26 replies to this topic

[the thing]

I have been intersted in cryonics for some time, but I am not entirely convinced. People here seem to be very convinced that it will work, but it seems bit wishful thinking to me. While I certainly get the idea that the structures of the brain probably dont get destroid instantly, it still bit of strech to think your brain is intact after hours of decay. I know neurons can live up to hours, but the connections are what matters and the fact that you can get brain damage after a very short of lack of oxygen does not paint a good image. While I dont know too much about the details of the actual vitrification process, I imagine it is not very precise and could be quite damaging on itself.

I have been reading this blog. I am not sure who writes it, but the blog got me worried, because it does have some points that seem sound. Alcor for example on their website speak of surgeons, but they dont seem to have actual medical professionals working for them. Added to the fact that their websites apparently use false medical terminology is not very convincing. I thought someone might be intersted in reading the blog and addresing something of it.

[Fundie]

I have been intersted in cryonics for some time, but I am not entirely convinced. People here seem to be very convinced that it will work, but it seems bit wishful thinking to me. While I certainly get the idea that the structures of the brain probably dont get destroid instantly, it still bit of strech to think your brain is intact after hours of decay. I know neurons can live up to hours, but the connections are what matters and the fact that you can get brain damage after a very short of lack of oxygen does not paint a good image. While I dont know too much about the details of the actual vitrification process, I imagine it is not very precise and could be quite damaging on itself.

I have been reading this blog. I am not sure who writes it, but the blog got me worried, because it does have some points that seem sound. Alcor for example on their website speak of surgeons, but they dont seem to have actual medical professionals working for them. Added to the fact that their websites apparently use false medical terminology is not very convincing. I thought someone might be intersted in reading the blog and addresing something of it.

Hi, thing. I have also been reading Melody Maxim's blog.

Cryonics may very well be wishful thinking. Nobody knows if it will work or not. A lot of people believe there are a lot of reasons to think that perhaps it may work, and a lot of people believe that chance is worth the cost.

You might want to read through this essay by Dr. Thomas Donaldson:
http://www.alcor.org...Archeology.html

If you're involved in cryonics, you've got to make your peace with the unknown, because it will always be there. You've simply got to make your peace with it.

Before cryonics, there was "death." After cryonics, there are a host a pathologies.

Donaldson's main point in this essay is that we don't know what damage to a body and a brain can be reversed and what damage cannot. Cryonics gives us a technology available today to make someone into essentially a "permanent patient." We can put them on ice and work on reviving them more or less indefinitely. Maybe cancer can be cured. Maybe aging can be reversed. Maybe brains are still revivable moments after cardiac arrest. Maybe the damage from vitrification can be reversed. Maybe even the damage from freezing and ice crystalization can be reversed.

We already know that if the heart stops sometimes a person can be revived. We already know that sometimes brain activity can cease and can still be revived. We already know that people can sometimes be chilled to extreme temperatures and then revived. Sometimes doctors even do these things intentionally during certain surgical procedures. It's somewhat extreme in a sense, but in another sense it is a completely routine part of medicine. Maybe the period of time that these things can go on can be lengthened with future advances of technology. Maybe people can be chilled colder. Maybe more and more damage can be repaired. Maybe gradually we will learn to reverse the effects of 1 minute of brain ischemia, then 2 minutes of brain ischemia, then 5 minutes of brain ischemia, then 10 minutes, then 60, then days. Maybe; who knows?

Not everyone who undergoes cryonic suspension endures these hours of ischemia at room temperature, either. Many times the cooling process is begun immediately. We already know that some people have survived longer periods of oxygen deprivation because of hypothermia. If you wanted to give cryonics the absolute best chance at working, then you would probably want to arrange to make sure that when you are pronounced legally dead you are in the presence of the best cryonics technicians and that procedures are begun immediately. (In fact, you might even want to get the law changed so that procedures can begin before you are "pronounced dead.") Keeling over of a heart attack in the woods somewhere and not being found for hours is not a good way to maximize the chances of cryonics working.

As for the charge of "false medical terminology," that is very much in the eye of the beholder. The medical establishment and the government have pretty definite ideas about what is and is not a "doctor" and a "surgeon" and what is and is not "medicine," but many of them also have definite ideas which would conflict with them accepting the idea of cryonics. If you are cutting on a body, you are in a sense a surgeon. You may be a good one or a bad one, but in the field of cryonics I find it unlikely that people who begin with the assumption that cryonics can never work will be qualified to say what the standard of "good" cryonic medical care is. Cryonics is for people who want to take some responsibility for their lives. A lot of responsibility for their lives. Instead of relying on other people to tell you who is good at it or not and whether it will work or not and whether the people who do it are "real" doctors or not, cryonics is for people who are willing to do that research themselves. I highly encourage you to read the history of cryonics and see what has changed, paying close attention to the different people who have been involved, what they have done, what standards they held to, and what their recommendations were (and why) and whether or not those recommendations are being followed.

As for Donaldson who wrote the essay I linked to, he quit breathing in 2006 and appears to have arranged a very smooth cryopreservation, being very close to the facility at the time. I hope he is one day revived. Alcor's case study of patient A-1097 is thought by some to be about him: http://www.alcor.org...ryonics0602.pdf

Edited by Fundie, 01 November 2010 - 08:24 PM.

[bgwowk]

I have been reading this blog. I am not sure who writes it, but the blog got me worried, because it does have some points that seem sound. Alcor for example on their website speak of surgeons, but they dont seem to have actual medical professionals working for them. Added to the fact that their websites apparently use false medical terminology is not very convincing. I thought someone might be intersted in reading the blog and addresing something of it.

It is odd that someone would assert that Alcor uses no medical professionals when a simple visit to the Alcor website shows otherwise. Alcor has employed professional paramedics for almost a decade. Alcor has also used medical surgeons, research surgeons, and veterinary surgeons in its operating room for 30 years going back to the days of Jerry Leaf. Jerry Leaf taught thoracic surgery in large animal models in Gerald Buckberg's lab at UCLA, and subsequently trained dialysis technician, Mike Darwin, and Steve Harris, MD, to do surgery in cryonics. Working without Leaf, Darwin and Harris recovered dozens of large animals from cariopulmonary bypass in their cerebral ischemia research in the 1990s. Anyone who knows something about bypass will tell that not just anybody can do that.

Chronologically, surgery at Alcor was done in 1980s and early 1990s by Jerry Leaf and sometimes a contract veterinary surgeon from Northern California, and in the mid-1990s to present by a veterinary surgeon and human neurosurgeon from the Phoenix area. Credentialed nurses have also assisted the surgeons on some cases.

Alcor has expressed a preference for medical professionals (Paramedic, CCP, RN, NP, PA, or EMT-B) in its job ads for years. There is a sincere interest at Alcor, and I believe in cryonics generally (with the exception of a few vocal individuals) to have even more medical professionals involved in cryonics. For example, recently Suspended Animation, SA, has made efforts to contract with professional surgeons and clinical perfusionists to be present for field procedures, despite the great expense and logistical difficulties of doing so.

Some critics have written that there is plenty of money in cryonics with which to hire even more medical professionals. Unfortunately this is not supportable by any objective quantitative analysis of Alcor finances. While five and six-figure cryopreservation funding minimums appear to be large numbers, these funds are consumed by existing up-front costs and Patient Care Trust allocations required to fund long-term care. The problem is compounded by minimums being based on present costs, but cryopreservation not actually occurring until decades after members make arrangements. Whether present funding levels are even adequate to cover present service levels is seriously questioned in this recent analysis:

http://www.alcor.org...corFinances.pdf

Alcor's present utilization of medical professionals and trained lay people in cryonics is described here:

http://www.alcor.org...fessionals.html

There are some people within Alcor advocating even more utitilization of medical professionals, and charging the extra money required to support it. Escalations of membership dues by hundreds of percent have been proposed. This is counterbalanced by others who feel obligated to keep Alcor membership affordable for all the middle-class people who have already arranged for it.

Doing the procedures required by cryonics in the best way possible within the constraints of the limited resources most people are willing/able to set aside for something as speculative as cryonics has always been a difficult problem. Contrary to assertions of some, there is no conspiracy of mediocrity. There are only hard choices at every step of the way.

Edited by bgwowk, 01 November 2010 - 09:34 PM.

[bgwowk]

I have been intersted in cryonics for some time, but I am not entirely convinced. People here seem to be very convinced that it will work, but it seems bit wishful thinking to me. While I certainly get the idea that the structures of the brain probably dont get destroid instantly, it still bit of strech to think your brain is intact after hours of decay. I know neurons can live up to hours, but the connections are what matters and the fact that you can get brain damage after a very short of lack of oxygen does not paint a good image. While I dont know too much about the details of the actual vitrification process, I imagine it is not very precise and could be quite damaging on itself.

Cryonics is two separate ideas that unfortunately have the same name. The first idea is that you may be able to take someone at the moment of clinical death and cryopreserve them with the best available technology in a manner that may be reversible in the far future. Whatever happens hours after death is irrelevant to that application and conception of cryonics.

The second idea called "cryonics" is that even if a patient has been suffering whole body ischemia (no blood circulation) for hours or longer, it is morally and medically wrong to assign the label "dead" and dispose of them. As Fundie explained in his reply, ischemic injury should be regarded as a pathology that requires treatment. The patient should be given the benefit of the doubt.

It is possible to believe the first conception of cryonics could work without subscribing to the second. However they are related in that both assume that conditions not reversible today (cryopreservation in one case, and ischemic injury and cryopreservation in the other) may be reversible in the future.

Scientifically, there are plenty of data showing persistence of brain structure hours after blood circulation stops. Here's a paper that shows some persistence of brain structure even after 24 hours of ischemia at normal body temperature.

http://stroke.ahajou...t/full/33/3/816

The poor clinical outcome in people resuscitated after several minutes of ischemia in medicine today is unrelated to any loss of brain structure during that brief time period. It's due to biochemical changes induced by ischemia that without intervention prime the brain to self-destruct when warm blood flow is restored. Medicine is already making inroads into stopping that process by treating with post-resuscitation hypothermia, doubling the length of time the heart can stop with later recovery and no brain injury. This is possible because there is nothing structurally terrible happening to the brain during short to moderate periods of ischemia. The brain just needs to be "rebooted" correctly to prevent the self-destruction program from engaging.

[RighteousReason]

Is cryonics quackery?

No.

/thread

[GabrielPaparella]

Whether it will ever work is an open question, but I also think there are ethical considerations to cryonics as it is actually conducted that are troubling.

I go into these at length on my blog. As has been said in this thread, to maximize the likelihood of eventual revival, we might want to push for the law to be changed so your biological functions known as life are ended before you are declared legally dead. Indeed. I suppose that was what Saul Kent was thinking when he sent two employees to bring his senile mother to an Alcor facility against her will, "deanimated" her on a day that her resting home had observed her to be unusually well, froze her and cut off her head.

From Saul's perspective, I'm sure this was completely above board. To him, the identity is patterns in the brain, and Alzheimer's was erasing his mother. She had to be deanimated while some of her identity yet remained. To those of us outside of Dr. Frankenstein's lab of horror, what he did is called murder.

You don't stick the terminally ill against their will in a teleporter that might disintegrate them or might transport them to a distant land of unicorns because hey, terminally ill, worth the chance. First you have to know where the teleporter sends them to. It's the same thing for a time teleporter like cryonics. The blinders futurists suffer from is in seeing the future as better because of current trends. For comparison, consider a sect of people who believe that distant places are inherently better. Say, the upwards direction is more heavenly. They might consider teleporting in the blind probable to be an improvement, a chance worth taking when other options are exhausted. We would see it as a burial custom of a people who don't wait for the deceased to be deceased.

Now once you're dead, a burial option that contains hope of revival is an individual's prerogative. But... fun fact, did you know many Christians choose embalming because of a Biblical verse about them being restored to life in their bodies in a Revelations scenario? But as undertakers know, they aren't leaving the body intact and spraying on some sort of chemical sealant or something, they are sucking all the organs out with a hose, and pumping in cooled formaldehyde. That would be quite a rude awakening. Those undertakers are taking advantage of the naive public's hope of reanimation and just doing their business in the way that is most convenient for them. My concern with cryonics outfits is that they by and large do this same thing. They don't really align their practices with being actually able to revive these people.

Edited by GabrielPaparella, 03 December 2010 - 05:46 PM.

[Luke Parrish]

I suppose that was what Saul Kent was thinking when he sent two employees to bring his senile mother to an Alcor facility against her will, "deanimated" her on a day that her resting home had observed her to be unusually well, froze her and cut off her head.

"Deanimated her"? If you only have claims and not proof, you shouldn't be stating this in certain terms like this. My impression of Kunzeman's book from the parts I read was that his thinking on the matter was mostly motivated cognition -- he painted the picture he wanted to believe and interpreted everything in a way that fit that image.

They don't really align their practices with being actually able to revive these people.

I don't get what you mean by this. "Being able to revive these people" is not possible in today's age. Current cryonics practices try to maximize the chance that future technology can revive them. There's nothing more that can be done.

Sure you could increase the chance by more by "deanimating" people before they are clinically dead (which is certainly not murder if euthanasia is not murder) but this would expose the organization to risks that could endanger other patients. People who think of cryonics as "Frankenstien's lab of horror" are the biggest reason for this, in fact.

[GabrielPaparella]

If we had a matter teleporter that either went to another inhabited world with far superior medicine or the vacuum of space, with the odds subject to debate, this would be acceptable as a burial option for people who just died, and would have to be considered a form of euthanasia for everybody else and treated as such. We could not justify using this device on people who were not ethically candidates for euthanasia, and certainly not anyone who would prefer whatever small amount of life remained here than go through the machine.

It should be the same for cryonics, but I don't think everyone in cryonics sees things that way.

If a religious sect embalmed their terminally ill hours or even moments before they would eventually die because they believed this would allow them to rise again to life in the apocalypse, I would describe their parlor as a Frankenstein's lab of horror as well, and likely other unkind words as well. We can not let speculations trump life.

And as for my contention that Saul Kent "deanimated" his mother, you are right, he and O.J. might not have done it, except everybody knows they did. His mother told the staff she was only going with the two Alcor orderlies if they would take her to Saul's house to live there. They lied and said they would, and she supposedly died of natural causes hours later, fortuitously timed to coincide with her abduction to of all places a cryogenic facility, on a day when she was doing better than usual. Right. Yeah, I only have claims and not proof, and I'll state it exactly as I have done. The evidence says Saul Kent killed his mother.

Now when I say that these outfits aren't aligning their practices with being able to revive their customers, I mean that they are performing sub-optimal perfusions. Rarely are they hiring Certified Clinical Perfusionists. I've read their accounts of their support teams being in a funeral home struggling for over an hour to find the femoral artery to perform a perfusion, when CCP's in life-saving situations do this kind of thing in minutes, doing a coronary artery perfusion, a superior location to perfuse but requiring more skill and time. Ridiculous, little more than medical theater.

This doesn't mean I think nobody should be allowed to pay to get preserved with one of these companies as their option for what to do with their remains at time of death. Absolutely people should have the right to decide what is done with their bodies, especially if it offers some small hope of life. I just don't think it's right that these companies are unregulated, and allowed to take a lot of money and provide crummy service, with zero guarantees, and own the remains as if it is donated medical tissue. And I disagree with the equivocation about the value of a person's life now when there is no guarantee that they could even eventually be revived, when such equivocation happens.

[Luke Parrish]

If we had a matter teleporter that either went to another inhabited world with far superior medicine or the vacuum of space, with the odds subject to debate, this would be acceptable as a burial option for people who just died, and would have to be considered a form of euthanasia for everybody else and treated as such. We could not justify using this device on people who were not ethically candidates for euthanasia, and certainly not anyone who would prefer whatever small amount of life remained here than go through the machine.

It should be the same for cryonics, but I don't think everyone in cryonics sees things that way.

If a religious sect embalmed their terminally ill hours or even moments before they would eventually die because they believed this would allow them to rise again to life in the apocalypse, I would describe their parlor as a Frankenstein's lab of horror as well, and likely other unkind words as well. We can not let speculations trump life.

And as for my contention that Saul Kent "deanimated" his mother, you are right, he and O.J. might not have done it, except everybody knows they did. His mother told the staff she was only going with the two Alcor orderlies if they would take her to Saul's house to live there. They lied and said they would, and she supposedly died of natural causes hours later, fortuitously timed to coincide with her abduction to of all places a cryogenic facility, on a day when she was doing better than usual. Right. Yeah, I only have claims and not proof, and I'll state it exactly as I have done. The evidence says Saul Kent killed his mother.

Now when I say that these outfits aren't aligning their practices with being able to revive their customers, I mean that they are performing sub-optimal perfusions. Rarely are they hiring Certified Clinical Perfusionists. I've read their accounts of their support teams being in a funeral home struggling for over an hour to find the femoral artery to perform a perfusion, when CCP's in life-saving situations do this kind of thing in minutes, doing a coronary artery perfusion, a superior location to perfuse but requiring more skill and time. Ridiculous, little more than medical theater.

This doesn't mean I think nobody should be allowed to pay to get preserved with one of these companies as their option for what to do with their remains at time of death. Absolutely people should have the right to decide what is done with their bodies, especially if it offers some small hope of life. I just don't think it's right that these companies are unregulated, and allowed to take a lot of money and provide crummy service, with zero guarantees, and own the remains as if it is donated medical tissue. And I disagree with the equivocation about the value of a person's life now when there is no guarantee that they could even eventually be revived, when such equivocation happens.

It would be nice if you stuck to one point at a time. Jumping from the drama of whether or not Saul Kent actually did (nominally) euthanize his mother to whether it is right or wrong to (nominally) euthanize someone to save their life, to whether it is fair to call someone a murderer for euthanizing someone they love who is in pain and approaching the end of their days -- is rather disorienting. These are all separate issues.

On top of that you imply that CCP's can perform perfusions all the time in remote conditions such as a funeral home without any flaws comparable to those seen in a particular case you read about. But you don't refer to any studies of CCP's doing such things under such conditions. Can you back that claim up with some kind of data? Are you a CCP perhaps?

[GabrielPaparella]

Yes, I make several points. I'm sorry if my narrative reads as jumping around too much.

No, I don't have studies to cite on how long a CCP should take to do a femoral perfusion. I could go looking for them, but common sense should put some bounds on how long the procedure could take in, say, a person getting a heart transplant. Could the perfusionist take an hour? No.

Here is the case report for the cryopreservation of Curtis Henderson by Suspended Animation. Regarding the quality of the perfusion performed:

Curtis Henderson was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest at the hospital at 4:17am. The ready team arrived at the funeral home at 6:35am, with their vehicle and necessary equipment. Guess when they finished with cannulation and moved on to wash-out and perfusion? 12:11pm. Why? Because they had no clue what they were doing. Read it for yourselves.

[suspire]

I have been intersted in cryonics for some time, but I am not entirely convinced. People here seem to be very convinced that it will work, but it seems bit wishful thinking to me. While I certainly get the idea that the structures of the brain probably dont get destroid instantly, it still bit of strech to think your brain is intact after hours of decay. I know neurons can live up to hours, but the connections are what matters and the fact that you can get brain damage after a very short of lack of oxygen does not paint a good image. While I dont know too much about the details of the actual vitrification process, I imagine it is not very precise and could be quite damaging on itself.

I have been reading this blog. I am not sure who writes it, but the blog got me worried, because it does have some points that seem sound. Alcor for example on their website speak of surgeons, but they dont seem to have actual medical professionals working for them. Added to the fact that their websites apparently use false medical terminology is not very convincing. I thought someone might be intersted in reading the blog and addresing something of it.

Cover your back before you get stabbed for heresy on this forum. Any talk of cryonics being "wishful thinking", much less "quackery" results in a near fundamentalist level of backlash, especially if they have a vested stake or it pertains to their own pet projects. Real science often gets glossed over as "boring", while the fixation on science-fiction level flashy conjectures is lauded and praised. I do like these forums in general, for a lot of science-minded individuals gravitate towards them and at times discuss real topics that have genuine potential, but you need to separate the wheat from the chaff. A measured, reasonable approach mixed with a healthy dose of skepticism for anything anyone is selling or preaching will increase your mileage here.


And no, if it wasn't obvious, I don't think it will work. There is a lot of hand-waving that goes on about how all these bodies in the freezer will be restored via "future science" that is reminiscent of fundamentalists talking about God bringing back the worthy, but I find the science uncompelling. That doesn't even take into account matters of financial or socio-cultural considerations that would come into play in some far off scenario and society. Or whether anything resembling your own personality would return with the body that is hypothetically restored. There are better ways to spend your energy, time and money in the pursuit of an extended life-span.

[Luke Parrish]

No, I don't have studies to cite on how long a CCP should take to do a femoral perfusion. I could go looking for them, but common sense should put some bounds on how long the procedure could take in, say, a person getting a heart transplant. Could the perfusionist take an hour? No.

Here is the case report for the cryopreservation of Curtis Henderson by Suspended Animation. Regarding the quality of the perfusion performed:

Curtis Henderson was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest at the hospital at 4:17am. The ready team arrived at the funeral home at 6:35am, with their vehicle and necessary equipment. Guess when they finished with cannulation and moved on to wash-out and perfusion? 12:11pm. Why? Because they had no clue what they were doing. Read it for yourselves.

First off, let's be clear that the allegations about Curtis Henderson (deployment of of insufficiently trained staff) have nothing to do with the allegations about Dora Kent (nominal euthanasia).

Secondly, the Henderson case had multiple things go wrong simultaneously which were not easily predictable. If you look at them now it might seem that they were obvious, but this is hindsight bias. You would need a much larger sample size and a control group to definitively diagnose this as incompetence. Common sense is frequently misleading.

Cover your back before you get stabbed for heresy on this forum. Any talk of cryonics being "wishful thinking", much less "quackery" results in a near fundamentalist level of backlash, especially if they have a vested stake or it pertains to their own pet projects.

Derogatory labels aren't helpful. If you have a criticism, you should be able to phrase it politely.

Real science often gets glossed over as "boring", while the fixation on science-fiction level flashy conjectures is lauded and praised.

Could you please reference actual examples of this happening instead of making vague (and insulting) generalizations?

And no, if it wasn't obvious, I don't think it will work. There is a lot of hand-waving that goes on about how all these bodies in the freezer will be restored via "future science" that is reminiscent of fundamentalists talking about God bringing back the worthy, but I find the science uncompelling.

What exactly do you find "uncompelling"? What is your estimate of the probability of it working? What factors influence the probability negatively in your opinion?

[enoonsti]

And as for my contention that Saul Kent "deanimated" his mother, you are right, he and O.J. might not have done it, except everybody knows they did.

Strike two. Normally for strike two, I tell the person to "kindly fuck off" because I know the conversation will go nowhere. Yet I will make an exception with you, and I encourage you not to go to strike three. Instead, approach cryonics from an angle of: "Hey, is there a way I can help?" Of course, if you decide to take the apocalyptic route, I should let you know that I've read more than Mothermelters. I also read Frozen, and here is my favorite excerpt from page 325: "In his diaries, Mike Perry described media preparation meetings. Alcor officers sat behind closed doors and practiced answering any questions that could be posed by the public or by police. Kunzman called it 'Hitleresque.' Indeed."


Alcor prep meetings = the Holocaust. Indeed.

There are better ways to spend your energy, time and money in the pursuit of an extended life-span.

I always find this perspective amusing. I get this vision in my head that the person saying it will be gunned down on a street corner the next day, with his final moments of consciousness consisting of furiously popping in vitamin pills to help make the bullet wounds go away.

[suspire]

[quote name='Luke Parrish' timestamp='1291425140' post='443206']
[quote name='GabrielPaparella' timestamp='1291415487' post='443187']
No, I don't have studies to cite on how long a CCP should take to do a femoral perfusion. I could go looking for them, but common sense should put some bounds on how long the procedure could take in, say, a person getting a heart transplant. Could the perfusionist take an hour? No.

Here is the case report for the cryopreservation of Curtis Henderson by Suspended Animation. Regarding the quality of the perfusion performed:

Curtis Henderson was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest at the hospital at 4:17am. The ready team arrived at the funeral home at 6:35am, with their vehicle and necessary equipment. Guess when they finished with cannulation and moved on to wash-out and perfusion? 12:11pm. Why? Because they had no clue what they were doing. Read it for yourselves.
[/quote]

First off, let's be clear that the allegations about Curtis Henderson (deployment of of insufficiently trained staff) have nothing to do with the allegations about Dora Kent (nominal euthanasia).

Secondly, the Henderson case had multiple things go wrong simultaneously which were not easily predictable. If you look at them now it might seem that they were obvious, but this is hindsight bias. You would need a much larger sample size and a control group to definitively diagnose this as incompetence. Common sense is frequently misleading.


[quote name='suspire' timestamp='1291417660' post='443193']
Cover your back before you get stabbed for heresy on this forum. Any talk of cryonics being "wishful thinking", much less "quackery" results in a near fundamentalist level of backlash, especially if they have a vested stake or it pertains to their own pet projects.[/quote]

Derogatory labels aren't helpful. If you have a criticism, you should be able to phrase it politely.

[quote]Real science often gets glossed over as "boring", while the fixation on science-fiction level flashy conjectures is lauded and praised.[/quote]

Could you please reference actual examples of this happening instead of making vague (and insulting) generalizations?

[quote]And no, if it wasn't obvious, I don't think it will work. There is a lot of hand-waving that goes on about how all these bodies in the freezer will be restored via "future science" that is reminiscent of fundamentalists talking about God bringing back the worthy, but I find the science uncompelling. [/quote]

What exactly do you find "uncompelling"? What is your estimate of the probability of it working? What factors influence the probability negatively in your opinion?
[/quote]

I've argued over this topic before in years past on here and elsewhere. I've come to realize that it is pointless; arguing with supporters of cryonics is like arguing with religious fundamentalists. Absolutely nothing will change their mind, because they will always say "you never know". In fact, it seems to be part of the Alcor credo--to make peace with the unknown. It reminds me of what the religious crowd says, "You just need to have faith." I think rehashing my arguments again would be a waste of time, but I couldn't help myself when I first made my remarks; cryonics is such a sacred cow on the forums that it elicited a knee-jerk comment.

[suspire]

There are better ways to spend your energy, time and money in the pursuit of an extended life-span.

I always find this perspective amusing. I get this vision in my head that the person saying it will be gunned down on a street corner the next day, with his final moments of consciousness consisting of furiously popping in vitamin pills to help make the bullet wounds go away.

I am not sure when I advocated "popping vitamin pills to make bullets go away". Do you really think it is...vitamins versus cryonics in the life-extension discussion? Wow, talk about limited perspective. Then again, cryonics groupies do tend to have tunnel vision.

Still, I always get a good laugh when I think of cryonic groupies giving away thousands of dollars to be stocked away in the frozen food section. Hey, at least they'll eventually end up as the feature attraction in a Happy Meal! Do you think they come with toys?

P.S.: And while we're having a good laugh, if you think someone gunned down on the street is going to get anywhere near those overpriced Sub-Zero freezers anytime in the near future after being murdered, think again. By the time the police and coroner release said body, they wouldn't even make for good ground beef.

Edited by suspire, 04 December 2010 - 02:56 AM.

[suspire]

However, while I am not interested in rehashing all the old arguments, I do enjoy RationalWiki's write up on cryonics. Much better than Wikipedia's, which feels like it was written by a mixed team of Alcor, CI, and other related orgs and supporters.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cryonics

[Luke Parrish]

I've argued over this topic before in years past on here and elsewhere. I've come to realize that it is pointless; arguing with supporters of cryonics is like arguing with religious fundamentalists. Absolutely nothing will change their mind, because they will always say "you never know". In fact, it seems to be part of the Alcor credo--to make peace with the unknown. It reminds me of what the religious crowd says, "You just need to have faith." I think rehashing my arguments again would be a waste of time, but I couldn't help myself when I first made my remarks; cryonics is such a sacred cow on the forums that it elicited a knee-jerk comment.

Please provide links. Denigration of a topic in a forum where others actually come to discuss it is not helpful. It could be that you got a mistaken impression of what someone was trying to explain to you, or they could have genuinely been in the wrong for all I know. My experience has been that people who attack cryonics are usually far more certain that it won't work than cryonicists are that it will work.

However, while I am not interested in rehashing all the old arguments, I do enjoy RationalWiki's write up on cryonics. Much better than Wikipedia's, which feels like it was written by a mixed team of Alcor, CI, and other related orgs and supporters.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cryonics

Huh. According to David Gerard, "RationalWiki is a silly wiki of no import in the wider world. It doesn't pretend otherwise. It's mostly read by its writers."

[suspire]

Huh. According to David Gerard, "RationalWiki is a silly wiki of no import in the wider world. It doesn't pretend otherwise. It's mostly read by its writers."

Huh. The way you've combated RationalWiki's criticisms of the massive, glaring problem of cryonics is to take a single sentence of David Gerard's out of context and seem to miss the fact that he's saying it, at least partially, tongue-in-cheek. In fact, if you read RationalWiki, parts of it are certainly interspersed with humor and tongue-in-cheek remarks. You could call it a little Twainism, for behind the humor are biting truths. Information is information. Valid criticisms are valid criticisms. Any misdirection on your part does not make it less so.

If anything RationalWiki is too kind to cryonics. They seem to think most individuals involved in cryonics are honest and straight-forward and don't have ulterior motives or that fraud or manipulation of customers may be part of the equation. Or that it is unlikely that there are incompetents in the field (ie the Alcor incidents). I am more skeptical of those involved in cryonics, especially when money and paychecks are involved. Greed and abuse of trust has always been a fundamental cornerstone of human nature, as is laziness and incompetence. Anyone preaching that those involved in the cryonics industry are above this--that we've found a Utopia on Earth in these people--needs their heads checked.

[Luke Parrish]

Huh. According to David Gerard, "RationalWiki is a silly wiki of no import in the wider world. It doesn't pretend otherwise. It's mostly read by its writers."

Huh. The way you've combated RationalWiki's criticisms of the massive, glaring problem of cryonics is to take a single sentence of David Gerard's out of context and seem to miss the fact that he's saying it, at least partially, tongue-in-cheek. In fact, if you read RationalWiki, parts of it are certainly interspersed with humor and tongue-in-cheek remarks. You could call it a little Twainism, for behind the humor are biting truths. Information is information. Valid criticisms are valid criticisms. Any misdirection on your part does not make it less so.

No, RationalWiki really does not care enough about being objective to be taken seriously. David was being totally honest in that comment as far as I can tell. Furthermore, in its present form, the article contains numerous errors and distortions. It's probably the best existing criticism of cryonics, but that's a testament to how poor the criticisms are.

Sample error:

A rabbit kidney (cryobiologists like rabbit kidneys, and experiment on them a lot) was frozen to -135°C and retransplanted, and supported life.^[56] Best^[3] claims it "functioned well enough as the sole kidney to keep the rabbit alive indefinitely," but the original paper does not go that far. The 2009 paper does show that the vitrified rabbit kidney when rewarmed was able to function as the sole functioning kidney — but only for a few days, not "indefinitely". Best has since admitted that this was an erroneous interpretation on his part, but maintains that the study nonetheless has significance in demonstrating continued functionality in complex organs.^[57]

This error has been there since February. Dr. Wowk posted a refutation in March. Nobody has yet bothered to fix it.

If anything RationalWiki is too kind to cryonics. They seem to think most individuals involved in cryonics are honest and straight-forward and don't have ulterior motives or that fraud or manipulation of customers may be part of the equation. Or that it is unlikely that there are incompetents in the field (ie the Alcor incidents). I am more skeptical of those involved in cryonics, especially when money and paychecks are involved. Greed and abuse of trust has always been a fundamental cornerstone of human nature, as is laziness and incompetence. Anyone preaching that those involved in the cryonics industry are above this--that we've found a Utopia on Earth in these people--needs their heads checked.

You aren't taking into account the fact that those running cryonics organizations have far more to lose by betraying the trust of their clients than they have to gain.

[enoonsti]

I... tend to have tunnel vision.

Wow, talk about limited perspective. Life extension simply means that you deal with (insert something bad, such as the Chilean mine that has collapsed upon you, AIDS, "old age," vitrification damage, large asteroids, global warming, nuclear weapons, rogue nanobots/aerovores, heat death of the universe, stuff like that.... no big deal). If Kurzweil fans get shot today, then they are going to find out that "the singularity" was much nearer than they realized. Of course, that brings me to your currently valid point:

By the time the police and coroner release said body, they wouldn't even make for good ground beef.

This is not an intrinsic problem of cryonics, but something produced by a thoroughly mechanical society. Your stance is: "Look at those people using coat hangers! Ha ha. I guess this means abortions are nonsense."

(And no, I am not comparing cryonics to abortions, just like I was not saying that you advocate vitamin trafficking and getting all busted up like the pic below.)

Hey, at least they'll eventually end up as the feature attraction in a Happy Meal! Do you think they come with toys?

For whatever it's worth, I actually discussed this in another thread.

[Shannon Vyff]

I've said before that I don't believe in cryonics. I think it is much more likely to not work, than to work. I do think it is a good idea, and I have hope that it would work. It makes sense to me to support the field. Currently cryonics is a small field, with only about 2000 people signed up to be cryonically preserved. There are all sorts of people who are signed up and even more who are supportive of the right to be cryonically preserved. When you are a cryonicist you are donating your body to science, just as if you were donating your body to medical students or a body farm. Decades from now, or centuries from now things could be learned about the cryonically preserved bodies from now, even if the people frozen never have consciousness again. Some of the people who are criticizing the field of cryonics are sincere in their attempts to better the field, some seem to like to make things up for sensationalist purposes. It is all interesting to watch, there are cryonicists who don't follow what is going on within the organizations, there are those who do and who get involved in leadership or volunteering--they will continue to be committed to the cause of giving people the right to be cryonically preserved regardless. So in summary to the thread title: I do not think cryonics is quackery--the bodies are preserved, but at the same time it is a small field that has a lot of costs involved to keep it going and there are not that many people who sign up (even at CI's highly affordable rates). I attribute this to people's lack of end-of-life planning in general, or their not really caring what happens to their body after they die, because they are dead. I like that I'm donating my body to science in some capacity, and I hope that it helps in some small way. I appreciate the ongoing conversations about how to better the field, but do find it difficult at times to distinguish between who is in a verbal war with whom, which things are real problems and to find the important things that need to be focused on in the vast amounts of one-sided negative things being said. It is funny to me that those who say ImmInst posting, or posting by cryonicists will be fundamentalist in nature, because I see the other side being just as convinced that cryonics is quackery. I like to look for the middle ground, where the two opposing sides can find things they agree on--but I know it will be an ongoing argument.

[bgwowk]

Now when I say that these outfits aren't aligning their practices with being able to revive their customers, I mean that they are performing sub-optimal perfusions. Rarely are they hiring Certified Clinical Perfusionists. I've read their accounts of their support teams being in a funeral home struggling for over an hour to find the femoral artery to perform a perfusion, when CCP's in life-saving situations do this kind of thing in minutes, doing a coronary artery perfusion, a superior location to perfuse but requiring more skill and time. Ridiculous, little more than medical theater.

This is absolute nonsense. There no fewer than four falsehoods in that paragraph.

1) CCPs don't perform femoral cannulations. They have no surgical skills at all. They run the machines used to perform clinical perfusions. Surgeons do vascular access and cannulation.

2) Cardiopulmonary bypass is very rarely used in time-sensitive situations in clinical medicine. When it is used to treat cardiac arrest, the vascular access route used is femoral, just like field cryonics. Surgeons of other specialists who can do percutaneous femoral cannulation fast enough to save the life of someone in cardiac arrest are rare, and virtually unavailable for something like cryonics. Hiring such a surgeon full-time would cost more than anyone in cryonics could pay, and they would quickly lose their skills from lack of practice because cryonics cases are so infrequent. The best bet is to try and hire surgeons on contract, train other specialists to do the surgery, or use morticians if they are the only help available, all of which cryonics does.

3) Most cannulations done in clinical medicine are not time-sensitive. They are done as part of elective surgeries on patients WHOSE HEARTS ARE BEATING during vascular access surgery and cannulation, and for whom there is therefore no time urgency, certainly not the urgency of someone in cardiac arrest.

4) In the operating room at Alcor, Alcor does use the thoracic route and cannulates the aorta and right heart. As previously explained, these techniques were developed at Alcor by a researcher from a major university cardiothoracic research lab, and who used to himself teach cardiothoracic surgeons. That very same person, Jerry Leaf, did the surgery on the Dora Kent case that you wrote about. (Incidentally, there is difference between saying you think somebody committed a crime vs. saying that they actually committed a crime. Look up "defamation per se".)

In response to the narrative of alleged under-utilization of medical professionals in cryonics, I recently wrote the following elsewhere.

Except for the very small number of people who choose to sign up for it, practically no one values or cares about cryonics. No one takes the time to learn its premises, its history, the technologies it's predicated upon, or what technical elements will ultimately determine its success or failure. There are no schools or generally-recognized standards. No one cares. This includes mainstream medicine and mortuary science.

Against this backdrop, it's not credible that there is a conspiracy among cryonics companies-- companies run by people who want cryonics for themselves --to suppress a tide of experts who could easily step in and do cryonics better. There is no corps of knowledgeable physicians or morticians ready and able to deliver cryonics services that is being displaced by incompetent lay people.

So what do cryonics organizations do? They train lay people and Emergency Medical Technicians to do tasks suited to those levels of expertise. They use morticians to help with some aspects of cases, including vascular cannulation. They contract with sympathetic medical professionals who help with expertise-intensive aspects of cryonics cases when they can, ideally multiple professionals for redundancy. They hire full-time medical professionals for certain roles when they can afford to do so, and when candidates can be found. Or they allow their members to contract with companies, like SA, who do the above.

This mixture of people is then cast into world where they must perform these unscheduled procedures at short notice anywhere within the country, and sometimes beyond. Where they must lug hundreds of pounds of equipment and perfusate to do it. Where sometimes they have to wait weeks at bedside, only for the patient to recover. And where there is no mainstream infrastructure, support, or understanding of what they do. And, recently, where they are bitterly criticized when cryonics cases fail to meet the same standards as scheduled mainstream medical procedures with entire hospitals, universities, and industries that support them.

There are no mainstream medical teams waiting in the wings to do cryonics procedures to some higher standard. There is no mainstream medical procedure or infrastructure for vascular cannulation of human remains undergoing mechanical CPR while immersed in a ice bath, and who've been dehydrated by the process of dying. Cryonics organizations have had to invent such procedures and find and train people willing to do them because no one else was.

Cryonics patients are people who, by definition, have been consigned to *destruction* by mainstream medicine. They are people who have been "prescribed" burial or cremation, and for whom the very idea of vascular cannulation surgery is greeted with a smirk by mainstream medicine. That cryonicists manage to do what they already do in face of such hostility, indifference, and resulting logistical obstacles is remarkable.

Edited by bgwowk, 05 December 2010 - 05:11 PM.

[Shannon Vyff]

We are fortunate to have an integral figure within the cryonics field taking his time here to post as an advisor. Thank you, Dr. Wowk for your detailed, precise and highly astute insights into the current state of cryonics. It is important that the various accusations of quackery are not only countered where necessary, but also understood as to how they arise in the fist place.

[GabrielPaparella]

If anyone still cares to revive this topic, I have found Dr. Wowk and suspire's arguments compelling, and my antipathy for cryonics has cooled. Enough so that I regret having my name up next to previous comments, opinions on matters of fact that I should have looked far more deeply into before allowing them to crystallize.

This could explain the chilly reception I got from a few people at the Open Science Summit this fall.

[Shannon Vyff]

Thank you though for sussing out your thoughts, the more conversing on this topic the better in my opinion. Cryonics is still a very small field and while growing slowly, really needs more of its members to take interest in supporting research. I'm happy that the current vote on funding research at ImmInst is to help with cryonics research: http://www.longecity...iser-selection/

We support various life extension topics ways to effect current aging to more out there end of life options, and try to focus on those that would have a hard time getting traditional funding.

[Mind]

Is cryonics quackery?

No.

Is it an extremely difficult scientific endeavor which is only at the very beginning?

Yes.

For people who think it is a cult of quackery or whatever, you should visit the cryonics facilities in the U.S. They give regular tours. If you aren't willing to go see for yourself (and confirm that these facilities are full to the brim with freaks, wackos, cultists, or whatever derogatory ad hominem term you come up with this week), then your comments fall on my deaf ears.

[AgeVivo]

As indicated by Shannon, LongeCity is currently organizing a vote to fund cryonics research: http://www.longecity...__fromsearch__1
(to vote you need to become a member) 2 projects have been preselected, both to improve current techniques:

• one by tuning current techniques once a person is officially dead. Here that's where some may think that this is useless ("quackery" is different...) depending on whether you think the person as a chance or not to survive/be revived one day (recovery after initial reason for death, plus body and brain decomposition, injection of highly toxic compounds, structures disrupture during cooling and unthawing, body maintained in the very cold for hopefully sufficiently long!)
• one by trying to understand and reduce the toxicity of antifreeze compounds. This can increase the chance to be revived one day, but it could also eventually lead to injecting such compounds while alive, in case of severe health condition that requires a lot of time to find the adequate cure for example: if we were to reach that point, "reversible cryonics" would become routine, and I don't think anyone could think it is useless.

So right *now* this is a little like hoping or dreaming, but all your current environment (internet, freezer, good food, etc), health and life expectancy wouldn't be there if people before you had not thought for a better future and worked hard towards it. That's just the same now with cryonics.

Edited by AgeVivo, 17 December 2011 - 08:24 PM.