Cyrogenics & toads [split from 'Ladbroke Grove']

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

Charles Platt:
Was President of CryoCare Foundation, a cryonics organization that he co-founded in 1993. He worked for Alcor, a company which may be best known for cryopreserving Ted Williams' head after he died. In 2004 Platt became a director of a company named "Suspended Animation, Inc.", which is based in Boynton Beach, Florida. Suspended Animation pursues R&D to develop equipment and procedures for use in mitigating ischemic injury immediately after cardiac arrest, in terminal patients who have made arrangements for cryopreservation at cryonics organizations such as the American Cryonics Society and the Cryonics Institute.

ALCOR Inc:
As of February 2003, Alcor charged $120,000 for whole-body suspension and $50,000 for neurosuspension. It costs $150 to apply for membership and $398 per year in membership dues. Lifetime membership costs $20,000. Even the cheaper (and less well-known) companies charge upwards of $28,000 for whole-body suspension. Still, Alcor does not guarantee indefinite preservation, though it has established an "irrevocable" Patient Care Trust funded by membership payments that provides continued care and that theoretically cannot be cancelled until all patients are reanimated.

http://www.students.emory.edu/HYBRIDVIGOR/cryonics.htm

The dreams of cryogenic suspension are fascinating, but I find them very hard to digest. The whole process has a strong scam potential in the fact that it gives people morbid hopes of being able to resurrect deceased loved ones at astronomical costs. I'm sure that there are also ongoing maintenance fees once the subject is in "suspension". Quite Morbid.

[Kamelion]

The dreams of cryogenic suspension are fascinating, but I find them very hard to digest. The whole process has a strong scam potential in the fact that it gives people morbid hopes of being able to resurrect deceased loved ones at astronomical costs. I'm sure that there are also ongoing maintenance fees once the subject is in "suspension". Quite Morbid.

That, plus the fact that the act of freezing something causes its cells to rupture means that it is something of a dead-end con. Oh well. One born every minute...

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

Kamelion Posted: That, plus the fact that the act of freezing something causes its cells to rupture means that it is something of a dead-end con.

Ice crystals form around cells during the freezing process, causing them to separate. The technicians prevent the formation of these crystals by pumping glycerol-based antifreeze throughout the body. Even if this preventative measure succeeds, the antifreeze is toxic to cells and thawing can inflict further damage on fragile tissues. The work is intricate and exacting, as different kinds of cells require different thawing procedures, even within individual organs. Sometimes only a patient's head is frozen (neurosuspension), even though brain degradation begins to occur immediately after death. The current attitude of cryonicists is that reanimation from cryonic suspension will be achieved only after the development of nanotechnology, which would hypothetically use miniscule machines to repair cells at the molecular level. These machines would repair damage caused by the freezing process and cure the disease that was the cause of death. In the case of neurosuspension, therapeutic cloning would be utilized to create a body for the suspended brain. So far, nanotechnology remains in the realm of science fiction, though cryonics advocates (including the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the world's principal provider of cryonic suspension facilities) point to the infant discipline as one of the main arguments for continuing the practice of cryonic suspension. Another justification is that cryonic preservation can do no harm--even if it does not work, you will be dead anyway. Alcor even claims that nanotechnology could be developed within the next 20 to 100 years. However, most cryobiologists (scientists who study the effects of low temperatures on living organisms) are skeptical, as are many scientists in general.

http://www.students.emory.edu/HYBRIDVIGOR/cryonics.htm

Looking to frozen frogs for clues to improve human medicine
By David A. Fahrenthold
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — This is the way a wood frog freezes:
First, as the temperature drops below 32 degrees, ice crystals start to form just beneath the frog's skin. The normally pliant and slimy amphibian becomes — for lack of a better word — slushy. Then, if the mercury continues to fall, ice races inward through the frog's arteries and veins. Its heart and brain stop working, and its eyes freeze to a ghostly white. "Imagine an ice cube. Paint it green," and you've got the wood frog in winter, said Ken Storey, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. The frog is solid to the touch and makes a small thud when dropped. But it is not dead. When a thaw comes, the frog is able to melt back into its normal state over a period of several hours, restart its heart and hop away, unscathed.This amazing process of reanimation is being examined by scientists who hope that learning the frog's secrets might yield clues for improving human medicine, including better preservation of organs on their way to transplant patients. "Here's an amphibian that has solved the problem of cryo-preserving its organs — all of them, simultaneously," said Jon Costanzo, a professor of zoology at Miami University in Ohio. "And we haven't been able to do that with one [human organ]."

When science can duplicate the traits of the cells of cold blooded amphibians and apply them to the cells of mammals cryogenics might become a viable process. That goes without considering the moral aspects of the deceased person in question.

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

It should all be congruent with:
‘The Index of Possibilities’

[Kamelion]

Yeah, it always makes me smile that successful cryonics is (at present) dependent upon advanced sciences that would probably negate the need for cryonics itself in the first place. Oh well. Fear of death is common enough to be profitable, I suppose.

That frog story was cool, though. The image of scientists dropping one to measure the quality of the thud made me giggle. ("I would characterise that as a medium thud, would you not agree Professor Matterspank?" "A small thud, perhaps, Doctor Mingletwist, but not quite medium. A toad might make a medium thud, but that was clearly only small.")

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

Compliments of Madrigal Rose:

"Then, late one night after I'd put the dogs out, Lady wouldn't come in," Laura Mirsch says. "She finally staggered over to me from the cattails. She looked up at me, leaned her head over and opened her mouth like she was going to throw up, and out plopped this disgusting toad."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=6376594

[Kamelion]

In the last house we lived in back in Holland a nest of toads lived in the back garden. I once counted thirteen of them (all of varying sizes) out hunting flies together. Every now and then, one would wander into the house, upsetting our cats and compelling me to turf it out back into the garden.

On two occasions, however, my girlfriend and I were awoken by a toad joining us in the bed. Or, more accurately, joining her, as the toads in question would somehow make it across the the house, into the bedroom and then climb or jump up into the bed and get cosy with my girlfriend (crawling up her arm or snuggling up on her pillow).

I thought that this was odd enough, until she revealed that this had happened before. In her previous house in a different city (before we were together) she had also discovered a toad in her bed - although this one had only made it to the foot of the bed before being ejected from her place of repose.

So it would seem that she sends out some kind of toad homing signal or something. Our current bedroom is at the top of a three storey house, with no toad habitats nearby, so I have no way of telling if she is still acting as a toad-beacon. If we move back to Holland next year (as is the plan) it will be amusing to see if her nightly congresses resume. Well, amusing for me, at least...

[voilodian ghagnasdiak]

A Charming Prince in need of a kiss perhaps??

[Madrigal Rose]

A Charming Prince in need of a kiss perhaps??

Har! But then, if one did so, was it real, or was it an hallucination?

Great story, Kamelion!

[Kamelion]

A Charming Prince in need of a kiss perhaps??

Well, it's how I started out ...

Har! But then, if one did so, was it real, or was it an hallucination?

Great story, Kamelion!

Heh, thanks - truth is indeed stranger than fiction!

[Tales from Tanelorn]

I am fairly sure these days that the only way that we mortals can attain any form of temporary immortality is through the individual creative mark that we leave behind us. Children, Creative Arts, Literature, Scientific or Geographic Discovery, Political Leadership and stand taking etc.

I believe that this may ultimately be the purpose behind many great creative works eg. Stonehenge (suddenly no longer a mystery to me!), The Pyramids etc.

All we have to decide is how and for what we want to be remembered, if we do in fact want to be remembered, and thus temporarily immortal in this way.

I say temporarily because this universe, this shared physical reality is ultimately entirely transient and changing and certainly not permanent. I also find it difficult to imagine either something eternal beyond this universe, or the possibility of communicating our existance to any eternal place beyond this universe.

We exist temporarily, in a flow of energy between an infinitesimal point of almost infinite potential energy and infinite nothingness.

[Michael Moorcock]

I think we need life and death and the idea of living past my time doesn't appeal to me, especially if I'm living past all my friends. I think it's solipsistic to want to be kept alive forever. I've written a bit about this in certain early sf novels. I'd rather be remembered for writing about the war between Law and Chaos than starting one in the Middle East...

[Tales from Tanelorn]

I think we need life and death and the idea of living past my time doesn't appeal to me, especially if I'm living past all my friends. I think it's solipsistic to want to be kept alive forever. I've written a bit about this in certain early sf novels. I'd rather be remembered for writing about the war between Law and Chaos than starting one in the Middle East...

I think probably the Corum of the second trilogy is a good example of what you mean here. Sometimes the idea of non existance is somewhat comforting.


I had no idea what solipsistic meant but this is helping a little!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism