A Great Day! (was: Re: Heart-Brains & Cryonics (was Re: Thinking with our hearts))

From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Mon Jul 12 1999 - 21:12:10 MDT


Upgrade! writes:
> Up till this I had been in two minds about whether to go for head-only
> or full-body suspension. It now seems that full-body is the better
> option, warranting the extra cost. Thanks.

Due to prolonged process of dying prior to suspension in essentially
every patient the periphery (due to body's built-in protection mechanisms)
gets very limited blood flow for days -- it thus 1) suffers extensive
damage 2) thus gets very very patchy cryoprotectant perfusion. While the
most recent best-case(!) ischaemic (rabbit) models seem to imply even
neuros are getting a very rough ride, this need not to remain so in
the future (if cryonics is part of euthanasia in ICU setting).
Single-organ vs. multi-organ cryoprotection is intrinsically much
simpler to achieve. (Though I am not sure of this) neuros achieve
faster and better perfusion by clamping off the rest of the body.
Additional (admittedly minor) point with whole-body: cracking.
Financial reason: neuros are cheaper, since whole-bodys don't
utilize dewar volume well.

Since the technology necessary for suspension can essentially generate
a body or a model thereof which is essentially undistinguishable
from the real thing, whole-body basically doesn't make sense. Ymmv.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:28 MST