Comments on: The Armories of the Latter Day Laputas – Part 1 http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/06/03/the-armories-of-the-latter-day-laputas/ A revolution in time. Thu, 11 Apr 2013 01:11:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: admin http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/06/03/the-armories-of-the-latter-day-laputas/#comment-2178 admin Sat, 04 Jun 2011 07:22:02 +0000 http://chronopause.com/?p=714#comment-2178 The short answers to these questions are “no” and “no.” A kidney has been cryopreserved – a single rabbit kidney. While I believe that result was both real and important, it doesn’t count as science until the last steps in the Scientific Method are achieved: replication and confirmation. Until the original investigators (in this case, Fahy, et al.) replicate the work AND other investigators confirm their results, then no one beyond a small circle of people who have or have had first hand knowledge of the character or the investigators involved, is going to take the work seriously – nor should they. This doesn’t mean that these results are either invalid or useless; in fact, they provide valuable information for future experiments to perfect the procedure.

Going further, it is unlikely, IMHO, that organ cryopreservation will change cryobiological or public perception much, until it is brought to the point of clinical application. As long as it remains a laboratory technique, especially one confined to small organs, such as the rabbit kidney, it is not likely to change the perception of cryonics. — Mike Darwin

]]> By: gwern http://chronopause.com/index.php/2011/06/03/the-armories-of-the-latter-day-laputas/#comment-2172 gwern Sat, 04 Jun 2011 02:05:11 +0000 http://chronopause.com/?p=714#comment-2172 From http://lesswrong.com/lw/1r0/a_survey_of_anticryonics_writing/ I found a link to http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/coldwar.html which was quite interesting. You remark

> Of course, a variety of more optimistic scenarios can also be offered for consideration. It is possible that successful cryopreservation of a solid organ such as a kidney or liver would soften cryobiological hostility. Certainly it can be argued that successful cryopreservation of the mammalian brain would go a long way towards achieving this end and some both inside and outside the cryobiological community have argued that it will.

Kidneys have been successfully cryopreserved, have they not? Has hostility softened?

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