Friday, October 23, 2009

Cryonics Institute "Neuros" Better Than Alcor

What's that you say? CI doesn't do neuros? Au contraire, mon ami.

I believe most of CI's patients are "neuros." They isolate the head vessels, so the brain can be selectively-perfused with cryoprotective agents. This is superior to Alcor's practices, for several reasons, but the two major ones are:

1. CI's procedures are relatively simple vascular cannulations performed by a licensed embalmer, as opposed to Alcor's decapitations, which I'm told are often performed by staff members with little more than high school diplomas and overblown egos. (The word "megalomania" comes to mind.) This is a HUGE public relations mistake, if nothing else. I think it probably qualifies as "mutilation," and wonder why Alcor wasn't shut down a long time ago.

2. A decapitation results in a LOT of vascular damage, which most likely results in poor perfusion, (especially when carried out by laymen wielding Craftsman hammers and praying for electric carving knives). Read the Ted Williams case report, in the Johnson book, and you will see they documented the perfusate was coming out from virtually everywhere EXCEPT where it was supposed to be, and my guess is, this has probably been true for most of their cases.

4 comments:

Rick Potvin said...

This is probably a topic worth looking at more deeply in terms of Alcor's history. The neuro goes a looong way back-- and it seems to me it was justified by LN2 cost considerations more than anything else. The lack of writing and transparency in cryonics over the years, combined with natural tendency to NOT think about these types of things, has led me astray, quite possibly. I never considered the details of perfusion of my head before... a startling admission on my part. The revelation that CI is doing effectively neuroperfusion is itself stunning in context, but again the major weakness in all of cryonics is the inability for cryos to write and draw. The literature in cryonics is always meant to suppress and redirect rather than truly expose and educate. Your writing continues to be fresh air in a very deep dark area.

Rick Potvin said...

Have you participated in a low temperature bloodless surgery case?

AboutCryonics said...

If you are referring to a case in which the blood was replaced with something else, no. I have participated in a few dozen cases in which we cooled to below 18 degrees C, and then exsanguinated the patient, (draining most of their blood into the perfusion reservoir), and then turned off the heart lung bypass machine. (Meaning they had little blood left in their body, no circulation or respiration, and probably no detectable EEG activity, while repairs to the ascending aorta, or aortic arch, were performed.

Rick Potvin said...

Wow-- I had not realized that you had participated in cold bloodless surgery. Astounding. Why can't we make the protocol for THAT-- an INHERENT part of the cryonics process? No need for life-suppressing drugs-- in THAT process right? (See Mike Darwin's amazing article on cryoncs kits with life suppressing drugs in How Dead is Dead Enough in DeWolf's blog).


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