4 replies to this topic

[lordprovost]

Um probably another one of my out-of-date discoveries;

http://www.geocities...veral/lab/3388/

Tetradotoxin is a neurotoxin found in puffer fish and the deadly componant in Japanese delicacy fugu.My favourite cyberpunk author Jon Courtenay Grimwood used it in his novel Red Robe as an assassins poison of choice, plus, apparently it was discover on Haiti by a biologist in the 70s and was used by Voodoo doctors to create zombies.They made a movie based on the book of the same name (Serpent and the Rainbow.)

http://www.erowid.or...rpent_and.shtml

Also the latin name of the puffer fish is Tetrodontidae, fish are symbols of the soul in Xianity and tetra = God in hebrew, perhaps there is some ancient folk-knowledge at work here, or perhaps just wishful thinking on my part, hehe [!]

Soo anyway I was wandering which drugs are being researched as an aid to suspended animation ie for space exploration.Surely the ultimate goal of cryonics is to freeze a preferably genetically enhanced 'corpse', yet allow the uploaded consciousness to re-connect with the physical vessel at will.

[Lazarus Long]

Soo anyway I was wandering which drugs are being researched as an aid to suspended animation ie for space exploration. Surely the ultimate goal of cryonics is to freeze a preferably genetically enhanced 'corpse', yet allow the uploaded consciousness to re-connect with the physical vessel at will

Now this raises an interesting question for I am curious too. You see the entire thrust of cryo at the moment is to preserve the body after death but in my opinion as well the issue should be to develop voluntary stasis PRIOR to death along with established mechanisms for resuscitation. One problem is the tech is limited by law as freezing before "Official Death" constitutes a form of euthanasia.

But hibernation is being developed in a tangential manner through the use of drug induced coma for intensive care purposes and what we need to be able to do is find out how to combine methods to achieve true stasis.

[lordprovost]

Theres been a lot of press coverage here about volunatry euthanasia over the last couple of years as several Brits have chosen to go to a clinic in Switzerland to die.

http://www.finalexit.org/swiss.html

I reckon that even with contemporary cryonic technology people who may for example be suffering from incurable bowel cancer should be given the option of going into stasis.I suppose that with cryonics still being more or less at the fringes of science there isn't the demand ( and therefore a lack of political campaigning) necessary to pass the liberal laws necessary.

[Lazarus Long]

I reckon that even with contemporary cryonic technology people who may for example be suffering from incurable bowel cancer should be given the option of going into stasis.I suppose that with cryonics still being more or less at the fringes of science there isn't the demand ( and therefore a lack of political campaigning) necessary to pass the liberal laws necessary.

Here is an example of an "off-shore" strategy to accomplish this, find a nation, like the Caymans', Malta, Switzerland, or some other reasonably sized but smaller nation-state with a desire for a new cottage level industry storing and maintaining cryogenically preserved individuals that have chosen this form of "alternative euthanasia".

The nation in question has to be willing to legalize euthanasia and make such "containment" of the "near-dead" a cottage industry. And they would pick up a fringe benefit of death worship tourism analogous to how people visit their dead in "old world" and hometown cemeteries and mausoleums now. They could actually spin-off a lot of beneficial tourism traffic and trade into a smaller economy.

Perhaps Romania? )

The other aspect of this is to dress up the containment vessel so as to meet the demands of "family" that may want to retain a ritualistic reference to the individual, thus as in a "mausoleum" the individual would have some sort of generally respectful sarcophagus such that family may come and pay respects along the general Creed of worship of the individual's choice prior to internment.

The fact that the sarcophagus in question is also a highly complex scientific device for suspended containment shouldn't be too hard to blend. I agree there is a linkage of the issues of euthanasia and cryonic suspension.

[lordprovost]

Hey theres always the Principality of Sealand, teehee [lol]
But yeah, I've thought along the same lines.Dare I mention the Railians without sounding wako haha, but after they left the US they supposedly visited Romania in an attempt to find a government which was open to the idea of human cloning.
Also I guess that the chemicals and possibly the bio-tech required could be produced cheaply in eastern europe and with agricultural land selling for less than $2 per square meters in the mountains it would seem ideal.(Theres a property boom on with Brits buying vacation villas in Bulgaria at tha moment as its cheaper than the equivalent on the costa del sol in spain.)
From a micronational perspective Romania has always been subdivided into counties or prefectures which have been pretty much self-governing through-out the ceucescu era and way back since the days of someone called Mr.Tepes, ughum; heard of him [?] which brings us neatly back to immortality [!]