[ExI] Another step towards uploading

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-10-06 00:07, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> ### Max wrote about the choices between vitrification vs. fixation 
> recently (or was it somebody else at Alcor?). The problem is that 
> suspension usually takes place under non-optimal conditions - instead 
> of live perfusion as in the case of animals used for the scans you 
> mentioned, the cryonauts are treated typically after many hours of 
> warm ischemia and this means the perfusion can be rather poor. 
> Freezing here at least stops further damage. Keeping a poorly perfused 
> brain at room temp makes it turn into a mush. 

The problem might be that fixing brains has the same problem. In 
reality, you will need to proceed more or less like for cryosuspension: 
wait until the patient is declared dead, and then start biostasis 
protocols. In fact, I expect cryonics people to be the best kind of 
people to perform the initial stages of a fixation procedure - they know 
their way around distributing chemicals in a deanimating body. Lab 
histologists are a little bit too used to being able to force the 
deanimation themselves, and to small mammal brains :-)

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University