99 replies to this topic

[kerr_avon]

I just heard about this. My thoughts are with you Bruce. That's all I can say. Car accidents have got to be one of the cruelest things since they strike pretty much at random.

[fruitimmortal]

I'm very sorry to read about the loss of your darling Mom dear Bruce.
I know nothing can ease the pain you and your family are going through.
The only comfort we have after losing a loved one is the fact that their
suffering is over.

with deep Sympathy,
Dorothea

[quadclops]

Dear Bruce,

What can anyone say at this time that can take away the pain, and the shock of life's fragility? I don't know. All I can say is that we're with you, and the best of luck in signing up the rest of your family for emergency cryonic services.

May their need for it be a loooooong time coming!

[makrn2b]

BJK and Susan,
You both already know how we feel about Theresa. Our life as a married couple began at her home and she welcomed me into the family from day one. She was more a sister than a sister in law to me. Nothing we can say will ease the pain, but please know that we are here for you now and always will be.

All our love,
MK and RK

[Bruce Klein]

Thanks all and thanks MK and RK,

Dad, Susan and I very much appreciate your help.

LV BJK
---

Following posted on behalf of ImmInst Full Member:

I am so saddened to hear of your mother's sudden unexpected death at such a young age. I am hoping in earnest that you receive all the support you need to further your work. My heart goes out to you. I lost my son when he was 18 years old suddenly and profoundly (ten years ago) and have often wondered what could have been done to further his life. As you go through the grieving process, I'll be thinking of you.

Amanda R

[jonano]

Life and death is one. We might be able to bring life again. We simply dont know the powerful future. My sympathy Bruce. Go ahead, keep your goal.

[natashavita]

My dear friend BJ,

Your mother is a symbol for vitality and you carry the passion for life as your sword.

Natasha Vita-More

[treonsverdery]

BJ you are doing your best+ youve done well with cyronics your mom gains the right to an appeal

keen on the time

Overruled

Edited by treonsverdery, 02 November 2006 - 04:50 AM.

[treonsverdery]

BJ you are amplifying your longevity idea force measurably you do motivate


you will probably end up influenceing the immortality-movement in a positive
way, meaning that immortality will be here quicker. It may not be measurable in
any way

Im writing to scientists with your material at this place


Dr Name
there are two things that thinking might be valuable
to your studies

theres a plant with a 40 k+ year lifespan if you like
im willing to write letters to have the mtDNA as well
as right DNA described

There may be a way to do bigger more or better
longevity mouse research. Im participating on the
writing of the wild willing mouse protocol a way to
use field environments with vast N study mice to make
the cost of n=100 a ninth to with cleverness a 70th
the normal fees

Treon Verdery

40,000-year-old shrub: King's Holly, Example of
Immortality Track Topic | Email Topic | Print
BJKlein
imminst.org/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=48&t=513&s= imminst.org/forum/index.php?act...T&f=48&t=513&s=

Scientists in the remote southwest corner of Tasmania
have found what they claim might be a 40,000-year-old
shrub, thereby making it the oldest living organism in
the world. The plant, known as King's Holly, is the
only known living specimen of the species Lomatia
tasmania. It is not only older than the last ice age
but also incredibly big. Exn Discovery: Link - More
About King's Holly
user posted image

exn.ca/Stories/1996/10/21/01.asp exn.ca/Stories/1996/10/21/01.asp

Edited by treonsverdery, 02 November 2006 - 04:53 AM.

[Clifford Greenblatt]

My visits to Imminst.org have been too sporadic. Until two days ago, I was oblivious to the tragic event that has deeply impacted your life. I am grateful for the love you have for your family, for the way you take a real personal interest in others, and in the high regard you have for the value of life. I know you must be filled with a profound sense of loss due to strength of the bond of love you have for all those in your family.

--Clifford Greenblatt

[Casanova]

Bruce,

Sorry I didn't post sooner.
My deepest condolences, during this tragic time for you and your family.

Although I do not believe physical immortality is possible, I do feel that our physical lives are much too brief. Your mother was in her prime, and it really is a tradegy that she left this earth so soon.
If this website, and it's associated thikers, and planners, can accomplish nothing else but the extension of human life to maybe 300 years, then I consider the whole project a success. The 300 years includes pets, too.

Also, look for signs, and messages, from your mother. Believe me, they are there, if you open your attention to them. What we call the "dead" communicate to us in very bizarre, and off the wall, ways, manners, and circumstances. It is another type of language that we have to decode, decipher, and try to understand. It might be the only way the hyper-world can communicate with us.

My hearfelt best wishes to you, Susan, and your extended family.

Tim

[chestnut]

Once again the Imminst family has come to our aid. BJ and I cannot express adequately our sincerest appreciation to all of you for your kind words and thoughtfulness. I want to especially thank CI, ALCOR and the ImmInst members BJ contacted during those critical first 6 hours when we were still fighting to save our beloved “mother.” I am humbled by the response and genuine love and support given by these organizations and individuals (you know who you are) that at once instructed us on what to do and what needed to be accomplished. Incredibly the hospital (recall this is Alabama!) also responded positively with the idea of “dry ice,” and alternative measures should we have proceeded in that route. In the end our mother’s wishes were carried out but it showed how quickly and effectively our “friends” responded in times of greatest need.

Although I am still scared (ok, “petrified”) of the idea of cryonics, the sorrow my darling Bruce endured once he realized cryonics would not be an option for his mother is too much for me to bare should history repeat itself and should I find myself in her place. I would never want to be the cause of such pain on my other (best) half and thus I have agreed to be signed up.

One of Theresa’s legacy’s will be that she pushed all of us to work a little harder and faster to realize the dream of life extension and the eradication of pain, disease and hopefully involuntary death. She was a great woman and strong supported of her son’s vision and dreams. Although she believed in a realm where “spirits” live on, she nonetheless opened her heart and mind to the idea of life extension and was very proud of BJ’s efforts. Mom, thank you for giving me the greatest gift of all –your son. We will miss you.

The fight now continues with the book and film projects. Thanks to everyone who is working on these endeavors, from directors, to editors, sponsors, volunteers, future readers and audiences. Thank you for your hard work and dedication. I (we) am looking forward to the finished product!! [thumb]

All are love and appreciation,
Susan & BJ

[Marc_Geddes]

Sorry to hear about BJ's Mum.

I should just add a quick note that I do still have doubts about the viability of cryonics. It might just be possible to 're animate' a cryonically suspended person. That's not my main worry. My main worry is that it's not entirely clear to me that the animated person would actually be the 'same' person. There is a fundamental 'break' in consciousness when a person goes into suspension you see. This is not like sleeping or even a coma, where some unconscious mental proccesses still go on. This is a total disconnection or 'break' in mental activity. I subscribe to a 'continuity' identity theory, and this break in consciousness is very troubling for cryonics.

[Bruce Klein]

Thanks, Marc. I understand your concerns, but rather than thinking 'yes' or 'no' continuity, think more about consciousness and continuity in degrees of fidelity. Low temperature preservation (cryonics) does not necessarily have to lead to great discontinuity -- if done well. The information (nerve connections, etc) in the brain is preserved to a degree... and current trajectories toward future tech's ability to restore (nanotech) is promising. Cryonics is getting better.

[bgwowk]

Marc Geddes wrote:

My main worry is that it's not entirely clear to me that the animated person would actually be the 'same' person. There is a fundamental 'break' in consciousness when a person goes into suspension you see. This is not like sleeping or even a coma, where some unconscious mental proccesses still go on. This is a total disconnection or 'break' in mental activity.

There are many types of survivable coma that involve *total* breaks in brain processes, for hours, or even for days as in barbiturate coma. There's nothing qualitatively different about cryonics in this respect. Here's a famous cite that cryonicists like to quote

We know that secondary memory does not depend on continued
activity of the nervous system, because the brain can be
*totally inactivated* (emphasis added) by cooling, by general
anesthesia, by hypoxia, by ischemia, or by any method and yet
secondary memories that have been previously stored are still
retained when the brain becomes active once again.

Textbook of Medical Physiology, Arthur C. Guyton, W.B. Saunders
Company, Philadelphia, 1986

I devote a lot of ink to this common misconception in my suspended animation essay at

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

The stopping-of-consciousness objection to cryonics is a straw man. It's also a double standard given that stopping the brain during certain procedures is such an accepted practice in medicine that doctors won't even bother to specifically tell that it's going to happen, or tell you if it did happen. They'll tell you about the risks of anesthesia, or the surgery you are going to have, or that your heart stopped for X minutes. But the brain stopping? Pffff! In medicine it's a non-issue as long as everything else goes okay.

---BrianW

[Marc_Geddes]

There are many types of survivable coma that involve *total* breaks in brain processes, for hours, or even for days as in barbiturate coma.  There's nothing qualitatively different about cryonics in this respect.  Here's a famous cite that cryonicists like to quote

        We know that secondary memory does not depend on continued
        activity of the nervous system, because the brain can be
        *totally inactivated* (emphasis added) by cooling, by general
        anesthesia, by hypoxia, by ischemia, or by any method and yet
        secondary memories that have been previously stored are still
        retained when the brain becomes active once again.

Textbook of Medical Physiology, Arthur C. Guyton, W.B. Saunders
Company, Philadelphia, 1986

I devote a lot of ink to this common misconception in my suspended animation essay at

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

The stopping-of-consciousness objection to cryonics is a straw man.  It's also a double standard given that stopping the brain during certain procedures is such an accepted practice in medicine that doctors won't even bother to specifically tell that it's going to happen, or tell you if it did happen.  They'll tell you about the risks of anesthesia, or the surgery you are going to have, or that your heart stopped for X minutes.  But the brain stopping?  Pffff!  In medicine it's a non-issue as long as everything else goes okay.

---BrianW

Correct me if I'm wrong but regarding things like Cooling, General anesthesia, Hypoxia, Ischemia: In none of these things is the brain *totally inactivated*. Not even close! These things are not even remotely like cryonics. For instance during general anesthesia, most of the brain is in fact still fully operational. Only consciousness is lost. And even in all of the other things mentioned there is still plenty of electrical activity going on in the brain.

My objection is not the stopping-of-consciousness. I agree that's a straw man. My objection is the total stopping of electrical activity which occurs during cryonics.

[bgwowk]

My objection is not the stopping-of-consciousness. I agree that's a straw man. My objection is the total stopping of electrical activity which occurs during cryonics.

I guess I wasn't clear enough. Let me re-write my last paragraph more clearly to address your erroneous premise:

The stopping-of-electrical-activity objection to cryonics is a straw man. It's also a double standard given that stopping electrical activity in the brain during certain procedures is such an accepted practice in medicine that doctors won't even bother to specifically tell you that it's going to happen, or tell you if it did happen. They'll tell you about the risks of anesthesia, or the surgery you are going to have, or that your heart stopped for X minutes. But brain electrical activity stopping? Pffff! In medicine it's a non-issue as long as everything else goes okay.

Again, please read the beginning of

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

and check the references. For whatever it's worth, I've been working in the field of low temperature biology the better part of a decade. I assure you I know what I'm talking about.

---BrianW

[Marc_Geddes]

    I guess I wasn't clear enough.  Let me re-write my last paragraph more clearly to address your erroneous premise:

The stopping-of-electrical-activity objection to cryonics is a straw man. It's also a double standard given that stopping electrical activity in the brain during certain procedures is such an accepted practice in medicine that doctors won't even bother to specifically tell you that it's going to happen, or tell you if it did happen. They'll tell you about the risks of anesthesia, or the surgery you are going to have, or that your heart stopped for X minutes. But brain electrical activity stopping? Pffff! In medicine it's a non-issue as long as everything else goes okay.

    Again, please read the beginning of

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

and check the references.  For whatever it's worth, I've been working in the field of low temperature biology the better part of a decade.  I assure you I know what I'm talking about.

---BrianW

Total stopping of electrical activity in the brain is an accepted practice in medicine? No way. As I mentioned, general anesthesia certaintly doesn't totally stop electrical activity, nor, as far as know, does any other procedure.

My worry concerns personal identity. According to the most commonly accepted theory of quantum mechanics for instance, there are numerous near identical versions of ourselves in alternative universes. Yet would you be happy to die in this particular quantum branch, even though identical brain computations representing you carry on in the other branches? Or what about making a copy of your brain? Even though that copy would be identical to you, would it actually be you? The worry for cryonics is that continuation of personal identity might require at least some continuity in electrical brain activity. Since there's a total break in brain activity during cryonics, it's not clear that a reanimated version of you would actually be you.

I'll take your word for it that you know what you're talking about. Cryonics might work. I just wouldn't want to bet my life on it

[bgwowk]

I'll take your word for it that you know what you're talking about. Cryonics might work.

Sir, you are not paying attention. I have not said anything about whether cryonics might work. All I've said is that your claim that cryonics is unique in stopping brain electrical activity is false. Medicine treats and revives people on a daily basis with stopped brain electrical activity, and sometimes deliberately induces it because it's cerebroprotective.

Total stopping of electrical activity in the brain is an accepted practice in medicine? No way. As I mentioned, general anesthesia certaintly doesn't totally stop electrical activity, nor, as far as know, does any other procedure.

Stage IV general anestesia sure as hell makes an EEG isoelectric. Although it's generally avoided, it's certainly not fatal. Rather than gassing a patient to stage IV, the usual approach when brain protection is desired is to layer a barbiturate on top of gas anesthesia to flatline the EEG. This is especially important if there is to be a circ arrest interval. A surgeon will not let a perfusionist turn off the pump until the EEG is flat because they know damn well that the prognosis is poor if the brain is active when circ arrest begins. This is just one example of the deliberate suppression of brain electrical activity in medicine. There are others.

But what's the point of discussing any of this? Twice now I've provided you with a URL that discusses this issue in detail with numerous references. Rather than learning something, all you do is keep repeating the same sun-revolves-the-earth flat out, wrong, false, incorrect statements. You say "as far as I know." Well that isn't very far. Too bad you choose not to walk any farther.

---BrianW

[bgwowk]

Since now I've got a bee in my bonnet about this, here is a partial list of the kinds of patients that have suvived complete cessation of brain electrical activity:

*Deep hypothermia survivors

* Surgical deep hypothermia patients

* Barbiturate overdose survivors (isoelectric-- EEG flatlined -- sometimes for days!)

* Deliberately induced barbiturate coma patients (brain inactivation to treat head injury)

* Stage IV anesthesia recipients

* Anyone suffering cardiac arrest for more than one minute (at least 100,000 people right there)

What you should ask yourself is why do legal criteria for brain death explicity specify absence of drugs or hypothermia? Answer: Because hypothermia and certain drugs shut down the brain in a manner that is indistinguishable from brain death!

If in the face of this barrage of information and references (at the provided URL) you continue to insist that survival after cessation of brain electrical activity is something new under the sun, then obviously you believe that as a religion. In that respect you would be no different than the Church officials that refused to look in Galileo's telescope because they already "knew" the truth. If so, good luck to you.

---BrianW

[Lazarus Long]

Since now I've got a bee in my bonnet about this, here is a partial list of the kinds of patients that have survived complete cessation of brain electrical activity:

I am glad to hear the bee is buzzing the brain )

Brian what do you think of the suggestion I made elsewhere about a Van Winkle Award?

The proposal is meant to be in the same spirit as the Methuselah Mouse Prize and is about the resuscitation side of the debate.

This is not about skepticism about what *we don't know* IMO, as much as encouraging a focus on what *we can know* (now). When we debated this very issue a while ago my purpose was not to take the antithetical position but to shift the attention from exclusively the getting frozen side, to including a focus on revival.

I would love it if a complex mammal (beginning with a mouse) could be frozen *alive*, and then reanimated, preferably for at least a week afterward. I am willing to sidestep the debate of raising the dead for the moment by applying the issue to simply whether a true steady state is achieved and that the technique is not *killing* the subject but suspending them only.

By this manner it may be possible to dodge the euthanasia debate as well as preserve estate under the proper trust.

You and Clifford have been having so much fun and are a joy to observe. Please don't stop on my account but this may be a good time to introduce this alternative perspective to the debate.

Clifford would you concede that if the patient were proven to be *suspended*, not dead, and a revival possibility demonstrated in lower related species; that the procedure is not a form of euthanasia and offers a reasonable set of odds for those willing to make the gamble?

My argument is different than yours though Brian, because this is based not on conjecture about what some hypothetical technology might be capable someday but instead about what the specific potential to someday reanimate a subject that is facing certain death now.

This makes it a personal choice to risk a voluntary alternative that by suspending life they might arrive at a time when their condition is *treatable* and reanimation is already perfected. Yes their alternative is death but they are not seeking that one, hence no more of a added risk than decided to be an experimental test subject for a new treatment or even an astronaut.

It is also a way of taking this away from the *after death* issue in legal terms. *Suspension* simply has never been considered from a legal perspective. The specific idea has never really been treated as viable but some forms of legal procedures have been made a part of the body of law with soldiers, sailors and explorers that left their homes for extended periods or even the extended status of *Guardian ad Litem* as it applies to the case law of patients that have become unconscious for extended periods. Prove reanimation is possible and the debate in the courts can be shifted to establishing the distinction between Suspension and Euthanasia.

BTW this article is coincidentally in the current issue of Science
Could astronauts sleep their way to the stars?

Edited by Lazarus Long, 05 August 2004 - 03:21 PM.

[bgwowk]

Once again, the argument with Marc_Geddes is not about cryonics per se. I'm not saying anything in my current discussion with him about whether cryonics will work, can work, can be made to work, or even if it's good idea. Although I admit I've certainly wrote much about these questions elsewhere.

The argument with Marc_Geddes is now about mainstream medical anesthesiology. It's about whether any human has ever survived complete cessation of brain electrical activity, or whether cessation of brain activity is an accepted and sometimes deliberately induced condition in medicine. The correct answer is "yes" on all counts, and I've documented that fact. Call me stubborn, but until that fact is acknowledged I do not want to sidetrack into cryonics, identity survival, personality duplication, many worlds quantum theory or other irrelevancies. If a discussion participant will not acknowledge present medical reality, discussing the implications of future medical technology like cryonics is pointless.

With respect to your post, Lazarus, I would be happy to discuss the issues you raise in another thread. If you repost your message to another thread that I can find with the keyword "cryonics" I'll certainly respond. If you'd like to discuss cessation of brain activity specifically, we can continue here.

---BrianW

[bgwowk]

Although I admit I've certainly wrote much about these questions elsewhere.

Should of course be "certainly written". Bruce will know why this funny.

---BrianW

[Bruce Klein]

Still remodeling that certain section of the brain, I see

[Da55id]

Hi Lazarus,

You said...

I would love it if a complex mammal (beginning with a mouse) could be frozen *alive*, and then reanimated, preferably for at least a week afterward.  I am willing to sidestep the debate of raising the dead for the moment by applying the issue to simply whether a true steady state is achieved and that the technique is not *killing* the subject but suspending them only.

Aubrey and I have discussed a similar scenario...If someone were to take a live mouse and put it under cryogenically (as you say "freeze" it), and were able to reanimate it successfully at a time when its age was greater than the previously longest lived mouse winner (currently Bartke's), then they could be a winner of the Methuselah Mouse Postponement Prize. Of course they would be required to preregister etc.

If one could do this with a mouse, aside from the good news for cryogenics, it would also imply that major human organs of similar size could be preserved and banked in a similar fashion to the great benefit of 10's of thousands of individuals awaiting transplants annually - and the quality of donor matching would be improved to a "breakthru level" with the much larger inventory from which to choose...ensuring that recipients would no longer need to take such high levels of immune suppression drugs year after year that makes them subject to fatal infections and general frailty. This is one of the reasons we are reluctant to discontinue the Postponement Prize.

Dave G.

[bgwowk]

It looks like Marc_Geddes is either convinced that yes indeed there are lots of peope walking around today who have survived complete cessation of brain activity, or he doesn't care to argue it further. Just as well. We can move on to the broader question that Lazarus raised.

Well, Laz, you are absolutely right. Reversible suspended animation of legally living people would certainly be far superior to cryonics as currently practiced. Why isn't it being done, and why is something as bizarre as cryonics being done instead? I'll give you the history.

The idea of freezing whole animals and bringing them back goes back to at least the 1950s and the work of Audrey Smith who froze whole hamsters slightly below 0 degC (freezing half their body water) and bringing them back. The cryoprotective effects of glycerol and DMSO had just been discovered, and there was enormous optimism about prospects for both organ freezing and possibly even freezing of whole animals. Cryobiologists freely talked about both subjects. By the mid-1960s, there were many labs trying to freeze organs.

The Robert Ettinger came along with The Prospect of Immortality and suggested that the suspended animation problem could be short-circuited by relying on (then unspecified) future technology for revival. Furthermore, he suggested that people could start doing it immediately by having themselves frozen the moment their heart stopped. The downside of this-- a downside still being suffered today --was the tabloid-style controversial publicity that cryonics created. By the early 1970s, mainstream cryobiologists stopped talking about suspended animation, and firmly distanced themselves from cryonics.

The other thing that happened is that people found that is was REALLY HARD to preserve organs by freezing. By the end of the 1970s, just about everyone had given up trying to cryopreserve organs. Whole animals? Forget it. Only Drs. Segall, Sternberg, and Waitz (the nucleus of what later became BioTime, Inc.) continued work without much success freezing small animals.

Enter Greg Fahy and vitrification in 1984. New hope was breathed into the field of organ preservation by the insight that it was theoretically possible to cryopreserve organs without any ice formation at all. Greg has been pounding away, pretty much alone, on this problem for 20 years now at three different institutions and is finally at the point were rabbit kidneys can be cooled to -45 degC, rewarmed, and transplanted. That's still not cold enough for long-term storage (which requires -130 degC), but in terms of the technical hurdles that had to be overcome to get this far, it's probably 80-90% of the way there. I would estimate the cost over two decades of getting rabbit kidneys to -45 degC and back has been $15 million.

Now maybe you are beginning to get a feeling for why cryonics exists, and why nobody is cryopreserving whole mice (at least not yet). Cryonics exists not because of any morbid fascination with freezing (or vitrifying) legally deceased persons, or because cryonicists enjoy have to speculate about arcane future nanotechnology (although I guess some do). Cryonics exists because long-term reversible suspended animation of whole animals is a HARD PROBLEM. It's not a $1 million problem, $10 million, or even $100 million problem. In my personal opinion, it will require hundreds of millions of dollars and probably three decades to solve-- if a major effort is made. Trying to do it in short order with present technology would be like the President setting his moon landing goal in the 1940s instead of 1960s. Eventually we'll get there, but certainly not this decade.

What to do? Most cryonicists since the 1980s have held the position that the first thing to do is perfect reversible cryopreservation of the brain. That is a necessarily prerequisite for any success with whole animals. Furthermore, one you have it, you make cryonics revival a purely technical problem with no fundamental uncertainties about whether a person is still "there" or not.

So if there are any wealthy benefactors out there, I would like to suggest a counter proposal: An "X" prize for a lab to successfully recover a mammalian brain from -130 degC. $10 million would probably be sufficient incentive for at least one lab I know.

---BrianW

P.S. It's interestig that ESA is pursuing hibernation, but suspended animation by hibernation is not true long-term suspended animation. Still, it's a much easier goal to pursue with present technology, so they are doing absolutely the right thing.

[Marc_Geddes]

Once again, the argument with Marc_Geddes is not about cryonics per se.  I'm not saying anything in my current discussion with him about whether cryonics will work, can work, can be made to work, or even if it's good idea.  Although I admit I've certainly wrote much about these questions elsewhere.

The argument with Marc_Geddes is now about mainstream medical anesthesiology.  It's about whether any human has ever survived complete cessation of brain electrical activity, or whether cessation of brain activity is an accepted and sometimes deliberately induced condition in medicine.  The correct answer is "yes" on all counts, and I've documented that fact.  Call me stubborn, but until that fact is acknowledged I do not want to sidetrack into cryonics, identity survival, personality duplication, many worlds quantum theory or other irrelevancies.  If a discussion participant will not acknowledge present medical reality, discussing the implications of future medical technology like cryonics is pointless.

With respect to your post, Lazarus, I would be happy to discuss the issues you raise in another thread.  If you repost your message to another thread that I can find with the keyword "cryonics" I'll certainly respond.  If you'd like to discuss cessation of brain activity specifically, we can continue here.

---BrianW

I stand corrected. I just have nagging doubts that electrical activity has *really* completely ceased when an EEG is flat-line. People have reported out-of-body eperiences at the time EEG's were flat-line. Clearly not all brain activity could have ceased, it just wasn't showing up on the EEG. I'm prepared to accept the facts and allow that humans can survive completle cessation of brain electrical activity. I just have those nagging doubts (admittedly my doubts wouldn't show up on a graph measuring 'rationality' but they are there never the less)

[bgwowk]

I just have nagging doubts that electrical activity has *really* completely ceased when an EEG is flat-line.

Consider cerebral ischemia (stopped blood flow to the brain) for example. During the anoxia (lack of oxygen) of ischemia, ATP stores are quickly depleted. Neuronal action potentials cannot exist without ATP. ATP is needed to operate membrane ion pumps to support action potentials. How do we know that the ion pumps aren't working, perhaps at some slow unmeasurable rate? There are a variety of reasons we know, but perhaps the best one is that adverse ion fluxes are a primary damage mechanism of cerebral ischemia. Because membrane ion pumps shutdown during ischemia, there is uncontrolled escape of K+ from neurons and massive penetration of Na+ and Ca++ into neurons, where they don't belong. This is totally incompatible with any kind of action potentials. So great is this upset after a few minutes of ischemia, that if a patient survives, their EEG can remain flat for hours after circulation is restored.

People have reported out-of-body eperiences at the time EEG's were flat-line. Clearly not all brain activity could have ceased, it just wasn't showing up on the EEG.

The controversial conclusion by van Lommel in Lancet that people can have experiences during flatline EEG naturally sent materialists scambling for explanations. Many alternative explantions were put forth, but I don't know of any serious suggestion that residual brain activity was responsible. Any brain activity sufficient to generate memories would certainly show on an EEG. Either the explanation is supernatural, or must involve brain acitivity before or after the flatline interval. The most likely explanation (to me) is something like the one suggested below by a study critic

van Lommel and colleagues' report raises the possibility of a new potential artefact in such studies. It seems that at least some NDEs may be the result of false memories, of the mind trying to retrospectively "fill in the gap" after a period of cortical inactivity. The investigators report that, at the 2-year follow-up, four of 37 patients contacted to act as controls (ie, people who had not initially reported an NDE) reported that they had had one. Although these patients represent fewer than 1% of the total sample, they represent over 10% of the 37 patients interviewed with a view to acting as controls. If this subsample is at all representative, it implies that around 30 patients from the sample of 282 who initially denied an NDE would, if they had survived for another 2 years, be claiming that they had had one. van Lommel and colleagues suggest that these patients may have been unwilling or unable to describe their NDEs in the first interview, but no attempt seems to have been made to corroborate these possibilities with the patients themselves. It seems likely that at least some patients, on hearing about other survivors' NDEs, would start to imagine what it would have been like if they had had the same experience. Recent psychological studies have shown conclusively that simply imagining that one has had experiences that had in fact never been encountered will lead to the development of false memories for those experiences.5-7 Interestingly, susceptibility to false memories correlates with tendency to dissociate,8,9 which in turn correlates with the tendency to report NDEs.

---BrianW

[bgwowk]

I would like to suggest a counter proposal: An "X" prize for a lab to successfully recover a mammalian brain from -130 degC.

Of course it could be argued that this is just as much tabloid fodder as cryonics itself.

That's the problem with cryonics. It's a series of completely logical statements that lead to an absurd conclusion. The conclusion is absurd not because it's scientifically or logically invalid. It's absurd because it steps on so many cultural taboos that it couldn't be any worse unless it involved sex with animals.

---BrianW

[Da55id]

I would argue an organ preservation prize at some point is the way to cultural acceptance.