Selected messages from the Cryonics Institute Yahoo Group’s Forum and Cryonet.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cryonics_Institute/

The question of how much ischemic damage is too much damage is difficult not only because of it depends on uncertain information, but because the value judgment based on that uncertain information is based on subjective costbenefit analysis.

I am conservative in the extreme: I would want any of my remains cryopreserved, no matter how deteriorated. From a benefit point of view, I place no limits on the capacity of future science (far enough in the future) to use physical remains as part of the artifacts used to reconstruct identity. From a cost point of view, my cryopreservation is funded through life insurance, and there would be no cost sacrifice to cryopreserve my highly deteriorated remains.

Dr. Roy Walford's daughter chose to cremate her father rather than cryopreserve him because he had suffered a few hours of ischemia. Insofar as his cryopreservation would have been funded from his estate, it is difficult to say how much of a role the cost factor played in the costbenefit decision. I think there is an exaggeration of the amount of destruction attributed to a few hours of ischemia. Although neurons are placed on an irreversible path of cell death ("apoptosis", irrevesible by current technology), that is not the same thing as obliteration of the brain. I discuss this in detail, with references, on my website:

http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/ischemia.html#brain

A cryonics organization must struggle with public perception in its struggle to survive. Most recently a relative of a prospective cryonics patient implied that we are unethical because we were planning to cryopreserve the patient despite the fact that he had suffered serious brain damage due to stroke. The implication was that we were exploiting the family simply to gain money and that we cared nothing about the prospects for recovery. The relative, however, undoubtedly was influenced by thoughts of money as well.

So must we prove that we are reputable by refusing to cryopreserve a person who has suffered one day, two days or a week of ischemia at room temperature or refrigerator (morgue) temperature? What are the wishes of the patient (if the patient is a Member) or of the nextofkin? Are we duping the nextofkin for mercenary reasons if we cryopreserve after the patient has been in a hospital refrigerator?

Should we refuse the patient to avoid such accusations? Is the nextofkin too emotionally upset to make a rational judgment?

One British Columbia bureaucrat justified the anticryonics law in that Province on the basis of this claim. Other States, Provinces or Countries may follow suit if the media gets a hold of an appropriately sensationalistic and heartwrenching story of this nature.

Ben Best

Mike Darwin once estimated that only about onefifth of cryonics patients under his care were cryopreserved under good conditions, that is, where a cryonics rescue team was assembled and ready upon pronouncement of death and the patient was not already been severely damaged by a disease condition such as stroke or Alzheimer's Disease. But a statistic such as this is misleading if not used in a constructive manner.

If you live in the United States, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about one in 700,000. But the odds are much less if you don't live in Florida. The odds are a lot greater if you habitually stay on a golf course during approaching thunderstorms or stand under the largest tree in the area. There are always actions you can take to improve your odds! You can wear a motorcycle helmet when you drive a car, you can use a safer vehicle than an SUV, you can avoid alcohol or antihistamines when you drive and you can drive slowly & carefully. I think the most important actions you can take to improve the conditions under which you are cryopreserved are to avoid accidents and take care of your health. The risk of sudden death due to cardiac arrest or of brain damage due to stroke or vascular dementia can be dramatically reduced by lifestyle. Yet many cryonicists smoke, never exercise and eat poorly (one cryonicist told me that the two basic food groups are fat and sugar). The longer you can stay alive, the better the technology that will be available to cryopreserve you under good conditions and to expedite your cryopreservation.

Alarm and communication systems will improve, but I encourage you to use the best currently available. Most difficult is building a support group among friends, family and nearby cryonicists to respond in a cryonics emergency. Most cryonicists are culturally isolated and even if they are not too shy to discuss their cryonics arrangements with friends, relations, neighbors & coworkers, getting skilled & motivated cooperation requires daunting effort. It has taken me years to build an active local cryonics support group in Toronto, Canada and I am proud to say that it is one of the best in the world. But it leaves much to be desired.

The amount of time it takes for cryonics emergency support to be activated in a medical emergency depends upon the communications systems and human support network you have created. Cryonics is not simply an offtheshelf plugandplay consumer product. We must build our own lifeboats and the success of our cryonics arrangements depends critically upon the time, thought and effort we put into *making* it work. The point is not to passively estimate the odds, but to actively improve the odds.

And do all that you can to *delay* the date of your deanimation.

Ben Best

Philip Rhoades wrote:

Ben replied:

I was trying to discuss the question of brain damage in terms of the capabilities of future science which is relevant when we discuss how much damage is too much damage to expect reconstruction by future science future medicine.

"Brain death" is a current medicine term which refers to the irreversible absence (by current medicine) of electrical activity in the brain.

We can also speak of "brain cell death", which is the death of the neurons that make up the brain. This actually takes many hours. However, after an hour of ischemia brain cells are places on an irreversible (by current medicine) path of selfdestruction (apoptosis). However, I strongly believe that future medicine will be able to halt this (currently) irreversible progression. Therefore, I think it is a grave mistake to use current standards of ischemic brain damage as a limit on the capabilities of future medicine we should NOT decide that cryopreservation is useless after a few hours of ischemic damage.

The main reasons why heart stoppage of 6 to 10 minutes is invariably fatal for current heart attack victims is that the vasculature of the brain is damaged by the ischemia and even more damaged by reperfusion if an attempt is made to restart the circulation after 10 or more minutes of no circulation.

To clarify another point of confusion about what I have said on these subjects, I don't mean to diminish destruction wrought by the ultimate effects of ischemic damage. When it is all done, brain tissue is little more than soup all structure in a liquid state. This happens gradually and at room temperature is probably completed within a few days. This is far, far worse than freezing damage there is nothing left that can be used to deduce original structure.

- Ben

Surely the same thing can be said of medicine. Anyone predicting that this or that cryopreserved person cannot be revived is making a prediction about the future of medicine and related technologies. Reeves' prediction had telephone numbers stored in cell phones using a tape loop. No doubt some of the engineers attending these lectures would have thought "no way that would wear out far too fast" and if they were as hide bound as some cryonics detractors, may have concluded that numbers could *never* be stored in a cell phone. EEPROMs were unknown in 1970.Static RAM came in chips holding a massive 64 bits (not bytes). These chips consumed power all the time they were retaining those 64 bits. Some things that doctors steadfastly believe will never happen are equally "tape loopy."

The real worry, of course, is when people in authority have silly ideas such as "individuals of other races are not really people", "once declared dead by law, a person ceases to be a person", and so on, then they can use violence with impunity to enforce these ideas. Violence always causes damage that spreads beyond the immediate target, and the risk that exists in such situations extends to other patients in the cryonics situation.

No one today would consider destructively gathering evidence from a heart transplant patient in the middle of an operation, yet according to law only a few decades earlier the person whose body was the table with no heart would be dead. The only answer seems to be education. Try and get as many people as possible to understand the ideas behind cryonics.

Again, from John:

"iceblockman001"

Seeking suspension insurance and funeral director in Australia:

Hello everyone. I have just joined CI and am in process of arranging suspension. Are there any Australian members who can offer advice/help? I am looking for a funeral director in the Brisbane area and an insurance broker who has written suspension insurance. Also just interested in contacting Australian members generally. [iceblockman001@yahoo.com.au]

Hi everyone!

Dave Pizer is quite correct when he says that signing up fails to guarantee suspension. While I know of no steps which GUARANTEE suspension, there's a strong case that we should keep track of one another more closely, perhaps with a kind of "buddy" system.

Certainly, once Dave Pizer's cryonics community has been built, then once we get there we're probably more safe than in the outer community. One fundamental problem, however, lies in that phrase "once we get there": most of us have to live in an outside world not necessarily friendly to cryonics or cryonicists, and even worse, one which may hide that unfriendliness from us until we've become ill enough not to see it at all. I'd trust another cryonicist with my life much more than I'd trust a relative who isn't a cryonicist and doesn't understand our thinking at all.

And I'll also add a bit about the socalled threats to us by Bush and "rightto lifers". I think we should pay much more attention to the threats to us by relatives or friends who go along with our beliefs whenever they speak with us, but do so only out of politeness or outright attempt to fool us about their devotion and then turn around when we become incapacitated and try to get us buried or cremated.

*******

In a brief piece for Cryonet I recently argued that very long life spans would affect us in many ways even without any special biological or physical redesign. I am agreeing with Mike Perry on this issue; however I would argue further, by saying that a virtually immortal lifespan will give anyone so endowed with a character that wouldn't even think of hurting others or being "evil" toward them. (This doesn't mean that they would fail to defend themselves if attacked, and with technology less and less damaging ways to do so will be found).

In short, our wish for a very long lifespan brings with it a loss of any desire to commit evil on any other. Immortality plays an essential role in the argument here; we don't just become nice because of general technology, but specifically because our life spans have increased so much that we've outgrown such inclinations.

If anyone on Cryonet is interested, here are a few more changes, told about as briefly as I can. We may lose our interest in history, since after all we would have ourselves experienced the events history tells about. A good deal of literature deals with love and death; we'd hardly lose interest in love, but most of that literature (yes, Shakespeare and others such included) would be forgotten. One way or another, we may take on many lovers, not all at the same time but sequentially.

After all, two independent people following their independent lives may have paths which match for a while but not forever. Nor for that matter would we "fall in love" any more, so that the term "lovers" would cease to be exactly correct. We wouldn't want to produce children in such unions, of course. Production of children, ie. new human beings, may turn out to bear little relation to any sexual unions at all when they are produced, which would be quite rare. Groups of people would combine to produce a child, not just from their genes but their ideas about what a new human being should be like. These groups would occur independently of any pairing for sex.

We would not seek honor or acclamation from others because in our long life spans everyone will have done something worthwhile and striking. Our status at any instant and for any other person will depend on just what we and the other person seek together. We would have differences in wealth, but they would be seen as choices anyone could make if they wished. If we were the equivalent of scientists today, we'd put out the results of our efforts for anyone to see, be glad if someone finds a way to carry them further, and interested if someone finds arguments against them (it's our short current life spans that makes some scientists oppose a new theory contradicting their work so vehemently).

As readers might guess, that's what TALES OF SKASTOWE is about: my attempt to see what life will be like for us as immortals.

Best wishes and long long life for all,

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Has CI ever frozen/stored an umbilical cord/placenta from a new born for future use in stem cell repair of a person with such diseases as cancer or for bone marrow transplant? If so, what would be the cost to provide me such services by CI?

My father presently has the initial stages of Leukemia, and is undergoing chemotherapy at the age of 85. My daughter is to give birth this February to my new grandson. I wanted to know if by freezing my new grandson's umbilical cord and placenta if it would be either of future help to my grandson or to be of use for my father's leukemia using the stem cells for a bone marrow transplant.

There is no special care taken for sample collection and the tissues are simply straightfrozen in liquid nitrogen without cryoprotectant. The procedure could be used for any tissue, including umbilical cord tissue. However, I expect that professional services use special techniques for both the collection and preservation of the samples. Although we have had numerous requests, no one has yet stored umbilical cord tissue for stem cells at CI, and we make no claims about the quality of our service other than to preserve in perpetuity.

Ben Best

Thanks Ben, for your reply.

If I do save a sample of umbilical cord and blood by use of the CI sample method, what’s the best way to do this? Shall I send the sample kit in a dry ice refrigerated container to CI to reduce the damage caused at room temperatures, making certain I get the samples immediately at the birth from the OB department of the hospital and immediately place them in the dry ice container for shipment? Thanks for any help you can provide on answers about this matter.

Also, since I am a CI fully funded member with CI contract, I can receive indefinite storage at a total cost of only $98 total with shipping costs for the sample without any ongoing annual storage fees. Compared to what Viacord charges, this is a real deal. For any young couple expecting a new born child considering saving umbilical samples for the future, this cost savings in storage costs of the samples alone would easily pay for a family membership with CI. CI needs to capitalize on this great money saving aspect of its membership privileges, if it can, to increase our membership numbers of the younger generation.

Jack Nixon

Jack, I think I may not have emphasized strongly enough that CI has NO professional expertise in this area. Those with professional expertise probably do a lot better job of preparation and perhaps even storage than CI does. I do not even know enough about the matter to know. But if the professional services are offering transplantable quality stem cells, that is something that CI is probably not capable of offering.

Your suggestions for data collection and shipment sound good, but if you want professional advice, ask the professionals. If you want to ship in dry ice, contact Argents Express.

****

But the storage itself does seem very profitable for very little work, judging by what they are charging to store in liquid nitrogen ( $43 per month for a small sample YIKES!).

Ben

My experience in this domain suggests this: First make contact and do the paperwork with CI in advance (CIHQ@aol.com), look at how to pay the suspension fee. Contact Albin and Sons in the UK. I have got a great deal of help from John and Chrissie de Rivaz, (many thanks to them). They are the people to go to on this matter.

Ask the Albin’s' team not to speak about cryonics, only about moving the body to the UK In France, you need a death certificate, a certificate stating the cause of death and one about no contagious disease. All of them done by the same MD. After that, the local funeral director will get an authorization from the police and one from the state authority at the prefecture.

Everything can be done in one day if there is not a word about cryonics. If the hated word is used, count four days.

Yvan Bozzonetti.

Replacing the Pioneer unit is a Radio Shack product, Catalog # 492559:

It is a pendantbased system connected wirelessly to an autodialer console that will call up to four phone numbers and play a prerecorded 15second message three times if someone answers. If there is no answer or if there is an answering machine the autodialer goes on to the next phone number. If someone answers he/she can press any button on his/her phone and hear any sounds that can reach the microphone on the console (but cannot converse). This pendant panicbutton seems less vulnerable to false alarms by accidental pressing than the Pioneer button.

The console emits a loud squealing sound while phoning the numbers and playing the message after the pendant button is pressed. (A stop button is below the "panic button" on the pendant.) It is possible to buy a power horn auxiliary that emits an even louder sound, but the console was earpiercingly loud enough for our purposes. We did buy an auxiliary device that interfaces between a lamp plug and a wall socket to cause the lamp to blink on and off after the console is activated by the pendant panic button. Another auxiliary device is available that can replace a wall switch to produce the same effect for wallswitchcontrolled lighting. These would be helpful in alerting neighbors or others in distant parts of the house that the pendantwearer is in trouble. We programmed four numbers into the console:

(1) the CI Facility

(2) Robert Ettinger's son's house

(3) the CI Funeral Director

(4) my cell phone

My cell phone should never be called insofar as the CI Funeral Director has a 24/7 answering service and a human will always answer the phone. In the recorded message made by Robert Ettinger he identifies himself and states that he is in trouble and needs emergency assistance. No one at the above numbers should need further information, such as his address.

The list price for this product is $62.99, but with taxes and warranty we paid $77.76. The warranty is indispensable. The first unit I obtained from the Radio Shack store simply did not work it was burnedout. Someone had returned the item and Radio Shack had put it back on the shelf for resale. When I returned the unit I was sent to a nearby Radio Shack store for a replacement. The first unit I was to be given at the second store had also been used and returned. The second unit was apparently new, however. I tested it at the CI facility and it worked fine. But when I attempted to test it at Robert Ettinger's home, the unit would not record a message when the record button was pushed.

When I returned this unit to the first Radio Shack store and demonstrated the problem to the manager, she told me she would get a replacement unit from a third Radio Shack store, which I could get the following day. But when I came for pickup the manager informed me that the unit in the third store had also been used and returned. So she ordered me a new unit for delivery directly from the warehouse to the CI facility.

The new unit apparently works as advertised, but my experience with this product has not inspired a sense of security in what is intended to be used as a lifesaving device. Fortunately, we are also using the Magnavox MobilPal+GPS system. Redundancy is probably a good idea anyway, in case of problems with one of the units or power failure or battery failure (the pendant battery is supposed to last 5 years).

****

There has been a trend of declining rate of autopsy over the past several decades which has been attributed to a number of factors:

(1) Medical insurance (including Medicare) does not pay for autopsy

(2) Many people and religious groups object to autopsy and physicians have become increasingly subject to social pressure.

(3) Imaging and other diagnostic technology has made autopsy less necessary to determine cause of death. These technologies are also less messy and less likely to be a biohazard. The Young Physicians section of the American Medical Association, however, has produced a pamphlet arguing some of the benefits of autopsy:

Of interest, the document includes a map of the United States showing which states give authority to coroners and which to medical examiners.

Ben Best

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Hello there I am a film maker from Chicago doing a documentary on Cryonics I have already been to the Cryonic Institute in Clinton Township and talked to both Robert Ettinger and Ben Best but I was hoping to talk to some other people interested in the field particularly those signed up to be preserved. Because I am receiving no funding for this film I don't have the means to travel very far so if you live in or near the Chicago area or know of anyone that does –

I would love to sit down and have a chat with them on camera about their experiences with Cryonics. You can email me at jeph@sherlockrock.com and let me know if you can help me out. I would appreciate any help at all.

Jeph