Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!oz.nm.paradyne.com!alan From: alan@oz.nm.paradyne.COM (Alan Lovejoy) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Whole-Body Frostbite: Can It Be Cured? Message-ID: <8906010521.AA05552@athos.rutgers.edu> Date: 31 May 89 15:04:05 GMT References: <8905310354.AA19574@athos.rutgers.edu> Sender: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Paradyne, Largo, Florida Lines: 64 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article <8905310354.AA19574@athos.rutgers.edu> mmm@cup.portal.COM (Mark Robert Thorson) writes: > >I see two problems with cryonics. I've mentioned the first one before, >the fact that the electrical state of your brain will be destroyed by >freezing. This should be an experience similar to shock therapy; expect >memory loss and personality changes. It is possible to freeze and revive lower animal forms (e.g., frogs). Experiments on such animals show that memory is preserved during this process (as far as can be determined in a frog: learned responses to stimuli). The evidence gathered to date indicates that only short-term memories (on the scale of seconds or minutes) are stored in solely electronic form in the brain. Revived patients should remember what they had for dinner the day before they died. >The other is radiation. If you're frozen for 50 years, your body will >absorb 50 years of background radiation. Because your DNA repair enzymes >will be inoperative during that time, it will be like being hit with a >big flash of radiation. The cellular injuries due to freezing, whatever led to death, and the decay that occurred between death and freezing, simply dwarf the radiation damage that accrues over only a few centuries. It may be possible to reconstruct extinct animals whose DNA has been preserved in amber for millions of years. Why? Because a bit of flesh preserved in amber contains billions of cells. It is unilikely that all cells will be damaged in the same way. Statistical analysis can discover the "original" DNA with a very high probability of complete correctness. Similarly, memories in the brain (the only important information) are stored with high redundancy, and are highly non-localized. Statistical analysis should be able to recover them essentially intact from the brains of well-preserved cryonics patients. It is unlikely that damaged memory molecules will be mistaken for whole ones. The original state of the molecule can likely be inferred from knowledge of the allowed states and the processes that caused the damage, as well as statistical analysis of the state of surrounding molecules. >Now, I can just hear the cryo-advocates saying, "If you aren't frozen, >you're for sure dead, but if you're frozen at least you've got a chance!" >Oh really? What about the rights of the living? What impact will it have >on society to allow billions of dollars of personal wealth to be tied up in >the estates of people who expect to come back? What about the rights of the living? What impact will it have on the starving people in Africa if we permit Americans to go on living (and eating the food that should be going to Africa)? ANY MORAL/ETHICAL ARGUMENT ANYONE CAN RAISE AGAINST MAINTAINING OR REVIVING CRYONICS PATIENTS IS EQUALLY VALID WHEN APPLIED TO OTHERS!!!!!! Becoming or being a cryonics patient does not deprecate one's rights (any more than being an American--or an African--does). Being DEAD may deprecate one's rights. But cryonics patients, it they can OR MIGHT BE revived, ARE NOT (morally or ethically) DEAD!!!! Perhaps not even legally: a court in southern California issued a permanent injuction against the Riverside County Coroner preventing an autopsy on a cryonics patient (Mrs. Dora Kent) because the Alcor organization was able to convince the judge (by weight of expert testimony of eminent scientists) that Mrs. Kent might be revived some day. An autopsy would have lessened Mrs. Kent's prospects for revival quite considerably. Alan Lovejoy; alan@pdn; 813-530-2211; AT&T Paradyne: 8550 Ulmerton, Largo, FL. Disclaimer: I do not speak for AT&T Paradyne. They do not speak for me. ______________________________Down with Li Peng!________________________________ Motto: If nanomachines will be able to reconstruct you, YOU AREN'T DEAD YET.