Robert Bradbury wrote:
> Its kind of interesting when you think about it, that you have
> dozens or hundreds of people depending on the intuitive beliefs of
> perhaps 4 individuals (including myself in the "authoritative" group)
> who have looked at this in enough detail that they claim to
> understand the problems well enough to say "this will work".
> But then again, there are millions of people who believe in
> the resurection based on a considerably less robust analysis... :-)
Haaaa! Great comment Robert. {8^D
Some cluey person help me out here. I understand we cryos have
two choices basically: full body or just head. I have been bugging my
parents and my wifes parents about cryonics {they are all healthy
mentally and physically}. So far I have one definitely in, one
definitely out, and two undecideds and two unapproached {the
step parents}. I would be paying in each case, out of my own resources.
One of the undecideds objects to being decapitated (even after
he's dead!), but will agree if I arrange to do a full body. I countered
that this costs a lot more, and that by doing so he would perhaps
be displacing three other family members who would otherwise
get neuros. So he went off to ponder this.
In the meantime, I came up with another idea. Is there a third
choice whereby the brain is removed and frozen by itself? Strange
as it may sound, my father-in-law would be willing to have any
organ removed for donation following his demise, including his
brain, to be donated to some downloaded Commander-Data-ish
future version of himself.
I can even imagine a brain-only deal might actually *increase* the
likelihood of eventual revival for it might allow quicker cooling
of the brain mass, thereby reducing warm-brain injury. Is that
called ischemia? One could even have a traditional open
casket funeral, thus. A surgeon could be called as soon as
one breathed their last. In the mean time, a machine could
keep the heart beating and lungs breathing. Upon arrival,
the surgeon would make an incision from the back of the
neck vertically over the top of the head, split the skin, peel
it away from the skull, saw off the scull from about the eyebrows
around where the ears were, remove the skullcap, drop the
brain out, sever the spinal cord as far down as possible,
drop the patient into an ice bath, reattach the skull cap,
put the skin back in place, superglue the incision, plop the
earthly remains into a wooden box to use as a decoration
for the traditional cultural rites of passage, while the patient
cools to 0 within minutes of surgery, to then continue her
journey deep into the negative numbers, with the hope that
some day Drexlerinos will map the location and configuration
of each neuron and synapse, create a digital analog of some
sort so that the patient will awake on that glorious day to
compute again.
Is there a company doing brain-only cryopreservation? This
may well be my father-in-law's only hope. spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:13:24 MDT