[ExI] cryonics vs. chemopreservation

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Rafal Smigrodzki <
rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

> Cryonics is available now and almost certainly preserves the material
> underpinnings of a mind


That could very well be true and I certainly hope it's true but I think its
pushing it to say its almost certainly true.

> chemopreservation at present does have significant technological
> problems at the preservation stage, with concerns about preservative
> delivery, and questions about whether the synaptic weight information
> can be adequately recovered.
>

When neuroscientists try to trace out all the connections in the brain, as
in the very ambitious Blue Brain Project, they first use chemicals to
preserve the brain and then slice it into very thin slices; they don't
freeze the brain, so I guess they think chemopreservation works better than
cryonics. Perhaps there is a practical reason Alcor doesn't offer it, maybe
it's too expensive, I could be wrong but I don't see why it should cost
more than cryonics.

At any rate I'd still like to know what Alcor's official position on
chemopreservation is.

  John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20130114/80720e43/attachment.html>