From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Thu Aug 29 2002 - 14:44:12 MDT
> >2) Enough of the structure of the brain is preserved by freezing that the
> >person is preserved. Neurons and axons get damaged but their identity and
> >connections are preserved.
>
> This is the problem right here. It is stated as a fact when no evidence
> supports such claim. There are brains being frozen since 1976, and even
The damage that occurs when animals or cells are frozen and thawed doesn't
tell us whether essential structures are preserved in a frozen brain.
What's been done with freezing and sectioning biological samples gives me
confidence that the structure is preserved in a frozen brain. Sectioning
is ususally the most damaging part of the process, and specimens are
usually fixed to prevent gross damage during sectioning and mounting.
Cells, axons, dendrites, and synapses are all quite large, and may be
damaged but aren't obliterated by freezing.
> Even with hardy microbe cells you get at best around 90-95% viable cells
> after freezing -- and this with a suspension of cells, where it doesn't
You miss my point. Yes, freezing causes damage, and thawing causes
further damage, and for most large animals this is lethal. But the nature
of the cells, their type and position is preserved in the frozen brain,
and it could *in principle* be restored. Not practical today, perhaps
never practical, but possible.
> That's precisely when quacks make the most money: when the patients are
> dying and have little to lose. Especially in this case (if your brain is
Buyer beware is always the watch word...
Jim Lund
-------------------------
Driven wrote:
>> >[...]
>> >2) Enough of the structure of the brain is
>> preserved by freezing that the
>> >person is preserved. Neurons and axons get damaged
>> but their identity and
>> >connections are preserved.
>>
>> This is the problem right here. It is stated as a
>> fact when no evidence
>> supports such claim.
>
>How on dog's sweet earth could such evidence be
>provided?!? The amount of the structure of the brain
>that is preserved is *dependent upon how good, how
>powerful, how sophisticated, your technology, in other
>words, how much brain structure you can infer.
If you cannot provide evidence to support your claim, then your
claim is not scientific. It's really as simple as that.
>BTW, you say cryonics is not a science. Wrong.
>Cryonics *is* an experiment, and therefore is the very
>*essence* of science....
Not quite. We say that the specific claim that humanity *will* be
able to revive frozen brains sometime in the future is not
scientific. Not that our statements are about *just that claim*, not
the entire field of research into the preservation of organic tissue
through freezing, which is (for the most part) quite scientific and
has a number of positive results to its credit.
The claim that humanity *may* be able to do so *is* a valid
scientific hypothesis, and one that these "experiments" may settle,
one way or the other.
However, to sell a service that assumes that this hypothesis is
valid -- i.e. to assume your results before your experiment is
complete -- is not scientific.
James H.G. Redekop
-------------------------
On 28 Aug 2002 at 23:18, Ludwig Krippahl wrote:
> Terry W. Colvin forwarded:
> >[...] One perfectly reasonable cryonic reanimation scenario
> >involves a destructive, slice by slice, readout of your information
> >content using for example AFM's scanning the synaptic connections at
> >the molecular level.
>
> This may look perfectly reasonable on Star Trek, but the point is that
> it's not science at this time. There is no adequately tested procedure
> to do this, nor is there any way to guarantee with a minimum of
> confidence that it will be possible to do this on a brain that is
> frozen with current technology.
>
> So to freeze human brains today in the hope that your "perfectly
> reasonable" scenario will be feasible in the future is not a
> scientific decision but merely a wild guess, and to sell such service
> is fraud.
Legally, it may not be fraud *IF* the seller of the service fully informs the
purchaser that cryonics is, at best, highly speculative, that there is a great
degree of uncertainty over when and whether technology will progress to the
point that the purchaser can be revived successfully, and if no guarantees or
promises are made. As someone already pointed out, if you're going to snuff it
anyway, having yourself frozen is probably the equivalent of buying a dollar
ticket to the lotto.... in the worst case, you're still dead (and therefore no
worse off than before), and there's always that microscopic chance that someday
they may be able to revive you....
Of course, if assurances are made or promises given that are at wide variance
with what we know now, then it may well be legally fraud.
Len Cleavelin
------------------------
>Leonard R. Cleavelin wrote:
[...]
>As someone already pointed out, if you're going to snuff it anyway,
>having yourself frozen is probably the equivalent of buying a dollar
>ticket to the lotto.... in the worst case, you're still dead (and
>therefore no worse off than before), and there's always that
>microscopic chance that someday they may be able to revive you....
That sounds ok in theory. Sort of "when I die freeze me, who knows I might
come back". But in practice it's a bit different. E.g. from Cryonics Institute
"Our prices are lower than any other organization -- in fact, the most
affordable prices anywhere in the world. Our minimum whole-body suspension
fee is $28,000. (For members at a distance, transportation costs and local
help may add a bit.) Our $28,000 fee is a one-time only payment, with no
subsequent charges. It's easily funded by insurance or other means, and
funds the best care available for our member patients. (For last-minute
cases, where the patient was not signed up beforehand, we ordinarily charge
$35,000 rather than $28,000, if arrangements can be worked out at all.)"
So if you didn't sign in as a member in time, you pay extra and, more
importantly, they may not accept you at all. So best not wait for the last
moment and sign in in time. How?
"[...]
Originally we offered only one sort of membership option: what we now call
a Lifetime Membership, or Option One. As an Option One member, you pay a
one-time non-refundable $1,250, and you become a member for life
[...] Option Two: if you become an Option Two member, you don't pay any
membership fee at all. You do pay annual dues of $120 (which you can pay
all at once, or quarterly at just $35 per quarter). Once we receive the
first dues payment, your membership is in full force and you have the right
to arrange a contract (or Cryonic Suspension Agreement). And once
arrangements to fund the procedure, when the time comes, the member can be
suspended safely in cryostasis."
So as it turns out you don't pay a buck as a bet when you die. You pay
$1,250 (non refundable) just to get your name on the list, or $120 per year
for the rest of your life, so that when you die you can pay $28,000.
This procedure has no scientific validation. It's indeed a bet. But it's a
bet where you're dead by the time you'll collect, you have no idea what the
odds are and the whole gamble is unsupervised and without guarantees (even
if the technology allows it will they revive me? Will I still be around a
few centuries from now or will they scrap everything in 50 years? etc..)
As a service I feel they lack a minimum of assurance that expectations will
be met. As a bet I feel that gambling with dead people, unknown odds and no
regulations isn't quite right.
Finally slogans like "Cryonics -- the only alternative to the despair of
death and disease. A new technology of life potentially without limits"
don't really express the idea that this is a risky bet or an experiment.
Ludwig Krippahl
---------------------------
On 29 Aug 2002 at 7:29, Driven FromThePack wrote:
> I don't know why I carry on against what appear to be
> deliberately obtuse arguments, but...here goes:
Because you get off on feeling superior to us obtuse dolts?
> What about all the everyday occurences of cancer
> patients who, having what appears to be untreatable
> cancer, agree to undergoes *experimental* treatments,
> that *(obviously* (b/c there is currently no cure for
> cancer) do not work the vast majority of the time? Why
> are you not denouncing that as fraud?
In a nutshell, subjects in human experimentation are fully informed as to the
risks they are undergoing when they agree to be experimental subjects, and they
are made well aware of the facts concerning the experimental nature of the
treatment they will be receiving (assuming in a double blind experiment that
they are in fact getting the treatment, and are not part of the control group).
Fraud, legally, is the misrepresentation of a material fact in a transaction. A
subject in an experimental protocol isn't being defrauded because s/he is fully
informed and gives consent to participation. You may want to re-read what I
wrote earlier. I stated that provision of cryonics services may not be legally
fraud *if* the purchaser of such services is fully and accurately informed of
all the facts surrounding the services, *including* the fact that there is no
guarantee that technology will progress in the manner which you seem to think
that it will in order to make revival of the frozen subject practical.
In my not so humble opinion (since you are a newbie to this list, let me detail
*my* credentials: law degree from one of the better law schools in the US
(Northwestern), about 10 years of law practice experience, and now employed by
a major research institution (University of Tennessee Health Science Center) and
certified by that institution as having sufficient knowledge of the laws
governing experimentation on human subjects that I can participate as an
investigator in any research involving human subjects), if A persuades B (or B's
custodians if B is not in possession of his/her faculties at the time the
transaction is entered into) to have B cryonically "preserved" at death by
leading B to believe that it is likely that B can be revived at some time in the
foreseeable future, A has committed fraud if it is a commercial transaction,
or A has committed a serious breach of the law governing human experimentation
if this has been done pursuant to a scientific experiment. However, the
transaction may well be perfectly legal as long as B has been given accurate
information about the risks and probable outcomes of the process. At this stage
of our knowledge, my legal opinion is that B must be told that at present, the
state of scientific knowledge about and the technology underlying cryonic
"preservation" is such that there is a very, very small (though nonzero)
probablilty that s/he can be revived in the future, and that the most likely
outcome is that B will not be revived in the future. If B is told this, and
agrees to the procedure anyway (as I pointed out in my earlier post, B is
certainly no worse off being frozen as opposed to being cremated or allowed to
feed worms), everything is, from the legal perspective, as legal as church on
Sunday. The issue is what information are we giving the prospective corpsesicle?
If that information is accurate, everything is cool, legally. But if that
information represents an overly optimistic estimate of what science is likely
to accomplish in the future, the transaction is fraud, pure and simple.
Len Cleavelin
--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com >
Alternate: < terry_colvin@hotmail.com >
Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
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