by Ben Best

We were going to have more material about our 71st patient in this issue, but instead we are devoting our space to the 72nd patient, which was an extremely complicated and informative case.

Because this case involved removal of life support, it had the potential to minimize ischemic damage, but the "human factor" presented many obstacles and should serve as a warning to all our Members.

Our esteemed editor, John Bull, wants to limit the amount of "boring technical material" that appears in THE IMMORTALIST. For this reason he published Dr. Pichugin's research report rather than my ischemia essay in the last issue. This issue my ischemia essay is being published rather than a report by Dr. Pichugin (which will be published in the next issue).

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The problems associated with ischemia (tissue deterioration after the heart has stopped) are of great importance in cryonics. In my essay I try to answer the question of how much time can pass after legal death without cooling or blood oxygen/nutrient before we decide that cryonics will be of no benefit. Is it two hours or two days? What effect does temperature reduction have on the tolerable time? Frequently we get calls from people who have relatives who have been in a hospital cooler for one to five days after pronouncement of death.

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The next annual general meeting of the Cryonics Institute will be Sunday, September 24, 2006 at the CI Facility.

All Members are encouraged to attend. Two Director positions are open. If you want to be a Director candidate, please submit a short candidacy statement (100 words or less) before August 11, 2006.

As of 24-Feb-2006 the Cryonics Institute had 572 Members, 249 of whom were fully funded with contracts. Three of those Members were recently "lost".

The breakdown of Membership by country and Option type is as follows:

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The next Potluck dinner at the CI Facility will be Sunday, March 26th at 6pm and the 7pm lecture will be "Vitrification: What it is and how to achieve it", by me.

We had our second potluck dinner at the Cryonics Institute on Sunday evening, which was attended by eight people -- up from the five who attended the first potluck that was held last month. There were five new people plus three of those who attended in October. Two of the new ones were local CI Members who had never seen the CI facility before.

I had less time to prepare my "Free Radicals and Ischemic Damage in Cryonics" lecture than I had expected because I had been busy this weekend accepting our 70th patient. (Andy is away on his annual hunting vacation.) But the lecture went reasonably well, largely because there was so much questioning and participation of those attending -- which made it more of a discussion than a lecture.

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Alan has apologized for any embarrassment this may have caused, but he believes that Alcor will be offering whole body vitrification in the near future, and this is a service he desires. The Cryonics Institute has no plans to offer whole body vitrification to our members in the near future, although a form of cryoprotectant perfusion of the body in addition to cryoprotectant perfusion of the head is anticipated shortly for those who request it. We have regretfully accepted Mr. Sinclair's resignation.

Today I received the January 2006 issue of LIFE EXTENSION magazine. On page 54 there is an article by Saul Kent entitled "Life Extension's Visionary Plan to Conquer Aging and Death". This article details as no article in LE magazine has detailed before the amount of money and effort that the Life Extension Foundation is putting into cryonics-related research. It discusses Timeship (http://www.timeship.org) and 21st Century Medicine (http://www.21CM.com), giving the URLs. It also discusses Critical Care Research and (no URL, but described by name) and Suspended Animation(no URL and the name of the company not given).

The whole project of cryonics and cryonics-related research is described in great detail, but the word "cryonics" does not appear anywhere in the article. Nor is there any reference to Alcor or the Cryonics Institute. The article portrays cryonics as something that will become available in the future, with emphasis on the current research and breakthroughs that are making the cryonics idea feasible.

It's unfortunate that Alan's resignation letter may have suggested to some people that Alcor is offering whole-body vitrification right now, or in the immediate future. This is not the case.

True whole-body vitrification would entail vitrifying body components such as cartilege or the aqueous fluid inside the eye, neither of which can be reached effectively via cryoprotectant carried on the blood stream.

In addition, major organs tend to have different and conflicting requirements for vitrification protocol, which cannot be satisfied by perfusion of one solution through the whole body.

I believe no human being is likely to experience whole-body vitrification within the next twenty years. Instead, cryonics organizations will concentrate primarily on the brain and will provide lesser protection for the body, as now.

The real difference between CI and Alcor vitrification is that Alcor is using a solution developed by a relatively well-funded lab employing many people, enabling verification by (for instance) vitrification of an isolated rabbit kidney followed by successful rewarming and reimplanting of the kidney in the donor animal. CI lacks such resources. This is not to say that CI's vitrification solution is inferior, only that it has been developed on a much smaller budget and has not been tested as extensively. We also have less public information available, to assess the CI solution.

The January 21^st issue of the WALL STREET JOURNAL, in a feature article written by Antonio Regaldo describes the lengths that some people are going through to "Take it with them," and in the process, gave cryonics some very public exposure. . The article mentions "Personal Revival Trusts,"and "Dynasty Trusts," as means of carrying their wealth forward (and increasing it) and having it waiting for them on reanimation. Long time cryonicist David Pizer,is quoted as saying he could wake up in a hundred years "the richest man in the world" .According to Regaldo there are a number of very wealthy individuals who have created revival trusts, but decline to go public.

Not surprisingly, it’s rather negative of the cryonics concept …"cryonic suspension of human remains is still dismissed by most medical experts as an outlandish idea." News of cryonics in the WALL STREET JOURNAL was well received on Cryonet, for the publicity. But there was criticism that wealthy individuals are squirreling away large sums of money for their reanimation, at the time CI and Alcor. are struggling to raise money for badly needed research. A few days later the ABC morning show had a segment shot at Alcor and interviewing Dave Pizer.

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That’s the title of a screenplay that just went up for auction on ebay. Baseball legend Sal Bartino offers two shady sports memorabilia dealers $100,000. to "liberate" the frozen body of Ted Williams from the cryonics lab that its stored at. FREE TED’S HEAD is described by the author as a "black comedy about fanaticism in the sports memorabilia business, mortality, and improbable second chances." Minimum bid was $15,000 for the production rights. [ The auction ended with no bid -- web editor ]

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CI Members may remember Kevin Boyle as the CI Member who had his dog Thor cryopreserved by vitrification before we were able to vitrify any of our human patients:

http://www.cryonics.org/reports/Dog_Thor.html

Kevin's story appeared on the front page of the South-Boston local newspaper THE ENTERPRISE.

http://enterprise.southofboston.com/

This article excited the interest of Boston Fox News (Channel 25 ?), and Kevin is now being interviewed for a news clip that should appear on a Boston Fox News broadcast.

Boston is Ted Williams country because Williams was a Boston Red Sox hero. The Boston sports media speak of the disrespectful defilement of the remains of Ted Williams in connection with cryonics, so hopefully these features about Kevin and Thor will give a more positive image of cryonics to those in the Boston area.

Kevin reported "I did an interview for the local FOX affiliate in Boston that aired last night during their ‘10 O' Clock News’. The station found out about me through the front page headlines in the Brockton Enterprise: ‘Frozen in Time’. It went fairly well. Although on camera the TV reporter questioned the logic of spending almost $17,000 on my dog, she confided to me off camera that she had spent $25,000 on her dying dog on an unsuccessful medical procedure. Since then I've been contacted by the Boston channel 7 who is coming to my house next Wednesday for another on-camera interview."

"Last night Channel 7 (Boston) interviewed my 87 year old grandmother and I, (both CI members), at my home. We discussed Thor's (my dog) suspension last February and our plans for ourselves. I think my grandmother did great and they seemed to really like her. They are planning on airing the piece sometime next week on the news. When I find out for sure when, I'll try to send out another message to this group in case anyone is in the Boston area.

(That makes two television interviews and one front-page newspaper headline in the last 8 days.")

The Future Is Here!

The Truth Machine, by James Halperin was published in the old days (1996.) His vision was of Truth Machines that were 100 % accurate. In the book their development changed every aspect of human discourse.

Polygraphs have been used for a long time with varying degrees of success. They measure heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and increased sweating. At the same time MRIs have been used in the medical field for years to probe the human body.

Now researchers at Columbia University using an fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) are studying neurological changes in the brain when a test subject lies. By the end of this year, two companies, NoLie MRI and Cephos will be marketing lie detectors that are claimed to be 100% accurate. Initially they’ll be marketed to individuals who claim to be falsely accused of a crime.

One problem with the units is their size. They are not portable. Britton Chance a professor emeritus of biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania has developed a device that records much of the same information as an fMRI, but fits in a briefcase, and can be used on an unwilling subject. He’s currently developing an invisible laser with a photon collector that can pick up neural signals of deception from across a room.

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