Targets for a possible Prize?
As a relative newby to discussing the damage created by the cryopreservation process, but someone who has some knowledge of medicine, I would like to suggest that a Prize setup to aim people at overcoming some problems that still exist with cryopreserving individual outstandingly difficult organs to cryopreserve (AND return to function) OR more ambitious prizes still, be setup.
It seems to me that the advantages to the world at large would be
1. If the most likely people to solve the problem are the ones that are already working on it... i.e. C21 and competitors, then the prize would allow them to go to the people who fund their work and say 'look - we can do this - give us a cash injection and we will win it for you'.
2. It gives those guys a target to race rather than crawl towards IF there is any slowing on their part (which is a small possibility only).
3. The more minds considering a large problem space, the more likely there will be a way through found, and at the moment, there are ?<10 in the entire world, considering the reversibility of the cryopreservation process on organs of >= medium sized mammals as far as I know, which is woefully insufficient and a formula for stagnation.
The counter arguements are
a. Maybe people will kill lots of animals in unscrupulous experiments with no hope of success - so rules regards perhaps only using animals that are already dying irreversibly e.g. as vet students do - working on 'death row' animals at the pound, or similar who are 'donated to medical science'. i.e. no animal suffering and no animal sacrificed that was deemed to be about to live a natural life.
b. That it would be 'better to give the money directly to 1 group or another' (which I feel we should resist as money is already likely to increase to those groups if 1. above is true (which I don't see why it should not be).
Prizes seem a good way to go to me. The more minds on a problem, the more solutions.
I have setup a separate site for this... as I think a rebranding is also in order... BUT that is a separate issue and I would rather work out the logistics with you guys first.
Regards
Adrian
Possible Prize
Model an animal into Second Life ( or other VR simulation ) based only on the vitrified remains of that animal, and to demonstrate behaviours that that animal had learned in real-life within the virtual world.
The target could be some kind of insect seeking the location of it's nest with the virtual world constructed to mirror it's original domain down to topology, UV signatures, sun positions, sky polarization etc. Alternatively, an easier candidate may be a territorial fish and the learned behaviour would be demonstrated by maintenance of the same boundary in the virtual world.
Because they are so small, it may be possible to vitrify insects or small fish by snap freezing.
Prizes
Distributed searches work brilliantly for evolution, economics and google so I agree that the more minds looking at the problem the better. Prizes are centainly one way to achieve that goal.
Where prize money is finite, I think it is important to pitch the initial target abstract enough to not preempt a solution. This touches on my central concern with current resurrection cryonicists, we do not know enough about the mechanisms of identity storage to know how best to preserve it. Current attempts and work designed to minimize cellular damage may be losing vital information in favour of nice looking and reviveable tissue.
If there is funding available for lot's of prizes, by all means, do a Manhattan project, and look at everything at once. There may also be some commercial payoffs in multi-tissue type storage but I suspect that if we have the technology to do the kind of repairs required to freeze and recover brain tissue, then people won't die in the first place.
I therefore nominate as a prize the development of a neural tissue transition and storage protocol which provides maximum identity information retention. This may not maintain cellular viability, nor is it guaranteed to even be a form of cryo-stasis. It would however require a lot of convincing and empirical work on the nature of information storage in the brain.
Agreed regards identity storage
Ultimately it seems to me that you cannot see if identity is preserved unless you do a 'full body' suspension of an animal and bring them back??
The question maybe then, if that is the case, is, what animal is easiest to reversibly 'pause' and has behaviours that are learnt and testable (as a test of 'identity being stored')?
OR if you believe that in fact 'instinctual' behaviours are enough to prove information storage (which I do believe), then what is the easiest target that has a behaviour which is complex enough to determine brain damage yes/no.
Perhaps organisms that already hibernate, but only to minus a few degrees could be cooled down further, and then brought back? Certainly that would make the first part of the procedure easy - no G.A. required!
Perhaps some simpler organism still, if some threashold behaviour is demonstrable? What about the frogs that freeze themselves solid in the winter?
What do you think?
If we make the prize open - anyone who can prove that they can reversibly take an organism with a brain down to minus 100 degrees C and bring them back, wins $x ??
Even a fly would be a start!
The other advantage of a fly would be the lack of ethical dilemmas as few people would miss them.
Regards
Adrian
Identity storage - dogs
Guys,
The early work that Mike Darwin did used dogs (as did the Russian research before that). I think the main reasons they did this are:
- Dogs brains show a similar sensitivity to ischaemia as human brains do.
- When the dogs were revived (from above zero temperatures), the researchers could tell fairly easily that personality was intact because of doggie behaviour - recognition, tail wagging etc.
So it appears dogs are good to use for this sort of work but even using dogs that are destined for putting down anyway will be difficult in comparison to flies . . lots of ethics committees and animal friends . .
Phil.
Frogs
My reply on frogs and vitrification is given here . Frogs might miss flies.
The development of a freeze and return protocol for a small animal would certainly be a marketing boon for cryonics.
Our biggest dilemna, and clear and present problem in Australa, is how to get someone into cryo-stasis quickly. CI have insisted we ship on water ice because they want to be able to use their vitrification perfusions at the other end. The question for us is, is this trade-off of a better freezing protocol worth many hours ischemia at zero degrees? I suspect not and argue the answer to that question ultimately relates to information storage.
Don't understand
Comment reply re vitrification added: http://www.cryonics.org.au/node/21#comment-24
Can you expand on your suggestion that the trade-off of a better freezing protocol may be worth many hours ischaemia at zero degrees? It is not clear to me what you are saying.
Regards
Adrian
Better Freezing Protocols vs Snap freeze
This is a problem that was highlighted recently recently.
CI requires bodies to be shipped on water ice which allows them to then use their well developed cool-down protocol to prepare for cryostasis. Australia,being so far away, means there must be minimum delays, such as flight times, and the delays must therefore be suffered at near 0 degrees.
This was further exasperated in the recent case by the presence in transit of low temperature airport cool-rooms which are kept well below zero. The shipment temperature will therefore have fluctuated just below zero for the entire trip.
Some argue, a straight freeze using a simple local perfusion cocktail followed by shipment on dry ice would be preferrable than shipping on water ice, even granted the loss of cellular viability that this would cause.
Two problems?
1. We don't have a viable cryonics treatment system in Australia
2. We don't have a reversible (pause, wake up alive) cryonics system yet... which also makes 1. more likely to be the case.
If 2 was solved, 1 would be solved in a flash, guaranteed.
Regards
Adrian.
time ship expression of interest
i have a rather large... er friend, who would be interested in purchasing one of these "time ships" I was wondering if you could give me some information about what is available, and the general costs involved.