Yes, I read Steve's letter--and I still don't agree will all of the points. It is funny that I came here to post the article about resuscitation science because I feel it shows that death is not only seen as 1. The soul leaving the body, or 2. The body being a corpse, or 3. Any attempt to recall the soul is no longer medicine, or 4. Any revival of the body is revival of a 'zombie' like creature.
In it they point out that one can be clinically dead, then come back. I think this article shows that cryonicists will also be seen as in that 'third state' with a 'lot' more 'maneuvering room....but also that they will be considered to have once been dead, and then come back. It would have to be this way legally for estate purposes, a 'clinical death'-- then during suspension one being considered to have been in a 'state of suspension' or 'third state'--then alive again. I talk to a lot of people about cryonics who have never heard of it, and over time have seen what people come to agree with more, by their heads shaking in agreement and wanting more information instead of flat out discounting or laughing.
People--adults and children alike, are more willing to believe that cryonics preserves a person who can not be kept alive by modern medicine any longer, when they are 'legally dead' (this is important for some people who want to think they had no more chances, before being preserved--thus preservation is their only chance) for the opportunity that if society continues to advance as it has been, then the people can be brought back to full health--even (as is important for some very sick, or old) into rejuvenated bodies. It is important to remember that not all cryonicists have the same view that patients can not be 'called dead'. I've talked with many who do agree that the patients preserved now are legally dead, but that the definition may change in the future because they are not yet cellularly or informationally irretrievable, what cryonicists consider 'all the way dead'.
I follow all talking points given to me by Alcor when I'm giving interviews, or just presenting information at a social gathering. I cut and pasted two points from Alcor's site, which I hope relate to you how I explain that people are clinically dead by current standards, but that this may change in the future--since they have not lost all their information, or are 'irretrievably dead'. In fact I've explained in detail how patients are biologically alive and not 'dead', to my children--this to us is the basis of being cryonicists--the medical time travel of the cells and information, actually alive but extremely slowed down.
"Q: Aren't cryonics patients dead?
A: Law requires cryonics patients to be legally dead, but this does not mean they are biologically dead. Under ideal conditions, cryonics can begin moments after the heart stops beating. Blood circulation and breathing are then artificially restored, keeping cells of the brain and the rest of the body biologically alive during the early stages of the procedure. The blood chemistry and blood gases (oxygen, carbon dioxide, pH) of a cryonics patient receiving good cardiopulmonary support are similar to those of a legally living person. Cryonics patients are therefore legally dead, but biologically alive, depending on how rapidly procedures are begun after the heart stops. For further clarification of this often confusing issue, please read Cardiopulmonary Support in Cryonics in the Alcor online Library."
and also from Alcor:
"Preventing Death
Death occurs when the chemistry of life becomes so disorganized that normal operation cannot be restored. (Death is not when life turns off. People can and have survived being "turned off".) How much chemical disorder can be survived depends on medical technology. A hundred years ago, cardiac arrest was irreversible. People were called dead when their heart stopped beating. Today death is believed to occur 4 to 6 minutes after the heart stops beating because after several minutes it is difficult to resuscitate the brain. However, with new experimental treatments, more than 10 minutes of warm cardiac arrest can now be survived without brain injury. Future technologies for molecular repair may extend the frontiers of resuscitation beyond 60 minutes or more, making today's beliefs about when death occurs obsolete.
Ultimately, real death occurs when cell structure and chemistry become so disorganized that no technology could restore the original state. This is called the information-theoretic criterion for death. Any other definition of death is arbitrary and subject to continual revision as technology changes. That is certainly the case for death pronounced on the basis of absent "vital signs" today, which is not real death at all.
The object of cryonics is to prevent death by preserving sufficient cell structure and chemistry so that recovery (including recovery of memory and personality) remains possible by foreseeable technology. If indeed cryonics patients are recoverable in the future, then clearly they were never really dead in the first place. Today’s physicians will simply have been wrong about when death occurs, as they have been so many times in the past. The argument that cryonics cannot work because cryonics patients are dead is a circular argument."
I agree that this a circular argument, but also that patients are legally dead per our current legal standards, yet they are not information dead, or 'real dead'--and may be fully alive again in the future. I make this point with my children, and with others. They will then have been considered dead, like some people are now who come back from death ( I have and hope to again
)--
In the following story a National Geographic Special "I Came Back From the Dead" is mentioned, I have it set to record and will be watching it tonight
But our culture can handle those words, and it can help cryonics.
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4179894Resuscitation Science: Is There a Third State of Being?
Doctors Learning More About Bringing People Back From Clinical Death
By BOB BROWN
Jan. 25, 2008
They call it resuscitation science. It's a new area of research at the University of Pennsylvania, where a Center for Resuscitation Science opened less than a year ago, and where the line between life and death is shifting.
Historically, doctors have defined clinical death as the point at which either the heart irreversibly stops beating or the brain shows no signs of activity according to Dr. Benjamin Abella, the center's clinical research director.
"But researchers & now believe there's a third state of being that hovers somewhere between life and death -- a place where most of the body's cells are still alive, but neither of these two classical signs of life are present," Dr. Abella said.
How can medicine bring patients back from that state without causing irreversible damage to the cells?
Watch the story on the National Geographic Channel special "I Came Back From the Dead," at 10 p.m. ET Tuesday, Jan. 29
"It used to be thought that getting someone back as quickly as possible with CPR, defibrillation and warming & was the best approach," said Dr. Abella. "Where that may in part be true, many initial survivors from cardiac arrest go on to suffer severe debilitating brain injury and sometimes don't live to leave the hospital alive."
Restarting the heart while protecting the brain is where the key to successful resuscitation lies. It is dramatically demonstrated in the National Geographic Channel documentary "I Came Back from the Dead," airing Jan. 29.
Through a cooperative arrangement with the National Geographic Channel, ABC News has looked into two of the cases featured in the documentary, studying how the lessons learned from them have contributed to the knowledge of how people can be brought back from clinical death.
'He Looked Like a Cadaver' Ward Krenz, now of Sioux Falls, S.D., survived after being submerged for an hour in an icy lake.
"He certainly came back from the appearance of death from all the clinical criteria for death," said cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Dan Waters of Clear Lake, Iowa. "I don't think it's a big stretch to say he came back from the dead."
Today Krenz is active and healthy and works for a railway company in Sioux Falls. In 1993, he was presumed dead when his body was pulled from a frozen lake he fell into after his snowmobile careered onto an open patch of water in Clear Lake.
"That's when you are in panic mode," Krenz said. His companions heard him cry for help but were unable to reach him.
Krenz treaded water. "I believe it was for about five to 10 minutes," he said.
Then Krenz lost consciousness and slipped beneath the surface. Rescuers discovered his body, with only the helmet still floating above the surface, roughly an hour after the accident. His father was told his sonhad died.
"So on his way to the hospital," said Krenz, "for three hours he was planning my funeral."
"When [Krenz] came to the emergency room he looked like a cadaver," Waters said. "He was stiff, ice-blue, horribly cold to the touch, and he just looked like somebody who had been dead for a long time."
Krenz had flat-lined.
Nevertheless, an estimated two hours after he plunged through the hole in the ice, he was hooked up to a heart-lung machine. Doctors were able to restore a heartbeat, but the prospects, if he survived, were troubling.
"There was at least, I thought, a statistically significant chance we would not get the person he was before back," Waters said. "That he would suffer severe, irreversible brain damage, and still & persist in a vegetative state. So that was my biggest concern."
But in the icy lake, Krenz's body had reacted with incredible, evolutionary defenses: capillaries constricted, sending blood to his vital organs, which needed the oxygen, and away from the skin to reduce heat loss. Had he been warmed too quickly before being placed on the heart-lung machine it could have been the worst thing for him.
According to Abella, research shows that cooling a patient, as Ward Krenz was cooled by the lake, can also slow the clock that counts the seconds of remaining life.
"Hypothermia, or keeping someone cool, seems to add minutes to that clock," Abella said. "So it seems we can push back that envelope and actually affect the transition point between life and death."
In addition, Krenz's lungs never flooded with water because the shock of the cold caused a spasm that closed his windpipe.
The cold also protected his brain.
"He was fully immersed," said Waters. "So not only did his body cool evenly, but his head was underwater and his brain actually was physically cooled by the water as well."
"It turns out when you lower the core body temperature, you slow metabolism," Abella said. "And it seems to have protective effects on the brain, the heart and other organs."
The cold may have been lethal but it also saved Krenz. A sudden warming and uncontrolled return of blood flow to his body could have damaged or killed him. Researchers are now working on understanding why. It's the type of case that has changed conventional thinking about how to revive patients from clinical death.
"When the heart is stopped, that's clearly a bad thing," said Abella. "But when we get blood flow back, a whole new set of injuries kick in at that very moment."
That damage appears to be slowed and lessened by hypothermia.
"I've cared for many patients after cardiac arrest who I thought would never leave the hospital, and I thought would be brain damaged," Abella said. "And what I've seen is that hypothermia brings them back."
First Death, Then Surgery
As the science of resuscitating people advances, it also means that surgeries can be attempted on some conditions that would otherwise be untreatable -- first by killing the patient; then by bringing the patient back. That was what was necessary to operate on a painful and potentially fatal aneurysm in the brain of Atlanta musician Pam Reynolds.
"It was difficult to eat, it was difficult to sleep," said Reynolds. "And it's the kind of pain that no medication helps."
Reynolds went to Phoenix neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler.
"When an aneurysm blows, half the patients die," said Spetzler. "And those that survive, half of them never return to being normal. So it's a real, real threat."
To remove that threat, Reynolds had to be placed in a state of clinical death. Her body was cooled by a heart-lung machine until her heart was at a standstill; then it was stopped completely by an injection of potassium chloride, the same chemical used in death row executions.
Spetzler and his team repaired the aneurysm. During her clinical death, Reynolds experienced something that is reported by around 20 percent of cardiac arrest victims -- a phenomenon commonly termed a near-death experience. She had the sensation of having watched her surgery from above the table, and what surprised her doctors was that she could recount specific details of the operation, including parts of the operating room conversation.
"I heard a female voice say, 'We have a problem, her arteries are too small,'" Reynolds said.
The conversation and other details she recounted were in the surgical records.
Dr. Karl Greene, who was on the team of surgeons, asked, "Why would she have this kind of information if she was so deeply under a barbiturate infusion of medications that should be shutting down her brain?"
In the absence of facts, some partial theories have been proposed. The body may have a self-defense mechanism that produces endorphins to create a sense of well-being in anticipation of death. Because cells never stop working all at once, Reynolds' brain might have continued to function after it had flat-lined, absorbing or envisioning details. Reynolds, however, believes it was a distinct memory.
"It was just too in the pocket to make it up," she said.
"Whether that image came from somewhere else that she then internalized somehow, I don't think there is any way to tell," said Spetzler. "But it was sort of intriguing how well she described what she shouldn't have been able to see."
As the science of resuscitation improves and tackles unanswered questions, doctors are not only redefining what we mean by the term "clinical death," they are re-engineering the ways they can resuscitate those who have experienced it.
"I don't think you want to live at those limits, but at least you know that there is maybe a little maneuvering room out there," Waters said.
