CRYONICS
Volume 11(7) July, 1990 Issue 120
1 A Message From The Editors of Cryonics
7 Volunteering
8 Alcor News Items
Mike Darwin
-- Australian Suspended/8
-- Membership Status/15
-- The Far Side/Gary Larson/35
9 Media Update
Mike Darwin
10 How Secure Is Your Suspension Funding?
Mike Darwin
10 Bigfoot Revisited
Mike Darwin
12 The Assault On Aging --
Human Growth Hormone
Hugh Hixon and Mike Darwin
16 The Assault On Aging --
A Gene For Senescence?
Hugh Hixon
18 But Only God Can Make An Enzyme . . .
Mike Darwin
19 Letters To The Editors
Our Readers
21 The Case For Whole Body Suspension
Michael B. O'Neal
26 Conservative Medicine
Mike Darwin
31 Identifying Resistances
David Rath
36 Advertisements And Personals
36 Upcoming Alcor Events
Staff
CRYONICS is the newsletter of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Inc.
Mike Darwin (Federowicz) and Hugh Hixon, Editors. Published monthly.
Individual subscriptions: $25 per year in the US; $35 per year in Canada
and Mexico; $40 per year all others. Back issues are $2.50 each in the
US, Canada, and Mexico; $3.50 each all others.
Please address all editorial correspondence to ALCOR, 12327 Doherty Street,
Riverside, CA 92503 or phone (800) 367-2228 or (714) 736-1703. FAX #:
(714) 736-6917.
Contents copyright 1990 by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Inc.,
except where otherwise noted. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed
herein are not necessarily those of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation or
its Board of Directors or management.
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A MESSAGE FROM
THE EDITORS OF CRYONICS
by Mike Darwin with Hugh Hixon
Cryonics magazine has been published continuously
since March of 1981. In nine more months we will
celebrate our 10th anniversary of continuous publica-
tion. During all of that time I have been co-editor
of Cryonics and during six years of it, Hugh Hixon has
served as co-editor. It has been a very satisfying 9+
years. It has also been a very long nine years! It
is hard to do anything for nearly a decade and still
stay "fresh" at it. Editing Cryonics is no exception.
Some Background
The point of this editorial is to tell you a
little about our past, a lot more about the present
situation we confront, and a little on where we plan
to go with the magazine, or at least where we'd like
to go. We need to do this because if there is any
thing that our years of putting out this magazine have
taught us, it's that we can't go there alone. We need
you, our readers and contributors.
First, a little history. Cryonics started out
as a four-page newsletter put out by the Institute for
Advanced Biological Studies in Indianapolis, Indiana.
It was put out with the objective in mind of replacing
Long Life magazine, which had folded after becoming
more and more irregular and experiencing a big drop-
off in production values and content. Steve Bridge
and I were the first editors and uppermost in our
minds was the production of a successful newsletter
that would ultimately grow to be the standard of the
industry; i.e., the largest and the best. We aimed to do this by doing
two things: first, be extremely reliable about a production schedule and
second, consistently deliver honest, accurate, and no-holds-barred coverage
of all issues of relevance to cryonics and cryonicists.
I believe we have succeeded in our goals. With nearly 700 subscribers
we are undoubtedly the largest publication, and I think there is little
doubt we are also the best. This is a very satisfying position to be in;
maybe even too satisfying a position. . . .
Alcor's suspension membership has also grown since 1981, from fewer
than 30 to over 170. While it would be foolish to try to pin this growth
on any one "big fix" or "major event," it would also be foolish to ignore
some of the key factors that have fueled it. Those factors are the quality
of services that we offer across the board, the consistency with which we
offer them, and the fairness and honesty with which we treat all with whom
we deal. Cryonics magazine has been the major vehicle with which we have
communicated those things to our members. In its pages they have been able
to see us keep our promises and break a few, chart our progress and our
setbacks, and above all see our commitment to both quality and consistency
in the pages of our magazine.
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The Situation Today
The last two years have seen that consistency (if not quality) marred.
We have not been able to keep Cryonics on a regular production schedule and
there can be no doubt that our members' (and prospective members')
confidence in us has suffered. It is an irony in cryonics that the
"customer" doesn't get the primary "service" from us he is paying for until
he is no longer able to evaluate/appreciate it. In other words, you have
to be unconscious and without heartbeat and breathing before you get what
we ultimately exist to deliver: cryonic suspension.
That means that our members evaluate us only is by the other things we
do. If we can't get a magazine out on time, how good are we going to be at
being there when you need us? And believe me, that is a valid concern, and
the two things are related.
Cryonics has been late getting to you because of a complex mix of
things which I'll now summarize:
1) We are incredibly busy. Even though paid staff has risen
dramatically (five full-time and one part-time employee), the demands
on our time have risen even more dramatically. Most of our members can
see this just in the increased media attention we are receiving. This,
coupled with our expanded marketing program, has resulted both in new
members and a truly dramatic surge in last-minute suspensions.
2) Communications overload. We (the editors of Cryonics) and other
core Alcor staff now spend an inordinate amount of our time
communicating: we take several tour groups per week through the
facility, handle dozens of communications-intensive phone calls a day,
and deal with 1 - 3 film crews a week! This has the effect of leaving
us "drained" and burned out for other kinds of communication.
One of the things I've learned from talk show hosts is not to "pre-
interview" immediately before the show. Dialogue between host and
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guest should be kept to the minimum immediately before air time or you
"blow it" by giving your freshest and best performance in the green
room, and not on the air. Much to my dismay, I have discovered that
the same kind of thing applies to other areas of life as well. After I
have given two interviews to media, given a lecture to a group of
libertarians in Ventura, spent four hours on the phone counseling
terminal patients, and taken two guests through the facility, I'm just
about communicated-out. And I am not alone.
3) The pace of things. Writing and telling people about what is
happening requires time off, at least for me and most of the rest of us
around here. It requires a reserve of energy and a tranquil time to
reflect and write in. After 10-12 frantic, often crisis-ridden hours
at Alcor, I want go home and watch television. Period.
4) Shifting priorities. As the work load goes up, things which are
critical to delivering good service do get done. If they are to get
done, something has to give, and what gives has been getting out the
magazine.
5) Proliferation of publications/dilution of effort. The past three
years have seen the growth of splinter organizations/publications which
have, inevitably, "drained off" energy and articles for Cryonics.
While much of what appears in these publications would not be suitable
for publication in Cryonics, it nevertheless has had the effect of
"tapping out" some of our best and brightest former authors. It is
inevitable that if you are writing what you want to write for your own
publication, you will have less energy left to write for others.
I well know the truth of this myself: you rarely see articles by Mike
Darwin appearing in places other than in Cryonics. Much to my dismay I
am now finding that regular contributors to Cryonics are telling me
"I'm sorry, I can't do that article for you . . . I've promised an
article to . . ."
I can't help but find this insidious, because the kind of articles I
want and need for Cryonics are not EASY to write. They require time,
energy, and thought. It is hard for Cryonics to compete with other
publications that deal with issues in a more relaxed and less
structured way.
Well, all of the above are what constitute reasons, or what some might
call excuses. Both are probably on the money, because there is a reason
that is NOT listed above but should be. Boredom and lack of discipline.
Yes, boredom. It is a paradox that now, when more exciting things are
happening than ever before, I -- and I think it fair to say, most others
here -- are less interested than ever in telling you about them. After
nine years of editing Cryonics I don't find it as exciting a job as I did
on Day One, largely because so much else exciting is happening. This, to
some extent, must also be impacting on the quality of the magazine and its
punctuality.
Unfortunately, this situation cannot be allowed to persist without
serious consequences to both Cryonics and to Alcor. It is a fact that
Cryonics is THE major tool we have used to convert subscribers/associate
members into Suspension Members. As many of our current Suspension Members
will attest, it is a great tool for doing that.
It is also fact that we are at a crossroads of an unprecedented
nature. An amazing thing has begun to occur. So amazing a thing that I,
and many other "old timers" who have been tilling the soil since the 1960's
can scarcely believe it is happening: cryonics is starting to catch on.
Don't kid yourself; we aren't going to be a billion dollar industry
tomorrow. And our troubles are far from over. Indeed, the real hairy
battles are yet to be fought, I firmly believe. But the inescapable fact
is there that, at least for Alcor, cryonics has entered a brand new and
unprecedented period in its history.
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We are currently adding 20
subscribers a month, our average
rate of information requests is
now over 100 per month, and we
have done three suspensions in
just over 30 days. More to the
point, we have four potential
terminal cases where funding and
other considerations seem to indi-
cate a "GO."
No matter how you look at it,
we are a long way from the days of
the early and mid 1980's, where
the two editors of this magazine
thought it was great if we got
three information requests in a
week and a single letter to the
editor in a month! We had plenty
of time to focus our efforts and
our energies on putting out
Cryonics and there can be no doubt
that we lavished an inordinate
amount of time and attention on
it.
The paradox is that those
were the days when we had very few readers and almost no "virgin"
subscribers. The situation today is a cruel but inevitable paradox. We
are (by our historical standards) deluged with subscribers (read:
prospective members) and we are also faced with a critical shortage of time
and energy to exploit the tremendous resource those new subscribers
represent.
Solutions
What are we to do about this? It is clear that the large and rapidly
expanding subscriber base represents an incredible opportunity for growth
in membership. But in order to exploit this opportunity we have to return
to a regular schedule of publication and begin generating an increasing
number of articles in the magazine which introduce new and prospective
members to both cryonics and Alcor. We need more self-help articles that
tell new readers what they can do reduce their risk of sudden death,
increase their chances of being suspended under good conditions, and
improve their likelihood of being reintegrated into the world happily and
successfully after resuscitation.
This is a tall order, and one which the Editors of Cryonics can
scarcely carry alone. The part we can do is try very hard to return to a
regular production schedule for the magazine. That will not be easy,
particularly not with the workload increasing as fantastically as it has
and the number of members signing up with terminal conditions.
We will also try to treat our contributors better. We intend to do
this by establishing a uniform editorial policy which will include a prompt
response to contributors acknowledging their submissions informing them of
the status of their submission: accepted, rejected, or under
consideration. The full text of this editorial policy will appear in the
next issue.
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The other part has to be done by you, our members and readers. I have
heard quite a number of you ask "what you can do" to help Alcor grow.
Well, for those of you with writing talents, what you can do is to write.
What we need are thoughtful articles on a wide range of topics. Areas of
special interest to us are as follows:
-- Local Progress: what you are doing and how it has succeeded or
failed.
-- Personal experiences in telling others about cryonics and persuading
others to sign up.
-- The history of cryonics; straight reporting or opinion or a mixture
of both. Particularly interesting would be an oral history with some
of the pioneers of cryonics. Just letting them talk, taping, and
transcribing it. Some of these pioneers are nearing suspension age,
and this needs to be done before too much more time passes.
-- How to avoid sudden death; auto safety, avoiding atherosclerosis,
and so on. We could particularly use a detailed article on how NASCAR
specifications for crash survivability could be adapted to everyday use
in standard passenger vehicles.
-- How to live longer; We are looking for a comprehensive article from
a credentialed person on possible interventive strategies to extend
lifespan. Topics of special interest are the use of L-depreynl, modest
antioxidant supplementation, and coenzyme Q10.
-- How to prepare/archive video
material and printed material
for the future. Not just how
to sit down before the camera,
but how to create indexing
systems and control forms that
will let others who do not know
you know what you are saving
and what it all means. We
currently have a mini-warehouse
full of material from a member
that is not in any way indexed
or ordered. It will takes us
months to do this and will cost
that member's fund a consider-
able amount because he didn't
do it in advance. Someone
(perhaps the Lifepact people?)
who generates a simple, easy-
to-use, and comprehensive
indexing system which also
relates items to each other
would be VERY helpful.
-- The philosophy of cryonics. We
are especially interested in
thoughtful pieces about re-
integrating into the future and
providing emotional/psycholog-
ical care for patients in sus-
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pension.
-- Survivors' psychology. An especially needed area of work is an in-
depth series of interviews with the "surviving" families of members in
suspension. We are willing to act as a go-between for someone who we
think has the right skills and credentials to write such an in-depth
article.
-- Cryonics and the bureaucrats. The field of cryonics and bureaucracy is
a ripe one for exploitation by an investigative reporter type. It
would be fascinating to have someone take the time to try to really get
inside the heads of some of these guys and see what they really have to
say when they are interviewed 60 Minutes style. Contact the Editors
for a list of people we would like to see interviewed. There may even
be limited travel money available for this job.
-- Controversies within cryonics: neuro vs. whole body, identity, the
nature of human beings, and human technology in the intermediate and
far future. Good examples here are Thomas Donaldson's Analog article
"New Matters" and Marc Stiegler's story, "The Gentle Seduction," which
also appeared in Analog.
-- Financial planning: how to structure your estate and trusts to
maximize resources available for cryonics. We would love to see a
thoughtful article which helps tell people how to provide for
dependents, make decisions about how much money they want to leave for
suspension, and review the options open to them to do these things.
-- Women and cryonics: article(s) by women for women about the role of
women in cryonics and how women can bring their unique insights and
skills to bear to further cryonics.
-- Alternative Preservation Technologies: a comprehensive, scholarly, and
well referenced article on possible alternatives to the use of
cryopreservation for biostasis.
-- Mechanisms of memory: A comprehensive review which takes existing
research and lays out the competing theories for memory storage; and
then intelligently speculates about how well or poorly these postulated
mechanisms would survive existing freezing techniques (contact us for
detailed information on the nature of freezing damage).
-- Evaluating cryonics organizations: a checklist of things to look for
and look out for when selecting a cryonics organization. This list
should be comprehensive and the article should include a list of
questions which should be asked over and above the checklisted items.
Tips about personal inspection of facilities and general organizational
policies should also be present.
-- We would be very interested in publishing an article which uses such a
checklist to evaluate existing cryonics groups. We'd like to know how
we stack up.
-- Interviews with prominent people of interest to cryonicists: examples
would be Dr. Eric Kandel and Dr. Daniel Alkon, prominent theorists and
experimenters on the mechanism of memory; Arthur C. Clarke, science
fiction writer; Isaac Asimov, science fiction writer hostile to
cryonics; Dr. Gerald LaRue, Hemlock Society President and social
gerontologist who is very hostile to cryonics; Dr. James Southard,
cryobiologist; Dr. Greg Fahy, cryobiologist . . . The list goes on
and on! NOTE: do not do interviews without first contacting the
Editors of Cryonics for permission and suggestions on questions to ask.
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-- Euthanasia and cryonics: do we have any common ground with advocates
of euthanasia? Contacting the Hemlock Society's Derek Humphry would be
a good place to start.
-- The future of food and sex: will they still be there when we wake up?
Will everyone be a vegetarian? What will sex be like 100 years from
now?
The above list should be fertile ground for any of a number of talented
writers lurking out there. Some of you, some of our best writers in fact,
have become occupied with personal projects. Part of the reason for this
may be that we didn't show you the attention you deserved. Part of it may
just be the inevitable desire to "do your own thing."
Whatever the reason, we hope you'll give us some thought. We also hope
that you'll consider that your opportunity to reach and persuade new people
about cryonics has never
been richer. Fortunately, it's
not much of sacrifice for me to
ask that you redirect your ef-
forts a little and do this.
Because in doing so, you will
certainly help Alcor grow, and
that means improving your own
chances for survival.
We can't think of any bet-
ter reason with which to per-
suade you.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
VOLUNTEERING
As Joe Hovey noted in the June issue, we need HELP!!!! After some
thought, we decided that getting that help might be more likely if we were
a bit more specific about the things we need done, both simple and
complex. So herewith is a list, by no means complete, but nevertheless a
beginning:
-- Patient Records: Urgently needed is someone with a background in data
entry. We have reams of lab values and other measurements which must
be entered on the computer. Unless you have a good charting program or
a Macintosh computer this work will have to be done in-house.
Also needed is someone to label and order suspension photos. This must
be done VERY reliably and we are looking for an organized
secretarial type here.
Patient records also need statistical analysis (after data entry is
complete). Any with those skills lurking out there?
-- We need a handyman type in the worst way; someone who can run conduit,
install lighting fixtures on the upper deck, and just generally do a
lot of minor but necessary repair projects such as remounting a sink in
the bathroom and doing some painting (walls) in various areas of the
facility.
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-- We need a data entry person to enter
information requests and other routine
information.
-- Electronics Handyman: we need someone to
assemble alarm systems for our patient
dewars. We have the plans if you have
the hands.
-- A "mail room" person. Someone who knows
(or who can learn) how to handle bulk
mailings. This is going to become a more
critical requirement as time goes on, as
present projections indicate a regular
monthly mailing volume of 2,000+ pieces
for our marketing program alone, by the
end of the year.
-- An administrative assistant. Someone
with a high degree of organizational
skill and good judgment, who can help
keep our principal officers "on track"
and focused on high-priority items.
Thanks to those who have already
volunteered their services. Particularly,
Keith Henson, Jerry Searcy, Benjamin Hartwick,
and Maureen Genteman.
To volunteer, call Joe Hovey at 800-367-
2228.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
AUSTRALIAN SUSPENDED
by Mike Darwin
On 2 July, 1990 Rocco (Roy) Schiavello arrived at Alcor from Melbourne,
Australia after having been placed into suspension and cooled to -79C (-
110F) by Australian Alcor members and the staff of the Mulqueen Mortuary
in Melbourne. Mr. Schiavello is a 30-year-old computer programmer who
experienced cardiac arrest after unsuccessful surgery to remove a deep-
seated brain tumor.
Roy had long been interested in cryonics, and had extracted a promise
from his family to place him into suspension in the event that he did not
recover from surgery. The family, at great emotional cost, honored his
request, and Roy was placed into long-term liquid nitrogen storage at Alcor
on July 11, 1990.
The story of Roy's suspension and the determined and supportive family
that made it possible is a remarkable one, and we will bring it to you in
the August or September issue
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of Cryonics.
Roy is the 16th patient placed into Alcor's care.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
MEDIA UPDATE
Heavy media coverage of Alcor and cryonics has continued. The Donahue
Show aired across the U.S. from July 16 through July 23. This show, one of
the most positive media events in Alcor history, has resulted in 560
information requests as of this writing.
A radio interview by WABC (New York) with Alcor President Carlos
Mondragon resulted in 40 information requests; and the repeated airing of
"On Ice," a documentary about Alcor by USC film students Grover Babcock and
Andrew Takeuchi on PBS' Point of View program resulted in a few additional
inquiries and exposure of a TV audience to cryonics that had not previously
had an opportunity to hear our message.
Inside Report also aired a segment
about Alcor and the Donaldson case which
was both generally positive and
reasonably fair.
Upcoming national media coverage is
a 6 to 8 minute long segment on Alcor and
cryonics to air on 48 Hours sometime in
September during rating sweeps.
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HOW SECURE IS YOUR SUSPENSION FUNDING
"If you live in a community-property state and buy a life insurance
policy with community property funds, one-half the proceeds are owned
by the surviving spouse. This result can be varied by a written
agreement between the spouses, in which one spouse transfers all
interest in a particular life insurance policy to the other spouse."
-- Plan Your Estate by Nolo Press
As the above quote makes clear, if you are
married, your cryonics arrangements could be in
serious trouble. Particularly if your spouse is or
becomes hostile to your cryonics arrangements. A
good way to guard against this is to execute a
transmutation of community property wherein your
spouse gives up or transfers all claims to life
insurance policies set aside for cryonics. Your
insurance agent or your attorney can help you with
preparing and executing this form.
This thoughtful reminder is brought to you via
David Brandt-Erichsen. We wish to echo David and
to also point out that it is your responsibility as
a member to see to it that such forms are drafted
and executed in order to insure adequate funding.
If you do not have adequate funding you could face
the possibility of not being placed into suspension
to begin with, being removed from suspension if the
spouse wins in a contest over an insurance policy,
or being converted from whole body to neurosuspen-
sion.
If you are married or if you become so in the
future or change spouses, you need to execute such
a form. Failure to do so will be your responsibil-
ity and yours alone.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BIGFOOT REVISITED
by Mike Darwin
Last month we reported on the arrival of our new four-patient storage
unit, nicknamed "Bigfoot." This month we have some additional reporting to
do, as well as a little clarification about the previous article.
Fortunately, all of the news to report is good news. VERY good news.
First, boiloff with the unit running full is lower than reported last month
(the figure of 16 liters/day was a calculated use rate based on partial
fill operation). Actual use is 12.7 liters/day or 3.2 liters per patient
per day (four-patient use).
We have now ordered three more of these units from the manufacturer and
this resulted in more good news: the cost has come down considerably.
Because the first unit took a lot
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of design time and back-and-forth between the
manufacturer and us, the cost was higher. Since
the subsequent units will not require extra design
time, the cost has come down (also, ordering three
helped a lot!). How much has it come down?
The first unit cost $17,550, but this price
did not include casters or other add-ons which
raised the final cost to about $20,000, or $5,000
per patient. The new units will cost $15,800
including casters and other add-ons, for a cost of
$3,950 per patient! Additionally, we will be able
to save on shipping, since all three units will be
on the same truck.
Some clarification is also in order. Two
people have asked me why Alcor ever made storage
units "in-house and out of fiberglass to begin
with..." After re-reading the Bigfoot article in
the June issue, I understand why they asked this.
In the course of the article I discussed the
advantages of Bigfoot over in-house epoxy resin
and fiberglass units. I failed to make clear that
Alcor does not and has never used such units, but
rather that they are manufactured and used by a
competing cryonics organization, the Cryonics
Institute.
Finally, an overlooked but very important evaluation of the cost
reduction available from Bigfoot is its likely impact on neurosuspension
costs. Yes, neurosuspension costs. Once we have both of our nine-patient
neuro units full it becomes economical to bring up a Bigfoot and use that
for neurostorage. We already have one nine-patient neuro unit full and are
working on a second. Since pets are usually stored in neuro cans, the rate
at which the neuro storage unit fills may be faster than might at first be
supposed.
Given that we use a Bigfoot for neurostorage the numbers for storing a
single neuropatient for a year shake out as follows:
Neuropatient Storage Capacity: 54 patients (using current packaging).
Bigfoot Current
Unit Unit
Liquid Nitrogen Cost: 23.60 70.97
Floor Space Charge (@ 45 per sq. ft.): 2.50 2.50
Custodial Labor Cost: 10.00 8.00
Amortization of Dewar/Alarm System: 21.98 59.26
Administrative Charges: 3.00 3.00
Utilities and Other Overhead 5.00 5.00
____ ____
TOTAL ANNUAL STORAGE COST PER PATIENT $66.08 $148.73
As can be seen from the above numbers this would result in a 56%
reduction in costs for storing neuropatients. The minimum trust fund
required to generate $66.08 in income at a 3% rate of interest would be
$2202.67. Multiplying this number by a factor of four for safety and to
generate positive growth of the fund to cover reanimation costs yields a
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total of $8810.67 required for the trust fund.
Numbers for whole body patients are as follows:
Whole Body Storage Capacity: 4 patients
Bigfoot Current
Unit Unit
Liquid Nitrogen Cost: 298.72 821.50
Floor Space Charge (@ 45 per sq. ft.): 33.75 24.30
Custodial Labor Cost: 135.00 270.00
Amortization of Dewar/Alarm System: 296.67 433.33
Administrative Charges: 3.00 3.00
Utilities and Other Overhead 67.50 135.00
____ ______
TOTAL ANNUAL STORAGE COST PER PATIENT $834.64 $1,686.80
As the above numbers demonstrate, Bigfoot will result in approximately
a 50% decrease in storage costs for whole body patients, resulting in a
minimum of $27,821.33 being required (at 3% interest) to generate the
annual charge of $834.64. Multiplying this number by four yields a total
required in trust of $111,285.33.
Thus it can be seen that particularly where whole body storage is
concerned, Bigfoot should help us to hold the line on costs.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
THE ASSAULT ON AGING --
HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE
by Hugh Hixon and Mike Darwin
If you're an immortalist and have not been living in a cave (the story
made the front-page headlines of the Riverside Press Enterprise) you
undoubtedly took note of all the media attention in early July concerning
an experiment in which older men (age range 61-73 years) were treated with
Human Growth Hormone (HGH). HGH is a hormone produced in the pituitary
gland (at the base of the brain), whose production starts falling off after
about age 30. There has long been speculation that the radical decrease in
growth hormone production (in many cases its virtual disappearance in
measurable amounts after age 45) may be a significant contributor to age-
associated deterioration.
When HGH was administered to a small group of elderly men, it reversed
a number of the changes associated with aging that were previously
considered intractable. Specifically, lean body mass increased (probably
due to a general increase in mass of skeletal muscle, internal organs,
skin, etc.), fatty tissue weight dropped (probably accompanying a
redistribution of fat from the abdomen to the extremities), the density of
some bones went up, and skin thickness increased. The details are in an
article by Rudman et al, which appeared in the New England Journal of
Medicine, 323(1), 1 (July 5, 1990). Additionally, the volunteers
interviewed afterward by the media said that the treatment made them look
better and feel stronger; and what's more, their wives agreed.
The responsible media were quick to point out a number of caveats, such
as the very preliminary nature of the work, the selection characteristics
of the volunteers, possible bad side effects (both observed and
postulated), the cost, and general disclaimers that HGH was not the
Fountain of Youth. But the take-home lesson clearly is that something can
now be done to at least partially reverse changes of aging on a system-wide
basis (as
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opposed to more local therapies
such as Retin-A for the skin and
Minoxidil for baldness) that
were previously intractable to
any sort of treatment.
So . . . Where do we go from
here?
The researchers and other
medical commentators were quick
to point out to the press that a
lot more clinical work must be
done to find out just what the
benefits and hazards are in this
application of HGH. Between the
pace of research done on people
and assorted regulatory impedi-
ments, this could be a long
time.
However . . . HGH has been used for quite some time to treat pituitary
dwarfism in children. As a result, it already has a respectable clinical
track record, and is available by prescription; if you've got the money
and can find a cooperative doctor. Its trade name is Humatrope
(Somatropin, recombinant DNA origin, for injection, manufactured by Eli
Lilly and Company).
The estimated cost of HGH treatment for an adult for a year is
$13,800. The cost of necessary associated medical monitoring would be
extra.
The price, at least, seems amenable to change. The HGH used in the
study was produced by genetic engineering in E. coli. How much should it
ultimately cost?
The dosage for HGH in the study was approximately 1 mg/day. This is
very approximately the same as the insulin dose required by diabetics. A
month's worth of human insulin (Humulin, which is also produced by both E.
coli and Eli Lilly) costs about $10. The molecular weight of HGH is about
3+ times that of insulin, so the price of HGH in a mature competitive
market would probably be higher, but by no means insupportable.
Further, given that studies in the next year or two confirm that it
really works, there is no question that a market exists. Since it is a
natural product, it can't be patented (but modifications and the production
method can be), so competitive pressures should come into play fairly
quickly. A downside to this is that, in recent experience, drug companies
have shown a notable aversion to competitive markets. The whole ethical
drug situation is so tangled up with regulation, liability, development
costs, health provider strategies, etc. that it's difficult to predict how
the drug companies will behave.
Another factor to consider regarding any future price of HGH is a
recent shift in ethical drug marketing practices to an "all the traffic
will bear" stance. This is reflected in recent medical ads that end "When
you've got your health, you've got everything." And people have been
willing to pay (or at least their health insurance has) to the extent that
medical costs have taken up a remarkable portion of the personal budget in
recent years.
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Given that reversing some aspects of the aging process is
possible, there are some interesting possibilities for improve-
ments. HGH has a rather short half-life in the body (about an
hour) Half-life is often regulated genetically, with a process
called spontaneous deamidation. The basis of spontaneous
deamidation is well understood, and it would only take a minor
modification of the genetic code patched into the E. coli to make
a significant modification to the half-life. Unfortunately, such
a modified hormone would have to undergo a new FDA certification,
and in the face of cheap unmodified HGH, this might well not be
economical.
Another route to useful modification would be to characterize the
active portion of the hormone, which is probably a rather small surface
region, and attempt to duplicate it as either as a shorter peptide or some
other chemical. This approach is considerably more technically demanding.
With regard to the problems of administration, HGH is administered as
an intramuscular injection. In no respect does this seem to be any more
complicated that the daily injection of insulin by hundreds of thousands of
diabetics (although it would be more painful). If the benefits are as
great as they appear to be, it seems clear that this hurdle would be well
worth living with.
Where does all of this leave us with respect to HGH and its use by
would-be life extenders? How much will HGH improve the quality of life --
and just as important, how much will it extend the life span?
These are unanswered questions, and the bottom line is, they are likely
to remain unanswered questions for the immediate future. It is very
important to point out that the Rudman study is a very preliminary one.
The gains the treated patient's experienced were modest (14.4% decrease in
adipose mass, 1.6% increase in average lumbar vertebrae density, and a 7.1%
increase in skin thickness) and the impact on lifespan remains unknown. A
particularly important unanswered question is what the benefits would be of
beginning growth hormone supplementation long before 20 to 40 years of age-
associated degeneration due to its absence have occurred. The gains
experienced by the patients in this study were modest but significant;
however, it needs pointing out that these were by and large elderly
patients in very frail condition when the study was started. It will take
years -- maybe even upwards of a decade or more -- to answer that question.
What this means for the life extensionist of today is that if you want
access to this treatment in the near future, you'll just have to pay your
money and take your chances. And there are risks. While HGH
supplementation in children has proved innocuous, it is important to point
out that such treatments merely restore normal levels of hormone at an
appropriate time in the individual's developmental cycle.
One potential problem with "turning up the heat" in the older people is
that decreased cell division and reduced rates of cell turnover in the
elderly may be a strategy used by nature to minimize the risks of cancer.
Since DNA repair isn't perfect, the older you get the more somatic
mutations you get and the greater your risk of one them being a cancer-
inducing mutation. It has long been understood that there are two phases
to cancer: initiation (i. e., the mutagenic insult) and promotion: the
increased turnover of cells which further increases the risk of a
"catastrophic" mutation. The primary reason that most toxins are
"carcinogenic" is that they increase the rate of cell turnover; this is
why even mildly irritating things like silicone implants are associated
with an increased risk of cancer. Indeed, the reason high fat, low fiber
diets promote
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colon cancer is that they cause higher rates of turnover of colon lining
cells due to longer fecal dwell times and subsequent longer exposure to
irritants in the stool.
A "beneficial" aspect to aging may be the reduced rate of cell turnover
(read: lower level of maintenance) which would be protective of cancer.
Turning up the rate of cell division may thus expose people to increased
risks of cancer.
But there are several up-sides to all of this beyond the obvious ones
of a new modality to treat aging and a raised public consciousness that
something can be done. HGH is only one of many bioregulatory substances
which decline or disappear with age and which we can now synthesize. What
this undoubtedly means is that in the future a "cocktail replacement"
approach to treating aging will probably be used and it will involve a host
of bioregulatory and growth control molecules which will be able to "turn
on" cell division and tissue remodeling and repair which have been shut
down due to aging.
It is impossible to say
what the ultimate limits to such
a treatment approach might be,
but it seems likely that as a
minimum many, if not most, of
the "wear and tear" aspects of
aging like the degenerative
joint diseases, skin wrinkling,
immune aberrations, and general
decline in vitality and
"wasting" seen with advanced age
should be amenable to treatment.
Coupled with good treatment for
cancer, we can expect such
advances to allow people to look
better and live longer, and with
greater vigor . . .
. . . until some key compon-
ents which never had any main-
tenance/repair/cell division
capabilities built in fail: such
as nondividing cells in the
brain, heart, and skeletal
muscle. A complete answer to
aging seems a long way off. But
any help along the way will be
greatly appreciated. The Rudman
study is definitely some much
needed help.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
MEMBERSHIP STATUS
Alcor has 172 Suspension Members, 469 Associate Members, and 16 members
in suspension.
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THE ASSAULT ON AGING --
A GENE FOR SENESCENCE?
by Hugh Hixon
The 9 February, 1990 Science contains two interesting articles with
regard to an aging gene. The first, titled "Induction of Cellular
Senescence in Immortalized Cells by Human Chromosome 1," appears to make a
rather good case that such a gene does in fact exist.
Osamu Sugawara and his collaborators describe their work on inducing
senescence in Science, 247, 707 (9 Feb 1990). Their work was carried out
at the Laboratory for Molecular Carcinogenesis, National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences, NIH (US), and at the Laboratory of
Cytogenetics, Kanagawa Cancer Center Research Institute (Japan).
Briefly, they fused cells of a standard immortal cell line from Syrian
hamsters with random assortments of chromosomes from a standard senescing
human cell line. The resulting cellular hybrids were cultured up to the
point where they began to senesce and karyotyped to determine which human
chromosomes were present. The difference between hybrids which retained
their original immortality and those in which senescence was induced was
the absence or presence of human chromosome 1. This result was confirmed
in two other independent experiments.
In one, the immortalized cell line was fused with either of two cell
lines in which portions of human chromosome 1 had been translocated to
another chromosome. The results also narrowed the location of the gene or
gene package for senescence to the long arm of human chromosome 1.
In the other experiment, the original immortal cell line, two other
immortalized hamster cell lines, and a normal mouse cell line were fused
with one of two cell lines from mice that contained either human chromosome
1 or human chromosome 11. Again, only the hybrid lines containing human
chromosome 1 senesced. A few hybrid lines that initially showed senescence
but later began dividing at a higher rate again were observed to be
progressively losing human chromosome 1.
Two main hypotheses of cellular senescence have been proposed:
accumulation of progressive random damage or mutations that result in loss
of proliferative capacity; and senescence as a genetically programmed
process. Interestingly, the authors, having demonstrated a genetic
senescence mechanism, then proceed to invoke the random damage and
mutations hypothesis to explain why there should be a need for such a gene.
Their argument is that given the continuous occurrence of random
mutational events that lead to a variety of cellular catastrophes,
including particularly cancers, where the result is an immortal cell line,
a senescence gene is an additional protective mechanism against cancers.
That cancers do occur indicates that this protective mechanism fails from
time to time; but given the minimalist nature of evolution, this is not
surprising.
Unfortunately, this explanation also means that simply identifying and
neutralizing the gene would result in a shortened lifespan due to the
individual becoming a culture vessel for every form of cancer known, rather
as a person whose immune system has been killed by AIDS becomes the host
for an improbable variety of microorganisms. There is no question,
however, that any practical route to extended lifespan must include
knowledge of a gene like this.
Given that we should know more about this gene, how long would such
research take? A good example is given elsewhere in that issue of
"Science."
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In a remarkable collaboration, described in Science, 247, 624 (9 Feb
1990), six research groups have associated themselves as the Hereditary
Disease Foundation Huntington's Disease Collaborative Research Group.
Cooperation on this scale and to this degree is almost unheard-of in the
research world, where competition for funding by individual researchers is
next to matters of life and death. The members of the group not only share
data, but have agreed to publish their ultimate findings in the name of the
group, with no individual singled out for credit. Their goal, very similar
to the location and description of a senescence gene, is to locate and
describe the single gene that causes Huntington's disease, "a devastating,
uniformly fatal disease, characterized by progressive loss of motor
control, personality changes, depression, and dementia."
Here is an abbreviated chronology of their progress:
1968 -- Hereditary Disease Foundation formed. The founder, Milton
Wexler, whose wife was diagnosed with Huntington's in that year, is advised
to interest the brightest young scientists in the disease ("brains, not
bricks"), as opposed to constructing a research facility. The first young
postdoctoral researchers are neurobiologists.
1979 -- In the early days of recombinant DNA work, a young molecular
biologist, hooked in 1972 at one of the frequent free-wheeling
interdisciplinary workshops the Foundation holds, and subsequently promoted
to scientific director of the Foundation (in 1978), convinces the
Foundation's board that molecular biology could track down the Huntington's
gene. A new type of genetic mapping technique is proposed for the hunt.
1983 -- After slowly assembling a set of genetic markers for the
technique, a young researcher almost immediately locates the gene, on
chromosome 4. Concurrently, the Foundation has been mapping the spread of
the gene in several families, including one in Venezuela with over 1,000
members at risk, and collecting blood samples for the genetic marker work.
However, the location of the marker on chromosome 4 is not known, nor is
its distance from the gene.
1984 -- A new collaboration between molecular biologists and cell
geneticists is proposed, and the Collaborative Research Group begins to
take shape. Each group in the
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collaboration will get $30,000/year to support a postdoctoral researcher
and for other purposes. (This amount will later be increased.) The core
groups are at: MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, UC Irvine, UC
Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and the Imperial Cancer Research
Fund (London). The grand collaboration will not be without frictions.
1986 -- The marker (not the gene) is located on the short arm of
chromosome 4, within 5-10 million base pairs of the gene itself. But which
direction?
1986 -- A marker developed outside the group seems to point toward the
tip of the chromosome arm, and appears very near the gene. Considerable
friction arises as the separate groups consider bolting from the
collaboration, but this is finally ironed out, helped considerably by the
lack of success in what was expected to be the home stretch.
1989 -- The tip of the chromosome is reached, but the gene isn't
there. Confusion in the data.
1990 -- The group has agreed to split its efforts in an exhaustive
search of the chromosomal arm. The groups are settling in for what may be
a long campaign. Perhaps several years more just to find the gene.
Okay. On the scale of the Huntington's gene effort you go looking for
a senescence gene located on the long arm of chromosome 1. The first
problem is bait. Say $300,000-500,000 per year of it, committed for at
least five years into the future. Second: interest hungry, competent
researchers in the problem. Don't bother looking for them in the
gerontology community: it is, politely, severely sclerosed. Note that the
demonstration of the location of the senescence gene was done by cancer
researchers. That's where the big money and the good post-docs have been
going since the "War On Cancer" started. Third, talk them into a
collaboration. Think of it as about as difficult as doing the research on
the Moon. The person who has done this for the Huntington's Group, Nancy
Wexler, is the founder's daughter, at risk for the disease herself, and a
psychologist. Holding a hand this strong, it still hasn't been easy for
her to keep things together. This is all the down side.
The up side is, first, the chromosomal location of the senescence gene
is known. Second, the marker technology is reasonably well developed, and
sets of markers for all the chromosomes are being developed as a continuing
side-benefit of the human genome mapping project. Third, it just might
turn out to be easy. Sugawara's paper points to a reference where immortal
cell lines may be induced by simian virus 40 (SV40), which may mean that
SV40 binds directly to the senescence gene and modifies it.
Thus, a rough timetable: given the money, 2-3 years to recruit and
establish a collaboration; 2-5 years to locate the gene; 2-3 years to
characterize it and figure out what it does. And maybe it will mean
something useful.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
BUT ONLY GOD CAN MAKE AN ENZYME . . .
by Mike Darwin
A little over a year ago after a lecture on cryonics I had the
experience of having a biochemist come up to me, shake his head in total
disgust and lecture me on how not only would biorepair such as I had
postulated never be possible, but that even figuring out the
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rules of how proteins fold would take many decades and probably even
several hundred years. Specifically, he told me that in his opinion we
would probably never figure out the complex rules underlying protein
folding to de novo design and synthesize an enzyme. His argument could be
summarized by paraphrasing Ogden Nash's remarks about trees: ". . . but
only God can make an enzyme."
Well, no longer. Biochemist John M. Stewart and his
colleagues at the University of Colorado Medical School have
designed a synthetic enzyme which they have christened CHZ-1,
built it, and demonstrated that it performs as predicted. The
73 amino acid protein was designed as a chymotrypsin analogue
and was designed over a two-year period, amino acid by amino
acid, using computer-aided design programs.
Such work is incredibly important, as it goes a long way
to build confidence in the theoretical underpinnings of
protein design and folding behavior which will guide all
future efforts. A next major step will be to automate the
design process so that much of the complex reasoning using first principles
which goes into to de novo design can be done rapidly, in parallel and by
machines which don't need to sleep, eat, or take vacations.
In any event, I have the satisfaction of knowing that out there
somewhere is a pretty surprised biochemist. Will it change his opinion
about cryonics and nanotechnology? Don't count on it. He's probably
telling someone right now (and with complete assurance) "Yes, but they will
never succeed in designing an enzyme much more complicated than CHZ-1
because of the enormous complexity of . . ."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Letters to the Editors
TO: Editors, Cryonics Date: 6-14-90
From: Jerry D. Leaf
RE: "Ischemia"
The word "ischemia" has often appeared in Cryonics magazine, mostly
referring to "absence of blood flow" as seen in cardiac arrest. This is an
appropriate use of the word in the context usually given. However,
"absence of blood flow" is not a definition of "ischemia" as the word is
commonly used in medicine today. To restrict the meaning of ischemia to
mean only "absence of blood flow" is an error. This definition occurred in
Cryonics, Vol.2(5), May, 1990, page 27. Medical usage of the term
"ischemia" refers to "inadequacy" of blood flow, which means not enough
blood flow to meet the energy demands
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of the area affected. Ischemia is a supply/demand concept which defines a
condition in which supply of blood is inadequate relative to the metabolic
demands of the tissue. (1)(2)
Restrictions of blood flow may have many causes and may be regional,
affecting a single organ or part of an organ, or an entire organism, as in
cardiac arrest. Let's examine some examples of ischemia that will
illustrate how the concept relates to "inadequacy" rather than just some
particular quantity of blood flow or its absence. The conditions or
context of flow can be definitive in establishing inadequacy.
We have a suspension member who is dying of congestive heart failure at
a local hospital. His total blood flow requirement is 4 liters per minute,
at rest, and his heart is just able to pump this blood flow with the added
stimulus of medications. The Alcor transport team is standing by, equipped
with circulatory support equipment. The patient's lungs begin to
deteriorate, causing his heart to pump harder, which increases the energy
requirements and blood flow needed by the heart. The heart cannot meet
this new demand, so the blood flow to the heart is inadequate and the heart
is ischemic. The heart begins to fail and the total blood flow begins to
decrease. Sixty minutes later the patient has a cardiac arrest, the blood
flow is zero, and the entire patient is ischemic.
The patient is pronounced clinically dead by the attending physician
and the transport team initiates CPR and achieves a total blood flow of 2
liters per minute. The blood flow supplied is only 50% of requirements, so
the patient is still ischemic. Surface cooling is initiated in the Pizer
Tank by covering the patient with ice. Standard pharmaceutical protocol is
followed during the ambulance transport to the facility. Upon arrival, the
patient's temperature is 27C. We know from the Q-10 Rule that each 10C
reduction in temperature will reduce metabolic requirements by 50%. Now
that we have reduced the patient's temperature from 37C (normal) to 27C,
the blood flow requirement is reduced from 4 liters per minute (normal) to
2 liters per minute, by virtue of hypothermia. The patient is no longer
ischemic because the blood flow is adequate, supply equals demand. Note
that the blood flow remained constant during CPR, but we altered the
conditions that determined the blood flow requirements of the patient's
body. Our patient is not ischemic, even though his blood flow is 50% less
than it was before he died in the hospital.
The patient is brought into the operating room and connected to the
heart-lung machine. The patient's blood is substantially replaced with
perfusate so that only 1% of the circulating fluid contains red blood
cells. At the same time, the body temperature is reduced to 7C.
Perfusate/blood flow is 1.5 liters per minute and still adequate even
though 99% of the blood is removed. At 7C even aqueous perfusate that is
oxygenated can meet requirements. The patient is not ischemic.
When cryoprotective perfusion is complete, the heart-lung machine is
turned off and the patient is disconnected in preparation for cooling to
liquid nitrogen storage temperature. At the moment the heart-lung machine
is turned off, zero flow, the patient becomes ischemic again as he did
previously after cardiac arrest. However, the patient is cold and
subsequently the effects of ischemia are much reduced as a direct result of
the temperature, but not eliminated. There is inadequate flow and the
patient is ischemic.
As the temperature of the patient is lowered, metabolic requirements
continue to become less. At cryogenic temperatures any semblance of
metabolism has ceased to take place. Question: Is the patient ischemic?
We have entered a new condition that is not commonly found in clinical
medicine, therefore, we cannot expect a medical community standard answer
to this question. Let us retain the standard functional criteria of
"inadequacy of blood flow" to mean ischemia. If we do, then our patient is
no longer
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ischemic, even though there is zero blood flow. The total body metabolic
requirements at -196C are zero, therefore, the blood flow requirements are
zero. Supply equals demand, there is not an inadequate flow, therefore,
there is no ischemia.
However, as the clinician will be quick to point out, dead biological
systems do not have metabolism and therefore, the concept of ischemia and
consequent injury are irrelevant. Alas, we have come once again back to
the arguments we continue to have with clinical medicine today about the
difference between "clinical death" and "biological death." We will meet
them half-way. If the viability of a biological system is preserved, then
the system can metabolize when the conditions of supply and demand are
sufficiently restored. The concept of ischemia, as illustrated above, then
applies. If a biological system is "biologically dead," i.e., irreversibly
injured, non-viable, then the concept of ischemia is non-applicable.
I hope this discussion has brought a more thorough understanding of the
concept of "ischemia" as it is used today and perhaps will be used
tomorrow.
Sincerely,
Jerry D. Leaf
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
THE CASE FOR WHOLE BODY SUSPENSION
by Micheal B. O'Neal
Introduction
This article presents several
reasons for preferring whole body
suspensions over neurosuspensions.
For those of you who are new to
cryonics, a whole body suspension,
as the name implies, involves the
perfusion and long term storage of
the entire patient. Neurosuspen-
sions are similar to whole body,
with the exception that only the
patient's brain (encased within the
cranium) is placed in long term
storage.
The intent of this article is
not to dispute the validity of
neurosuspensions or to object to the
Alcor policy of emergency conversion
to the neuro option under dire cir-
cumstances. I believe a neuro-
suspension is certainly preferable
to no suspension at all and I fully
support Alcor's policy of a conver-
sion to neurosuspension in emergency
situations.
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I am disturbed, however, by the ease with which many Alcor members seem
to reach the conclusion that a full body suspension is simply a waste of
liquid nitrogen. According to a recent Cryonics article, about 2/3 of
Alcor members have chosen the neuro option [1]. Even allowing for the
economics of the situation, I find this figure surprisingly high.
Each of us must decide for ourself whether the additional cost of a
full body suspension is justified by the perceived benefits. Any informed
decision can only be made after careful consideration of the benefits and
costs of each option. The Alcor publication: "Neuropreservation:
Advantages and Disadvantages" [2] attempts to do just this. That article,
however, seems to be unfairly biased in favor of the neuro option. As
evidence of this conclusion I would point out that of the 17 paragraphs in
the document only 4 seem to present advantages of the whole body approach
(paragraphs: 1, 9, 14, 17). To be fair, articles have appeared in this
and other publications [3] which favor the whole body approach. Even Mike
Darwin's excellent pro-neurosuspension article, "But What Will the
Neighbors Think?!" [4], devotes substantial space to a balanced treatment
of the questions surrounding neurosuspension.
Many of the arguments favoring whole body suspensions over
neurosuspensions have been based on aesthetic and social reasons. While
these arguments are certainly valid, I do not wish to repeat them here.
Instead, I would like to propose two additional technical arguments for
favoring whole body suspensions.
Arguments for Whole Body Suspension
First, in my opinion, it is by no means clear that the body does not
contain information critical to the revival of the person. I do not mean
by this statement that I reject the fact that the human brain holds a
person's mind and personality. What I do mean is that reconstruction of
the person may be very difficult, or impossible, without the body.
Most everyone agrees that DNA does not completely specify a person.
The argument of those who have selected neurosuspension seems to be that
DNA plus the information contained in the brain does completely specify the
person. I argue that we can not be sure of this.
Why? Let us consider the case of identical twins. Since they
developed from the same original cell, their DNA sequences should be
identical. However, twins are not exactly the same. For example, they are
not always the same height and they do not have the same fingerprints.
Some of these differences, such as height, may be directly attributed to
environmental factors such as nutrition and health care. Other
characteristics, such as fingerprints, seem less related to environmental
factors and suggest that DNA programming may only specify general patterns,
with the specifics arrived at in some other, seemingly random, fashion.
Regardless of how these differences arise, it should be clear that a
person's physical characteristics can not be fully determined from DNA
alone.
So, "what is the point," you might ask. "Surely all of my memories
plus an almost identical body would still be me." Perhaps. But what if
the details of the central nervous system are not specified in the DNA
programming?
The typical scenario for reviving a person suspended using today's
primitive technology involves reconstructing a person using cell by cell
(or molecule by molecule) repair techniques. If whole body procedures were
used, the person's entire central nervous system would be preserved. This
preservation would not be perfect. There would
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be damage, perhaps even fractures to the spinal cord. It has
been suggested [2, page 3] that because of the likelihood of
these fractures there is little reason to prefer a whole body
suspension. I would like to point out that repair of a damaged
system, even a spinal cord, is likely to be much less complex,
and more accurate to the original, than an unguided reconstruc-
tion based on DNA.
This leads me to conclude that without the original body to
serve as a guide, it may not be possible to "interface" the
neuropatient to a clone body. Even if an approximation of the
original connections can be designed, the new body may not
"feel" right due to the subtle differences that are sure to
exist between the original body and its clone.
My second point is that even if revival is possible without
a complete body, the existence of the body may make revival
easier and help reduce personality and memory loss caused by a
less than perfect suspension.
The physical characteristics of our bodies strongly
influence who we are. Our actions also strongly influence the
condition of our bodies. Hence, we can think of our bodies as a
crude physical backup for personality and memory.
Many people in the cryonics movement have pointed out the
need to keep records and memorabilia to backup crucial memories.
While this is certainly a good idea, it should be pointed out
that information of this type cannot entirely replace the
information stored in our bodies, since there is always the
chance that our bodies contain important information that we are
unaware of.
An examination of a well-preserved body can tell an expert
much about that person. Present-day anthropologists are able to
determine many details of a person's life from an examination of
a (poorly preserved) body together with clothing and jewelry.
Details such as overall medical condition, age at death, even
social standing and, perhaps, occupation can be determined. The
person may not have been aware of some of these details, such as
an undiagnosed medical condition, even if the impact on his life
was great.
One could argue that in the vast majority of cases most information
available from an examination of the body would be known to the person and
therefore be available in the suspendee's brain. Even if some memories are
apparently destroyed by a poor suspension, many traces of them may remain.
Surely, during patient reconstruction, these partial memories will be
discovered and enhanced.
This argument overlooks the very real possibility that a patient's
brain may be repaired without an understanding of the personality and
memory information it holds. This is a very important point.
Reconstruction and repair of a brain does not imply access to the memories
it contains.
Perhaps the best way to understand why this is true is to look at
"neural net"
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computers. The connectionist machine or neural net is composed of a large
number of simple processing elements that are highly interconnected. Each
of these elements is modeled after biological neurons, the basic components
of the human brain. Information in such systems is not stored in discrete
locations, as is the case in conventional computers, but instead is stored
as weighted connections between large numbers of processing elements.
Machines of this type are often trained to recognize and classify
particular patterns.
We can imagine a neural net where the connections between nodes are
represented as electrical currents that flow through wires. Our particular
machine has been in storage for a long time. When it was being placed into
storage some of the wires came loose from their connections. We may repair
the machine by reconnecting the wires to their proper connections (assuming
we can tell where the loose wires belong). After completing these repairs
we should have a fully functioning machine. Of course, we have no idea
what patterns it has been trained to memorize. It would, in fact, be very
difficult to try to determine what the machine knows without turning it on,
since its memories exist only as connections between nodes.
The parallels with repair of a human brain after cryonic suspension are
clear. Just because we can fix a brain does not mean we will understand
the person contained in that brain. The point of all of this is that it is
unreasonable to expect that during repair memory traces from a damaged
brain will be automatically detected and enhanced. Instead, the
availability of the original body may prove invaluable in helping the
person to reconstruct their life, by providing a familiar physical
environment to ease the transition into the second life cycle and by
providing physical reminders of memories which may have been partially
lost.
Conclusions
I have presented two arguments for preferring whole body suspensions to
neurosuspensions. The first described a theory that information contained
in the brain and DNA is necessarily incomplete and that the information
loss incurred from disposal of the majority of the body may be critical.
The second argument postulated that in cases of memory loss, the existence
of the body might act as a crude type of memory backup and trigger recall
of partial memories that might otherwise be lost.
How strongly do I feel about these issues? Strong enough to write this
article and select the whole body route for myself. Strong enough to be
concerned by the relatively small number of people selecting the whole body
option. It seems to me that a conservative stance on this matter is
prudent and that the whole body option is the conservative stance. The
more information we preserve about ourselves the more likely our chance of
rescue. Whole body-suspensions maximize the amount of information
retained.
Of course, whole body suspensions are much more expensive
than neurosuspensions. Full body patients are also more costly
to maintain and less mobile. Currently the need for mobility is
high. Had Dora Kent not elected neurosuspension, she would
surely be dead now [5]. But, if cryonics gains even a limited
acceptance, these advantages of neurosuspension will likely
diminish. As our technology improves the advantages of the whole
body approach will become more apparent.
In the final analysis each of us must weigh the costs and
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benefits of both approaches. For me, the potential benefits of a whole
body suspension far outweigh the additional costs.
* * *
Addendum
The above article was written to present some technical reasons for
preferring whole body suspensions over neurosuspensions. I purposely
omitted social and political reasons for selecting this option, because I
feel a good case can be made solely on the technical merits of the two
options. Since I drafted this article, however, the Thomas Donaldson case
has become public, so I feel a few words concerning the social and
political impact of neurosuspensions are now in order.
I saw the initial coverage of the Donaldson story on CNN. Their
treatment was somewhat typical. While the taped report seemed balanced and
fair, the introduction given to the piece concentrated on the "bizarre"
aspects of the situation, emphasizing that Dr. Donaldson chose to have only
his head preserved. The intention seemed to be to cast doubt on Dr.
Donaldson's mental condition.
Cryonics is a radical concept. I think that we, as a group, would do
well to consider the fact that no man, or organization, can survive in
isolation. We need the cooperation of others -- doctors, lawyers,
pharmaceutical companies, liquid nitrogen suppliers . . . the list is
almost endless. Without these people, we are already dead.
The concept of neurosuspension is even more radical than the idea of
whole body suspensions. Decapitation has historically been associated with
death, not life, and thus can elicit a very strong emotional reaction.
This seems to characterize my own family's view of cryonics. Most of my
family does not object to the idea of my being frozen at death. In fact,
my sister has agreed to be the executor of my estate. Their biggest
concern was that I choose the whole body option. They, like most other
"reasonable" people, believe that it will never be possible to restore a
person from a "frozen head," and find the notion extremely repulsive.
Note that I used the word "believe" in the previous sentence. I have
discussed, at length, the scenario envisioned for the restoration of
neuropatients, and I have explained to them the necessity of nanotechnology
to restore both whole body and neuropatients. They seem to intellectually
understand, but they still don't truly "believe" it will ever be possible
to revive a patient from neurosuspension.
I think that Dr. Donaldson's case would be taken much more seriously by
the media and the public if he were signed up for a full body suspension.
It is clear that a legislative test case should be selected with extreme
care and all factors should be carefully weighed. When you consider the
potential impact of this case on the future of the cryonics movement, and
the obvious resistance caused by the neuro option, it would not have been
unreasonable for Alcor to encourage Dr. Donaldson to sign up for a full
body suspension, perhaps by arranging to absorb the additional cost.
After all, why should we throw another psychological roadblock in front
of our path? The issue of paramount concern is the establishment of the
right to premortem cryonic suspension, not the right to premortem
neurosuspensions. Once the public and the law acknowledge our right to
suspension, then recognition of neurosuspensions as a valid option will be
much easier.
My personal belief is that Alcor, and the entire cryonics movement,
would be better
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served if future members were strongly encouraged to consider the
advantages of full body suspensions. Neurosuspensions could be presented
as an intelligent fallback position, to be used under circumstances that
preclude whole body suspensions, rather than as a primary option.
* * *
References
[1] "The Alcor Survey 1988-9 (Part I)" by Max O'Connor and Mike Perry, in
Cryonics, Vol 10(9), September 1989, page 42.
[2] "Neuropreservation: Advantages and Disadvantages," Alcor publication
NEUROPRE 9-88.
[3] "The Neuropreservation Controversy" by Paul Segall, in "The American
Cryonics Society Journal" Vol 5(2), March 1988, pages 4-5.
[4] "But What Will the Neighbors Think?!: A Discourse on the History and
Rationale of Neurosuspension" by Mike Darwin, in Cryonics, Vol 9(10),
October 1988, pages 40-55.
[5] "A Timeline on the Events Surrounding the Cryonic Suspension of Dora
Kent" in Cryonics, 9(1), January 1988, pages 1-7.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CONSERVATIVE MEDICINE
by Mike Darwin
conservative: adj. 1 PRESERVATIVE . . . 3 a: tending or disposed
to maintaining existing views, conditions, or institutions:
TRADITIONAL b: MODERATE, CAUTIOUS . . . (1)
-- Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference in the
world. For as long as I can remember cryonics has been described as a
"radical undertaking," as a "long shot gamble," and as something that most
"scientists (read "conservative scientists" or "establishment scientists")
scoff at" and call "irresponsible."
It's a funny thing, but to a great extent we've been our own worst
enemies in trying to promote cryonics because we've allowed the media and
the establishment to write our promotional literature (2) and, much worse,
to shape our very thoughts. I think that we have paid a very high price
for this. Just how high we are only now beginning to fully understand.
________________________
1) I have left out the definitions of conservative which relate to
politics.
2) One thing which to my knowledge Alcor has never done, and which used to
irritate me when I saw it done by other cryonics organizations, was to use
media stories about cryonics as promotional literature. In my 23 years of
involvement with cryonics I have yet to see a single media story I would
consider suitable for the purpose of telling anyone about either Alcor or
cryonics. The media always manages to screw up some key element of what we
are about; and all too often they have all of them screwed up!
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Before I get to the reason for this article, I'd like to talk a little
about an example of our failure in this respect which can't be talked about
too much. It should serve as an indicator of just how badly we can hurt
ourselves by buying into the wrong semantics.
Almost from the start we went wrong. The first mistake was allowing
cryonics to be described as the practice of freezing the dead. This was a
mistake because dead is dead; the dictionary definition of death is the
correct one: death: a permanent cessation of all vital functions: the
end of life. It goes without saying that you can't raise the dead. And in
fact, we don't claim to be able to do that either, and we never really ever
have. What Ettinger said in 1964 and what we've been saying ever since is
that there is something wrong with medicine's definition of death. It is
fundamentally flawed because it defines death not in any absolute sense,
but only as a function of medicine's ability or lack thereof to restore
function. Thus, the medical definition of death as "irreversible cessation
of heartbeat/breathing and/or brain function" fails because it doesn't go
deep enough; it begs the question. What constitutes irreversible? What
are the absolute limits to resuscitation in a theoretical sense, as opposed
to the practical matter of what a physician can do right now? These were
issues that were never directly addressed and on which we never challenged
our critics.
If we had it to do all over again, those of us who've been around from
the beginning (or nearly so) would probably not make the mistake of
allowing suspension patients to be called "dead" or "frozen dead" or
cryonics to be described as the practice of "cadaver freezing" or "freezing
the dead." Had we taken the tack of pointing out the inadequacy and
shallowness of existing function-based criteria for pronouncing death, and
challenged the medical and cryobiological communities on a fundamental
level, things would probably have gone a lot better for us. There would be
fewer people who were (and are) frightened or put off at the "ghoulishness"
of freezing dead people, and the intense, morbid
revulsion some people experience at the very mention of
cryonics would certainly not be there nearly as often as it
is now. In fact, had we played our cards right, the
intense morbid revulsion would be reserved for those who
did anything but place terminal patients into cryonic
suspension.
And of course it goes almost without saying that the
strong religious objections that have plagued us from the
very start of the program could have been completely
sidestepped by the simple expedient of pointing out that
suspension patients aren't dead! And what's more, we agree
that it is not possible for people to "resurrect the dead."
I first noticed this difference when discussing my
experience with resuscitation cases as a dialysis
technician many years ago. When I would talk about an
experience in resuscitation I noticed that people were
perfectly happy to hear such stories as long as the patient
didn't become a cadaver at the end of them (i.e., when the
story was about a success). In fact, many people I spoke
with who were very uncomfortable in talking about death
were actually reassured in talking about successful
resuscitation.
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From the start, we should have fought tooth and nail the image of
cryonics as something done to dead people or to us "after we die." We
didn't. I was looking back through my clipping files recently and I came
across an article written about me in 1970 entitled "Teen Wants To Be
Frozen After Death." I can remember quite well that I was pleased about
that article at the time it appeared and that I thought it did a fair job
of telling people what we were all about. Indeed, I can remember
describing cryonics as something that "would be started as soon as I was
pronounced dead . . ." I was not alone. The file is full of clippings
from around the world with similar quotes and headlines. No wonder people
think we're crazy. Death is a dreaded word, loaded with finality,
irreversibility, and anxiety. In hindsight it is easy to see that
portraying cryonics as a post-mortem procedure was in effect putting an
impossible barrier in the road to its acceptance.
The above insight has caused me to think deeply about other aspects of
our public relations and the way we communicate about cryonics to those
around us. I have become very sensitive to the words reporters and hostile
scientists use to describe cryonics to the public. In short, I've become
very careful not to buy into their oppressive world view of us. About a
year ago I was called up by a reporter for some publication or other and
during the course of our conversation she quoted me a statement made by a
university physician to the effect that cryonics was a radical, unproven
treatment which should not be allowed.
I was almost ready to agree with the first half of that statement
(i.e., that cryonics is radical and unproven) and then go on to defend why
radical and unproven things should be allowed when I got to thinking about
cryonics in the context of the words "radical," "unproven," and
"medicine." I came to a very surprising conclusion which I've used in
almost all my public speaking since, and which I think is worth sharing
because I have observed the powerful positive effect it has had on the wide
range of people I've used it on, and in particular because of the wonderful
effect it has had on hostile medical doctors: either silencing them or
putting them uncomfortably on the defensive.
The insight is a simple one:
cryonics is conservative medicine
in almost every sense of the
word. At first glance this
wouldn't seem to be the case at
all. Normally we think of con-
servative as being defensive of
the status quo, as being preser-
vative of the existing order of
things. And in one sense, the
political/institutional sense,
cryonics is certainly not conser-
vative of the status quo. But in
a more important sense, in the
medical or biological sense of
the word, cryonics is truly con-
servative medicine.
It is often said that the
first dictum of medicine is to
"do no harm" to the patient.
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This does not mean that a physician can literally do no harm; incising a
patient's abdomen to remove an inflamed appendix causes some additional
harm to the patient in the short term, but it averts long-term disaster.
Rather, the dictum means that you should not administer treatments which
worsen your patient's overall condition or prognosis. I believe this is a
sound dictum and I believe it is universally accepted by competent
physicians of good will. It is also a conservative dictum in the truest
sense of the word since it seeks to confine treatments to those which
conserve the patient's life and health.
The issue at the beginning of this article is really the issue of "when
is death?" If you are equipped with the right tools, it is easy to
demolish the simple-minded function-based criteria used by cryobiologists
and many physicians to define death. All of their attempts to do this will
always have reference to function-based criteria which in turn are always
related to current technical limits. With the right examples it is easy to
destroy these arguments. One such example points up the relative and
changing nature of function-based criteria: 50 years ago anyone whose
heart stopped beating from a heart attack or electric shock was pronounced
dead; today many of those people are resuscitated. Were people who "died"
of heart attacks 50 years ago really dead if they could be resuscitated
today?
There are other, even better analogies that can be used and I think it
is worthwhile to digress a bit and discuss them. The difference between
our definition of death and their definition is simple. We define death in
the following way: death: irreversible loss of the critical structural
information which encodes identity. By this definition you are only dead
when it is no longer possible to deduce your functional state from your
nonfunctional state. Try using few simple analogies to make this point:
A photograph or a printed document has a function, which is to
communicate information (people have functions too: blood circulation,
reproduction, thinking, happiness . . .). If we tear a photo or a page of
text into several pieces it is no longer functional and thus by current
medical criteria it is "dead" (it helps to actually do this to a piece of
paper while explaining). But here's the catch: the pieces or the
"debris," if you will, completely describe the functional state. Thus, if
you have some tape and a little time you can restore the document or the
photo to a functional state. With better tools you could perfectly restore
it.
On the other hand, if you burn the document or the photo and you stir
the ashes, then you experience an irreversible transition and, given what
we know of physical law, it is impossible to restore the debris to the
functional state. I have found this example a very powerful one to use,
because it can be easily understood by almost everyone and because it
forces our critics to deal with the issue of remaining structure after
legal death and freezing. This is something they are ill-equipped to do,
and at which they invariably fail at doing because we know much more about
those issues than they do and what's more, the facts support our position
better than they do theirs!
The point is, once you destroy their function-based definition of death
and shift it to a structure or information-based definition, you put the
critics in a very difficult position. That position is simply that at the
very least, patients in cryonic suspension may not be dead.
Indeed, the most intellectually honest of our critics will always, when
pressed, say something like "Well, it's not possible to say absolutely that
cryonics won't work, but in my opinion the odds are so small that it is a
waste of time . . ."
And with that remark our critics have conceded the argument.
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Why is this so, you may ask? Well, lets look at the issue of cryonics
as conservative medicine again. A physician, when faced with a situation
where a patient has experienced a cessation of vital functions such as
heartbeat and breathing which he either cannot reverse or more often
chooses not to reverse (as in the case of "no-code" or "do not resuscitate"
patients), is faced with two choices:
1) He can assert that the nature of the patient's malfunction is such
that no technology, present or future, could ever reverse that
malfunction. Here he is asserting in effect that the skills of
contemporary medicine as embodied in his practice of it can never be
improved upon, or at best cannot be improved upon sufficiently to
rescue this patient. He can thus abandon his patient and allow him
to be incinerated or used as food for soil organisms.
2) He can take a course of action wherein he uses the best available
technology to prevent the patient's condition from deteriorating
further, (accepting added damage from the preservation process) thus
allowing the patient to continue forward movement in time to a point in
the future where medical knowledge may be more sophisticated and the
patient may be considered rescuable.
Which of the above two alternatives is conservative and cautious and
which is radical and irresponsible?
Human beings consist of a unique pattern of atoms. That pattern does
not disintegrate all at once upon cessation of heartbeat and breathing. At
what point in the dissolution process of that pattern of atoms human
identity is lost we simply do not know at this point. It is a radical,
arrogant, and unconscionable act of intellectual chauvinism for a physician
to abandon his patient and allow him to be destroyed before he can answer
the question of when in the dying process identity is lost and what
constitutes irreversible injury.
The logical, rational, and above all the conservative thing to do is to
preserve as much of the patient as possible and defer any decision to
abandon the patient and destroy him until it is possible to determine with
a high degree of certainty that the patient truly has experienced an
irreversible loss of the critical structural information which encodes his
identity (i.e., has died).
I think it is very important that we stop allowing ourselves to be cast
as the radicals, as the people who are taking unreasonable and unreasoned
"risks" and/or as people who are engaged in "far out," "extreme," or
"irresponsible" behavior. The facts are otherwise. WE are the
CONSERVATIVES. We are the people who are being cautious, who are saying
"look, we cannot be sure this patient is really not going to be salvageable
in the long run, so the only reasonable thing to do is to get him into a
stable, unchanging state in the least injurious way we know how and
continue working on the problem in the meantime. That's conservative
medicine.
I have used this strategy many times now and it is incredibly effective
at putting our critics on the defensive and destroying their authoritarian
credibility. I think cryonics can profit a great deal from a wider
application of this tactic. I urge each and every one of you to give
careful consideration to adopting this strategy when you talk about
cryonics in the future because it is nothing more or less than the honest
truth.
After all, it never hurts to tell the truth.
Especially when you're right.
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IDENTIFYING RESISTANCES
by David Rath
To make a sale, one must first identify the resistances of the
potential customer. Once identified these resistances can be refuted,
their influence can be acknowledged but diminished, or the problem can be
designed around. Following is a list of those potential resistances which
might keep a late 20th-century human of an industrialized culture from
pursuing a chance at a greatly lengthened lifespan through cryonics or some
other form of post-mortem tissue/information preservation. Following the
description of each social, spiritual, or practical concern are some
possible strategies which might lessen the effect of these barriers to an
individual, organization, or movement trying to "sell" preservation
services.
Socially Based
1) Money Needed Elsewhere -- Late 1980's prices for cryonic
preservation of the head only was about $35,000, including the endowment
necessary for indefinite maintenance costs (monitoring, energy input,
etc.). Even in the leading technologic nations only a small elite (<10%)
has accumulated sufficient wealth that such an investment would not result
in a perceived diminishment of daily comfort or foregone enjoyment of a
specific, coveted life-enriching experience. Some portion of the elite
would experience debilitating guilt that such resources didn't go to the
truly needy.
-- Focus marketing (direct mail, display ads) to economic elite in
nations or regions which have concentrations of such elite.
-- Support social change projects that work towards planetary minimum
standards of comfort and safety so that guilt over self-preservation
expenditures is unnecessary.
-- Bring down costs of current processes through economies of scale
(greater number of preservations) and research leading to engineering
efficiencies.
-- Explore and encourage development of new tissue or information
preservation techniques which involve smaller inputs of initial and on
going maintenance resources (digital representation of neural networks,
chemical tissue fixation, permafrost burial, etc.). Have greater faith
in the future to overcome lower initial investment.
-- Develop legal documentation and organizational flexibility so that
100% of the costs of preservation can be shifted to the estate of the
deceased and thus have no impact on the finances of the living.
2) Resentment Of Potential Beneficiaries -- Financial competition for
preservation funds can be removed from the period of one's life when there
are so many attractive alternatives to the time after death when the funds
are presumably of no more value to the deceased. Allowing 100% post-mortem
preservation financing through will or partial post-mortem financing
through life insurance could still "cost" the living customer through the
real or imagined resentment of children, spouse, sibling, or potential
charitable donees who would rather that the portion of the estate allocated
to the deceased's preservation go instead to them. Such a fear by the
potential customer could either lead to not contracting for preservation
services or to contracting in secret (which loses the publicity/
acceptability benefits of each new enrollee).
-- Marketing, social change, and cost-reduction strategies listed above
also mitigate this effect.
-- A process to encourage issue exploration between wealth holders and
potential estate beneficiaries may expose the fears to be groundless or
capable of being overcome through role-playing, outside facilitation/
arbitration, and personal values meditation by all parties.
-- Legally establish and publicize that preservation services are a
funeral expense deductible from the measure of an estate for tax
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purposes. Thus up to 55% of preservation costs for those in the
highest brackets (3M+) would have otherwise gone to the government
rather than inheritors.
3) Typecast By Friends -- The popular culture and media has long
portrayed those who operate outside conventional practice as oddballs who
lack the social skills to accept the given comforts which the status quo
affords, and this is reinforced by a tendency for the discontented to be
social revolutionaries. These stereotypes are particularly acute in the
areas of technology (the "mad" scientist) and death practices (voodoo,
witchcraft, etc.). Those interested in preservation must face their fears
of social ostracism, behind-the-back derision, and public ridicule from
friends, family, and co-workers.
-- Orient marketing and public relations efforts toward accentuating
the values of courage, discipline, experimental rigor, curiosity, and
openness also inherent in socio/technological pioneering. Offer
historical models of the once-laughed-at and the now-considered-
heroic.
-- Develop an international network of preservationist groups which not
only advance the economic and technologic tasks but which also meet a
full range of social support needs, so that the perceived decline of
relationships may be compensated from a pool of the intellectually
sympathetic.
4) Population Ethics -- The argument is that if human life spans are
greatly extended then the resources of the planet would soon be exhausted
leading to degraded quality of life for all and eventual mass die-offs
through war or environmental upset. Living on into our distant
descendants' timeframes would in effect crowd them and be ultimately
unsustainable if they practiced it also.
-- Support efforts of population control, lessen 3rd World economic
insecurity (the major motivation for rapid growth rates), encourage
simple and non-consumptive life styles (less population impact), and
lobby for the dream of human space travel and migration.
-- Encourage visionary science fiction treatments of the problem such
as Earth as a time-share development where periods of awareness (life)
are punctuated by long eras of suspended animation.
-- Acknowledge the ethical dilemma as real but argue that the crisis
point (absolute limit) is distant given possible technologic and social
distribution improvements. Work with well-intentioned antagonists for
joint resolution.
Spiritually Based
5) Barrier To What's Next -- Many people believe intuitively that there
is a natural, pre-ordained order to existence, and that there is at least a
possibility of a next stage even if there is no way to even get a clue as
to what it consists of. Although this next place is usually believed to
have a non-physical basis, there is a fear that somehow physical
manipulation or processing of the remnants from this reality (the body)
will prohibit travelling there. Being stuck in "limbo," neither here nor
there, and thus having created a personal "hell" is the worst case
scenario.
-- Encourage discussion and study of the various historical projections
as to the qualities of this next place as presented by theologians,
mystics, and tribal cultures. Demonstrate lack of logical connection
between treatment of this life's biologic vessel and non-physical
"admission standards" of their postulated future soul evolvements.
Develop a preservation philosophy which does not need to threaten any
other metaphysical system.
6) "God Doesn't Want It" -- Somewhat similar to the above, but more the
resistance of the more rigid and less intellectually open thinker, is the
feeling that for some reason the omniscient, omnipotent Creator of all
would be angry at an individual who pursued a course of preservation.
Opportunistic religious leaders often benefit from opposing anything new,
and they would tend to project their jealousy about a competing
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value system onto the God who created death.
-- An individual heavily invested in irrational or pathology-based
belief systems is difficult to move and not a good allocation of scarce
time and attention. Encourage strict church/state separation and
religions with a still-evolving and compassionate God.
7) Poor Self Esteem -- For a person to even desire a prolonged life
they must believe they are worth it. This can take the form that their
contribution to evolution is helpful or significant, or that the learnings,
challenges, and sporadic pleasures of existence are inherently more
valuable than the accompanying uncertainty, loss, and pain which inevitably
tag along. For the chronically guilty or self-deprecating, or for those
whose life experience has tragically been negative, the choice to willingly
embrace non-awareness may seem personally appropriate.
-- Support social change programs which lessen human misery (medical
and social) and provide self-image protection for developing children.
-- Encourage therapeutic self-help ("mortalists anonymous") and public
assistance to the troubled and insecure.
-- Develop self-awareness of phenomenon and design programs of change
if desired.
-- Encourage artistic and inventive creativity which celebrates
intrinsic human worthiness.
8) Confronting Emptiness -- Desiring a longer life presupposes the
possibility that the alternative is the great void of eternal non-awareness
and emptiness. If that possibility exists then also does the possibility,
probability, or certainty of sometime reaching that state even if the best
preservationist strategies are pursued. This is a potentially fearful
thing to contemplate, sometimes for the stomach and sometimes for the
brain, and a potential preservationist is subject to the same avoidance of
imaging total termination which keeps wills from being written, doctors
from being consulted at first symptom, corpses from being displayed without
cosmetic treatment, and funerals from being pre-planned.
-- Encourage personal growth programs, educational curricula, and
religious rituals which allow supported contemplation of non
existence. Emphasize awareness of void possibility as pre-condition
for successful values clarification regarding life-style choices.
-- Support hospice and other programs which resist the "hiding" of
death through professionalism and institutionalization. Assist efforts
to examine it through literature or popular culture. Applaud diversity
of funeral practices for the questions which they raise.
Practically Based
9) Fear Of Image -- This classifies as a spiritual fear or resistance
because it concerns one's state during a period when there is presumably no
awareness. It involves our images of the processing or storage indignities
which our corpse would endure and which trigger an irrational, emotional
reaction based on the revulsion we would experience should they happen
during our awareness. For example, imaging the current cryonics practice
of storage in a cylinder full of liquid nitrogen brings us face to face
with our fears of cold, being trapped, isolation, quiet, boredom, and
drowning.
-- Acknowledge that fears can be both irrational and real. Diffuse
with humor, indulge personal idiosyncrasies, and design "humane"
environments and hardware.
10) Inability To Focus -- Many individuals are unable to successfully
pull off any major project which demands long-range planning, difficult
choices, and repeated acts of commitment. These individuals will tend to
remain stuck in unrewarding jobs, abusive
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relationships, or unhealthy behavior patterns because they are unable to
marshall the multi-level responses necessary for accomplishing major life
change, and this limitation will apply to the organizing necessary in
arranging one's post-mortem care even if desire is present.
-- Sophisticated design and packaging of preservation services will
allow their contracting with a minimum of confusion and customer
initiative beyond what is necessary to insure clear, informed consent.
Market "turn-key" offerings where all you need to do is choose, die,
and pay.
-- Seek legal clarifications which allow "deathbed" or guardian choices
to contract for preservation, since maximum motivation and ability to
change often accompanies realization of mortality.
11) Lack Of Organizational Faith -- Whether due to distrust of the
specific preservationist groups now available or generalized poor
expectation about the long-range performance of any human cooperative
endeavor, many would doubt that the group of individuals (organization) to
whom they might entrust their body or money will maintain the integrity,
economic resources, and motivation necessary to provide storage and revival
services over the long time periods which may be required. Scenarios of
mismanagement or embezzlement, fatal schism, physical or economic
destruction of endowment assets, government repression, or simple
abandonment all threaten the successful completion of a task which may take
centuries.
-- Study cross-cultural and cross-temporal models of long-term
organizational survival and failure. Identify structuring and
practices that combine continual commitment to goals with flexible
adaptation to changing cultural environments.
-- Design preservation techniques which demand minimal follow-up
attention such as chemical stabilization of tissue. Such preservation
artifacts could conceivably be protected in a non-degrading environment
(buried), forgotten, and then later discovered by future cultures
technologically capable of revival, thus removing the need for unbroken
organizational continuity.
-- Encourage a diversity of preservation organizations and usage of
redundant storage sites so that isolated organizational failure will
not totally destroy the whole movement.
-- Establish preservationist trade groups that adopt enforceable
(through trademark protection) codes of ethics so that incompetent or
dishonest operators to not undermine public perception of the industry.
12) Imperfect Restoration -- The probability that technology will never
find a way to repair the damage which originally caused death or the
additional tissue degradation caused by processing and long-term storage is
conceptually no worse than not trying at all -- either way you are
permanently not-alive. A more frightening scenario is that one's revival
is attempted during the experimental stage before technique perfection, and
that one is brought back with gross mental or physical imperfections and
limitations (retarded, immobile, etc.).
-- Couple the legal development of preservation contracting with the
equivalent of a "living will" which would allow one to issue
instructions as to minimal standards of comfort and competence --
otherwise a revival attempt would need to be terminated or reversed.
-- Begin preliminary debate about the ethics of revival -- who decides
when and how, acceptable levels of risk and experimentation, etc.
13) Inhospitable Environment -- This resistance involves the fear that
revival in a potentially very distant future is successful, but that the
revivee's quality of life will be poor -- they will be fish out of water.
They might be totally without family or friends if none had chosen a
similar course, the revival costs might easily have consumed the storage
endowment leaving them destitute, they might lack the technologic know-how
or
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shared cultural assumptions which would allow them to competently function
in the future, and future society might have a population, belief system,
or government openly hostile to immigrants from the past.
-- Encourage family-wide survival plans and social relationships
between the preservation inclined.
-- Explore exceptions to the legal Rule Against Perpetuities which
currently forbids the indefinite ownership of wealth after death.
-- Accompany preliminary speculations about revival techniques with
preliminary projections about re-enculturation curricula.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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(36)
ADVERTISEMENTS AND PERSONALS
The Alcor Life Extension Foundation and Cryonics reserve the right to
accept, reject, or edit ads at our own discretion, and assume no
responsibility for their content or the consequences of answering these
advertisements. The rate is $10.00 per line per month (our lines are
90 columns wide). Tip-in rates per sheet are $90 (already printed);
or $180 (printed one side) or $270 (printed both sides), from camera-
ready copy. Advertisers in tip-in material must be clearly identified.
BIODYNAMICA, the first journal of cryobiology,paved the way for today's
VITRIFICATION technology. The entire set of BIODYNAMICA, Volume 1 (1934)
through Volume 10 (1969) is available to cryonicists at the special
concessionary rate of $50.00 per set, postpaid. Send checks to G. M.
Fahy; P.O. Box 3757; Gaithersburg, MD 20885.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
MEETING SCHEDULES
Alcor business meetings are usually held
on the first Sunday of the month. Guests are
welcome. Unless otherwise noted, meetings
start at 1 PM. For meeting directions, or if
you get lost, call Alcor at (714) 736-1703
and page the technician on call.
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The AUGUST meeting will be at the home of:
(SUN, 5 AUG 1990) Bill Seidel
10627 Youngworth Rd.
Culver City, CA
Directions: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to Culver City. Get off at
the Jefferson Blvd. offramp, heading east (toward Culver
City). Go straight across the intersection of Jefferson
Blvd. and Sepulveda Blvd. onto Playa St. Go up Playa to
Overland. Go left on Overland up to Flaxton St. Go right on
Flaxton, which will cross Drakewood and turn into Youngworth
Rd. 10627 is on the right (downhill) side of the street.
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The SEPTEMBER meeting will be held at the home of:
(SUN, 9 SEP 1990) Marce & Walt Johnson
(SECOND SUNDAY) 8081 Yorktown Avenue
Huntington Beach, CA
Directions: Take the San Diego Freeway (Interstate 405) to Beach Blvd.
(Hwy 39) in Huntington Beach. Go south on Beach Blvd.
approximately 4-5 miles to Yorktown Ave. Turn east (left) on
Yorktown. 8081 is less than one block east, on the left
(north) side of the street.
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* * *
There is an Alcor chapter in the San Francisco Bay area. Its members
are aggressively pursuing an improved rescue and suspension capability in
that area. Meetings are generally held on the second Sunday of the month,
at 4 PM. Meeting locations can be obtained by calling the chapter's
Secretary, Arel Lucas, at (408) 978-7616.
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The AUGUST meeting will be held at the home of:
(SUN, 12 AUG, 1990) John Galt
3707 Poinciana Dr., #110
Santa Clara, CA
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(37)
Directions: Take the Lawrence (G2) Expressway through Santa Clara and get
off at Cabrillo, heading west. Cabrillo becomes Poinciana
west of the Expressway. 3707 is in the second block west.
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The SEPTEMBER meeting will be held at the home of:
(SUN, 9 SEP, 1990) Ralph Merkle and Carol Shaw
1134 Pimento Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA
Directions: Take US 85 through Sunnyvale and exit going East on Fremont to
Mary. Go left on Mary to Ticonderoga. Go right on
Ticonderoga to Pimento. Turn left on Pimento to 1134 Pimento
Ave.
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* * *
There two Alcor discussion groups in the Greater New York area.
Details may be obtained by calling either:
Gerard Arthus, at (516) 474-2949,
or Curtis Henderson, at (516) 589-4256
The New York Cryonics Discussion Group of Alcor meets on the the third
Saturday of each month at 6:30 PM, at 72nd Street Studios. The address is
131 West 72nd Street (New York), between Columbus and Broadway. Ask for
the Alcor group. Subway stop: 72nd Street, on the 1, 2, or 3 trains.
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The meeting dates are as follows:
AUGUST 18 SEPTEMBER 15 OCTOBER 20 NOVEMBER 17
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The Long Island Cryonics Discussion Group of Alcor meets on the first
Saturday of every month, at the home of Gerry Arthus. The address is: 10
Jefferson Blvd.; Port Jefferson Station, L.I., telephone (516) 474-2949.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The meeting dates are as follows:
AUGUST 4 SEPTEMBER 1 OCTOBER 5 NOVEMBER 3
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* * *
There is a cryonics discussion group in the Boston area. Information
may be obtained by contacting Eric Klein at (508) 663-5480 (work) or (508)
250-0280 (home). Tentative meeting dates are Aug 26, Oct 28, and Dec 30.
* * *
Other Events Of Interest
-- Conference On Biostasis And Reentry sponsored by Lifepact will be held
August 24-26 at the Asilomar Conference Center, near Monterey, CA. For
information, contact Linda or Fred Chamberlain at (916)542-1331 (days) or
(916)577-4746 (eves); or P.O. Box 18698, South Lake Tahoe, CA 95706.
-- There will be a European Cryonics Conference October 26-29 at Gatwick
Airport (London). This will include a tour of Alcor, U.K.'s new facility.
See the April, 1990 issue of Cryonics for details and contact Saul Kent at
16280 Whispering Spur; Riverside, CA 92503; USA for additional
information.
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ENTER NUMBET 0020