58 replies to this topic

[jake332007]

Hi members. I was wondering if anyone knew about chemopreservation (as a theoretical way of preservation) and if any scientists and/or morticians were knowledgeable about it? Thanks for any information.

[bgwowk]

What do you want to know?

[jake332007]

Any history of it's use, potential as alterntaive to cryonic suspension, ect.You can also pm me. Thanks Brian.

[bgwowk]

jake,

This FAQ item has a link with lots more information on chemical fixation

http://www.alcor.org...ryopreservation

treonsverdery,

You are apparently not aware that there are many life forms that do survive complete dehydration and storage for apparently indefinite periods of time at ambient temperatures. The tardigrade is the most famous example. It also survives liquid nitrogen storage, as would be expected for an animal that is dehydrated. There are insects that survive in liquid nitrogen also. There are innumerable viruses and bacteria that survive dry conditions and/or direct immersion in liquid nitrogen even without dehydration. The ability of tissue samples stored in poorly-sealed containers to exchange infectious pathogens with each other while under liquid nitrogen is a well-known hazard of liquid nitrogen storage. You can learn more about natural freeze tolerance and the current state of modern cryobiology in this article

http://www.21cm.com/...ryobiology.html

Perfluorcarbons are not useful in cryobiology except as a heat exchange fluid (and oxygen-carrying emulsion). This is because perfluorocarbons are both hydrophobic and lipophobic, so they can't substitute for any solvents in living things. Adding a polar group to perfluorocarbons doesn't help much because hydroxylated fluorocarbons are toxic acids.

You are closest to being on to something when you suggest replacing water with enough *polar* molecules to prevent freezing. That is the approach created by Greg Fahy 25 years ago, called cryopreservation by vitrification.

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

It is now applied successfully to many living things, and is the method of choice used by both major cryonics organizations.

[jake332007]

What's the difference between cheomopreservation and plastination?

[rwoodin]

Here is a couple of links to more information on the two techniques enquired about.


http://www.ncbi.nlm....3&dopt=Abstract

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Plastination

[jake332007]

Techinically would a mortician be capable of using chemopreservation? Just wondering.

[bgwowk]

Embalming is a form of chemopreservation, just not very good. As may be inferred from the links, there are no really good methods of chemopreservation. With current technology, it's practically impossible to lock everything of interest in place for indefinite periods of time at ambient temperature. There's no market for it, and large quantities of highly toxic chemicals would be required.

[Shannon Vyff]

Aschwin de Wolf sent me the following link to a guest blog piece on chemopreservation, by cryonicist Greg Jordan--on Aschwin's Depressed Metabolism Blog:

http://depressedmeta...hemosuspension/

[jordansparks]

Well, I'm gonna do it. I plan to offer chemical fixation, pay-as-you-go cryopreservation, and lower cost than ever before. All with a solid business model.

Please see
http://www.oregoncryo.com/services.htm

Not there yet, but things are coming together, and it shouldn't be much longer.

Jordan Sparks

[lunarsolarpower]

From the site:

there is no such thing as "membership" nor a membership fee

I guess this conveniently side steps the issue of whether members should be able to elect directors Seriously though, it's a big undertaking you've got there. I'm curious if you have developed policies for what happens when a pay-as-you-go suspendee runs out of paying supporters? Not requiring adequate financial backing has been shown to be a recipe for heartbreak in the past.

[Shannon Vyff]

Why call it 'Oregon Cryonics' ? Do you have a bio we can read? The idea is exciting, but needs to be fleshed out more--details about your preservation process, your leadership, your contingencies etc.

[lunarsolarpower]

Do you have a bio we can read?

He's a director of CI.

[Shannon Vyff]

Thanks I look forward to hearing more about the plan.

[dr_chaos]

I do not like what I read there:

This can be prevented by following chemical fixation with cryopreservation. Some will claim that such people will need to wait longer for revival because higher technology will be required to eliminate all the cross-links. But those people who are currently being cryopreserved are already sustaining damage that will require some very advanced technology to repair, something similar to molecular nanotechnology. So our opinion is that there would be no difference in wait time. The remaining objections to chemical fixation have to do mostly with perception. These include, "It seems more like mortuary science than medical science", "It does not provide a continuum from current medical technology", and "cryopreserved tissue is intrinsically closer to normal biological condition". In spite of these objections, chemical fixation remains a very good option.

Chemical fixation of tissue does much more irreversible damage than cryonics. I'm no expert on this, but as far as I know it is even hard to fixate histological slices without loosing some of their parts. Most fixation techniques(apart from freezing) do not preserve lipids. Formalin at example washes them out. The same happens many free molecules in the tissue. They are lost as well. Anatomical specimens( of course not fixated to last "forever") are very far from a living human, too and show pretty well that it is even harder to preserve whole organs than to preserve slices. Pulling the science will fix everything card does not convince me since I believe that there is to much information going lost this way. Even plain straight freezing has the advantage of conserving some of the tissues functions. Therefore frozen slices are used to find out about enzyme activity in tissues and not chemically fixated ones which aren't anymore than nice to watch. I don't think freezing after chemical fixation can counter this. Furthermore the cryonics and vitrification guys had some impressing results with their frozen kidneys and brain slices. http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/15094092. Don't take my criticism personal. A low budget preservation method would be nice. On the other hand if it doesn't work it's useless.

[jordansparks]

The membership comment has been clarified. I don't ever forsee there being a membership fee. Directors could conceivably be elected by family members of those in cryopreservation. But it's a bit premature to be discussing all of this.

As for chemical fixation... The fact is that it's the gold standard for structural preservation. As long as the positions and sizes of all the synaptic junctions are preserved, then I'm satisified. Chemical fixation does this just as reliably and accurately as cryopreservation. More importantly, it can be done very quickly in any mortuary in the world and it can be done at an incredibly low price. The end result is much more "information" being preserved due to more brains being preserved. Preserving vast amounts of such important information is certainly an important and worthy goal.

[bgwowk]

As for chemical fixation... The fact is that it's the gold standard for structural preservation. As long as the positions and sizes of all the synaptic junctions are preserved, then I'm satisified. Chemical fixation does this just as reliably and accurately as cryopreservation. More importantly, it can be done very quickly in any mortuary in the world and it can be done at an incredibly low price. The end result is much more "information" being preserved due to more brains being preserved. Preserving vast amounts of such important information is certainly an important and worthy goal.

These statements are over-the-top unjustified. Mortuary perfusion is not the same as what is done to tissue slices for microscopy, and it is not obvious that even what is done to tissue slices for microscopy is sufficient to preserve memory. Memory is not just "position and size of all the synaptic junctions." It's also molecules in the lipids of membranes at synapses. Aldehyde fixation does not preserve lipids. The picture that you are painting is very misleading. There is no "incredibly low price" mortuary procedure that can achieve the objectives of cryonics.

Studies presented by Alcor in 1992 also showed that fixation *worsens* damage from subsequent freezing by altering the osmotic properties of membranes. In other words, fixation and freezing seems to be worse than just freezing.

"Pay as you go" is another very bad idea, but that's a subject for an essay in itself.

[dr_chaos]

As for chemical fixation... The fact is that it's the gold standard for structural preservation. As long as the positions and sizes of all the synaptic junctions are preserved, then I'm satisified. Chemical fixation does this just as reliably and accurately as cryopreservation. More importantly, it can be done very quickly in any mortuary in the world and it can be done at an incredibly low price. The end result is much more "information" being preserved due to more brains being preserved. Preserving vast amounts of such important information is certainly an important and worthy goal.

ok, so what fixative are you going to use? will you embed the people you have in peg or something?

[jordansparks]

As for chemical fixation... The fact is that it's the gold standard for structural preservation. As long as the positions and sizes of all the synaptic junctions are preserved, then I'm satisified. Chemical fixation does this just as reliably and accurately as cryopreservation. More importantly, it can be done very quickly in any mortuary in the world and it can be done at an incredibly low price. The end result is much more "information" being preserved due to more brains being preserved. Preserving vast amounts of such important information is certainly an important and worthy goal.

These statements are over-the-top unjustified. Mortuary perfusion is not the same as what is done to tissue slices for microscopy, and it is not obvious that even what is done to tissue slices for microscopy is sufficient to preserve memory. Memory is not just "position and size of all the synaptic junctions." It's also molecules in the lipids of membranes at synapses. Aldehyde fixation does not preserve lipids. The picture that you are painting is very misleading. There is no "incredibly low price" mortuary procedure that can achieve the objectives of cryonics.

Studies presented by Alcor in 1992 also showed that fixation *worsens* damage from subsequent freezing by altering the osmotic properties of membranes. In other words, fixation and freezing seems to be worse than just freezing.

Dr. Wowk, so nice of you to chime in. I knew it wouldn't take you long. I sincerely respect your opinion, so I don't know quite what to say. It's common, is it not, to perfuse organs with fixative in order to preserve them as perfectly as possible? Aren't those chemicals the same or very similar to the ones used in embalming? In embalming, there is a choice of solution strengths to use, and it is quite simple to choose the stronger one rather than the weaker solution which is typically used for a funeral viewing. I know you don't like my approach, but how can you say my statements are "over-the-top unjustified? It's the same process.

The long-term storage solution is probably going to be either formalin or a mixture of formaldehyde and gluteraldehyde.

I repeat, "It is an important and worthy goal". I know a woman who essentially has no money. She's getting older. She wants to be preserved, and I've been working for the last few years to come up with a solution to preserve her mind. I was initially swayed by Dr. Wowk's arguments that my chemical fixation approach would harm cryonics. I wouldn't want to do that. But I've watched prices just go up and up. I've seen very good people repeatedly turned away from Alcor and CI due to lack of funds. These are ordinary people barely scraping by. I've about had it up to here (holding my hand high) with this elitist approach. I'm just not going to take it any more. So you just go ahead and complain and protest. You just watch me succeed. I'll be out there preserving minds using an entirely acceptable scientifically based method while you are protesting that it's not good enough for you.

Edited by jordansparks, 18 March 2008 - 08:10 PM.

[bgwowk]

It's not the same process. Treatment with aldehyde fixatives is only the first step of a long process to prepare tissue pieces for electron microscopy that ends with complete substitution of all water, and embedding of cell constituents in a solid polymer! It's not the same as leaving tissue in aqueous aldehyde fixative for long periods of time. Such "preservation" is only done for gross anatomical specimens, not long-term preservation of ultrastructure.

Ironically for a cost-cutting measure, chemopreservation actually increases the need for one of the most expensive parts of cryonics: standby. If there is not prompt access and stabilization of the patient after cardiac arrest, there will be problems with later perfusion. For cryopreservation, this means that poorly-cryoprotected tissue will freeze, but ultimately stabilize. For chemopreservation, poorly fixed tissue will ultimately disintegrate.

I have no objection to research on chemopreservation, but it's got to be a serious investigation. People have got to do their homework. Unless a method convincingly raises the glass transition temperature of a chemopreserved organ above ambient temperature, there must be experiments that document stability over long periods of time. Even then, what is being stabilized and whether it is sufficient will remain open questions.

[bgwowk]

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

The Myth of the Golden Scalpel

by Mike Darwin

Both Ettinger's THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY and the cryonics movement as a whole have been accused of being unscientific, of offering unrealistic hope. In view of the history of cryonics since THE PROSPECT, this criticism appears justified. Ettinger wrote THE PROSPECT as an extrapolation of research observations, without further recourse to experiment. The cryonics community THE PROSPECT has spawned has continued to act on the basis of that original hypothesis. Historically, we have been more concerned with preserving hope than with real examination of the problem of preserving biological structure.

A major reason why nine patients were allowed to thaw out and rot in Chatsworth was because the relatives (and in some instances the patients themselves) were more interested in buying hope than in buying a real chance at revival. In hospitals, nursing homes, and other agencies where people are cared for in a framework where they cannot speak out for or defend themselves, society at least attempts to set up feedback mechanisms in the form of watchdog agencies and ombudsmen to set standards and evaluate care. In the absence of such precautions, anyone can claim anything, and it becomes impossible to sort out reality from fantasy.

One of most difficult and dangerous aspects of cryonics has been the absence of feedback. If you enter a hospital for surgery, take your car in for repair, or contract for the addition of a room to your home, you will have little doubt as to the quality of the work or the desirability of the outcome. The reason this is so is because of feedback. The task undertaken yields results in a meaningful time frame -- and the results can be evaluated. This has not been the case with cryonics. We have proceeded by speculation in a time frame of hundreds of years. In consequence, our society (which is not composed of total fools) has peered around the edges of our hope and speculation, noted the absence of substantial evidence, and dismissed cryonics as a viable alternative to death. To put it mildly, the absence of feedback on our procedures, in the form of real research results, has created a severe marketing problem.

This lack of feedback has affected every technical question in cryonics. Which freezing technique is best? What is the safest temperature to store at? How much and which kind of cryoprotective agent should be used? How can "outsiders" verify that a patient is really being maintained in storage and that the quality of that storage is adequate and everything it was promised to be? These are serious questions and they cut to the core of our program and often are at the root of divisions and dissension within the cryonics community.

There is a significant and growing contingent of people who accuse ALCOR and "Southern California cryonics" of being "too high tech" or more precisely too "chauvinistically high tech." John de Rivaz, commenting in the September, 1985 issue of The Immortalist has stated that "the organizers of cryonics and other immortalist societies should offer members as many options as are conceivable, from high technology, high cost California style cryonics on one hand, right down through interment in the Arctic or peat bogs or storage in a deep freeze as practiced by Dr. Martinot in France on the other." The thrust of this kind of commentary is that cryonics and hope ought to be affordable to everyone. A noble sentiment, and one which we share. But the question is how do we rationally, realistically get there? Are we just trying to provide hope or are we trying to do something that will realistically result in our continued survival?

Cryonic suspension as practiced by ALCOR is expensive because we are trying to offer more than empty hope. We know what our objective is: to preserve structure and viability under the best possible conditions. To this end we spend a fair amount of time and energy trying to insure that the care given meets our objectives. Tossing someone into a peat bog or dropping them into a vat of formaldehyde on the grounds of providing some hope not only isn't going to work -- it is cruel and immoral as well. Proposals such as Mr. de Rivaz's cross our desk all too often. What about freeze-drying people? What about chemical fixation? What about any alternative to spending time, effort, and money? In short, what about a Cosmic Automatic Road to Immortality?

The fact of the matter is that techniques other than cryogenic storage following "high tech" perfusion may offer some hope, may even be superior to cryonics, but we don't know this! We selected cryonic suspension on the basis of conservative criteria because we don't know how memory is stored or how much molecular structure needs to be preserved to conserve identity or allow for reanimation. We chose cryonic suspension because on the basis of the best available evidence it is the best technique around for achieving biopreservation.

ALCOR has not been content to let the matter rest there. We realize that Ettinger's original hypothesis needs a great deal of additional evidence before we can rest comfortably or even be assured that cryonics is good enough to achieve the goal of continued survival. It was nearly 20 years after publication of THE PROSPECT that ALCOR undertook the first basic research to examine the premise of cryonics. That research consisted of systematic electron microscopy to evaluate the extent of cryoinjury both under "optimum" conditions and after 24 hours of death with simple refrigeration. In 1983, ALCOR performed the first postmortem examination of frozen-thawed suspension patients' remains (following conversion to neuropreservation) and discovered the presence of massive fracturing in most organs -- including the central nervous system. For nearly 20 years patients have been suspended without anyone doing evaluations on animals, let alone on people, to determine what even the simplest gross effects of cooling to liquid nitrogen temperature were. For 20 years we've been freezing people without really knowing what kind of damage we were doing, or how we might improve things to minimize that damage!

Using conservative criteria, such as state-of-the-art medical and cryobiological technology, provides us with a benchmark and a framework against which we can measure progress. Such technologies are "expensive" because they involve feedback. When we suspend someone at ALCOR we conduct sophisticated laboratory evaluation of every step of the procedure. We do bacterial cultures on our perfusates and perfusion circuits to act as a check that good sterile technique is being employed (not only to protect the patient, but to protect the staff as well -- contamination goes both ways!). We run chemical analyses on the perfusate to make sure that it was mixed and formulated properly. We also take tissue, blood, and perfusate samples to evaluate the state of the patient before, during, and after suspension. In cryonics we don't have the "luxury" of waiting a few weeks to see if our patients recover from the surgery, or develop an infection from "sloppy" technique. Unless we provide the feedback in the form of quality control and laboratory evaluations, there just won't be any.

And, as the history of cryonics has sadly shown, without both positive and negative feedback there is no way to know whether you're on the right track. Opinions then hold the same weight as facts, and anyone is free to speculate and peddle false hope and empty promises. And empty promises can kill.

Not very long ago, I spoke with the family of a suspension patient who was unable to afford continued whole-body cryogenic care (the patient was suspended before current funding criteria were in place). They had been told and apparently believed that simply removing their relative from suspension and immersing the patient in formaldehyde solution promised some chance of eventual revival. No amount of trying to explain that the brain would be completely autolyzed and digested before formaldehyde (or peat bog acids, for that matter) could diffuse in was of any avail. We have actually conducted experiments to evaluate this, and we could thus speak with certainty that the brain would be decomposed long before formalin could diffuse through many millimeters of skin and bone and reach even the surface of the cerebral cortex. Despite the fact that neurosuspension was offered free of charge they preferred to believe that chemical preservation "offered some chance."

This same kind of attitude characterizes many of the people who have accused ALCOR of wielding a "golden scalpel" and of being unwilling to offer a family of low cost alternatives or even "anything the customer wants." What they fail to understand is that, in the absence of the same kind of evidence that exists for cryonics, the various low cost options they tout might be simply no better than empty ritual or hopeful prayer. If it doesn't matter how effective the preservation is, or even if it works at all (such as in the case of the peat bog suggestion) then why even bother with the business of preservation at all? Why not just believe in a merciful God and a bountiful Heaven and be done with it? Why even go to the inconvenience of opening a hole in the moss of a bog?

Offering ineffective or totally unsubstantiated forms of treatment just because a patient cannot afford cryonic suspension is not something that ALCOR (or any cryonics organization) should rationally be expected to become involved with. An instructive analogy would be a hospital which offered to have a witch doctor chant over a cancer patient because he couldn't afford chemotherapy or to offer to remove someone's gall bladder using kitchen utensils and no sterile technique because they cannot afford state-of-the-art surgery. For anyone who is truly in need, ALCOR has been and is willing to go out of the way to be accommodating and hold costs down. But we also realize that any procedure costs something, and that those now in suspension as well as those who have made suspension arrangements with ALCOR depend on us. Our first responsibility is to them. That means that standards will have to be set and operating criteria established to protect everyone from litigation and false expectations, as well as false promises.

There may be adequate or superior alternative techniques to cryogenic storage. But it is going to cost something to investigate them and to establish quality control and other criteria to see to it that they are adequately administered. 20 years after cryonics was suggested we are just now beginning to put into place the framework to demonstrate whether or not existing freezing techniques are effective in preserving most of the molecular structure of the patient. It has been a long, hard battle to lay that framework. We are heavily committed to it, and our expertise is in that area. Those who would rush into chemically fixing patients or storing them in department store freezers should be prepared to do the groundwork themselves to establish the safety and reliability of those techniques in preserving ultrastructure over long periods of time. And they should not expect us to follow until this has been done.

Even so, the fact is ALCOR has had a long standing commitment to the pilot evaluation of fixatives and imbedding schemes for preserving structure. As far as we know, we are the only organization in the world which has already examined tissue at intervals after fixation at room temperature to evaluate loss of structure. (We've looked at brain tissue stored in aqueous fixative for up to three years and the results are not good.) We are also storing imbedded tissue (which has all its water replaced by plastic compounds, and which should minimize entropic damage) and will be examining that at intervals as well. In the meantime, we have no intention of offering any preservation procedure which we do not have reasonable confidence in, and we are not about to abandon costly quality control and feedback for wandering around idly and "hoping" everything went as we intended.

Our commitment to quality control and feedback has already paid off. In a recent suspension we discovered that a potentially serious error had been made in perfusate preparation, an error which fortunately did not result in harm to the patient. We also detected a break in sterile technique during pump set-up as a result of doing perfusate cultures. This kind of feedback alerts us to trouble spots and helps ensure that a consistent and high quality of care is delivered. The majority of cryonics organizations have conducted suspensions in the past without reference to or even concern about quality control or good care. We have been told over and over again that it doesn't matter how you get frozen as much as if you get frozen -- all the errors on this end will be sorted out on the other. This kind of attitude has resulted in patients being perfused under filthy conditions with embalming equipment or not being perfused at all and with patients being stored at high subzero temperatures while armchair arguments are advanced to wish away objections and information that contraindicate this approach.

These advocates of hope and hype, no matter how good their intentions, sooner or later will confront the fact that this a rather inflexible and altogether too real world in which we live. If we are to survive we must keep our eyes open and never lose sight of the hard realities. Cryonics cannot and will not save everyone. Money, circumstances, and just plain bad luck have and will result in some painful defeats. For the time being we have to learn to live with that. Retreating into fantasy or becoming merchants of empty hope is not going to result in our long term survival. Progress will come only through feedback and rigorous reexamination of our premises and practices in the light of growing knowledge.

[jordansparks]

Yes, I've read that many times. You think that actually helps your argument? I think it validates mine. That essay sounds dated. I think people are moving past the more intuitive cryopreservation scenario and might be starting to realize that structure is the _only_ important criterion. The essay mentions viability as a goal. Not as far as I'm concerned. At least not in the near future. Viability might be a goal for you in a research setting. But you know as well as I do that all currently cryopreserved patients will require something equivalent to nanotechnology. They will require extensive repair of individual molecules. Structure is the only thing that matters, and chemical fixation has been scientifically proven to be the best way to (initially) preserve structure in gross anatomical specimens. The research supporting this is far more extensive than the research supporting successful cryopreservation.

Final comment: Bob Nelson was (trying very hard to be polite here) incompetent and dishonest.

Edited by jordansparks, 19 March 2008 - 12:22 AM.

[dr_chaos]

as far as i know, specimens swell up and get hard and a bit brittle in formalin after some time. so even if you only want to preserve the structure i'm not sure, that it will work. furthermore the solutions you store them in need to be changed regularly, too.

[bgwowk]

A big problem here is that the terms "chemical fixation" and "structure" are being used without context or definition. There is an implied equivalence of mortuary perfusion of aldehydes with treatment of tissue pieces for electron microscopy. The extent of tissue penetration is different, the chemicals are different, and the resulting stability is totally different!

There is also an implied equivalence of gross anatomical "structure" as preserved by formalin, and fine molecular "structure" as preserved by cryopreservation. These are so different that the same word shouldn't even be used.

There is at present no evidence that simply perfusing a strong embalming solution under mortuary conditions with significant port-mortem delay can preserve the molecular structure of tissue with long-term stability at ambient temperatures.

The Golden Scalpel article is not about the need to preserve tissue viability per se. It is about the temptation to implement inexpensive panacea preservation methods without sufficient information about efficacy. The Chatsworth angle is that Chatsworth was the result of people believing that much less money than others were asking could still preserve hope, without actually checking and verifying what was being sold.

Edited by bgwowk, 19 March 2008 - 06:08 PM.

[xlifex]

The Golden Scalpel article is not about the need to preserve tissue viability per se. It is about the temptation to implement inexpensive panacea preservation methods without sufficient information about efficacy. The Chatsworth angle is that Chatsworth was the result of people believing that much less money than others were asking could still preserve hope, without actually checking and verifying what was being sold.

This is a somewhat unfortunate context to discuss chemopreservation. If the Chatsworth patients would have been chemopreserved, some of them *might* still have been around.

The best insurance against Chatsworth is complete transparency of cryonics operations and honest management....

Will chemopreservation of brains be less expensive than straight freezing of neuros (which Jordan wants to offer as well)? I do agree that it would be better if the new organization initially offers low cost cryonics and delays offering chemopreservation until people like Mike Perry and Greg Jordan have made more progress.

But does anyone notice the irony of some cryonicists implying that other preservation methods offer false hope ;-)

Brian is absolutely right that the renewed interest in chemopreservation warrants more research. But it's my impression that the reaction of some cryonicists are more emotional than rational. Who would have thought that we would ever have "vested interests" in our movement.

If there is one thing that Jordan should do is produce some detailed calculations to show that his numbers make sense.

[bgwowk]

But does anyone notice the irony of some cryonicists implying that other preservation methods offer false hope ;-)

One of the reasons that there is so much skepticism about cryonics is that people recognize there is something intrinsically mischievous about selling a process with an invisible, unverifiable outcome. Without standards or feedback, expectation and reality can become completely uncoupled. To be credible about biostasis, you've got to show a good-faith effort to achieve and document stabilization. In proposing biostasis by cryopreservation, Ettinger at least knew the resulting state was stable, and that all tissue components would still be there in some form. This is not the case with post-mortem perfusion of aldehyde fixatives.

Rushing to commercially offer conventional embalming with the goal of future revival by false analogy to microscopy specimen preparation is not philosophically equivalent to cryonics. It's a parody of cryonics. Most of the world thinks that cryonicists are people who don't understand the effects of their preservation process, don't study the process, and only do it in the naive belief that it is some kind of "preservation". Do you want to prove them right?

[jordansparks]

The irony is not lost on me.

One big difference between Chatsworth and now is quite simply the internet. It allows an organization such as Oregon Cryonics the ability to be very open if it so chooses. And we just happen to highly value openness. There will be a writeup on every case. Certainly not to the standards of a Cryovita writeup, but there will at least be one. Our precise capabilities are completely exposed and will continue to be so. I don't want anyone walking into our facility and exclaiming, "This isn't what I expected". Someone who has never visited should still be able to clearly evaluate the situation. It's all part of informed consent, something I'm very big on. You will notice that I continually make changes to the website, even in response to this conversation. If it seems like we're not quite ready yet to actually provide services, it's because we're not. Our state of readiness will be quite clear on the website as it improves.

Oh, and I have stopped promising "revival". It's pointless. I envision something more like information archaeology rather than true revival in most situations. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but it's a hard distinction for low tech people to understand. So it's easier to deemphasize revival as a goal. I might also drop the "patient" label, which I find a bit cultish.

Edited by jordansparks, 20 March 2008 - 12:23 AM.

[xlifex]

"In proposing biostasis by cryopreservation, Ettinger at least knew the resulting state was stable, and that all tissue components would still be there in some form. This is not the case with post-mortem perfusion of aldehyde fixatives."

This statement is too general. Preservation of the person does not require preservation of "all tissue components" and the long term stability of the components that matter is unknown. Philosophically speaking, there is a baseline problem here. The correct baseline to evaluate the ethics of offering chemopreservation should not be cryonics but information-theoretic death.

The only serious recent publication about chemopreservation (Perry, 2007) did acknowledge all these problems and that's why currently work is being funded to investigate them:

http://www.alcor.org...ryonics0703.pdf

Although chemopreservation is a "dead end" in terms of resuscitation with contemporary technologies, most of the issues that matter can be investigated and falsified.

But I do think that Jordan Sparks would do best in focusing on affordable pet- and human neuropreservation for the time being.

Edited by xlifex, 20 March 2008 - 02:13 AM.

[jonano]

Im going to give some of my opinions about Oregon Cryonics.

First, I hope the leader of Oregon Cryonics is a real leader and a smart one.

Alot of people spend more than they earn, or spend as quick as possible, the money they receive, they dont make pleasure by having money in their safe without touching it. You must be sure that when you take money out, you will get more after, in. There is always a risk, but some are less risky. For example you can copy your parents and earn money as they do.

I see Cryonics as a money grabber machine. Every Cryonics organisations should try as more as possible to keep money with them and to grow as much as possible, without any edge, any limit. There is no limit to be big. We should have this philosophy in our head, to always keep money in our hands. Most people are unable to do this. Maybe when you get older, you get some fun doing it, but I understood this and now when I have money, I just look at it, I dont touch it.

Oh and I almost forget to suggest that Jordan try to speak with Bruce or Mind and ask to put "Oregon Cryonics" in the team forum, it will help you to get exposure.

--Jon

[dr_chaos]

Maybe I am the only one who feels like this, but I'm missing a comparison discussing which parts of a stored tissue will be destroyed and which will be preserved through cryonics and through the chemopreservation approach jordansparks proposes. I still wonder how the long term prospects are with the chemo systems that is discussed here are, too. I know, I could go to the library and look it up myself. But on the other hand bgwok and jordansparks could just type two messages