[extropy-chat] Suda et al papers (was Cryonics without comprehensive brain disassembly?-No)

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, May 06, 2004 at 03:06:45AM +1000, Brett Paatsch wrote:

> I've photocopied the above (3 pages) and the other Suda et al paper
> "The Bioelectric discharge of isolated cat brain after revival from
> years of frozen storage" Brain Research, 70 (1974) 527-532
> (5 pages). They're temporarily available at www.entrepitec.com.au 

Thanks for making those available.
 
> I hope electronic copies of these papers become more available so that
> it will be hard for them to be presented as evidence for what they are not. 

That depends on what one expects them to be. Glycerolized tissue at -20 C is
not even frozen. State of the art in whole organ cryopreservation doesn't
focus on the brain, as that is not a transplantable organ.

So let's not waste time comparing apples with frozen orange juice concentrate.
 
> I read, or reread these recently mainly to see if they bore out what Merkle
> said they did in his paper The Molecular Repair of the Brain [1]. They
> constituted relatively easily checkable facts. 
> 
> In The Molecular Repair of the Brain Merkle wrote, "The brain seems
> (sic) more (sic) resistant than most organs to freezing damage [58, 79]".
> 
> I think that that statement is false (verifiable so by reading the reports) but
> I would like to hear what others think.

Merkle is not a cryobiologist. He's a cryptographer turned computational
nanotechnologist, postulating total reversibility in absence of facts which
speak otherwise. It is very difficult to get him to listen, because (for
whatever reason) he assumes the burden of proof is on your side, not his. 

This doesn't mean all information is irretrievably lost. A whole lot of it is
reversible. What we don't know: a) how much of it is reversible (we can
extrapolate the rest) and b) is that enough to recreate the original person?

We currently don't know, save of scant data points in tissue viability and
structure preservation in EM micrographs of vitrified rabbit brains.
 
> The reason that this sort of stuff is an issue for me is that citations offered
> in papers that are not peer reviewed; (a bunch of amigos with a shared bias
> towards a particular outcome is not peer review), are often hard to check by
> individuals interested in the truth yet with a finite amount of time to waste 
> routing out mischief and wishful thinking. 
> 
> When something is not true I prefer to take out the trash not keep it 
> around out of sentimental value to keep tripping over or to waste the time
> of other people whose good efforts may be diverted by it as well. 

You're displaying your own bias. It is impossible to prove cryonics has no
point, equally that it's going to work. Given the potentially tremendous
payoff in case it does, we need to figure out issues a) and b) above.
Unfortunately, the cryonicists are ghettoized, don't have the skills nor 
motivation to research this, and cryobiologists wouldn't touch the issues
with a ten-foot pole.

I've seen enough to maintain that there's enough in there to undertake 
vigorous research. Don't claim the area isn't worth studying, the potential
damage is very high.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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