7 replies to this topic

[Set]

Just wanted to let you guys know when I looked last time they didn’t offer
whole-body vitrification. Also another thing I noted was the membership dues.
I recall someone doing math over the difference between Alcor and another facility in Florida.
The person was wondering how long the facilities could operate.
I believe I now understand where all of the funding comes from.
As I’ve said before I have chosen Alcor as my cryo provider.

One question, I’m not really up to date on medical practices. How likely is it that someone in a hospital
would look at your necklace for medical information? I think the bracelet is quite bulky so Id prefer the
necklace but I’ve decided to do the bracelet because I’m worried about the possible over sight.
Anyhow opinions welcome as always.

Hope this hasn’t been posted already.

Edited by Set, 02 October 2005 - 05:57 AM.

[Set]

By the way, to find the information on whole-body vitrification you will need to look here:

http://alcor.org/Lib...cornews043.html

[sjvan]

Please keep in mind that this is far from complete vitrification. We are confident that the brain and parts of the torso are vitrified, but there are substantial regions of the body that are not sufficiently cryoprotected to completely vitrify. Nevertheless we are able to vitrify the brain now without any seperation while still cryoprotecting the body, and feel this is a significant advance.

Alcor is still struggling with terminology for this process that is accurate but not cumbersome. Any ideas?

Steve Van Sickle

[caliban]

Well, "whole body neurovitrification" does sound a bit confusing.

Maybe I'm a bit slow but I can't find the claim to whole-body vitrification in the newsletter? (But air in the circuit? The honesty is appreciated)

Thanks for the clarification Mr. Van Sickle.
Whatever the perfusate, thorough perfusion is never going to be possible after cardiac arrest. I think most full body patients appreciate the fact. Nonetheless, non-seperation is good news.

Did you build a bigger box? Modify the whole body machine?

[bgwowk]

caliban wrote:

Whatever the perfusate, thorough perfusion is never going to be possible after cardiac arrest.

For someone who has been in cardiac arrest for hours with blood clotting, perfusion problems are going to be an issue. However when a standby team is present to administer medications and other procedures within minutes of cardiac arrest, the occurrence of cardiac arrest makes no difference on how well a patient can be perfused. Whether a patient is legally alive (as in heart bypass surgery) or legally deceased, in both cases the heart will be stopped and perfusion driven by an external pump. Perfusion depends on the condition of the blood and circulatory system, not the heart.

Uneven perfusion is a problem in cryonics simply because even under normal physiological conditions, tissues perfuse at vastly different rates. The brain is one of the most well-perfused organs of the body. One quarter of your cardiac output is devoted to supplying this three-pound lump of tissue. In contrast, inactive muscles perfuse at a tiny fraction of this rate. Some tissues, such as the cornea of the eye, don't even perfuse with blood at all. So the problem with cryonics is that tissues like brain absorb enough cryoprotectant to vitrify long before most other tissues of the body. You are then faced with a choice of continuing perfusion and poisoning the brain with cryoprotectant toxicity for the sake of vitrifying other tissues, or stopping perfusion and vitrifying the brain and letting other tissues partially freeze. The latter is obviously the superior choice.

As you can see, this whole topic of trying to vitrify bodies is very complicated. So far most energy has been devoted to bringing the technology online. Now more energy is going to have to be devoted to properly explaining it.

---BrianW

[scotthello]

That's interesting..I wonder if most Alcor member shave picked the neuro over whole body because of the preservation quality issue..or is because of cost reasons? Just wondering...

[sjvan]

That's interesting..I wonder if most Alcor member shave picked the neuro over whole body because of the preservation quality issue..or is because of cost reasons?  Just wondering...

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me that is indeed the reason I chose neuro. I'm relatively young and healthy, so the insurance cost wasn't a big issue. Now that the whole body methods are improving, though, I may be changing to whole body.

[sjvan]

Did you build a bigger box? Modify the whole body machine?

Yes to both. There was quite a bit of engineering that went into it, including new perfusion equipment and controlled temperature enclosures. More details will be in the Nov/Dec Cryonics magazine.