part of identity can be entangled in THERE!

Edited by HYP86, 25 June 2008 - 07:47 PM.

[cyborgdreamer]

Another reason I'd choose neuro is so I could still be an organ donor. If I have to die (or deanimate) I'd at least like to save other people in the process.

Boy you really want to get ripped when you die don't you

Hey, it's still better than being eaten by worms.

[VictorBjoerk]

a question to the ones who wants neuro,do you strive to have a cyborg body later when returned to life?

[forever freedom]

Another reason I'd choose neuro is so I could still be an organ donor. If I have to die (or deanimate) I'd at least like to save other people in the process.

Boy you really want to get ripped when you die don't you

Hey, it's still better than being eaten by worms.

For sure. I didn't mean about the head, i meant that after they take your head out, they will also open you and take what's left of you; your organs

a question to the ones who wants neuro,do you strive to have a cyborg body later when returned to life?

A cyborg body wouldn't be bad. But even those who get full body preservation would probably also have many changes to their bodies if not an entirely new body when (or if) they're brought back.

[Shannon Vyff]

I think I said before that in theory a cryonicist could have their head preserved, donate organs from their body so others could stay alive now, have the rest of their body buried in a "green" way and a small amount burned (so there is less pollution, and not much is needed anyway) so a diamond (http://www.lifegem.com/) made from their ashes can be given to their favorite loved ones as rings, earrings or a necklace to remember them

Oh, if I'm preserved (I'm signed but who knows what will happen) and if cryonics works, I feel synthetic body would be superior--would rather have that a cyborg body. Really though I'll be happy with anything that works, an re-grown body from a cell (if I end up neuro as I'm currently signed) --even my brain being run in a simulation, I'd be happy to have sentience again and figure things out from there (like if I want to stay there or what ).

[Santos]

...yes, the mind is the most important, the memory, the information; the points with the brains, with the minds, with their memories, is that when they lost something (some information), in most of the cases, they, we, don´t not that we lost it; basically, we die a little each time we forget something (and we "born" a little when we learn something new), and that´s seems to happens all time. So, we should keep some additional information (stored digital information) about our lives, about what we like, places we had visit, favorites films, etc... to help the brain to refresch the indivisula life, that is, our identity.

[Korimyr the Rat]

I intend to preserve only my brain, because I understand that it's cheaper and by the time my brain is frozen, I will likely require a new body anyway. Anything useful left in my body will either be donated for transplant or research, and the rest can be left to the pigs for all I care.

As far as the issue of muscle memory is concerned... I imagine I would need considerable physical therapy after having been rejuvenated, anyway.

Edited by Korimyr the Rat, 03 December 2008 - 04:57 AM.

[Live Forever]

Since this poll's inception (more than 2 years ago now) Neuro had been ahead the whole time, until now where full body just pulled ahead slightly.

I just found that interesting...

[shifter]

A story I read was that a 13 year old girl given a heart transplant woke up craving for cigarettes and had a passion for motorbikes all of a sudden. Turns out her donor was a smoker and rode motorbikes. In a small amount of cases, people who have heart transplants, take on some personality traits from the donor. So for those that want to preserve only their brain, have you considered the possibility, that by losing the rest of your body, you may wake up 'missing' certain aspects of who you used to be? Amputees have 'phantom limbs' (as a lot of their brain has been wired having used to their limbs being there etc). Imagine a phantom body!! (which I imagine would still be the case whether cyborg, synthetic or new biological as its very different.

Well not to mention how accepting society may be in the future of half cyborg humans or the use of 'donor bodies' to reattach your brain into. While the majority of people may not care, you know how much power screaming minority groups have.

[kismet]

A story I read was that a 13 year old girl given a heart transplant woke up craving for cigarettes and had a passion for motorbikes all of a sudden. Turns out her donor was a smoker and rode motorbikes.
In a small amount of cases, people who have heart transplants, take on some personality traits from the donor.

Maybe you could link to the article? I'm not even expecting peer reviewed research anymore when I hear such a thing. I don't believe one word of the story. 

So for those that want to preserve only their brain, have you considered the possibility, that by losing the rest of your body, you may wake up 'missing' certain aspects of who you used to be?

Yes, but I will rebuild the muscle and learn to use the body again. Obviously there would be a great deal of rehabilitation involved, but it would be almost like rebirth (which is rather positive) - you find yourself in a completely new, even a little frightening world, not yet able to use your body, like at birth.

Amputees have 'phantom limbs' (as a lot of their brain has been wired having used to their limbs being there etc). Imagine a phantom body!! (which I imagine would still be the case whether cyborg, synthetic or new biological as its very different.

I thnk the "phantom" feeling goes away as soon as those people get a transplant. I'm assuming it would be the same in this case.

Well not to mention how accepting society may be in the future of half cyborg humans or the use of 'donor bodies' to reattach your brain into. While the majority of people may not care, you know how much power screaming minority groups have.

Cyborg? We're talking about biological bodies, not cyborgs. I'm pretty sure people will be very accepting, or we're all doomed anyway.

[shifter]

I read it a long time ago, however after googling 'heart transplant personality' there are tons more anyway. However, to date, none of these or the condition of taking aspects of the donors personality have been peer reviewed or documented in scientific journals. So I guess we should at this point, take them as amusing stories

Personality changes can happen to anyone who undergoes major surgery they may never wake up from. When faced with our own mortality, some people may wake up living life to the extreme to make the most of it, or go the opposite way and play it safe.

I suggested cyborg bodies as I saw it posted earlier in the thread. Don't get me wrong, I probably wouldn't mind if the cyborg was a nice guy/gal but think society would fear it too much to become reality.

[Proconsul]

Some good points made, however I still am going to go for full body. I'd like to be revived after the first few. If my body isn't required then I'll happily take whatever works! I'd rather be in some physical form than a virtual entity though. If my body can be revived along with my brain then even better! I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I wouldn't wait just because they can't revive my body, as I said before, my body is preferred but I'd drop it in an instant if I needed to. I am going to take my body along for the ride just in case. If by the time I reach 70, cryopreservation procedures have not improved (an unlikely scenario) then I may change and opt for neuro to get a better preservation. I was also thinking of moving to Arizona to be near Alcor (if they don't have a UK facility by then) when I reach my 70's.

It seems to me that opting for the 'brain only' option is doing unnecessary betting on future technological developments. If and when it will be possible to revive people in crio, we don't know how it will be done and what limitations those future technologies will have. What if it will be possible to revive whole bodies, but not to 'replant' brains into bodies - biological or artificial? Betting on the 'ethernal mind' option seems even more risky, since we don't even know if that will be possible in principle, and even if it will be, we don't know how it will be to 'live' in such a condition. It seems to me safer to preserve the whole body, where extraction of the brain will always be a possible option in the future (and with better and safer technologies and skills) rather than preserve only the brain, just to find out (or rather not to find out, since you wouldn't be revived) that it will no possible to 'resurrect' the brain only.

Another thing that worries me with the 'brain only' option is that the very operation of brain extraction could create new damage, perhaps irreversible. Brain is very fragile. I remember an annedocte from a friend. He was a biomedical student and was doing practice with authopsy. He picked up a piece of brain and unadvertantly he just squashed it between its fingers like jelly. We don't know how serious certain new crionics societies are, and how much care would these people use in doing such a delicate operation - considering that you would be legally dead and no risk of prosecution in case of mistake would be incurred. No, for me only whole body makes sense.

[kismet]

It seems to me that opting for the 'brain only' option is doing unnecessary betting on future technological developments. If and when it will be possible to revive people in crio, we don't know how it will be done and what limitations those future technologies will have. What if it will be possible to revive whole bodies, but not to 'replant' brains into bodies - biological or artificial? Betting on the 'ethernal mind' option seems even more risky, since we don't even know if that will be possible in principle, and even if it will be, we don't know how it will be to 'live' in such a condition. It seems to me safer to preserve the whole body, where extraction of the brain will always be a possible option in the future (and with better and safer technologies and skills) rather than preserve only the brain, just to find out (or rather not to find out, since you wouldn't be revived) that it will no possible to 'resurrect' the brain only.

Neuro used to allow better (faster?) vitrification of the head. I am not sure if this is still the case, though. Preserving the brain goes above everything else.
I am not sure why it should be impossible to attach a head and a newly grown (e.g. cloned) body, whole body transplants have been done 50 years ago. Actually it might be the safer option.

[boundlesslife]

Which are you signed up for, or which are you planning to sign up for? There are certain benefits to either choice, Neuropreservation or Full Body preservation, or so it seems. If you feel strongly about one way or the other, please state why.

The first neuropreservation is documented at this site.

It was my father. Logistics dictated this solution. However, you might ask, had it been a more favorable set of circumstances, would we have elected to go 'whole body'?

I think not. The present paradigm of 'perfecting' cryonics lies in projecting the vision that the goal is to render a 'medical' service of an advanced but as yet unproven kind, so as to attract those who might otherwise be disinclined to pursue it for fear of being categorzed as 'cultists'.

But that has nothing to do with the actual technological challenges involved. Take the brain alone, by itself. The technology of recovering it is so formidable that by comparison, the difficulty of reestablishing its previous state of functioning would make the 'plastering-on' of a biological support structure (body) trivial.

The task involves resestablishing some hundred trillion synapses in their original states, and the underlying neurons in their conditions of original responsiveness, based on data which may (in many cases) give us merely a vague trace of the pathways that formerly existed. One might as well say, "Give me the circuit diagram! Neglect the exact values of the components of the network, and I'll restore perfect computation!" This is not reasonable. Excluding the prospect of 'perfect suspended animation', which means (for example) bringing back an Alzheimer's victim in his (or her) exact state of dementation, with all of the recovery yet to be provided, we are talking about "bringing to life" a mentality in which we may expect to have to do a lot of 'optimization' of function in order to even obtain rudimentary memory behavoirs, much less full 'identity recovery'.

Those who have read Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence" in any depth will see where this is headed, right away. We will need to seek 'recognizers' of the kind suggested in his description of high-level cognition (see page 113 of the 2004 hardback edition where it states, "This cell, commonly called a face cell, will fire no matter whether the face is tilted, rotated, or partially occluded. It is part of an invariatnt representation for 'face'.")

How are we to achieve such optimization, in reanimation? Not by simply 'sticking all of the molecules back together'! We have to move beyond that kind of simplicity. Perhaps I've gone too far down a road that is unable to be fully explored in a short posting, but that's besides the point. The point that is the idea of 'saving the whole body' on the premise that this conveys some additional recovery benefit, vs. neuro, is on the same level as saying, "The world must be flat, because... well, it looks flat!" It's just not that simple. Restricting operations to whole body vs. neuro has only one benefit. It makes the whole idea of cryonics more comfortable for those who have not thought about it deeply. It's good PR!

I'm posting this more for my own satisfaction of 'reflecting on it' than anything else. My apologies for taking up your time with with these kinds of thoughts, rather than those which are more hopeful and optimistic. My own arrangements for cryonics suspension were in place over three decades ago, and I'm now a fully prepaid (in cash) member of CI, with the thought that if even a crude freezing of my brain takes place two decades from now, I'll at least 'stand a chance'. Beyond that, it's all a 'crap shoot'. But, as to neuro vs. whole body? Give me a break! I'd be happy for a 'whacked off' head in LN2 any day, vs. a whole body that had to wait just one hour longer to get a 'whole body' suspension.

Thanks for putting up with this meandering on the part of a long-term advocate of 'get yourself frozen if you die, no matter what'!

Fred Chamberlain (AKA boundlesslife)

[lunarsolarpower]

The first neuropreservation is documented at this site.

...

Fred Chamberlain (AKA boundlesslife)

Thanks for posting the link. I don't know that I realized who you were on here but it's great to have you here as a true pioneer of radical life extension. Reading the article I had a couple questions. First what was going on with the air traffic control looking headsets during the operation? Also is there a Fred V yet and if so how many generations do you see the tradition carrying on? It's amazing to think how far you and a few others have brought things in the past decades. The future is never certain but it certainly looks brighter than it must have during the 1960s and 70s.

[bgwowk]

It seems to me that opting for the 'brain only' option is doing unnecessary betting on future technological developments.

In believing that whole body patients will require a lower level of technology than neuropatients, I think there is an element of denial about how bad the damage associated with present cryopreservation methods is. The need to regenerate a body is frankly among the least of the problems involved in reviving any present-day cryonics patient, neuro or whole body. In fact, the damage done during whole body cryopreservation is so great that discarding the body and regenerating a new one around the repaired brain has been proposed as a repair scenario for whole body patients

http://www.alcor.org...suscitation.htm

If your computer falls to the ground and is smashed, nobody tries to fix all the broken parts. It's much easier to replace all the broken parts, except of course for the hard drive that holds the "identity" of your computer.

Another thing that worries me with the 'brain only' option is that the very operation of brain extraction could create new damage, perhaps irreversible. Brain is very fragile.

This concern is based on some kind of primitive transplantation paradigm. Any medical science infrastructure that can repair the damage done to brains by contemporary cryopreservation (which includes the brain fracturing into large pieces) is not going to resort to something as "stone knives and bearskin" as transplanation to recover neuropatients. Controlled regrowth of a new body around a repaired brain in-vitro is the most elegant way to do it. The ability to do such things is implied by the technology level required to repair present cryopreservation damage. Such in-vitro support and tissue regeneration technologies would also be applicable to recovering patients from severe traumatic injuries (far more severe than could be survived today), assuming that there were flesh-and-blood humans still around in the far future.

It's true that there must eventually be a preservation technology that will make it possible for whole body patients to be revived with less effort than neuropatients, at least if there is ever to be such a thing as reversible suspended animation. People who expect their need for cryonics to be decades in the future should probably plan for that. However that time is not yet.

Those who are seriously contemplating the neuro vs. whole body issue should probably read the collection of material at

http://www.alcor.org...ndex.html#neuro

Incidentally, the previous poster, Fred Chamberlain (aka boundlesslife) was one of the originators of the neuropreservation idea that became a cornerstone for Alcor almost 40 years ago. There are many people who would never have been cryopreserved where it not for that idea.

[boundlesslife]

The first neuropreservation is documented at this site.

...

Fred Chamberlain (AKA boundlesslife)

Thanks for posting the link. I don't know that I realized who you were on here but it's great to have you here as a true pioneer of radical life extension. Reading the article I had a couple questions. First what was going on with the air traffic control looking headsets during the operation? Also is there a Fred V yet and if so how many generations do you see the tradition carrying on? It's amazing to think how far you and a few others have brought things in the past decades. The future is never certain but it certainly looks brighter than it must have during the 1960s and 70s.

Things jumped ahead by light years after my dad was frozen, largely because of Jerry Leaf, Mike Darwin, Hugh Hixon, and so many others that it's difficult to begin to make a list of them. Conversely, many of them are gone, frozen or not frozen. More on that in a moment.

The "headsets" were hooked into a simple circuit where multiple mike-headphone access was wired throughout the van, and the voice traffic was recorded on a reel-reel tape recorder with an eight-hour setting on the transport so we could be sure to capture an entire operation on one reel. It overcame the background noise and greatly helped us communicate with each other, plus it made a record of everything, but since this was the first up-and-running operation we had ever conducted (and the last), we weren't practiced in how to make the best use of the system. So, there are long periods of silence except for the sound of the HLR running, later the perfusion apparatus, etc. This kind of thing would have been helpful later when the really high-tech stuff developed by those three individuals I mentioned earlier came along, but they had worked out very effective data tracking forms and methods that worked fine.

As to the overall contents of that van, and other things associated with our level of preparedness, I really need to give a tremendous acknowledgement to the things Mike Darwin did to develop all of that. Even though by the time my Dad went down, circumstances beyond the control of any of us necessitated that Mike move back to his home town, we would not have had anything like what was there, standing by, ready to go, when the operation did take place, without what he did. Every weekend Linda, Mike and I pretty much spent our time 'working on the van'. It was parked out back of a little commercial property Manrise Corporation had rented on Foothill Blvd in La Crescenta, CA. Mike lived there and did animal research in a lab he'd constructed, on virtually a full-time basis, plus worked relentlessly on the van with Linda and I whenever we had time to show up. He was the one who saw the need for a transport vehicle and (I think it was he who) located an old postal delivery mini-truck that was just right to roll a gurney into. When my Dad came down with what could have easily turned into a case of terminal pneumonia, he lobbied for us "bring him home" to our house on Fairmount Blvd for a week or so, and Mike "brought him through it". OK, I could go on with this literally forever. Later, Mike Darwin did amazing things as President of Alcor in establishing that fantastic facilitity at Riverside, and put together an equally astounding lab at 21st Century Medicine, etc., etc., etc. Perhaps that's enough on this for now, although I've still left out a lot of things that could be said.

There's no Fred V, and perhaps four of us is plenty. That sort of thing is a carry-over from a day when about all one "left behind" was his name. The tradition of males worrying that they would not have a male 'heir' to 'carry on the name' is bad enough. About the only excuse I can offer on the roman numeral thing is that I was still eight years away from being a cryonicist, and even three years to go before I would turn into a 'died in the wool' Objectivist. The Extropian practice of scrapping out the old name and coming up with a new name is a lot better, perhaps, and I've even got one myself (in SecondLife.Com, but I'm not going to post it here). About all I'll say about my son here is that he's gone a lot further into technology than I ever got by being at JPL for 12 years. Now, back to the 'more about that in a moment' jump point above.

I feel a little sheepish about posting my almost horse-blinderish advocacy of neuro on that posting to which you're replying, and apologize for not having offered a more complete set of thoughts. But, I'm about to make up for it. At the link below, you'll find a web page I've set up which gives you a time-travel-trip back 23 years to 1986, at one of the Life Extension Festivals at Lake Tahoe that Linda and I set up during the years we were there. On that page, there will be two videos you can view or download and keep (either one), and one of them is a one hour, forty minute panel discussion on "Neuro vs. Whole Body", with lots of audience participation. Jerry Leaf was on that panel, and Thomas Donaldson chaired it. Mike Darwin was on the panel too, almost 'flying faster than the speed of sound'. John Day (of ACS) furnished some balance as being more at the 'mainstream' level of thinking, although I believe almost all of those on this board will appreciate the careful way he addressed the subject, as well.

You'll see a lot of people in the audience you recognize, as well as the panelists. In each case, a number of them are now in suspension, or have dropped out, etc. It almost makes you want to go back there and 'do it all again', just to see these videos (that's been my experience putting the page together over the last week or so, after posting the very short discussion above).

OK, so where's the link? Right HERE. You'll arrive at the "Neuro vs. Whole Body" panel area, but scroll on up, and you'll find a Jerry Leaf presentation on the Cryovita Laboratories work, with detailed discussion of the MALSS cart as well as other aspects of the protocol, and how things worked at the central laboratory once the remote standby was complete. There are some questions and answers here too, but nothing to compare with the "Neuro vs. Whole Body" panel.

Enjoy!

Boundless Life,

Fred Chamberlain

[cryofan]

It seems to me that opting for the 'brain only' option is doing unnecessary betting on future technological developments.

In believing that whole body patients will require a lower level of technology than neuropatients, I think there is an element of denial about how bad the damage associated with present cryopreservation methods is. The need to regenerate a body is frankly among the least of the problems involved in reviving any present-day cryonics patient, neuro or whole body.

yeah, I gotta agree. In fact with respect to this question, I am reminded of the scene from the movie Butch Cassidy & Sundance Kid where Sundance and Cassidy are trapped atop a high cliff far above a raging river. They are arguing about whether to jump, and Sundance doesn't want to jump into the river because he can't swim. Cassidy replies: "You idiot. The FALL will probably kill you!"

[cryonickid]

I chose whole-body with CI, because I want to reatin muscle memory with what I have.

Either way, I would have to be rehabilitated.

I feel comfortable in my own body, and I'm not sure if the technology would be available to build a new body and synchronize it with my brain.

Besides, CI does not do neuro.

I understand that there are advances in medicine and science which may allow for new bodies.

If I, for argument's sake, were able to go neuro with Alcor, how would I know that all the connections would work?

[Heliotrope]

I chose whole-body with CI, because I want to reatin muscle memory with what I have.

How do we know "muscle memory" will make a difference? Does that mean doing neuro, you'll lose memory stored in muscles forever? Is there really memory there?

[Heliotrope]

yep voted neuro. I'd like intermediate step though, such as preserve much of the spine too. There're neurons in there (most = secondary neurons). Reading the above couple of posts, I don't think there is muscle memory locked in your other organs and even muscle tissue that makes "who you are".

brain is the most important organ. We can't live without it w/ current technology, unless mind upload or transferring preserves and fully protects the unique you

[AgeVivo]

I believe most people think that cryogenics is silly because most people think it is far from technically possible currently.

However i think it is quite easy with flies and worms currently, isn't it? Is there any document that explains with simple words what CAN actually be frozen CORRECTLY ("what": animals, human types of organs, portion of the body such as brain...; "correctly": while keeping cell/tissue structure/function)? same question for defrozen? what is needed to able to do more? (eg is it essentially a matter of finding an non toxic anti-freezing liquid?)

Afaik this type of question was asked in several threads without being really answered.
Sorry if my post isn't exactly the subject of the poll.

Edited by AgeVivo, 28 April 2009 - 05:19 PM.

[boundlesslife]

I believe most people think that cryogenics is silly because most people think it is far from technically possible currently.

The key words are "technically possible currently".

These words, as used above, put the "getting into suspension" and "getting back out of suspension" into a single package, but that results in confusion.

It is true that currently, it is impossible to "get someone out of suspension", no matter how perfectly it is done by today's standards.

It is also true that currently, it *is* possible, technically, to "get someone into suspension" in such a way that the amount of biological information preserved is virtually infinite as compared with cremating them (where effectively you have 'zero' left).

The possibilities of future recovery are unknown, with cryonics, but there are also other unknowns, such as how long it will be, before you 'go into' suspension, what the circumstances will be at that time, whether or not you will be able to 'stay' in suspension long enough for a recovery operation to be attempted, and to what extent you will recover your memories, if such an operation is performed. These are all unknowns. It is also unknown whether, tomorrow, a major asteroid strike will wipe out the biosphere, or whether two months from now you will have died from a swine flu pandemic, or whether the world will descend into chaos if a terrorist organization manages to detonate a nuclear weapon in some large metropolitan area. Notwithstanding all of these uncertainties, staying alive is a priority for most people, who do not think it is 'silly' to do so.

Few people look far ahead, and most people panic only when the dragon comes out of the cavern with flame and smoke belching from its jaws (they just told you that you have cancer and predict that you will probably die within six months, or, you wake up in a hospital after a bad auto accident, in an ICU, and they tell you your chances are not very good). At that time, and it would be almost funny if it were not so serious, too many people, for the first time, seriously have it cross their minds what will happen if/when they die, and briefly (if at all) consider cryonics.

Being frozen is like being thrown a life preserver after you fall overboard, from a high deck on an ocean liner. You don't know if you will stay afloat long enough for them to pick you up, even if they manage to find you, but the alternative is not to have any life preserver at all and go down... glug, glug, glug, and most people at that point will not think there is anything 'silly' about cryonics. They will only feel themselves slipping away into oblivion, and wish that life had been longer... a lot longer!

[AgeVivo]

Thank you for answering but i don't think it really answers:
Ok so when cryogenized you currently keep a lot more information of your body than if not cryogenized and in a perfect future world that should be enough. That's a good point but appearently it isn't quite sufficient for most people. Oviously most people
- know that
- believe that they will probably die from age-related diseases (rather than meteorites; for swine flu... let's wait a month of so )
- still think that such cryogenics techniques are very far from sufficient today

I'm trying to simplify/decompose the question:
1. What is level of tissue degradation currently with neuro and full body suspension?
2. a) What are the animals (yeast? flies? worms? mice? pigs?) that CAN currently go into and out of suspension? Same for human organs?
2. b) What are the main limits? Is there currently promising research against those limits?

[kismet]

I'm not sure (I'm not really into cryonics) so correct me if I'm wrong..

1. What is level of tissue degradation currently with neuro and full body suspension?

I don't think there's much tissue degredation if you are preserved in a timely manner, rather tissue damage from fracturing and cryoprotectant toxicity.

2. a) What are the animals (yeast? flies? worms? mice? pigs?) that CAN currently go into and out of suspension? Same for human organs?

I believe C. elegans is the biggest organism ever preserved in liquid nitrogen (but survival is <<100%).

2. b) What are the main limits? Is there currently promising research against those limits?

The last I've heard they were considering higher temperature preservation to mitigate fracturing.

Politically I believe we need more humane euthanasia laws, which would enable more timely preservation.

[bgwowk]

I believe C. elegans is the biggest organism ever preserved in liquid nitrogen (but survival is <<100%).

Tardigrades can survive liquid nitrogen preservation, as can some insects that undergo dehydration during diapause.

However what can and can't be preserved with real-time reversibility is only tangentially relevant to cryonics. Cryonics is not suspended animation. Cryonics, almost by definition, means holding someone who cannot be revived with available technology in stasis in anticipation that the preserved information can later be utilized. Five hundred years from now, when suspended animation of whole people (or whatever passes for people) is routine, there will still be debates about whether to preserve people who've suffered apparently irreversible injuries. That's cryonics.

AgeVivo, if the premise that people who are not immediately recoverable should be preserved (aka cryonics) is not acceptable to you, then there is no point in discussing details because your real interest is suspended animation, not cryonics. That's okay. That's also the view of 99%+ of people in the world. They want suspended animation, not cryonics, with all its uncertainty and lack of closure. Conversely, if you don't reject the premise of cryonics out of hand, then you need to scratch deeper beneath the surface than just the question of what animals or tissues can be reversibly preserved. You need to ask what makes a person a person, and how much of that can be preserved by cryopreservation with present technology.

[solbanger]

I was in this discussion with a man today driving back from a training in Dallas (am now certified to teach human sexuality to middle and high school programs with the OWL 'Our Whole Lives' program) but I explained that some cryonicists put in their contract that they only want to be revived if they would have their original body, or have it rejuvenated, some say being a robot/cyborg would be fine, some would not care if their mind/consciousness was disembodied and living in an internet. You can choose, some cryonicists have volunteered to be the first revived--when the procedure is still new and all the risks would not be known, others want to be revived after a certain amount of successful reanimations have occurred. The point is, that it is a chance--and if it does not work, you would not know (or may from heaven, or some sort of different dimension/alternate universe-- and be just fine and more knowledgeable than the humans you left, and somehow so happy you are not upset with not being able to help humanity... ) nevertheless--we don't know, and cryonics is a reasonable thing to try. Many people at the training I was at, M.D.'s, therapists, a rocket scientist and his wife from NASA--they all liked the idea of cryonics and I was an interesting person to sit by at lunch or during breaks.

I think the whole discussion is a mute point whether someone will want to be revived only with their "original" body. With the level of damage that occurs with freezing, not to mention the fact that most people would want the body of a teenager rather than the wrinkled up 70 year old body they went in with, becoming integrated with some sort of mechanical device is probably inevitable. From an engineering standpoint it probably makes sense to preserve as much of the human form as possible since neural pathways are hardened by adulthood and removing them would be tantamount to having to relearn how to move, talk and breathe. Also the human body is a closed circuit based on hormones. If you cleave away ovaries or testes you remove an integral aspect of one's personality both hormonally and psychologically (and we are all well aware of the nerves that are established in those organs by adulthood.) People already have enough trauma when they lose a limb. The synthetic replacement they're given is always an inferior to the real deal. Also consider that in essence we will be reviving dead flesh. Most of the time when something comes back to life the first thing it experiences is pain. You know how when you fall asleep on your arm and it goes numb? When you shake it awake you get a rush of pins and needles and then pain. Well imagine that throughout a whole human body... but your muscles do not work and you cannot scream.


Also the arguments these scientists are having are approached from the wrong angle. I almost can't believe I have to school you in this. For one thing consciousness is ALREADY DISEMBODIED. Existing in this reality is a guarantee of immortality within this reality. You have existed at some point on the timeline, like your grandfather and great-grandfather and so on reaching back through time. They, like yourself, are momentary knots of energy that only need be given the right ingredients to return and interact at later points on this timeline of ours. The entire timeline itself is just an energy wave which is made of an infinite number of sub waves, including you and me, in an immense cosmic fractal. Consciousness is a component of reality. It is always there and like any component it can be applied in different areas. This is what explains ghosts. A ghost is an energy source that approximates a person's personality however it lacks the specific energy wavelengths to interact with us the way we expect, hence, the bizarreness of typical ghost behaviors such as footsteps, rattling dishes, and low whispers at night, almost as if the personality believes itself to be in a dream. The reasoning is actually quite simple if you ask me. There is no splitting of the consciousness like the scientists might imagine. There is ONE consciousness of yours. The human brain is just an extremely sophisticated receiver of this broadcast of consciousness. All of your sensations arise from the brain and its interaction with the body that carries it. The idea that you are special and need to survive and that death is bad is an evolutionary trick that is meant to compel the organism to perpetuate. Creating a new house for your consciousness after destroying your brain is in actuality creating a synthetic twin whose mannerisms are just like yours. That's it. Consciousness does not transfer. You can only access the consciousness.

The body that you have now. The mind that you have. That's it. There's nothing more. You can clone yourself as much as possible but they will only be close siblings who are receivers of the personality. Perhaps an artificial link could be made between the bodies so that experiences are shared. Perhaps telepathy will make it possible for a hive existence to arise. But the sense of individuality, which is often what people really desire preserving, would still be locked in your specific brain. Take identical twins, most of the time they have similar interests and sometimes similar thoughts to the point of what we would consider telepathy. The reason for this is that although they are separate minds they act on nearly the same wavelengths. This is what explains all sorts of manifestations such as depression. Depression is like turning the bass on a radio receiver way up and the treble way down. The radio channel is the same, but the way it is expressed is manifestly different.

Living in an Internet system or whatever is really tantamount to having a second pair of eyes extend from one's brain and then gain access to hundreds of webcams. At least that is the fantasy, where you as a person would be able to see through millions of cameras, interact through millions of machines and operate machinery like an invisible mental octopus. Essentially it is a fantasy where the mind becomes a switch that can be turned on and off. Or at least be given a chance to never turn off. But of course how would these virtual brains be able to tell? Setting up a mind within a computer is just like having a perfect twin that operates according to one's own self-interests. But the individual scientist, who believes that he or she is an individual that must be preserved, will only be able to experience this cyber existence if their brain survives, which is where the self-preservation mechanism comes from. If you destroy the brain then the consciousness will have to be accessed in another method. Perhaps as a robotic brain. Now imagine we build a new brain exactly the same as the old scientist, but we add new features to the brain allowing the scientist to speak every language on earth. Then you can say that his consciousness has expanded. To humans, expanding one's consciousness is seen as a good thing since it may lead to the creation of products for humans whose minds have not expanded. In addition we apply high status to someone who can perform unique mental gymnastics. But in reality it is not good or bad. The scientist is simply a representation of a personality receiver whose spectrum has increased in ways that does not compel it to self-destruct.

Edited by solbanger, 30 April 2009 - 08:53 PM.

[AgeVivo]

Thank you, it is good to have concrete elements.
- Tardigrades and C elegans: better than nothing but tiny (<2mm): not great to get the enthousiam of more people. I remember there was once a big animal (a lamantine?) that was frozen and defrozen within a few hours; the chemicals were too toxic to make it last longer, the physiology of the animal made it easier; does anyone know what i'm talking about?
- I think that suspending someone that is about to die, until he or she can be revived and made in good health (if possible for hundreds of years ;-) is the what most people would understand by cryonics (and accept a little more, if it seemed technically quite ready). I'm not sure to understand whether it is "cryonics", "suspended animation" or both.

Edited by AgeVivo, 30 April 2009 - 08:25 PM.