CHRONOSPHERE

Fucked.

Posted on August 9, 2011 by admin

By Mike Darwin

Have I got your attention now?

Good.

Most people say my writing here is far too long and not nearly to the point. Today I’ll remedy that. [Though you’ll still have to read this http://wp.me/p1sGcr-1h for what I going to say here to have much credibility. Read, read it carefully, and note when the contents were first published on-line.]

A couple of readers have also noted that I “seem to be in a hurry” with whatever my agenda is. Today, in part, I’ll explain why.

Over the past few days the true state of the global economy has started to be unveiled. It is going to get a lot worse. I’m no prophet or seer; would that I were. Because then, I could quantify it all for you and spoil the ending by telling you how it’s going to turn out; for you, for me, and for everyone else on the planet. But the truth is, I have no crystal ball and no metaphysical “inside track” on the future. I had hoped, fervently, that I might have some more time, that we might have some more time – perhaps as much as a year or two, before this global economic decompensation occurred. Well, no such luck. What is happening now is the beginning of what is going to be a very bad time. I have been back and forth over the skin of this earth these past 6 years, and I can tell you that much of the world has been precariously balanced on a knife’s edge of instability, fear, hopelessness and simmering rage for onto to a decade, now.

When the French Revolution arrived, Louis VI and Marie Antoinette could hardly have been more surprised. Hosni Mubarak, lying in his hospital bed in a cage Cairo, must certainly feel a similar sense of disbelief and disorientation. To be plucked from his villa at Sharm el Sheik, after he surrendered the Presidency? Incredible! The difficulty for many of you reading this (in the Developed World) is that you have lived like Louis, Marie and Hosni for the last few decades – completely out of touch with that segment of the world deemed both untouchable and insignificant. It’s not that you’ve actively avoided them, but rather than you could not even see them, and if you did catch a glimpse of them from time to time, out of the corner of your eye, you not only had no opportunity for discourse with them – you lacked the language – you literally lacked the language – both symbolic and visceral – to communicate. You might more easily have communed with an ant, or an apple tree.

Now, regrettably, many of you are about to join them. Do not worry about any lack of knowledge of their linguistics. The lingua franca of fear and disenfranchisement is one that all but the Doctor Panglosses, and the Wickens Micawbers of the world, learn with astonishing speed. Chances are, you will too.

I don’t know how much ‘play’ there is left in the system. That means I don’t know when the futile and irrational wars the West is currently prosecuting will be replaced with much larger, more costly and absolutely essential conflicts. It means I don’t know exactly when healthcare expenditures are going to decrease from 17.6% of the GDP, to somewhere in the single digits (and all the grim statistics that implies). It also means I can’t tell you exactly when the currency is going to start really inflating – in part, because I don’t know to what extent deflation from lack of demand for major commodities will occur – or when – although I note that oil prices have already dropped.

I am an expert, a bona fide expert at watching things die and observing, in order to understand the mechanics of that process, even to the point where it has proceeded well into decomposition. Human and non-human, I’ve observed so many deaths I long ago lost count. This has made me wise enough to ‘know it when I see it,’ and wiser still, to know that I lack the tools to bring precision to my understanding of the process. I can tell you when it is underway, but I cannot tell you the appointed minute, the appointed hour, or even the appointed week, month, or year of its arrival.

I said I’d keep this bearably short, and I will. We’ve been fucked. It happened quite some time ago, but in the daze of the booze and drugs, we simply didn’t feel it – until now. My message, here and now, is to first be aware that this has happened. You have no time for denial, or for recriminations. Second, neither panic nor abandon hope in the months to come. Third, immediately stop all non-essential expenditures and save everything you can. When you need to convert those savings into non-cash commodities, of one kind or another, will become apparent in due time. If you have modest and manageable debt, pay it off. If you have large debt, begin to position yourself to walk away from it with as little injury to your assets and psyche as possible. Much of the work of doing this in the US is psychological. In other places, more material preparations will likely be required. Finally, if you are a cryonicist and you want to continue to be one, be prepared to relocate. It is very likely that cryonics (biopreservation) is going to require the support of an active, cohesive and geographically united community.

I am sorry for this message. I hoped to have far more time to sieve a working group of good minds, with good hearts, to confront what is now upon us. No such luck.

Posted in Cryonics Philosophy, Culture & Propaganda, Economics, Philosophy | 66 Comments

You Bet Your Life!

Posted on August 6, 2011 by admin

Figure 1: Roulette is how almost everyone thinks of cryonics in terms of it being a gamble. The odds are what they are, they slim and they are heavily weighted in the House’s favor. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

“Life is a gamble, a game we all play,

But you need to save something for a rainy day.

Don’t put it all on the line for just one roll

You’ve got to have an ace in the hole.

No matter what you do, no matter where you go

You’ve got to have an ace in the hole.” – George Strait, “Ace in the Hole”

Figure 2: The only way to beat the Devil is to outsmart him and out-bluff him – as well as have a little luck on your side.

Cryonics is often referred to as a gamble, and it is. But the real question is, “just what kind of a gamble is it, anyway?” Most people think of gambling as ‘all of piece,’ and most don’t think much of it. That latter opinion is one held for good reasons, not the least of which are that the odds are stacked against you, and the whole business can be highly addictive, as well as financially ruinous. But as the country crooners tell us, “life is a gamble, a game we all play.” And in this case, it’s not a game we can opt out of for something better. We may not be willing gamblers, but we are gambler nonetheless. Neither moral superiority nor the most astute negotiations will get us out the game alive; the Devil doesn’t give a damn for clever argument, or contrary principle.

Because, like it or not, are in the game, it behooves us to examine how the game is played. While there are few concessions to our possible survival, the most important of these is that not all of the games we can stake our life on are created equal. Some of the gambles we are forced to make are existential, they’re like roulette or craps; we have no control over the odds, and about all we can control is how much exposure we have (and often not even that). Getting hit by a meteorite or struck by lightning are two classic examples of existential risk. However, it’s worth noting than even in these instances, with enough time and enough knowledge, we can very likely alter the odds in our favor.

Figure 3: Not all games are created equal and not all gaming venues offer the same odds. Good judgment and skill actually allow a few people to make a very good living playing poker.

Most people who are critical of, or who feel hopeless about cryonics, make the mistake of assuming that cryonics is a fixed odds proposition, like rolling dice or dropping the ball on a spinning roulette wheel. This erroneous assumption is tied up with their mistaken perception of cryonics as a fully developed product. They think of cryonics as a discrete, consumable item, like a bag of crisps, a candy bar, or even a computer, or a radio. Or they think of lit ike an automobile maintenance contract, or an insurance policy that pays off when you need it.

It isn’t.

All of those products and services can be assigned, with a high degree of precision, a probability of how they will perform and what your likelihood is of being satisfied with them. They are fully developed products. And mostly, all you need to know about them is present, free for the asking in the culture, in the form of “common knowledge,” information from friends and family, and, of course from advertising. You pay your money and that’s it. Nobody needs to explain to you, or to anyone else, what a TV or broom or is for, how to use them, and what might go wrong with them over time.

This is no way describes cryonics.

So the first side-benefit you get by making cryonics arrangements is that you now have a proprietary interest in learning what it is that you just bought! What’s more, you will soon become aware that you need to keep learning, because cryonics is an undeveloped, immature, and above all experimental technique. I signed up with the Cryonics Society of New York (CSNY) when I was 15 years old. CSNY is long, long gone, and I’ve been signed up with 2 other organizations that have also vanished. This kind of dynamicity is likely to continue, and it may well continue even after suspended animation is perfected; longevity in corporations is likely much more of a crapshoot than the technical feasibility of cryonics itself. So, if you can’t keep learning until old age or cardiac arrest overtakes you, you are unwilling to do so, or you are an idiot, then cryonics is definitely not for you.

Because non-cryonicists have the view of cryonics as a developed product (like an automobile or a light bulb,) they have a similarly inaccurate and warped view of the odds. The odds of the Titanic sinking with the loss of 1,517 lives were 100% on 15 April 1912. But, what if the Titanic were to have taken, say, 12, 24, or 48 hours to sink? Depending upon how the passengers and crew behaved in that interval, the number of lost lives might go way up, or way down.

There were a lot of smart people on board the Titanic – very clever and very inventive people. There were also a veritable army of craftsman and skilled laborers locked up in steerage. But they were all panicked and they had very little time to react. Given a longer interval and the willing participation of the best minds and the most able hands aboard that ship, how many people need have died, or would have died? Were there ways, other than the optimal loading of the inadequate number of lifeboats that would have saved lives? Would clothing those passengers consigned to the icy sea in multiple layers of clothing saturated in grease, shortening, or oil, attaching them to life-ropes, and rotating them in and out of the lifeboats, have saved additional lives? What kind of makeshift lifeboats or floating platforms could have been made on an expedient basis from materials on the ship, thus allowing additional passengers to remain afloat and out of the freezing water?

Figure 4: The House Edge (HE), or vigorish, is the profit the casino makes by altering the odds in its favor. The HE varies from venue to venue and sometimes from time to time in the same venue. The HE is analogous to the “negatives” your cryonics organization brings to the table.

Two examples of gambling where the odds are not fixed and where skill, as well as luck, often makes the difference between success and failure are poker and blackjack. But even there, the odds can be considerably improved if the player understands the concept of the House Edge. The House Edge (HE), or vigorish, is defined as the casino profit expressed as a percentage of the player’s original bet. (In games such as Blackjack the final bet may be several times the original bet, if the player doubles or splits.) If you look at Figure 4 you can see that the HE can vary quite a lot from casino to casino. A good way to think of the HE is to think of it in terms of the likelihood of success or failure your choice in cryonics service providers is likely to have on your overall chances of cryonics working for you (and thus of your survival).

Unfortunately, the HE isn’t posted over the door of any cryonics organization and it’s up to you, as the thoughtful gambler, to figure the HE out for yourself. That won’t be easy to do and the best way to do it is to have a strong and ongoing incentive to keep working on a solution to the problem. Being signed up is the thing that is most likely to provide the requisite proprietary interest and the necessary experience and information. After all, one of the things you are paying for by being signed up is regular updates, newsletters and other information services from your cryonics organization. Those things provide extraordinarily good feedback about the vitality and the competence of the organization you’ve chosen. And they also serve to generally educate you about cryonics.

What the public, and what all too many cryonicists need to learn about cryonics is that the odds are not fixed to those that are calculated at any given point in time, because, in large measure, you are not carting off a discrete product to screw into your lamp, to process your words, or to play your video games on. You set the odds of success or failure to an amazing degree. [You also do this as an individual, to a tiny degree for the success or failure of the company that you buy a light bulb, or a computer from.] Cryonics is thus an activist proposition. Customers can, of course, be customers – if they insist. But in cryonics, as in any other market transaction, perfected or experimental, you get what you pay for. In the case of cryonics, the fees required for success are not even remotely reducible to cold hard cash, alone.

Figure 5: How many more would have survived if there had been 12, 24, or 48 hours to prepare instead of 2, before the Titanic sank? The odds of survival in a life or death situation are a result of the complex interplay between the time available, the physical resources, the human resources, the absence of panic and lastly, chance.

It’s a regrettable analogy, but a valid one, that we are very much like passengers aboard a slowly sinking Titanic. The Titanic was a microcosm of the very best of early 20^th century technology. It was comprised of a vast range of materials and it was equipped with a maintenance shop stocked with the finest tools of the era. But most importantly, it was equipped with some of the finest technological minds of the time, as well as with many able craftsmen. Even in the time allotted, the ~2 hours between the time the time it was first understood that the ship was sinking, and the time it slipped beneath the waves, had there been order, a willingness to accept the gravitas of the situation, and full use of the minds and hands on board, the loss of life would have been a fraction of what it was.

Figure 6: We are gambling for our lives; the stakes couldn’t be any higher. Do you want to win, or lose?

Lose and we die. Draw and we stay cryopreserved and waiting, Win and we get a chance at indefinitely long life and a wild and wonderful universe to live it in!

It’s going to take all the composure, good judgment and raw intelligence we can muster to beat the House at this game.

The only question now is, “Are you in, or out?”

Posted in Cryonics Philosophy, Philosophy | 37 Comments

Science Fiction, Double Feature, 2: Part 3

Posted on August 6, 2011 by admin

Introduction & Tour of the Alcor-B Foundation’s Mobile, Arizona Patient Care Facility & Existential Colony

Address given to Alcor-B Foundation Cryopreservation Members and Staff

Alcor-B Cryopreservation Research Foundation (ABCRF)

15 September, 2012 By Gorton Carpenter, M.D., Ph.D., President of the Alcor-B Foundation

Figure 1: The Alcors are the second, smaller and dimmer companion stars to Mizar, the bright stars that comprise the crook in the handle of the Big Dipper constellation. In the Arab world of the 5^th Century CE, Mizar’s much less bright (and more difficult to see) companion stars, Alcor-A and Alcor-B were used as tests for good vision. Only someone with the clearest and most acute visions could see the Alcor’s. Alcor-B was discovered early in 2011 using Project 1640m, which makes use of the Hale Telescope’s adaptive optics system. Project 1640 gives the Hale a view almost equal to what is possible in space. The instrument also has the ability to block out the light of a star, allowing faint objects located next to a star to be seen. The Hale, armed with Project 1640, was pointed at Alcor earlier this year and found that it isn’t a single star. Alcor has a small stellar companion that hadn’t been seen before: Alcor-B, a small, dim red dwarf star about one fourth the mass of our Sun. To see Alcor-B you must have the superior vision that only mastery of the most sophisticated technology allows. Alcor-B is thus a test for the clearest and most acute vision – vision capable of seeing things as they really are – not just as they appear to be.

Figure 2: Alcor-B President, Gorton Carpenter, M.D., Ph.D.

We have covered a fair amount of ground here today, in pretty much the order we needed to, and now it is time to intellectually explore what lies below the surface here, as we are about to do physically.

The existential risks that cryonics and Alcor-B confront are well known to most of you. As you can see in this slide (Figure3), those risks have been color coded based on the risk assessment done by the Timeline to Recovery Project (TRP) analysts. Those in red were deemed the highest risk, with those in yellow coming in a close second.

Figure 3: The primary existential risks that cryonics patients and Alcor-B staff face in the coming years. Arguably, two of those risks, climate change and economic upheaval are beginning to unfold at present.

Had we remained in the greater Los Angeles area we would already be suffering from the effects of a devastating earthquake. We can congratulate ourselves for having dodged one arrow. However, there are some arrows of fortune it is hard to escape. We are already in the throes of a serious economic upheaval, indeed of a global depression, and we are also suffering from the early effects of what will very likely be a climactic catastrophe of similar magnitude to the Little Ice Age, or the MezoAmerican Drought that collapsed the civilization of the Maya. We have the technology to cool the earth, but it remains to be seen whether we have the will, as a species, or the political ability equal to the task. Unlike as was the case with the Big One, from these two existential threats we cannot run, but rather, only hope to shelter ourselves until they pass or can be overcome buy our own efforts.

Figure 4: The map above shows the probable extent of the spread of a highly infectious communicable disease in the US. By day 87 virtually all populated areas of any size are infected. The inset curve shows the rate of transmission from the start of the infection until saturation is reached at day ~ 87. There is a window of ~ 30-50 days where reverse quarantine measures may be effective, providing that the infection has not already entered our colony from contact with Phoenix, or other large metropolises.

The TRP projections show a high probability (0.07) that a consequence of the interaction of the current climactic and economic chaos will be the emergence of one or more highly infectious, and reasonably lethal, pandemic diseases. Already, the untreatable strain of N. gonorrhea, which emerged late in2010, has created major public health problems and untold misery in the Developed World. In the Third World, it has proven an unsustainable strain on the healthcare system, and has resulted in a growing population of often malnourished, and now chronically morbid individuals, who are in a weakened state and easy pretty to other infectious agents.

The emergence of carabapenem resistance in gonorrhea, the last line of defense in the treatment of this venereal disease, has broader implications, since global surveillance is increasingly detecting the plasmid that confers antibiotic resistance on this organism in other microorganisms. Given the cohabitation of N. gonorrhea with S. aureus, and the various members of the Streptococcus family that naturally colonize our skin, it is likely only a matter of time before fully antibiotic resistant strains of these organisms emerge, and we are plunged back into the dark and terrifying time before effective antimicrobial therapy existed.

This slide (Figure 4) shows the time course and expected pattern of pandemic disease spread in the United States. We are, as you can see, located fortunately with respect to having some days notice that trouble is afoot. We have equipped the Alcor-B Facility with Nuclear, Chemical and Biological (NBC) air handling facilities, and we have added to those the ultraviolet virucidal treatment of all intake air. We have also offered subsidies and assistance to all member households on the campus of the Facility to allow them to prepare for such a contingency. And of course, a comprehensive plan of action to implement the reverse quarantine of the Facility, is also now operational. Part of the assistance offered resident members here is participation in the food reserves program which provides for sufficient long-term-storable foodstuffs to provide a sufficient calorie, protein, and micronutrient intake for 3-years, for each resident of our community.

Figure 5: Two views of the Alcor-B Patient Care Bay during the interval from the mid-1990s (left) to the early 2000s (right).

The Alcor-B patient care facilities in the 1990s (Figure 5) were woefully vulnerable to external assault – a risk we didn’t take seriously, in large measure because we thought we had no reason to. While cryonics has never been a treasured part of this culture (laughter), and while it has long been held in contempt, the contempt was never of a malicious, let alone a violent nature. We were considered non-threatening, and remained so, until the cryopreservation of the iconic American baseball hitter Ted Williams, in 2002. At that point, an irreversible threshold was crossed.

Cryonics not only touched mainstream American culture in an ineffable way, it forced it to confront the fundamental dichotomy between its values, and ours. Not only could the culture not comprehend that one their heroes wanted to pursue practical immortality, they could not even begin to comprehend that we were not going to bend, either to their will, or their flawed system of values, and surrender an Alcor-B patient to the mob for destruction. This resulted in vandalism, gunfire into the Alcor-B facility, and the emergence of a small but damaging corps of people committed to the destruction of not only Alcor-B, but of cryonics as a whole. And not just here in the US, but in the whole of the West, as the actions of individuals in the UK and Western Europe demonstrated.

Figure 6: The Alcor-B Patient Care Bay in 2009, shortly before the move to the Mobile, AZ Facility. (Photo by Murray Ballard.)

As late as a year ago, this is how our PCB looked (Figure 6). While precautions had been taken to reinforce the perimeter walls, and to protect the ceiling/roof from assault by the use of blast-resistant polymer matting, there was no control of the facility perimeter and the degree of protection against an explosive device as simple an easy to fabricate as a large pipe bomb, was minimal. Thankfully, the titling caption on this slide is now obsolete. We hope that the Cryonics Institute will also act to harden their facilities to protect their patients from assault by the deranged as well as by the evil and determined.

Figure 7: A contemporary view of the patient care area of the Cryonics Institute’s facility in Clinton Township, MI

Figure 8: At left above, two of the below ground silos that housed Bigfoot dewars at the facilities of CryoSpan, Inc., in Rancho Cucamonga. CryoSpan is no longer in operation.

We considered many options before deciding upon the Mobile, Facility. One option was to protect the patients in the way that CryoSpan, Inc., did in the late 1990s (Figure 8). Mark Connaughton and Paul Wakfer did a brilliant job of implementing a suggestion from Mike Darwin, that the patient dewars be sunk in the ground in steel reinforced concrete silos. This approach provided an excellent level of protection against many of the existential risks that we’ve just covered (Figure 3). But it falls short of the comprehensive protection we wanted, and of course, it could not address protection of the staff ,or the assurance of the infrastructure required to maintain the patients in cryogenic refrigeration.

Figure 9: The relative scales of a standard, immersion LN2 storage Bigfoot dewar, and the ECD-60 dome that now houses Alcor-B’s patients.

After a great deal of searching and evaluation, we decided upon a facility close enough to a major city to make LN2, major emergency medical care, and the other amenities of civilization within easy reach, and yet be far enough away to be outside of the “ring of destruction” cities create when they implode from civil unrest, or are the target of thermonuclear attack. That’s how the Mobile site was selected. The decision was then made to use a range of Green Eye Technology modular shelter systems to fabricate the most hardened and subterranean parts of the Facility. To house the patient storage part of our operation, we selected their ECD-60 (Earthcom Dome, 60 ft diameter x 22 ft high) The ECD-60 serves as a central atrium to connect the multiple CAT 12 and CAT 25 shelter modules (Figure 10). In addition to patient storage, the atrium is used to store additional food, houses the communications and defense center, serves as a meeting and entertainment area, exercise area, and so forth. The ECD-60 has its own NBC air supply system with a peak capability of processing 1200 cfm of outside air. As I said previously, we have outfitted that air handling system with a UV sanitizing system. The relative size of the ECD-60 to a Bigfoot patient storage dewar is shown in this slide (Figure 9).

Figure 10: The subterranean complex that comprises the maximally hardened parts of the Alcor-B Mobile, AZ Facility. The ECD-60 Dome serves as the hub from which 11 modules radiate like spokes. There are 6 residential modules, a hospital/dental module, a laboratory module which houses an emergency cryopreservation capability, a diesel fuel storage tank, a diesel powered electricity generating plant and a greenhouse which is used for storage of supplies until the facility becomes active in an emergency. The Patient Care Area is the in part of the ECD-60 that adjoins the clinical and technical spokes of the facility. The remainder of the ECD-60 houses the communications and defense center and is used for storage, communal dining and meeting spaces.

This slide shows the complete layout of the subterranean area of the Facility. The costing figures I will be discussing directly include only the ECD-60 Dome, one Cat-12 Residential Module and the Power Generating and Fuel Storage Modules. The other modules of the facility you see laid out here were paid for either by consortiums of Alcor-B members for their own use (via a long term lease-back agreement), or through directed donations. The Catalano Family deserves our tremendous gratitude for providing the funds for the Hospital/Dental and Laboratory modules. These facilities will not only provide medical care for staff and residents, they also allow for any member who needs to be cryopreserved to be perfused and vitrified, even under emergency “hunkered down” conditions.

This configuration, when the greenhouse is operational, will allow for the shelter of ~ 300 patients (as neuros), as well as 300 residents and staff for a period of 3 years, without recourse to outside resources. This includes all resources necessary for survival including, food, water, medicines and NBC processed breathing air. The Patient Care Area, as currently configured, can hold 200 whole body patients and 250 neuropatients. However, in the event of an existential catastrophe of such a magnitude that neither grid power nor liquid nitrogen is available, the whole body patients would, of necessity, be converted to neuro. This could conceivably change if extra generating and liquid nitrogen production capacity were to become available.

Figure 11: At right above, two men from the construction crew stand atop the ECD-60 shortly before the earth backfill was completed. At left above is the Patient Care Area of the facility as it appears today.

This image (Figure 11) shows the backfill operation underway (at right). The two workers standing atop the dome give some perspective to the scale of the structure and the size of the undertaking. None of these images or plans shows the vehicle access portal (VAP) or its location, for security reasons. The VAP is the way that patient storage equipment and the patients themselves are moved in and out of the facility. Because this structure had to have doors that were blast-resistant to 2o psi of overpressure, a unique design was required and a lot of very clever engineering went into making the VAP convenient to use, as well as hardened against assault.

Figure 12: The CAT-12 houses the Alcor staff and also houses a self-contained air handing and power generating facility. The CAT-12 contains enough food and water for a 90-day stay.

The CAT-12, CAT-15 Greenhouse, Power Generating Module, and the Hospital and Laboratory Modules, were all back-filled, covered and compacted before the ECD-60 was. The ECD-60 was the last structure to be buried, because it serves as the central connecting hub – the other modules had to be in place and fully wired and plumbed before ECD-60 could be buried. And since we planned to place a heavy structure atop the Residential Modules 01 and 02 (the Friendly Fortress), it was necessary to achieve a high degree of soil compaction. This took a lot of extra time and a lot of water!

Figure 13: Installation of the CAT-12 Residential Module in the Mobile, AZ facility. The inset photo shows the interior of the CAT-12 as it appears today

The CAT-12 is the smallest housing module in the facility. It was originally selected to house the Alcor-B staff, because it was both adequate, and within our very limited budget at the time. The CAT-12 can house 10 people in reasonable comfort and it has its own independent power generating capability, galley, 60 day food supply, and air filtration system (Figures 12 & 13). Our original plan for this facility included only the CAT-12 Residential Module. When additional funds became available for an expanded shelter capability to house Alcor-B residents, we decided to leave the CAT-12 configured as originally planned, because this would allow for staff to be emplaced independent of residents (Figure 14). This might be required in situations where the risk was deemed high enough to “button up” the facility and protect the critical personnel needed to care for patients, but where the situation was not deemed urgent enough to shelter the full contingent of the community’s residents.

Figure 14: Specifications and interior layout of the CAT-12 Residential Module.

Of course, what we would really like, would be a facility that could autonomously care for Alcor-B’s patients indefinitely. That ideal facility would be nuclear fueled, and use a super-efficient thermopile (thermocouple) generator to make electricity from heat; and then use the electricity to cool the interior of the dewars to -150^○C, using the Peltier effect (again, thermocouples as used in the power generating thermopile (but run in “reverse” as thermoelectric cooling elements).

Figure 15: In the event of a prolonged existential crisis the current emergency survival plan calls for conversion of all whole body patients to neuro so that everyone can be cared for within 1 or 2 ITS Bigfoot units.

This would comprise a power generating and refrigerating system with no moving parts and with a life span that would equal that of the working life of the nuclear fuel. Alas, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not going to give us either plutonium or Strontium-90, and in any event, thermoelectric cooling technology is not quite good enough yet!

The next best thing was to come up with a system which would run as long as currently available and affordable technology would allow, and that was within our budget of ~ $2.5 million 2010 US dollars.

Due to budget constraints, it became immediately apparent that it would not be possible to operate more than two Bigfoot units continuously in an “off-grid” fashion. The solution would be to configure our long-duration emergency capability around the conversion of the whole body patients to neuro. This would allow us to easily store 200+ neuropatients using our existing packaging and packing configurations, as well our existing cryogenic storage hardware.

The person who should be credited with first coming up with this idea of using a Bigfoot dewar to store the whole patient population, and to refrigerate it independent of the grid, was Dr. Greg Fahy. Back in the late 1980s he proposed using a liquid helium refrigerated “cold finger,” of the type used to pinch hit for LN₂ in electron microscopes and other kinds of laboratory equipment that need ultra-low temperatures but don’t want to be bothered with the logistic headaches associated with LN₂. His calculations at that time showed that this was indeed doable with off the shelf equipment then commercially available. So, when we began to explore this option, cold fingers were the first thing we looked at. However, we soon discovered that technological advances in small capacity LN₂ production plants made the cold finger option no longer attractive.

Figure 16: The CryoMech LNP-40 liquid nitrogen (LN₂) plant.

Due to advances in molecular sieving technology, as well as in the design of the Joule-Thompson helium refrigerators used to cool nitrogen (or air) to the point of liquefication, it was now possible to produce LN₂ economically, and in quantity, without the need for a separation tower (Figure 16). In the past, LN₂ was made by first liquefying air, and then separating out the various chemical components that make it up; oxygen, water, carbon dioxide, the noble gases, and so on… This was an inefficient process and one that required a lot of maintenance of the liquefaction equipment. It also greatly shortened the time to failure of the LN₂ plant.

It is now possible to separate nitrogen from the rest of the gaseous components of air using spiral wound membranes that allow nitrogen to pass across them, but which reject the unwanted gases – very much like reverse osmosis membranes. This technology eliminates the needs for a separation tower and it greatly increases the energy efficiency of the LN₂ production. The absence of water (ice) also prolongs the life of the moving parts in the system, increasing the time to failure (or preventive maintenance) by about two orders of magnitude over the small capacity plants that were available in the 1980s, when Alcor-B first examined this technology.

Figure 17: Specifications of the CryoMech LN₂ plant.

The platform we selected for use here in the Mobile Facility was the Cryo-Mech, Inc., LNP-40. This small LN2 production plant can generate up to 40 liters per day of LN₂ at a rate of ~1.6 liters per hour. This would be enough to keep one of the Intermediate Temperature Storage (ITS) Bigfoot dewars operational and two of the conventional immersion LN2 storage units in operation.

Figure 18: The elements which comprise the LNP-40 LN2 plant: molecular sieve membranes (upper left), air compressor which supplies air to nitrogen sieving membranes (middle right), LN2 collection and discharge dewar (center) and the Joule-Thompson nitrogen liquefier (lower left).

Necessarily, two of these plants must be purchased at the same time to provide redundancy, both during routine servicing and in the event one of the plants experiences an irreparable failure during the off grid interval. Thus, our initial capital outlay for the complete refrigerating system, including two LNP-40 LN₂ liquefiers was ~ $144,000. We purchased enough service kits to allow for continuous operation of both systems for 3 years.

Figure 19: Additional specifications of the CryoMech LNP-40.

The LNP-40 discharges LN2 into a specially designed 160 liter storage vessel from which it is subsequently dispensed to the Bigfoot units, as needed. In the near future we plan to have the LN2 from the LNP-40 collected in a larger, super-high efficiency storage vessel. This will maximize our energy efficiency, minimize the wear and tear on the liquefier, and allow us to better use the LN2 produced as “energy currency” for refrigeration where and when needed elsewhere in the Facility. As you can see (Figure 19) LN2 production does not come cheap in terms of the energy required. While industrial-scale plants are much more efficient, the LNP-40 is still impressively parsimonious when it comes it come to power consumption, since it uses only 5.5 kW.

And that leads to the next issue we had to address, namely where are we going to get that kind of power from off the grid, and reliably, for up to 3 years at a time? Diesel fuel is an option, but the quantities required are not only costly, they presented major regulatory problems with both Maricopa County, and the City of Goodyear. We took a long hard look at solar, and decided it was not only workable, but that it was the superior option. Besides, it seemed only fair that, given the merciless baking we endure from the Arizona sun, year in and year out, that we be able to convert some of that blistering energy into refrigeration for our patients!

Figure 20: The key elements (and their cost) of Mobile Facility’s solar power system.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that there were systems available pretty much as turnkey items in the capacity range we needed, principally 150 kW (Figure 20). We have two discrete solar power generating arrays: one atop the Friendly Fortress (FF, surface terminator) to the facility, and another, much larger one, located south of the FF. We have plans to enclose this second array in a more secure fashion, since it is essential to provide sufficient power to operating the LNP-40. The array atop the FF provides enough power for the staff and residents. We also have a large (buried) reserve of stabilized diesel fuel which is sufficient to operate the entire facility continuously for 3 months. Used in conjunction with solar power, this reserve of diesel will allow for uninterrupted operation for approximately 3 years. This assumes the normal number of sunny and cloudy days here in the Northeastern Sonoran Desert. All bets are off there is a nuclear winter, or other diminution of the anticipated solar radiation, of any duration.

Figure 21: Supercapacitors of the kind used to store solar-generated electricity in the Alcor-B Facility to meet the “surge demand” of starting motors.

At the present, we have 17,442 square feet of solar electric panels. While we are relying on lead-acid batteries to store energy, we are also using Supercapacitors. Unlike batteries, which store energy in an electrolytic chemical reaction, supercapacitors store energy in the field state across the area of an electrode, which is made of a sophisticated carbon aerogel. Supercaps offer a combination of high power storage density, high voltage levels, and high charging speeds. This means much more compact and powerful storage that can be quickly recharged. For this marvelous innovation we thank Eugen Leitl, who first suggested their use, and who was of great help in generating the specifications and working the Canadian manufacturer, to ensure that the finished product met our needs. Supercaps have vastly longer life spans than lead-acid (or other kinds of) batteries. But their greatest advantage is in their unique ability to meet the large surge requirements of the motors in use throughout the facility, and especially the air compressor and the Joule-Thompson compressor motors necessary to operate the LNP-40. Supercaps quickly discharge the large amounts of energy required for the “start-up surge” of these motors

Figure 22: The cost breakdown and key elements of the patient care essential portions of the Alcor-B Mobile, AZ Facility (2010 US dollars).

In concluding, I’d like to briefly review the key elements of this beautiful new facility, before we start our tour of it. The entire physical plant, including LN2 production, can be operated from the 150 kW solar arrays and is capable of running for up to 3 years without grid power, or supplies from the outside. The total cost to Alcor-B for the patient and staff essential parts of this facility was $2, 247,750 in 2010 dollars. The cost for the rest of the facility, exclusive of the above ground residences, was $4, 356, 925 in 2010 dollars. I believe I can confidently state that this is the most secure, the most technologically advanced and the most beautiful cryonics facility on the plane! It fulfills the dream of our founders, Fred and Linda Chamberlain, and of Mike Darwin and Jerry Leaf – all of whom realized, and worked for the day when Alcor-B would be as protected from existential and other risks, as current technology allows. Today, their dream is our reality.

The End of The Beginning

Posted in Cryonics Biography, Cryonics History, Cryonics Philosophy, Cryonics Technology (General), Culture & Propaganda, Economics | 1 Comment

Science Fiction, Double Feature, 2: Part 2

Posted on August 5, 2011 by admin

Introduction & Tour of the Alcor-B Foundation’s Mobile, Arizona Patient Care Facility & Existential Colony

Address given to Alcor-B Foundation Cryopreservation Members and Staff

15 September, 2012

By Gorton Carpenter, M.D., Ph.D., President of the Alcor-B Foundation

Alcor-B Cryopreservation Research Foundation (ABCRF)

Figure 2: Alcor-B President, Gorton Carpenter, M.D., Ph.D.

Why?

Now that we’ve returned from the break, hopefully refreshed and ready for a bit more technical material, I’d like to continue by explaining why we undertook to create the Mobile, AZ facility. In hindsight it seems strange that those who started cryonics were not more concerned with what could go wrong, let alone what the probability was of those things actually going wrong! Looking back at the press clippings and the media coverage from that era, it is for sure that the public had no problem identifying possible problems with cryonics.

While the average Joe may have been focused on power failures, economic calamities, nuclear war, and overpopulation as obstacles in simple-minded ways that irritated cryonicists, and caused a knee jerk reaction in them that led them to dismiss these objections. Their objections were, nevertheless, real and valid. No, our patients aren’t refrigerated by compressors that depend upon a continuous supply of electricity. But they are refrigerated by liquid nitrogen which is dependent upon the power grid– any lasting disruption to the power supply, or even rationing of electricity or, the energy commodities it is produced from – and cryonics patients warm up and rot. The difference in the outcome from the objection raised by Average Joe is only 30, or 60, or 90 days, at most. The standard response of cryonicists then, and mostly now, has been, “Cryonics facilities don’t use electricity to refrigerate cryonics patients: they use liquid nitrogen (LN₂). ”

And how is Ln2 made? With electricity, of course.

And while cryonicists were quick to point out (and to take delight in) the inaccurate and foolish predictions of Malthusian doom by the “experts,” such Paul Erlich. [1] It was to no small degree because of unprecedented and unforeseen technological advances in agriculture, food distribution (computerization) and food preservation technology that that this catastrophe was avoided. What those cryonicists did not do, was to the question the wisdom of courting catastrophe, absent at least a reasonably good assurance that the solutions would, in fact, be there when they were needed.

Facing Limits & Preparing For Adverse Consequences

And of course, our contempt for this issue begged the question, “Just what are the limits to population growth, even given the most optimistic projections for the growth in food supply?” Also not considered were the geopolitical and social issues that attend disproportionate growth in the populations of some peoples, while that of others remains unchanged. Nor was there any consideration given to the social-demographic effects on populations where the majority of the citizens are in their 20s, are unemployed, are poorly educated (or not educated at all) are impoverished, and are facing a future largely devoid of hope. It is also certain that we did not consider the consequences of even a single hiccup in the food supply, such as a sustained and widespread drought, that would double or treble food prices in those same already marginally fed populations. Something that is happening right now. The result was that to an alarming extent we did not see the mass famines that now engulf much of Sub-Saharan Africa and significant parts of India. And it is certainly the case that that our predecessor cryonicists did not foresee a time when over 16% of Americans would be receiving Food Stamps (Figure 3), and that people using EBT [1] cards at the till in a grocery store would become something that everyone recognized, and that almost no one held in contempt – for fear they might find themselves with one hand in a few short months.

Figure 3: In the closing days of 2012the percentage of Americans receiving Federal Food Stamp assistance reached 16.25% of the population, up from 14.2% in June of 2011.[2] The continued deterioration of the US and the global economy coupled with major agricultural failures in the US as a result of drought and record summer heat throughout most of the nation are the factors most immediately responsible for this situation.

Of course, this situation did not materialize out of thin air, nor did it happen overnight. We did not suddenly awake to over a quarter of this nation’s children being on Federal food assistance, with more than half of the children in Alabama and Missisippi needing Food Stamps, just to stay fed.

Figure 4: The US median household income has been flat or in decline since 1999. Since 2007 the decline has been precipitous and sustained and this is consistent not with an economic recession, but rather with an economic depression.

TRP’s (Timeline to Rescue Project’s) comprehensive econometric analyses had long shown the indicators that this economic upheaval was coming. Median US household income has been either flat, or steadily declining, since 1999, and even more alarmingly, debt as a percentage of personal income has been rising steadily and dramatically since at least 1985 while savings as percentage of personal income have been declining over the same time period even more dramatically (Figures 5 & 6).

Figure 5: Debt as a percentage of personal disposable (i.e., non-confiscated) income.

Figure 6: Personal savings as a percentage of disposable income from 1985 to 2005.

These trends might have been tolerable over a longer time course if it had not been for the fact that the same kind of fiscal irresponsibility was being practiced on the macroeconomic scale, as well. As is evident in this TRP data from 2008, the stock market began to exhibit unequivocally bubble-like behavior in the opening years of the 1990s and this behavior, as indicated by an absolutely astronomical (and unprecedented) disconnect between real value and the “market value,” as indicated by the S&P Price Index continued until 2007 (Figure 7). The problem with bubbles, economic and otherwise, is that thy burst, and that is precisely what happened to the global economic bubble in 2007.

Figure 7: The incredible disconnect between price, earnings, dividends and probable real value of shares; and of economic wealth as a whole. Data analysis and projection by TRP.

This single piece of econometric data was grounds for us to initiate the Mobile, AZ, Project. However, any uncertainty we had was further reduced when we examined the really long-term trend in the purchasing power of the US dollar (Figure 8) and compared that with foreign borrowing, and the global debt to equity ratio. When the TRP predicted sharp and steady rise in gold prices began, we knew we had to act.

Figure 8: Purchasing power of the US dollar from 1900 to 2000.

The decline in the value dollar has been so steady and unrelieved that it was impossible for either TRP or for Alcor-B management, to envision a scenario in which this trend would not only reverse itself, but be sufficiently large to allow for any reasonable possibility of servicing what was then $6 trillion in debt. A quick look at this slide (Figure 9) shows the hopelessness of this situation once the exponential phase of indebtedness and interest is reached; something that clearly happened around 2008.

Figure 9: The US National debt as of 2010, the last year that the TRP econometricians were certain that valid data was being released by the US Treasury Department.

In 2008, these data, taken together, led TRP to recommend that the Patient Care Trust (PCT) increase the fraction of its assets in gold from 10% to 20% and that they restructure their real estate and securities holdings. This advice was taken, and what’s more, the PCT decided to commit half the capital accumulated from the 10% Rule to gold. That was $1.9 million in 2008 Dollars. That purchase was made in February of ’08 at a price of $865 per ounce. Half of that “investment” was liquefied on 02 August, 2011 at the peak of the uncertainty as to whether or not Congress would increase the National Debt Ceiling, at a price of $1,648 per ounce. This resulted in a net increase in working capital of $1.85 million 2010 dollars (after transaction-related expenses). In other words, the time and effort invested in TRP covered three-quarters of the cost of the Mobile Facility, including the cost of the land (150 acres x $650 acre). To paraphrase the father of cryonics, Robert Ettinger, in another context; economic depressions are only for the unprepared and the unimaginative. (Laughter)

The Final Fallback Plan

Figure 10: The analogy of cryonics as a bridge to the future, our future, implies that we must both build with enough safety factor to prevent collapse and anticipate existential crises that pose a genuine threat to its workability

However, we shouldn’t be even a little smug. The current situation has the potential to deteriorate into a nightmare scenario – one that all the foresight in the world cannot prepare us for – at least not given our small size, and even smaller resources. While cryonics is our technological bridge to the future, it is, admittedly, a fragile one. And so one of the things I want to tell you about is the beginning of our implementation of our Final Fallback Position (FFP).

We have pursued cryopreservation as our method of bio-preservation for many reasons. For one thing, it was how the idea was handed to us by Ettinger and Cooper, the two men who first conceived of cryonics. They in turn were persuaded that cryopreservation was the best approach by virtue of the fact that many living systems can survive cooling to cryogenic temperatures if treated properly. And, perhaps just as importantly, both men were, understandably, hostages to the Arrhenius Equation, which states that the rate of chemical reaction is an invariable function of temperature. There’s a caveat to that though, and that is that the Arrhenius Equation only applies to systems that have molecular mobility, or in other words, to systems that are in a liquid or gaseous state. This caveat really didn’t become apparent until the era of vitrification began in cryonics in 2000. At that time, it began to sink in that systems in the solid state pretty much get a pass on the Arrhenius Equation, and it was the Arrhenius equation which had consigned stable, indefinite biopreservation to the realm of LN₂ temperature, or below.

Figure 11: Culicidae: Dipter in Dominican amber ~40 million years old.[3]

While it had been known since the 18^th century that biological material trapped in amber was remarkably preserved, even over time periods of millions of years. However, the quality of that preservation, and the implications for cryonics, were only fully appreciated a decade ago, with the demonstration of well preserved ultrastructure in some organisms preserved in amber. [4] And even more surprisingly, it has bow been verified that intact and relatively un-fragmented DNA is also present in some archaeo-amber samples. [5-7] There is also growing evidence that viable microorganisms may be cultured from amber ~20-45 million years old [8] and, incredibly, from aqueous inclusion in salt deposits that are at least 100 million years old. [6, 9-12] These findings led to the initiation of what was initially called the Brain Plastination Project, led by Dr. Ken Hayworth, which has since been rechristened the Ambient Temperature Vitrification Project (ATVP). The goal of the ATVP was to develop minimally biochemically disruptive techniques for rendering biological tissues into the solid state – and hence biochemically quiescent. The idea was to avoid the many chemical and biophysical changes induced by fixation by skipping this step, and introducing plasticizing monomers into tissue that was in a viable, or near viable state at the start of the procedure.

Figure 12: Buthidae: Scorpiones In Dominican Amber ~25-40 million years old.[3]

Figure 13: Cypress Plant Cell Ultra-structure: Baltic Amber ~45 million years old: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/272/1559/121.full.pdf and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1634957/pdf/rspb20042939.pdf [4]

This work is still in its infancy, but we have nevertheless learned a great deal, some of which is directly applicable to the development of the FFP. One of most difficult problems to be overcome when applying this technique to a whole organ the size of a human brain is, how do you keep the circulatory system accessible to allow for the replacement of the water in the tissue with the monomer that will subsequently be polymerized into a solid plastic, and to remove the truly enormous amount of heat liberated by the exothermic polymerization reaction?

Figure 14: A corrosion cast of the circulatory system of the human brain. The extensive vascularization of the brain allows for use of the circulatory system as both a mass and heat exchanger. Gas perfusion of the circulatory system prior to cooling to vitrification temperatures leave it accessible during cryogenic storage should fixation and plastination become necessary as a fallback position to cryopreservation.

This slide (Figure 14) shows the circulatory system of a human brain. This is the real deal, not a model. What you are looking at is something called a “corrosion cast.” In this case, the arterial circulation of a human brain was injected with a red-tinted plastic material and the brain was then immersed in a strong base, such as a concentrated solution of sodium hydroxide. The base dissolves or corrodes the tissue away, leaving behind the red plastic framework of the arterial circulation. It’s easy to see that the human brain is a “strongly circulated” organ – in fact, the brain normally received 1/3^rd of the resting cardiac output – about 1.5 liters of blood per minute. The FFP researchers decided that the best way to achieve both heat and mass exchange was to keep the brain’s circulatory open and accessible throughout the procedure. In order to achieve this during solidification of the brain, they turned to gas perfusion – replacing the liquid in the circulatory system with gas.

One of the investigators (Mike Darwin) realized that if the circulatory system of human cryonics patients was similarly perfused with gas during cooling to vitrification, not only would cooling be hastened, thus reducing the risk of freezing, but the circulatory system of the patient would remain accessible, even during storage at -150^○C. What this meant was that it would thus be theoretically possible fix and plastinate cryonics patients in the event that cryopreservation was no longer possible.

In this scenario, a patient would be removed from storage to a special apparatus, the Final Fallback Position System (FFPS), where his arterial circulation would be connected to a recirculating system of solvent chilled to -100^○C. This solvent would be pumped through the patient and would begin dissolving the viscous cryoprotectant-water solution in the patient’s tissues. The solvent would also contain fixative – initially formaldehyde to fix the proteins and, finally, a highly reactive metal, osmium tetroxide, that is necessary to fix the lipids; which comprise both the cellular and the intracellular membranes. Once the patient had been “solvent substituted” and fixed in this fashion, it would then be possible to safely warm him up to room temperature and introduce the monomer required for plastination. In fact, if necessary, this could be done by immersion, rather by perfusion (though this would necessitate removal of the brain from the head).

Figure 15: The head of a fresh (~1.5 hrs post-mortem) human cadaver subjected to vitrification and then deep subzero fixation and plastination with Epon epoxy resin using the FFPS. Accelerated aging tests show both ultrastructural and molecular stability in the range of 1.5 to 2.0 million years.

What you see here (Figure 15) is a human head that has been subjected to this procedure following vitrification. It has taken hundreds of experiments with animals, and over a dozen experiments with human cadavers to develop this process to the point that it is ready for application to cryonics patients, should the need arise. As a result of a directed donation of $850,000, we have developed the system you see here (Figure 16). This system is capable of processing up to 8 neuropatients at one time. And yes, if you are whole body and the FFP needs to be implemented, you will be processed as a neuropatient, with no ifs ands or buts. Tthe urgency of such a situation will necessarily strain our capability perilously close to the breaking point, even with our current population of 122 patients.

Figure 16: The Final Fallback Position System (FFPS) for the automated processing of cryopatient cephalons from the deep subzero state, to ambient temperature fixation and solidification (plastination).

I want to be clear that ultrastructural studies conducted during the development of the FFPS do show considerable additional distortion of cellular architecture. The best results are obtained when the procedure is carried out without the intermediate step of vitrification. And yes, we are giving consideration to offering this procedure as an alternative to cryopreservation. However, that is a topic for another time. For now, I felt it was important that you be fully informed not only that we have contingency plans in place for the care of the patients in the event that cryogenic refrigeration becomes unavailable, but also that we now believe such a contingency has sufficient probability to warrant the considerable time and expense involved in developing and deploying this system.

You will be able to see the FFPS during the tour later today. For now, I think we should take our second break before lunch. Following lunch we will assemble here for the formal tour of the facilities.

End of Part 2

Footnotes

[1] EBT cards are Electronic Benefits Transfer cards which have almost exclusively replaced paper food stamps. They are similar to ATM cards but bear the distinctive marking of the state that issues them.

References

1. Erlich P: The Population Bomb: Buccaneer Books; 1996.

2. Bloch M, DeParle, J, Ericson, M, Gebeloff, R. : Food Stamp Usage Across the Country:http: //www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/28/us/20091128-foodstamps.html. New York Times 2011.

3. R. PGaP: The Quest For Life in Amber. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; 1994.

4. Koller B, Schmitt, JM,Tischendorf, G.: Cellular fine structures and histochemical reactions in the tissue of a cypress twig preserved in Baltic amber: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/272/1559/121.full.pdf. Proc R Soc 2005, B 272:121-126.

5. Schmidt A, Schäfer, U.: Leptotrichites resinatus New Genus and Species: A Fossil Sheathed Bacterium in Alpine Cretaceous Amber. Journal of Paleontology 2005, 79(1):175-184.

6. Ascaso C, Wierzchos, J, Speranza, M, Gutiérrez , JC, González, AM et al.: Fossil Protists and Fungi in Amber and Rock Substrates:http: //digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/33738/1/DEFINITIVOMicropaleontology_2005.pdf. Micropaleontology 2005, 51(1):59-72.

7. Lambert L, Cox, T, Mitchell, K, Rossello-Mora, RA, Del Cueto, C, Dodge, DE, Orkand, P, Cano, RJ.: Staphylococcus succinus sp. nov., isolated from Dominican amber. Int J Syst Bacteriol 1998, 48(Pt 2):511-518.

8. Cano R, Borucki, MK.: Revival and identification of bacterial spores in 25- to 40-million-year-old Dominican amber. Science 1995, 268 (5213):1060-1064.

9. Stan-Lotter H, Terry McGenity, J, et al.,: Very similar strains of Halococcus salifodinae are found in geographically separated Permo-Triassic salt deposits. Microbiology 1999), 145:3565-3574.

10. Grant W, Gemmell, RT, McGenity, TJ.: Halobacteria: the evidence for longevity. Extremophiles 1998, 2(3):279-287.

11. Vreeland R, Piselli, AF, Jr, McDonnough, S, Meyers, Ss.: Distribution and diversity of halophilic bacteria in a subsurface salt formation. Extremophiles 1998, 2(3):321-331.

12. Brown M: Molecular History Research Center: http://wwwmhrcnet/ancientDNAhtm

Posted in Cryonics History, Cryonics Philosophy, Cryonics Technology (General), Culture & Propaganda, Economics | 3 Comments

Science Fiction, Double Feature, 2

Posted on August 4, 2011 by admin

By Mike Darwin

I promised a ‘Science Fiction, ‘Double Feature,’ so here is the second story. It has a lot of images and a number discrete ideas, so it will unfold in several parts to allow the reader the luxury of what will hopefully be more digestible bites, rather than one big serving, to be eaten all at one sitting.

Again, the usual caveats apply; this is science fiction; words set together to tell a story that is utterly impossible and which could never have happened – leastways not in the universe we inhabit. This story is sort of a sequel to the previous one. It too is about the fictional Alcor-B Foundation, but it takes place a year or so in the future. It is September 15^th of 2012, the 40^th anniversary of the incorporation of Alcor-B and nearly 500 Alcor-B Cryopreservation Members have gathered inside a most unusual complex of buildings on the otherwise mostly empty desert landscape outside of the tiny town of Mobile, Arizona. Mobile was a sleepy community of less than 10o people, located 35 miles Southwest of Phoenix. The town’s population has recently soared to 220 as a result of an influx of Alcor-B staff and members. Indeed, the large campus on which the unusual concrete structures sit where the members have gathered, is also graced by a small community of 2and 3-bedroom manufactured and prefabricated homes, ranging in style from the modest and conventional, the modest and unconventional, to the luxurious and unconventional.

Figure 1: Some of the homes on the 150 acre campus of the Alcor-B facility in Mobile, AZ that house Alcor-B staff, as well as Alcor-B members.

Many of those present have come in part, to establish legal residency, because the following November, Mobile will elect its local government, become independent of neighboring Goodyear, and incorporate. It will thus become the first legally recognized community operated by, and largely for cryonicists. If growth and revenues permit, it will then begin offering its citizens the full range of municipal services, including fire protection and policing.

Mobile was on the verge of becoming a boom town before the economic collapsed in 2007. A tiny town with little going for it but its proximity to Phoenix, its geological stability and its ample ground water stores, Mobile was to have been the site of a self-sustaining community of ~ 50,0000 people, with a regional mall and the full range of master-planned community amenities. Unfortunately, Amaranth, as the development was to be called, was a casualty of the economic meltdown, and the 10,200-acre tract which was approved for a mixed used community of 42,000 residences and a range of other uses, including 1,600 acres of commercial and 700 acres of industrial development, went into foreclosure in 2009.

Taking advantage of the extensive investment already made in the planning and zoning process, Alcor-B purchased a 150 acre parcel adjacent to State Route 238. Our story continues from there…

Introduction & Tour of the Alcor-B Foundation’s Mobile, Arizona Patient Care Facility & Existential Colony

Address given to Alcor-B Foundation Cryopreservation Members and Staff on 15 September, 2012 By Gorton Carpenter, M.D., Ph.D., President of the Alcor-B Foundation

Figure 2: The Alcors are the second, smaller and dimmer companion stars to Mizar, the bright stars that comprise the crook in the handle of the Big Dipper constellation. In the Arab world of the 5^th Century CE, Mizar’s much less bright (and more difficult to see) companion stars, Alcor-A and Alcor-B were used as tests for good vision. Only someone with the clearest and most acute visions could see the Alcor’s. Alcor-B was discovered early in 2011 using Project 1640m, which makes use of the Hale Telescope’s adaptive optics system. Project 1640 gives the Hale a view almost equal to what is possible in space. The instrument also has the ability to block out the light of a star, allowing faint objects located next to a star to be seen. The Hale, armed with Project 1640, was pointed at Alcor earlier this year and found that it isn’t a single star. Alcor has a small stellar companion that hadn’t been seen before: Alcor-B, a small, dim red dwarf star about one fourth the mass of our Sun. To see Alcor-B you must have the superior vision that only mastery of the most sophisticated technology allows. Alcor-B is thus a test for the clearest and most acute vision – vision capable of seeing things as they really are – not just as they appear to be.

Some History & Background

Figure 3: Alcor-B President, Gorton Carpenter, M.D., Ph.D.

Before I get started with the formal part of today’s program, I want to take the opportunity to thank each and every Alcor-B member who has come here, today. I especially want to thank those of you who have come from Southern California. I know that many of you lost property, and in some cases your homes, and even family and friends in the Big One, not two months ago. It is an extraordinary testament to your dedication that you are here today.

And to all of you, without your support over the past 40 years, what we are all about to experience today would not have been possible.

On this day forty years ago, Fred and Linda Chamberlain founded the Alcor Foundation for Solid State Hypothermia from their home in a suburb of Los Angles, near the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where Fred Chamberlain was then employed as an electrical engineer working on the Mariner-Jupiter-Saturn’77 (MJS’77) spacecraft.

Figure 4: Conceived in the 1960s, a Grand Tour proposal to study the outer planets prompted NASA to begin work on a mission in the early 1970s. The development of the interplanetary probes coincided with an alignment of the planets, making possible a mission to the outer Solar System by taking advantage of the then-new technique, gravity assist. Utilizing gravity assists would enable a single probe to visit the four gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) while requiring a minimal amount of propellant and a shorter transit duration between planets. Originally, Voyager 1 was planned as Mariner 11 of the Mariner program however, due to congressional budget cuts, the mission was scaled back to be a flyby of Jupiter and Saturn, and renamed the Mariner Jupiter-Saturn probes. As the program progressed, the name was later changed to Voyager as the probe designs began to differ greatly from previous Mariner missions. [ http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter11.html]

Figure 5: Fred and Linda Chamberlain at the turn of the 21^st century.

If that name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s probably because MJS’77 was ultimately renamed Voyager (1 & 2)[1] – the spacecraft that are, even as I am speaking here, crossing the heliopause and leaving our solar system.[2] Fred’s mind and Fred’s hands were in charge of crafting the Voyager Sun Sensor and Canopus Trackers which guided, and still guide, the Voyager spacecraft on their flights. Today, the existence of the paper records of those efforts is in question. With the 8.4 earthquake 7 weeks ago due to the rupture of the San Andreas Fault east of San Diego towards San Bernardino, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory sustained major damage. It is thus not yet known if a nondescript series of boxes occupying 3.1 cubic feet, and which are labeled “JPL 67,” have survived the quake. Those boxes contain the files documenting Fred’s achievements with the Voyager sensors.

Figure 6: Certificate awarded to Fred Chamberlain for his outstanding work on the Voyager Sun Sensor and Canopus Trackers. The certificate contains one of the unused sensor elements. [Images courtesy of Fred Chamerlain, III.]

The other record of his achievements is more secure and will undoubtedly be more enduring. That record exists in the physical embodiment of his labors, which are now on their way to the stars in the form of the four Voyager Sun Sensor and Canopus Trackers (there were two per spacecraft). At the same time Fred was working to expand humanity’s understanding of, and dominion over the cosmos in an unprecedented way, he and Linda were also working full time to facilitate our conquest of death and of time. The creation of Alcor-B, and the cryopreservation of its first patient, Fred Chamberlain, Jr., Fred’s father, who is with us here, today, are in fact, the vastly more impressive, and we hope the vastly more enduring legacy of the Chamberlains’ efforts.

Figure 7: The first Alcor-B hardened patient protection structures were put in place in 28 years ago when Alcor-B had only 5 patients.[3]

From the earliest days of Alcor-B, the Chamberlains, and those who followed them in leading us, were concerned about the long-term safety and security of Alcor-B’s patients, and of the staff who care for them. As early as 1974, the Chamberlains and former Alcor-B President Mike Darwin, made the journey to an abandoned Titan-1 missile site near Yuba City, CA in order to better understand the kind of infrastructure that would be required to shield Alcor patients and staff from the possibility of catastrophic, existential events, such as the one still unfolding in Los Angeles, today.

That trip, and those insights gained from it, was instrumental in the creation of the first system to protect patient patients from loss due to catastrophic, existential events. At that time, Alcor patients were housed in facilities that were in the same seismic risk zone where the San Andreas Fault ruptured a few weeks ago. They were also at risk from fire, because the first two facilities Alcor-B occupied were not sprinklered, and even sprinklered buildings are at risk of fire in the event of a major earthquake (due to the likelihood of the disruption of the municipal water supply). The Alcor-B neuropatient vault was the prototype for the level of protection intended for all Alcor-B patients (Figure 7).

Figure 8: Linda (L) and Fred (R) Chamberlain in the Control Room dome of the Titan-1 facility near Yuba City, CA in 1974.

Forty years ago, Alcor-B consisted of only a handful people, and when the trip to the Titan-1 site was made, the situation was little better. The idea that we would one day have the kind of infrastructure that it took the US government well over a billion of today’s dollars to construct must have seemed impossible. Thirty eight years have come and gone since that intrepid band of cryonics pioneers made their way through the carcass of that Cold War death star (Figure 8). In that interval, technology has advanced dramatically, particularly the technology of mass destruction. The side effects, or more accurately the adverse effects of our overall technological advance, have also become more apparent, and more pressing. The impact of climate change on the world food supply, and thus on the world’s economic and political stability, is becoming of increasing concern. What’s more, the vast expansion of economic irresponsibility and indebtedness that advances in computing and automated manufacturing have enabled, are creating an increasingly unstable and unsafe environment, both here and abroad. And finally, the presence of 7 billion people on this planet, many living in abject poverty under conditions that can only be described as incubators for pandemic disease, greatly increases the risk of a global catastrophe.

Figure 9: Economic destabilization, overpopulation and climate change appear to be interacting to greatly increase the risk of an impending global existential crisis.

For these and many other reasons, fifteen years ago Alcor-B made a definitive commitment to harden our patient care and staff facilities against existential risks. This commitment was consistent with our long-standing program of saving and investing capital to serve as a defense against contingent risks, as embodied in the 10% Rule.[1] In 1993 a working group was quietly established not just to study this problem, but to solve it. Their detailed recommendations were then molded into a plan, the realization of which you are about to experience today. In 2007, with the start of the current economic depression, the working group identified a property in Mobile, AZ as potentially ideal. Confidential negotiations were then undertaken with the city of Goodyear, AZ (which is responsible for the governance of Mobile) to ensure that Alcor-B would be welcome here. With the favorable conclusion of those negotiations, the 150 acre Mobile property was acquired, and construction was begun in mid-2008.

Figure 10: The Mobile, AZ land parcel. as seen from State Route 238.

The years of careful planning, and detailed design and technological projections have paid off handsomely. Construction finished two months ago, 6 weeks ahead of schedule and $250,000 under budget. We sit here today in this ‘surface terminator’ much as a gull sits atop an iceberg. This structure, attractive and impressive as it is, is but the tip of an iceberg of hardened infrastructure which you will shortly be seeing for yourself, firsthand. But before we depart from here and descend to the subterranean parts of this facility, I’d like to take a few minutes to acquaint you with what you will see – and with some of what you will not see; because it is buried in the earth, and not visible to any human eyes. And of course, I’d like to very briefly acquaint you with “the how” and “the why” of the decision making involved in realizing this project.

Defining Need, Scope and Urgency

Figure 11: “We should be dead, but we aren’t. The goal is to walk so far ahead that the arrows can’t reach us anymore. And then, maybe, we can begin pulling some of them out.” – Beverly Rubik

It may be that the greatest problem that confronts cryonics is the absence of existential actuarial risk data, and indeed, the absence of long term data about many things that only people who are attempting to step across the centuries, need be concerned with. What we share with the geographical pioneers of the preceding millennia is uncertainty, not just about the known risks, but also about those we have little, if any way to anticipate. And we all know that one working definition of a pioneer is a man with arrows in his back. However, my guess is that very few people know the next part of that quote by Beverly Rubik: “The weak fall against the arrows, but the greats have, against all odds, continued to walk forward with at least a dozen arrows stuck in their backs. They should be dead, but they aren’t… The goal is to walk so far ahead that the arrows can’t reach you anymore. And then, maybe, you can begin pulling some of them out.” That’s a pretty fair synopsis of the position we cryonicists are in (Figure 11). What we have attempted to do here in Mobile is to at least get far enough head that the arrows can’t reach us anymore.

How do we know how to weight the risks that we know confront us, and how can we possibly know how to evaluate the risks we can’t yet foresee? Our first step was to generate a comprehensive list of the known existential and other risks, and then do extensive research on the probability we will encounter them over given intervals of time. We also needed to know what the likely costs of defending against them would be. One of the first things we learned from this effort was that risk, like compound interest on debt, does not accumulate linearly. As a consequence, ‘risk exposure time’ has a very corrosive effect on the chances of our success over a period of many decades, let alone centuries. This initial effort, begun 25 years ago, led to the development of the Timeline to Recovery Project (TRP) in 1995: a sophisticated mathematical model designed to track and project the rate of technological advance, and to regularly update our assessment of risks that could threaten the safety and security of our patients in storage. In the 17 years since TRP became functional, we have been continually updating our databases and refining our projections in order to allow for meaningful, and truly long-term planning, to protect the patients in our care.

Figure 12: The Timeline to Recovery Project (TRP) began as an exercise to attempt to define the likely time course for the revival of various cohorts of Alcor-B patients, based upon the extent of ischemic and cryopreservation injury they are believed to have experienced. The TRP, whose symbol is Anapa (Anubis, the protector of the deceased and their tombs, in ancient Egypt) has become the principal defensive arm of Alcor-B in protecting the safety of its patients.

Until 2007, the numbers generated by the TRP Model and the TRP working group did not change much. They remained consistent with the numbers returned when we began this extensive survey program of this civilization’s broad spectrum technological advance. The quarterly TRP evaluations fairly consistently indicated that the earliest Alcor-B patients faced a probability of remaining in cryopreservation for (from 2007) ~200±25 more years, providing, of course, that progress continued at its current pace. However, for the last 18 quarters, the TRP projections for time in storage have been steadily increasing, initially for patients in the first cohort of injury, and much more disturbingly, over the past 9 quarters, for all patient cohorts. This is due to a marked slowing in the pace of technological advance.

Figure 13: Black Swan Theory” calls attention to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences. While Black Swan Theory has important implications, even for people living a currently normal lifetime of 75-100 years, its implications become more important when planning or carrying out undertaking that must continue, uninterrupted, across centuries.[4, 5] See also: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1864633

The TRP core and advisory groups consist of some of the brightest and most capable minds committed to cryonics assembled anywhere on the planet. They are economists, scientists from half a dozen disciplines, statisticians, mathematicians, and businessmen who have made their mark in diverse enterprises by becoming millionaires many times over. The consensus of the combined TRP working and advisory groups for the proximate cause of the observed technological slowdown was not surprising, and that was that it is a direct result of the economic depression we are still struggling through.

Figure 14: Some of the key factors considered by the Timeline to Recovery Groups in creating mathematical models for the time course to the reanimation of cryonics patients, as well as for the existential and other risks during the projected time interval.

What is surprising was the broadly shared consensus of both groups, that the economic woes we are and have been experiencing since 2007, are a likely (p= 0.05) a reflection of much deeper problems which are not likely to be resolved soon, and which may be the harbinger of a genuine existential crisis. Population growth, climate change, and gross fiscal irresponsibility in the public and private sector on a heretofore unprecedented scale, may precipitate geopolitical and human catastrophes of increasing magnitude in the coming decades. Under the most favorable analysis, the global infrastructure of this civilization is deemed so fragile that any major stressor, such an outbreak of global pandemic disease, a multinational military conflict with an economic impact in the multiples of trillions of dollars, or a conflict involving nuclear or biological weapons of mass destruction, would almost certainly have the potential to create rationing or the disruption in supply of the materiel essential to the continued care of Alcor-B’s patients, including liquid nitrogen. If this analysis is correct, then it is even more urgent that Alcor-B be prepared.

While I am getting ahead of myself here, I would be inexcusably remiss if I didn’t pay homage and offer thanks to the Wainwright Family, not only for their generous contribution of $950,000 for the surface terminator to this facility, but for their selection of Robert Konieczny of KWK Promesas, the architect of this most unusual building.

Figure 15: The Alcor-B Facility surface terminator, which the staff affectionately call the “friendly fortress.”

The Friendly Fortress (FF) is a steel-reinforced concrete building that is blast-resistant and impervious to conventional ballistic assault. It is not designed to withstand grave existential events, such as a full-on nuclear, biological or chemical or assault NBC). Although it is equipped with and NBC air handling system. Rather, its purpose is to provide temporary shelter, and allow for adequate deployment of the fully hardened, below-ground structures that comprise the rest of the facility. The design of this building is also a testament to the durability of our institutional memory. We have not forgotten the SWAT Team raid on Alcor-B in 1987, and the good advantage conferred by the fortress-like structure of the Alcor-B building in Riverside, CA. We remain ever aware that we are indeed pioneers, and that we can come under attack due to ignorance or misunderstanding at any time, and that it pays to be prepared.

When its armored petals are opened, the FF is a glowing and welcoming structure that houses conference and dining facilities, as well as some of Alcor-B’s administration. Adjoining the FF is a natatorium with an Olympic sized pool – something the Wainwright Family insisted be available for guests and staff, as part of their commitment to low-impact fitness. Beyond its purely functional nature, the FF will serve as a powerful statement to the media, and to prospective members, of both Alcor-B’s philosophy, and of its commitment to defend and care for its patients. I think you will be able to feel both of those things as you wander around this structure today. And with that, let us take a break and enjoy the refreshments that await us in the Phoenix Dining Room.

End of Part 1

Footnotes

[1] The 10% Rule was enacted by the Alcor-B Board in 1982 and stipulates that 10% of Alcor-B’s gross income must be placed in the Patient Care Trust to provide for contingent risks and for emergency relocation of the patients should that become necessary.

References

1. Butrica AJ (ed.): Chapter 11: Voyager: The Grand Tour of Big Science: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter11.html: NASA; 1998.

2. NASA: Today’s Voyager spacecraft distances and speeds, along with a graphical representation go to http://heavens-above.com/solar-escape.asp?/. 2011.

3. Darwin M: Cephalarium vault arrives. Cryonics 1984(53):1.

4. Taleb N: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life. In. New York: W. W. Norton; 2001.

5. Taleb N: The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: “On Robustness and Fragility”. In. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks; 2010.

Posted in Cryonics Biography, Cryonics History, Cryonics Philosophy, Cryonics Technology (General), Philosophy | Leave a comment

Science Fiction, Double Feature…

Posted on July 30, 2011 by admin

By Mike Darwin

I used to love science fiction. The trouble is that it simply became too believable to be any fun anymore. Space travel? Sure, everybody knows that’s possible, and thanks to Industrial Light & Magic, we all know what it will look like, too. Multiple universes? That’s almost received dogma in physics these days,[1] and it’s made it into Scientific American,[2] not once, but twice! You can turn on your TV and watch “Fringe” if you want to have an adventure in the universe next door. Yes, it has gotten really hard for a person to have a good time these days. So I was thinking, maybe I should sit down and write some uplifting cryonics science fiction. You know, the kind of really unbelievable stuff that get’s your pulse pounding and respiratory rate up – when you’re not holding your breath, that is! Because there sure isn’t much that’s very escapist or uplifting here on Chronosphere most of the time.

The question is, am I up to the task? The good ideas have already been well exploited by literary talents far greater than mine, and it’s hard to find inspiration for “the almost impossible” from the advancing front of science, these days. Or so I thought. Then I came across a remarkable new discovery, one made just this year, in fact. It turns out that there are two Alcors! That’s right, the “star” we’ve called Alcor for about 500 years years is really two stars.[3] One star is your run of the mill M-type star, and the other is a small, dim red dwarf star about one fourth the mass of Sol. There is thus an Alcor-A and an Alcor-B. Wow! That really got me thinking, what if there were an Alcor-A and an Alcor-B cryonics organization?

Of course, we know all about Alcor-A, because we can see it. It’s everywhere; on TV, on the Internet, everywhere we look for information about cryonics. But what if there were an Alcor-B, sort of an alternate, utterly fantastical and impossible Alcor? An Alcor that could say, take $20 million dollars over 20 years or so, and, and…what? Well, in order to find out the answer to that question, you have to read my story. Now let me warn you that I’m not much of a story teller. My story is one of those newfangled ones, which has no beginning, no middle and no end! It’s just a press release by an alternate Alcor, Alcor-B. Alcor-B may seem much like Alcor-A, but I assure you that any resemblance is purely coincidental. They are enough alike, however, that I was able to use pictures, illustrations and the like from Alcor-A, to tell my story, and for that I am very grateful.

Similarly, I do what most science fiction writers do. I build heavily on existing science. Even though my story is utterly incredible, indeed completely impossible (like time travel or faster than light travel), I need the real science to try to persuade my readers (you) to suspend your disbelief just long enough to read the story through, and hopefully to thoroughly enjoy it. My premise is simple. Just a few days from now on 06 August, 2011, in a universe much like ours, a cryonics organization called Alcor-B holds a press conference and makes the following announcement. Regrettably, due to constraints on data transmission between adjacent universes, all we are able to retrieve from that event is the media handout. And so, without further ado, here it is.

An Extensive Press Briefing from the Alcor-B Foundation on the Debut of its Novel Near Vitrification Cryopreservation Technology for Humans

Alcor-B Cryopreservation Research Foundation (ABCRF)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

06 August, 2006

ALCOR-B FOUNDATION DEVELOPS NEAR VITRIFICATION TECHNOLOGY (NVT)

NEAR PERFECT STRUCTURAL

PRESERVATION OF THE HUMAN BRAIN ACHIEVED

Figure 1: The Alcors are the second, smaller and dimmer companion stars to the Mizars, the bright stars that comprise the crook in the handle of the Big Dipper constellation. In the Arab world of the 5^th Century CE, Mizar’s much less bright (and more difficult to see) companion stars, Alcor-A and Alcor-B, were used as tests for good vision. Only someone with the clearest and most acute vision could see the Alcor’s. Alcor-B was discovered early in 2011 using Project 1640m, which makes use of the Hale Telescope’s adaptive optics system. Project 1640 gives the Hale a view almost equal to what is possible in space with the Hubble telescope. The instrument also has the ability to block out the light of a star, allowing faint objects located next to a star to be seen. The Hale, armed with Project 1640, was pointed at Alcor earlier this year and found that it isn’t a single star. Alcor has a small stellar companion that hadn’t been seen before: Alcor-B, a small, dim, red dwarf star about one fourth the mass of our Sun. To see Alcor-B you must have the superior vision that only mastery of the most sophisticated technology allows. Alcor-B is thus a test for the clearest and most acute vision – vision capable of seeing things as they really are – not just as they appear to be.

Introduction

Over the past five years the Alcor-B Cryobiology Research Foundation (Alcor-B) has been working to develop a fundamentally new and profoundly improved human cryopreservation technology platform. We have expended $3.5 million dollars on this effort and what we have developed is nothing less than a quantum advance in the quality of cryopreservation now available to Alcor-B patients who present for treatment under optimum conditions.

Figure 2: At left, above, is a light micrograph (400x) of the molecular layerof the rabbit cerebral cortex subjected to freezing to -79^oC in the absence of cryoprotection (straight freezing). The tissue is compressed between blocks of ice that have osmotically extracted the intracellular water. At right is the molecular layer of rabbit cerebral cortex tissue (10,000x) following thawing and fixation after straight freezing. The ultrastructure of the tissue resembles that of a tissue homogenate, rather than that of the molecular layer of the cerebral cortex.[4]

Previous cryopreservation techniques have relied on freezing, usually after the introduction of a cryoprotective chemical(s) to reduce the amount of ice being formed. While this technology reduces the amount of freezing injury that occurs when human patients are cryopreserved, there is still a great deal of serious disruption of the fine structure of the brain (ultrastructure) that will require very sophisticated molecular-level repair by a mature nanotechnology – a technology that is likely to be many decades, or even a century or more in the future. Alcor-B’s development of minimal ice, or Near-Vitrification Technology (NVT) all but eliminates damage from ice formation. In fact, in experimental animals subjected to Alcor-B NVT, damaging ice formation is confined to a few small areas of the brain comprising less than 1% of total brain volume. Similarly, NVT, delivered under optimal conditions, results in only approximately 3-5% ice formation in entire body of dogs subjected to this procedure.

What is NVT?

Under normal conditions, when a living system is cooled, the water in it, which comprises about 60% of its mass, is converted into ice. This ice forms outside of cells, not inside of them, and in the process the cells become dehydrated and shrunken. This dehydration due to ice formation increases the concentration of the salts normally present in body fluids, which in turn causes chemical injury to the proteins and the lipids (fats) that make-up the cells’ structures (Figures 2 & 3). The addition of modest (10-20% w/v) or moderate (20-50%) amounts of cryoprotective agents which do not freeze, and which interact with cellular water to reduce the amount of that water which freezes during cooling, markedly reduces freezing damage.

Figure 3: A ribbon model of a protein depicting the kind of conformational changes typically seen in protein denaturation as a result of freezing injury.

Figure 4: Above, top, shows a false-color rendering of the normal configuration of membrane lipids and the membrane protein sodium-potassium-ATPase in a bacterial cell membrane. The membrane exhibits a smooth, lamellar character, and there are only a few aggregated and displaced particles of protein evident (yellow granules). In B, at right above, there is evidence of an alteration in membrane structure after the cell has been incubated at ~ -6^oC for 1 hour in the presence of 20% w/v dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO). The membrane has developed a pebbly appearance and there are many extruded granules of protein on the membrane surface. The lower illustration (above) is a computer rendering of various lipid phase transitions in a model system (Langmuir trough), some of which result in perforations of the normally lamellar membrane structure.

In fact, such “cryo-protection” almost completely eliminates the damage that normally occurs to the lipids and proteins that cells are comprised of. This kind of cryopreservation technique is what forms the basis for the successful freeze-preservation of sperm, blood, bone marrow and many other types of cells and tissues that are amorphous in structure – in other words, cells and tissues where the cells are not attached to each other and organized in a highly structured way.

Figure 5: Typical representation of how freezing proceeds in cells and tissues. Ice begins forming outside cells, forming crystals of pure water. The salts and other solids that were formerly dissolved in the crystallized water are forced into a progressively smaller volume of unfrozen solution. This increase in the concentration of solids dissolved in the extracellular fluid osmotically extracts water from the cells, causing them to shrink. At ~ -20^oC no further water can be converted into ice and the interior of the cells remains in an unfrozen state – a highly concentrated solution of cell proteins and salts, from both inside and outside the cells. With further cooling this electrolyte gel will be converted to a crystal free glass at ~ -100^oC

Unfortunately, most multi-cellular animals, including human beings, consist of highly organized and structurally complex aggregations of cells which have specific jobs to do – jobs which can only be carried out if those structures are intact and un-disrupted. Ice formation in tissues can disrupt those important inter-cellular connections, and while the cells themselves may survive freezing and cryopreservation, the function of the tissue or organ is compromised (Figure 5).

Vitrification: A New Preservation Technology

Over the past two decades a new technology of cryopreservation has emerged and is being perfected. This technology is called “vitrification” (from the Latin vitrum, glass + Latin -ficre, -fy)because it completely suppresses the formation of damaging ice crystals during the cryopreservation process, as can be seen in Figure 6, below.

Figure 6: At bottom left a rabbit kidney that has been frozen following treatment with ~ 40% cryoprotectant agents. The kidney was submerged in solution that did not have enough cryoprotective agents present to allow it to vitrify. The kidney has a chalky, opaque appearance is due the presence of large amounts of ice in the tissue. At bottom right is a kidney that has been perfused and equilibrated with sufficient cryoprotectant to allow cooling to -140^oC with no ice formation. Because this kidney has no ice crystals in it to refract light, it remains translucent and appears unfrozen – which is in fact the case – even though it has been converted to a solid, glassy state.^[43] At top; Even in the everyday world, the difference between ice and glass is clearly visible when the two are compared side by side.

This non-frozen glassy solid state is achieved by replacing ~60% of the water in the tissues of an organ, or a whole organism, with a combination of antifreeze molecules that completely prevent ice formation. The technique of vitrification as applied to whole organs is relatively new, and only recently has a whole mammalian organ, the rabbit kidney, been subjected to vitrification and recovered function. However, there are still many obstacles to be overcome before this technology can be routinely applied to organs to allow for the creation of organ banks, wherein a large reserve of organs and tissues can be stored indefinitely, for transplantation. And there are many additional obstacles to be overcome before whole organisms, such as human beings, can be cooled to very low temperatures for stable, indefinite storage.

Figure 7: Visual appearance of ice in a rabbit kidney that was cross-sectioned during rewarming. The kidney was perfused with a cryoprotective mixture called M22 at -22°C, cut in half, immersed in M22, vitrified at -135°C, and eventually re-warmed at ~1°C/min while being periodically photographed. Times (1:30 and 1:40) represent times in hours and minutes from the start of slow warming. The temperatures refer to ambient atmospheric temperatures near the kidney but not within the kidney itself. The upper panel shows the kidney at the point of maximum ice cross-sectional area, and the lower panel shows the kidney after complete ice melting. Both panels show the site of an inner medullary biopsy taken for differential scanning calorimetery in order to determine the actual concentration of cryoprotectants in the tissue with high precision. [http://cryoeuro.eu:8080/download/attachments/425990/FahyPhysicBiolAspectsRenalVitri2010.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1285892563927]

The ability to cryopreserve people indefinitely would effectively allow for ‘medical time travel,’ whereby terminally ill patients with currently incurable illnesses could wait in suspended animation until medicine developed not just the cure for the particular disease that caused them to opt for cryopreservation, but also for aging and other degenerative diseases. Such a technology of fully reversible suspended animation would thus allow for a broad cross-section of the terminally ill population to have an opportunity to take advantage of indefinitely long lives in youthful good health, or in other words, what the neurosurgeon and medical commentator Dr. Sanjay Gupta, has termed “practical immortality.”

Near Vitrification Technology

Until suspended animation is developed it is necessary to cryopreserve today’s terminally ill patients with less than perfect techniques. These techniques inflict some injury, but we believe that this injury will be reversible in the future and we have excellent evidence right now that it is reversible, in principle. This is the theoretical underpinning of cryonics – the idea that if we cryopreserve today’s terminally ill patients with the best available techniques, it may well be possible to not only cure the lethal illness the patient is suffering from, but also to cure the damage incurred through the use of still imperfect cryopreservation techniques.

However, the damage inflicted by conventional freezing techniques is extensive, and it will take many decades, and perhaps even a century or two, before a mature “nanotechnology,” one capable of effecting repair at the molecular level, is likely to be developed. It would obviously be much better to be able to cryopreserve patients in such a way that the kind of damage being done could be reversed (and the patient restored to life) by biomedical technologies currently under development, and which may well become available within the next 30 to 60 years.

Alcor-B has been working relentlessly to develop such a cryopreservation platform and now, after 5 years and expenditure of $3.5 million dollars, we have succeeded. We call this cryopreservation modality Near Vitrification Technology (NVT). NVT is basically vitrification applied to the human body, or the human head in isolation, with the understanding that small islands of tissue will still be undergoing freezing, despite our best efforts to completely suppress ice formation. As you will see in the discussion that follows, the amount of ice that forms is surprisingly low; < 5% of the body as a whole and only ~1% of the brain.

It is important to point out that this ice formation is not global in nature, but rather is confined to a few tissues that are poorly circulated with blood under normal conditions, and are thus difficult to equilibrate with a sufficient amount of cryoprotectant to completely inhibit ice formation (Figure 7). It is also important to point out that even where some ice formation does take place and “freezing” occurs, it is freezing in the presence of very high concentrations of cryoprotectant drugs, and therefore the damage is much less than would be the case if freezing were to have occurred in the absence of cryoprotection.

Alcor B’s Laboratory Experience

To achieve NVT, Alcor-B is using technology similar to that developed by 21^st Century Medicine (21CM), a cryobiological research and development company located in Fontana, CA. We have used M-22 solution, a vitrification solution developed by 21CM primarily for kidney vitrification. The composition of M-22 is shown Figure 8, below. This complex mixture of antifreeze and actively ice-growth inhibiting (ice-blocking) cryoprotectants exhibits comparatively low toxicity, even at concentrations of ~60%. A unique feature of M-22 is the presence of two synthetic molecules that inhibit ice growth by binding to both the a and c axes of ice. These molecules stabilize the solution against ice nucleation and propagation, allowing for use of the much slower cooling and rewarming rates needed for ice free cryopreservation of large tissues masses, such as humans organs or entire human beings.

Figure 8: Twenty First Century Medicine’s M-22 vitrification solution contains 5 penetrating colligative cryoprotective agents as well as 6% of non-penetrating polymers – two of which are highly active ice-blocking molecules; Supercool X-1000 and Supercool Z-1000. X-1000 contains 80% of the syndiotactic stereochemical form of polyvinyl alcohol and 20% vinyl acetate and Z-1000 is a linear polymer of polyglcerol with an average molecular weight of 750 Da. Both bind to the a and c axes of ice crystals, stabilizing solutions they are present in against ice formation during slow rates of cooling and rewarming.^[95

A fair summary of the current technological state of the art with respect to the vitrification of organs for the purpose of developing organ banks is that under ideal (laboratory) conditions it is likely now possible to place complex mammalian organs, such as the rabbit kidney, into indefinitely long suspended animation with little or no loss of viability, and no damage as a consequence of structural disruption due to ice formation. The use of radio frequency, or microwave illumination to speed rewarming, the use of warm gas (such as helium) to perfuse the organ’s circulation, or a combination of these modalities, may offer a workable solution to the problem of ice formation during rewarming. Perhaps most impressively, one mammalian kidney has survived vitrification and rewarming sufficiently intact to permit immediate support of the rabbit from which it was removed (as the sole kidney), until the animal was sacrificed for evaluation 29 days after the organ was re-implanted.

Figure 9: The first kidney to survive vitrification shortly before it was removed from the animal for evaluation after supporting its life as the sole kidney for 29 days.[5]

It is not possible to directly apply the 21CM vitrification technology to humans, or to the human brain, because of constraints on the rate at which the necessary cryoprotective drugs can be loaded into and unloaded from the brain. Kidneys can be perfused with M-22 to temperatures as low as -20^oC, whereas the brain can be perfused only to -3-4^oC. This means that the brain will be exposed to toxicity from the cryoprotectants in the vitrification solution, which cause injury very much like that shown in Figures 4 & 5 above – although much, much less extensively. Alcor-B research indicates that perhaps a total of 25 proteins undergo some kind of denaturation, and that fewer than 20% of the cells in an animal treated with NVT undergo alterations in membrane structure that would interfere with function upon reanimation.

Viability studies conducted by Alcor-B indicate that even with extended exposure to M-22 at -3^oC, there is recovery of ~40% of pre-preservation viability (as measured by Na++/K+ ratio). Very importantly, two dog brains out of a series of 17, subjected to NVT and stored for 7 and 11 days, respectively, at -130^oC, demonstrated brief recovery of electrical activity (EEG). Rabbit brain slices treated with M-22 in the laboratories of 21CM, have demonstrated complete recovery of viability, electrical activity and Long Term Potentiation (LTP). Importantly, LTP is the biochemical change in brain cells currently thought to encode memory. Brain slices in which LTP was induced, by simulating a learning experience with a weak electrical current, were able to ‘recall’ this event following cryopreservation and reanimation.

An additional complicating factor in achieving reversible (viable) vitrification of the mammalian brain has been the inability to continue cryoprotectant perfusion at the same subzero temperatures (-20^oC) that have proven essential for recovery of rabbit kidneys following loading and unloading with M-22. As can be seen in Figure 10, below, perfusion of the terminal concentration of M-22 is not possible below ~ -3-4^oC. Exposure to ~8.2M M-22 at such a relatively high temperature, for the final ~60 min of perfusion required to load the brain with the CPA mixture, results in major loss of viability, but does not visibly affect brain ultrastructure, as imaged using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM).

Figure 10: Cryoprotection and cooling protocol used to achieve structural vitrification of the rabbit brain at 21^st Century Medicine, Inc., CPA loading commences at a temperature of ~+4^oC and continues at that temperature for ~ 60 minutes while the M-22 concentration is gradually increased to ~4 M. The temperature is then reduced to ~ -3^oC while the CPA concentration is increased to ~ 8M. The total time required to achieve full equilibration of the brain with M-22 is ~ 180 minutes, after which the organ is immediately transferred to an air-blast cooler for very rapid cooling to ~ -135^oC. [Image is courtesy of Brian Wowk, Ph.D., of 21^st Century Medicine, Inc., http://www.21cm.com/]

The ultrastructure of dog brains cryopreserved using the 21CM vitrification technique shows no evidence of gross ice formation, as can be seen in the photo at the top of Figure 11, below. Indeed, there is no evidence of ice formation in any of the tissues of the head and neck with simple visual inspection.

Figure 11: Dog brains subjected to NVT under optimum laboratory conditions show no visual evidence of ice formation. However, when false-color, polarized light imaging is used, areas of minimal ice formation can be seen. Measurements of the ice content in the brain regions seen to contain ice (as above) using differential scanning calorimetery typically show ice formation in the range of 4-12% of the tissues volume. A=brain, B=space from cryoprotectant-induced brain dehydration, C=spinal cord, D=soft palate.

However, if the exposed tissues of the brain and head are subjected to false-color, polarized light imaging, the areas where ice has formed become visible as green, highlighted areas. As can be seen in Figure 11, above, small amounts of ice have formed in several brain areas, as well as in the muscle of the neck, and in the frontal sinus. The rest of the brain appears ice free, fully vitrified, and thus spared any mechanical disruption of the tissues.

Figure 12: Sections of the experimental animals were cut at deep subzero temperatures using a specially modified Bright Instruments 8000 (BI-8000) sledge microtome with electro-linear drive (left, above). The modified BI-8000 can section specimens up to 250mm long, and is liquid nitrogen cooled to maintain stable temperatures during sectioning, and to avoid artifact-crystallization due to inadvertent re-warming. The BI-8000 employs a fully automated cutting sequence and an electro-linear drive for high cutting forces. Cut sections were then removed from the BI-8000 and photographed for subsequent analysis of the effects of the NVT procedure on the tissues, including polarimetric evaluation of ice formation (e.g., when and where it occurred).

In order to resolve the question of whether or not ice is forming at the cellular and intra-cellular level, Alcor-B has conducted extensive Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) studies of animals’ brains subjected to NVT. Exposure to the vitrifying cryoprotectants results in extensive (but fully reversible) dehydration of the tissues (Figure 11) and this makes interpreting the TEM pictures more difficult. Aside from increased density of the ground substance (which is the molecular fabric of the brain) due to dehydration, the brain cells (neurons), their long processes (axons) and their connections (synapses) are intact. As is evident in Figures 13-15, the architecture of NVT treated brains is essentially normal (aside from the cryoprotectant-induced dehydration). Cell membranes are crisp and intact, as are the intra-cellular membranes, including the synaptic vesicles that contain neurotransmitting chemicals.

Figure 13: TEM of rabbit cerebral cortex gray matter (~ 15,000x) subjected to vitrification, rewarming and perfusion fixation using M-22 and the perfusion protocol shown in Figure 10, above. The extensive dehydration induced by cryoprotective loading makes it difficult to visualize the finer elements of the ultrastructure such as vesicles and microtubules. The overall appearance of tissue in terms of the larger structural elements and their relationship to each other is apparently normal. [Image is courtesy of Brian Wowk, Ph.D., of 21^st Century Medicine, Inc., http://www.21cm.com/]

Figure 14: High magnification TEM (~ 40,000x) of vitrified rabbit brain tissue discloses the presence of difficult to visualize fine structures – in this case a synapse (S) with synaptic vesicles visible as dark densities in the synaptic bouton and a small myleinated (M) axon containing condensed axoplasm (A). Importantly, the topographical and structural relation of the synapse to the surrounding structures appears intact. [Image is courtesy of Brian Wowk, Ph.D., of 21^st Century Medicine, Inc., http://www.21cm.com/]

Figure 15: TEM of rabbit cerebral cortex white matter (15,000x) subjected to vitrification, rewarming and perfusion fixation using M-22 and the perfusion protocol shown in Figure 10, above. There is severe dehydration of the axoplasm and separation between some of the layers of myelin. There is no evidence of ice formation, and all structural changes appear to be a consequence of CPA-induced dehydration. These changes are reversible with controlled removal of CPA and return of the tissue to incubating medium (see Figure 17, below). [Image is courtesy of Brian Wowk, Ph.D., of 21^st Century Medicine, Inc., http://www.21cm.com/]

Figure 16: Mosaic of TEM’s demonstrating continuity of a long axon (red arrows) in a rabbit brain subjected to vitrification, rewarming and perfusion fixation using M-22 and the perfusion protocol shown in Figure 10, above. The tear in the tissue (green arrow) is believed to be a processing artifact. Two capillaries visible near the middle and top of the mosaic (blue arrows). [Image is courtesy of Brian Wowk, Ph.D., of 21^st Century Medicine, Inc., http://www.21cm.com/]

As can be seen quite dramatically above, in Figure 16, the axons are intact over long distances within the NVT treated brains. The areas of open space seen in Figure 15 are not due to ice formation, but rather appear to be tears in the brain tissue resulting from the cryoprotectant-induced dehydration. This is a worrisome problem that Alcor-B is actively working to solve. However, it should be emphasized that such damage does not destroy any information about the structure of the brain tissue. Thus, it should be possible to restore the tissue to its pre-cryopreservation state. It is also the case that micro-tears of this nature occur in concussion and other kinds of closed head trauma and that they are survivable, albeit it often with some cognitive impairment, with even the very limited repair abilities the brain naturally possesses.

Figure 17: Hippocampal CA4 cells following recovery from vitrification using a fully reversible, viability conserving technique. Following rewarming and unloading of the CPA the tissue was incubated in artificial cerebrospinal fluid at 35^oC for >60 min before being fixed in low-osmolality Karnovsky’s and examined by TEM.[6]

Most reassuringly, when brains subjected to NVT are cleared of cryoprotectant and reperfused with a life-supporting physiological solution, the dehydration induced changes in the fine structure of the brain observed in the NVT- state disappear, as can be seen in Figure 17, above.

Both freezing and vitrification have the potential to disrupt the structures that encode LTM in ways that would leave them non-infer able. Vitrification may do this by the expedient of altering membrane structure irreversibly by dehydration, or by changing the molecular structure of the membranes (or membrane components) by directly perturbing their structure. Vitrification solution is not water, and water is critical to the structure of many of the molecules inside cells. Indeed, a good part of the science behind designing tolerable vitrification solutions is to make them behave as much like water as possible – while at the same time behaving as good, or good enough, glass forming agents when cooled.On a purely structural basis it would seem that vitrification, applied under ideal (laboratory) conditions, is preserving the structures that encode memory and personality. To the extent that structural vitrification (as opposed to fully reversible, viable vitrification) perturbs or damages the biochemistry associated with LTP, there are grounds for concern. However, it seems unlikely that such injury would render the biochemistry of the brain non-infer-able, and therefore nonviable.

Real World Considerations

While laboratory investigations conducted under ideally controlled conditions provide considerable reassurance that existing cryopreservation techniques can conserve the essential structural and biochemical elements that comprise personal identity, such techniques are rarely available to human cryonics patients. Due to medico-legal and logistical constraints, most patients presenting for cryopreservation suffer extensive peri- and post-cardiac arrest global ischemia. When cryoprotection is delivered under these conditions in the laboratory setting, the results are very discouraging.

Figure 18: Feline cerebral cortex frozen, thawed and fixed in the presence of 4 M glycerol after 30 minutes of normothermic ischemia, followed by 24 hours of cold ischemia at ~2-4^oC. There was severe disruption of the tissue fine structure by ice (A,B), in addition to changes associated with ischemia such as mitochondrial swelling and blebbing of the endothelial cells (A). [TEMs by the author.][7]

In 1983, studies were undertaken by Alcor-B to determine the effects of 30 minutes of normothermic ischemia followed by 24 hours of cold ischemia at ~ 2-4^oC.^[101] Healthy adult cats were anesthetized; heparinized and cardiac arrest was induced. The animals were allowed to remain undisturbed on the operating table for 30 minutes, and then were packed completely in water ice, where they were allowed to remain for 24 hours. They were then perfused to 4 M glycerol using a linear increase in glycerol concentration during the ~ 60 minute perfusion interval. Following cryoprotective perfusion, the animals were cooled to dry ice temperature at ~ 3^oC/hour, and to liquid nitrogen temperature at ~4^oC/hour. Due to the unexpected presence of fracturing in the brain and other viscera, fixative reperfusion following thawing was not possible, and brain tissue samples for TEM were fixed by immersion.

As can be seen in Figure 18, above, there was extensive freezing damage superimposed over ischemic injury to the tissue. The mitochondria were swollen and often showed little internal structure. Neuronal plasma membranes were impossible to identify and the neuropil was macerated by what appeared to be ice artifacts. Large peri-capillary ice holes were almost uniformly present and large islands of tissue had the appearance of a tissue homogenate, as was observed in animals subjected to straight freezing. We thus wish to emphasize that for cryonics patients to obtain the maximum benefit from NVT, they must present for care immediately upon cardiac arrest, so that procedures can be undertaken to minimize the effects of lack of blood circulation on the brain and other vital organs (Figure 19).

The Alcor-B Cryopreservation Procedure

Figure 19: Ideally, immediately following the pronouncement of medico-legal death, circulation and respiration are restored by mechanical means while the patient is rapidly cooled. Medications to protect the brain against damage from lack of blood flow (ischemic injury) are also administered at this time. A new technique for cooling employing chilled liquid perfluorocarbon cycled in and out of the patient’s lungs allows for even faster cooling of the brain (~0.5^oC/min).[8]

Initial Stabilization & Cooling

As shown in Figure 19, above, care of Alcor-B cryonics patients commences the instant that medico-legal death is pronounced. Circulation and respiration are temporarily restored by mechanical means, initially employing chest compressions and mechanical ventilation. Cooling is also initiated at this time; both externally, and by the infusion of cold fluids into the abdominal cavity as well as chilled perfluorochemical into the lungs. Cooling using these technique can approach that achievable with cardiopulmonary bypass (1.0^oC/min) for the first 10 minutes of closed-chest cardiopulmonary support.

Figure 20: The Alcor-B extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO cart, being used to provide circulation, gas exchange and cooling to a cryonics patient who has experienced medico-legal death in his home, under the care of home hospice.

As soon as possible, usually with 45-90 minutes of the onset of cardiac arrest, circulation and gas exchange are taken over by the use of a blood pump and a membrane oxygenator (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO). ECMO allows any deficits in artificial circulation or ventilation due to organ failure (such as fluid accumulation or tumor in the lungs) to be side-stepped, and it also allows for far more rapid cooling, typically in the range of 1^oC/min all the way down to a few degrees above freezing. The Alcor-B ECMO cart is shown in Figure 20, above.

Cryoprotective Perfusion

Figure 21: At left above are the process control refractometrs (inside perspex fronted cabinet) which monitor the concentration of cryoprotectants going into (arterial) and coming out of (venous) the patient. The data stream from these refractometers feeds into the cryoprotective perfusion and cooling control computer. Next to the refractometers are the cryoprotectant addition pump and the recirculating perfusate withdrawal pump. The third pump is for ‘cardiotomy suction’ to recover perfusate leaking into the chest wound and return it to the circuit. At right above is the recirculating and mixing reservoir (yellow top) sitting atop a magnetic stirring table. A magnetically driven stir bar mixes the concentrated cryoprotectant solution with the much more dilute perfusate being recirculated through the patient.

Once the patient has been stabilized and temporarily protected against further ischemic injury, he is transported to Alcor-B’s facilities for cryoprotective treatment and cooling to -150^oC for long term care. The introduction of cryoprotectants is carried out using a sophisticated, computer controlled perfusion system developed in-house by Alcor-B. The key elements of the cryoprotectant introduction circuit are shown in Figure 21, above, and in schematic form in Figure 22, below. Two low capacity pumps deliver cryoprotectant to the perfusate being recirculated through the patient, and withdraw fluid from the circuit – fluid containing water from the patient’s tissues – which is discarded.

Figure 22: A schematic diagram of the extracorporeal circuit used to replace ~60% of the water in a cryonics patient’s body with vitrification (cryoprotective) drugs.

The process of cryoprotective perfusion requires very careful control over not just the pressure and the flow rate of the cryoprotective solution through the patient’s circulatory system, but also of the temperature. The toxicity of the cryoprotective drugs is a function of both their concentration and the temperature at which they are introduced. The lower the temperature; the lower the toxicity of the cryoprotective agents. That is why, in order for the rabbit kidney to recover from cryoprotectant loading to a vitrifiable concentration of cryoprotectant, the final phase of introduction must be carried out at -20^oC. If this is done, 100% of kidneys treated with a vitrifiable amount of M-22 cryoprotectant will recover completely, and support the animal as the sole kidney after re-implantation.

Figure 23: At left, above, is the controlled temperature enclosure for cryoprotective perfusion of the patient and cooling to -150^oC. The contoured aluminum module on which the patient rests is the bottom half of the protective pod that will enclose the patient during long-term cryogenic storage. Once perfusion and deep cooling are complete, the pre-cooled upper half of the patient pod is attached and the patient is transferred to long-term storage. At right, above, is close-up view of the liquid nitrogen (LN2) vapor circulating fans and the LN2 dispensing manifold. A solenoid, under computer control, open and closes the valve to the LN2 reservoir to maintain the temperature at the desired point.

However, as previously noted, it is not yet possible to introduce M-22 into mammalian brains at such a low temperature. Nevertheless, it is still very important to control the temperature precisely and to keep it as low as possible during cryoprotectant loading. The current procedure for perfusing cryonics patients with M22 is to wash out the blood with a specially designed carrier solution called B1, and then continue perfusion with B1 at ~+3.5^oC. Over a period of ~90 minutes, a concentrated form of M22 (125%) is gradually added to effect a linear increase in concentration in the perfusion circuit in order to allow the patient’s cells adequate time to equilibrate, and thus avoid injury from too much cellular dehydration.[9]

When 50% of target concentration of M-22 is reached, there is a pause in the addition of M-22 to the circuit, again in order to allow time for cryoprotectant to equilibrate more completely, and also to allow for the patient’s temperature to be reduced to -3^oC. When the venous and arterial concentrations of M-22 are roughly equal, the concentration of M-22 is rapidly increased to 100% of the target concentration. This is done in order to minimize the toxic effects of the cryoprotectants that would occur if they were introduced at these (high) concentrations at temperatures at or above 0^oC. At this point, the arterial concentration is held between 100% and 105% as long needed, but not exceeding 5 hours, until the concentration of M-22 in the venous perfusate reaches 100% of the target concentration.[9]

Figure 24: Once the patient is connected to the cryoprotective perfusion system and flushed with B1 carrier solution, the control of all parameters of cryoprotective perfusion is assumed by the computer. Arterial and venous pressures, perfusate flow rate, cryoprotectant concentration increase and all temperatures are under computer control. This is necessary because the rapid changes to these parameters that are required to minimize perfusion time and reduce toxicity by keeping the patient’s temperature just above the freezing point of the cryoprotectant-water mixture in his tissues cannot be managed by humans – we’re too slow – and too easily distracted.

Control over the temperature of the patient, and the perfusate flowing through his circulatory system, is achieved by the use of a sophisticated, computerized temperature controlled enclosure, in addition to the computerized perfusion system already described. This enclosure was developed by Alcor-B, and is shown in Figure 23, above. The refrigerated enclosure is cooled by liquid nitrogen vapor and it can maintain the patient’s temperature at any desired point between +15^oC and -150^oC. This means that when cryoprotective perfusion is completed, the patient can be cooled, in place within the enclosure he was perfused in, all the way to his long-term storage temperature of -150^oC. The entire perfusion and cooling to storage procedure are completely automated and continuously monitored by Alcor-B’s highly trained cryo-biomedical staff (Figure 24).

Long-Term Cryogenic Care

Figure 25: Long-term cryogenic storage is carried out using a newly developed technology known as intermediate temperature storage (ITS). ITS holds the patient at a temperature of ~ -150^oC, which is a sufficiently low temperature to stop all biochemical activity, and yet not so cold that it could cause fracturing in the patient’s tissues.

Once the patient has been cooled to storage the temperature, the other half of the protective aluminum storage pod, which has been pre-cooled to -180^oC, is placed atop the bottom half of the pod that the patient has rested upon during cryoprotective perfusion and cooling. With the two halves of the pod secured, the patient is them removed to long-term storage in one of Alcor-B’s unique, Intermediate Temperature Storage (ITS) units (Figure 25). There the patient can be held at -150^oC for centuries, if need be, to await rescue by more sophisticated medical technology. And in the meantime, Alcor-B will be there to care for him, and to assist in developing both the social and the technological infrastructure required to restore him to life, health and youth

Validating NVT in Cryonics Patients

Figure 26: Quality control and validation of our procedures is critically important to Alcor-B. For that reason we treat each human case as an experiment; an undertaking to be carefully documented and to be learned from. At left above is an Alcor-B patient following cooling to -150^oC. The chalky white areas present on the skin are areas where ice formation has occurred. The rest of the patient’s skin appears somewhat translucent and is not frozen, but rather is vitrified – converted into a glassy state. At right is a section of spinal cord taken from an Alcor-B neuropatient (i.e., a head-only patient). This section of cord is completely free of ice and demonstrated normal ultrastructure for tissue subjected to NVT, as can be seen in Figure 28, below.

Alcor-B is not content to rely solely on animal experiments conducted under ideal laboratory conditions; we have carried out careful examinations of patients undergoing NVT both during cooling, and after 8 months of storage, in order to evaluate the amount of superficial freezing that is occurring. As can be seen at left in Figure 26, above, there is always some ice formation in the skin of NVT patients, which is typically associated with peri-cardiac arrest trauma, or with injury to the skin secondary to the placement of temperature probes and the creation of “monitoring widows” in the skull. This ice formation is not of concern, and the amount of ice formed in the skin is within survivable limits for that tissue.

Figure 27: At left above is a dog treated with NVT under ideal conditions of 5 minutes of cardiac arrest at normal body temperature followed by 45 minutes and closed-chest CPS and then extracorporeal cooling to 10^oC. Cryoprotective perfusion was then carried out followed by cooling to -150^oC and solidification. There is no visible ice and the animal presents the appearance of being uniformly equilibrated with cryoprotective solution. At right, above, is a dog which experienced cardiac arrest followed by cooling with ice bags. Blood washout and cryoprotective perfusion were not initiated until 18 hours after the start of both cardiac arrest and external cooling. This animal underwent freezing and the distribution of cryoprotective agents was very inhomogeneous in the brain and in the skeletal muscle and other tissues.

We have conducted many experiments simulating the non-ideal conditions to which cryonics patients are sometimes subjected and we have also taken non-vital samples from human patients in our care that have been treated under a variety of conditions, ranging from optimum, to highly undesirable (Figure 27). In patients treated under ideal conditions, with only a few minutes of ischemia between the time of cardiac arrest (and the pronouncement of legal death) and the start of the procedure, the spinal cord is uniformly vitrified, as is evident in at right in Figure 26, above. TEM examination of tissue taken from patients treated under such conditions is indistinguishable in appearance from that observed in experimental animals (dogs) subjected NVT (Figure 28). Examination of the surface of the brain through the two observation windows (burr holes) made in the skull at the start of the procedure also show no evidence of ice formation when a patient is treated with NVT under ideal conditions.

Figure 28: Above are gray (left) and white (right) matter from the spinal cord of an Alcor-B neuropatient who underwent NVT under optimum conditions. The gray matter (left) shows two normal appearing capillaries and dehydrated, but otherwise normal fine structure. The white matter (right) shows more dehydration from cryoprotection. The interiors of the axons (axoplasm) are shrunken and the myelin sheaths that surround the axons have a rumpled and somewhat unraveled appearance. Alcor-B is currently conducting research to try to overcome these problems. Despite these admittedly undesirable alterations, the overall structure of the spinal cord appears beautifully preserved.

Summary

Figure 29: Patients treated with NVT & ITS may be recoverable before this century’s end using biologically derived organogenesis and tissue repair technologies. This offers considerable risk reduction and improved odds that cryopreservation will be successful.

With the advent of NVT and ITS technology, Alcor-B is now able to cryopreserve patients in a state of near viability, with little structural injury. It is conceivable that patients so treated may be recoverable before this century’s end, if the pace of biomedical advance continues at the rate that it has over the past five decades. The ability to recover cryonics patients within the limits of normal corporate and human undertakings (i.e., 60 to 90 years) offers a tremendous reduction in the degree of risk to which the patients are subjected. For example, very few business entities of any kind survive long-term. Even non-profit organizations (NPOs), such as Alcor-B, have a ~95% failure rate by the 30 year mark, and of those that survive to 30 years, only ~1 % will survive to 100 years.

Figure 30: Using the “Cryonics Calculator” developed by Brook Norton (http://www.cryonicscalculator.com/), and assuming a very conservative risk of organizational failure of 30% for the first two decades of cryopreservation, 75% for the second 20 year interval, 10% for the third 20 year interval, 3% for the fourth 20 year interval and 2% for last 20 year interval the probability of being recovered from cryopreservation is only 17%. [This assumes that you are currently 50 years old and will be cryopreserved at age 90 and that you have a 5% risk of autopsy, or other catastrophic destruction of your remains prior to cryopreservation.]

Using a very simple model of the impact of institutional failure on the chances of recovery from cryopreservation, and (approximately) applying the historical NPO failure rate, the chances that a person will be recovered from cryopreservation over a 100 year period of storage are only 8%. This outcome does not consider other risks, such as government proscription of cryonics, or existential risks, such as fire, flood, earthquake, pandemic disease, etc. Very importantly, it also does not take into account the probability that existing cryopreservation procedures may not be sufficiently advanced to allow for recovery of today’s patients (the default assigned autopsy risk is 5%, which is also quite low). Given such a high probability of failure solely from lack of institutional continuity, it should be clear why so many people, especially those who are knowledgeable and world-wise, fail to find cryonics sufficiently attractive to commit to it personally.

Figure 31: Alcor-B’s timeline to achieving fully reversible suspended animation for both the human brain and the intact human.

This is one of the principal reasons that Alcor-B is working so hard to improve the quality of cryopreservation, and to ultimately achieve fully reversible suspended animation. While the current odds of cryonics working are anything but good, we strongly believe that we can change that situation. With our commitment to research to achieve suspended animation, and our deep commitment to achieve truly long-term institutional stability, we believe cryonics will become an increasingly attractive choice. We invite you to join us in our effort to break the limiting chains of time and open a future for all of humanity that is as potentially limitless in time, as it is boundless in space.

References

1. Deutsch D: The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications New York: Penguin; 1998.

2. Tegmark M: Paralell Universes: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf. Scientific American 2003(May, 2003):41-51.

3. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091210092005.htm. Science Daily 2009.

4. Darwin M, Russell, S, Wakfer, P, Wood, L, Wood, C.: Effect of a human cryopreservation protocol on the ultrastructure of the canine brain. (Originally published by BioPreservation, Inc, as BPI Tech Brief 16 on CryoNet and SciCryonics, May 31, 1995), http://wwwalcororg/Library/html/braincryopreservation2html and http://wwwalcororg/Library/html/braincryopreservation1html 1995.

5. Fahy G, Wowk, B, Pagotan, R, et al.: Physical and biological aspects of renal vitrification. Organogenesis 2009, 5(3):167-175.

6. Pichugin Y, Fahy, GM, Morin, R.: Cryopreservation of rat hippocampal slices by vitrification. Cryobiology 2006, 52(2):228-240.

7. Darwin M, Leaf, JD.: Cryoprotective perfusion and freezing of the ischemic and nonischemic cat: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=1389, http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=1390, http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=1391, http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=1392 See also: Federowicz, MG. and Leaf JD. Cryonics. issue 30, p.14,1983. 1983.

8. Darwin M, Russell, S, Rasch, C, O’Farrell, J, Harris, S.: A novel method of rapidly inducing or treating hypothermia or hyperpyrexia, by means of ‘mixed-mode’ (gas and liquid) ventilation using perfluorochemicals. In: In: Society of Critical Care Medicine 28th Educational and Scientific Symposium. vol. 27. San Francisco: Critical Care Medicine; 1999: A81.

9. de Wolf A: Vitrification agents in cryonics: http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/2008/07/08/vitrification-agents-in-cryonics-m22/. 2008.

Selected Bibliography

Fahy GM, Wowk B, Wu J, Phan J, Rasch C, Chang A, Zendejas E. Cryopreservation of organs by vitrification: perspectives and recent advances. Cryobiology, 2004 Apr;48(2):157-78.
Fahy GM, Wowk B, Pagotan R, Chang A, Phan J, Thomson B, Phan L. Physical and biological aspects of renal vitrification. Organogenesis. 2009 Jul-Sep;5(3):167-75.
Fahy, G.M. “A personal view of the Alcor research fund-raiser.” Cryonics, Volume 12, December 1991,Â Issue 137, pp. 13-14.
Fahy GM, Wowk B, Wu J, Paynter S. Improved vitrification solutions based on the predictability of vitrification solution toxicity. Cryobiology, 2004 Feb;48(1):22-35.
Wowk B, Leitl E, Rasch CM, Mesbah-Karimi N, Harris SB, Fahy GM. Vitrification enhancement by synthetic ice blocking agents. Cryobiology. 2000 May;40(3):228-36.
Wowk B. Anomalous high activity of a subfraction of polyvinyl alcohol ice blocker. Cryobiology. 2005 Jun;50(3):325-31.
Gomez-Angelats M, Cidlowski JA. Cell volume control and signal transduction in apoptosis. Toxicologic Pathology. 2002 Sep-Oct;30(5):541-51.
Schliess F, Haussinger D. The cellular hydration state: a critical determinant for cell death and survival. Biological Chemistry. 2002 Mar-Apr;383(3-4):577-83.
de Wolf, A. de Wolf, C. Advances in Cryonics Protocols, 1990-2006: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/protocoladvances.html

Posted in Cryobiology, Cryonics Philosophy, Cryonics Technology (General), Culture & Propaganda, Perfusion, Philosophy | 1 Comment

Status Report: 28 July, 2011

Posted on July 28, 2011 by admin

Figure 1: Chronosphere performance data from 29 June through 28 Jul, 2011. The large bump up in views on 07-29-2011 represents the effect of the posting of Robert Ettinger’s passing into cryopreservation and the impact from targeted mailings of a media kit to ~ 100 major media outlets around the world.

By Mike Darwin

Introduction

One of the most valuable things I learned from cryonics is just how long and how hard a business it is to build an organization. Or even to build a base of readers and subscribers if you are in the business of producing a newsletter, a magazine, or yes, even a blog. Above are the stats for Chronosphere from 29 June through 28 July of this year (stats for the year to date are present in Figure 5, below).

I’m doing this update much sooner than I planned, because I wanted to show, objectively, the power of a single well planned and well timed intervention on “public” awareness and on readership. Public is in quotes because it is misnomer; the people who’ve come here and who will stay here as readers are a unique and highly distilled fraction of the public. Aside from the fact that they can read, and do so at a high level, they know how to use the web and they are at least intellectually curious enough to have come to light here. Most importantly, some subset of these people are nascent or actual cryonicists/immortalists.

The Worst Press Release in Cryonics History?

It is common practice and prudent public relations management to have media kits prepared and ready to go for any unexpected contingency. A representative media kit is shown in Figure 2, below, and contains detailed information on every aspect of the organization’s operations and public programs, as well as resource information and the best examples of prior media coverage. Such a press kit will also have “supplied images” that the media can use, as well as documentary (and if available, interactive) CDs or DVDs which tell the organization’s story in a tight, coherent way. In the case of cryonics, at a minimum this would mean lay and technical white papers on the issues of cryo-injury and the repair of freezing or vitrification damage, detailed written and visual guides to how cryopreservation is carried out, scientific papers, scientists’ statements and other third-party data supporting the feasibility of cryonics, promotional literature, samples of any magazines or newsletters, and finally, a specific press release, as appropriate. It is also appropriate to have a separate, concise document that deals with common misconceptions and which provides a credible answer to basic and often asked questions, such as how much cryonics costs, who will revive cryonics patients, how will patients adjust to life after being displaced into the future by decades, or even centuries, and so on.

Figure 2: A typical media kit for a technology-oriented enterprise.

Such press kits were generated in cryonics as early as the late 1960s(obviously, minus CDs or DVDs) and Alcor at one time maintained an extensive press kit that was kept in stock at all times through till at least 1991. Below (Figure 3) is the press release sent out by the Cryonics Institute on 25 July, two days after Robert Ettinger’s cryopreservation began. It is an amazing document, starting with title, and it becomes even more surprising from there.

Figure 3: Press release from the Cryonics Institute (CI) announcing that the father of cryonics, Robert C. W. Ettinger was pronounced medico-legally dead on 23 July and cryopreserved by CI in Michigan.

The first thing we learn from the press release is that Robert Ettinger was frozen. Is this true? Was he vitrified-frozen or simply frozen? Was he cryoprotected or straight frozen? Depending upon the realities, this document either represents enormous hubris, or enormous ignorance, because whatever else happened to Bob Ettinger on 23 July, being dead was not on the menu – not yet, anyway – and some of the media headlines got that right! After over 20 years of effort to remove cryonics and cryonics patients from the realm of death and the dead, the father of the cryonics movement gets “frozen” after he is “dead,” and this happens not in 1967, but in 2011. Incredible!

Early on in the classic 1974 Mel Brooks film, “Young Frankenstein, ” as Dr. “Fronkensteen” is concluding a lecture to a group of medical students, an unctuous-obnoxious student hurls leading question after leading question at the good doctor, finally concluding with: “But as a Fronkensteen, aren’t you the least bit curious about it? Doesn’t bringing back to life what was once dead hold any intrigue to you?” That was too much. Young Frankenstein, yells out, “You are talking about the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind! Dead is dead!”

Of course, Dr. Fronkensteen is right, dead is dead, and everyone who isn’t a lunatic knows that. The dictionary definition of death is: “the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism.” That’s a good definition of death and it most certainly does not reflect the current state of Robert Ettinger.

The medical physicist and cryonics activist Dr. Brian Wowk was the first point this out in his 1988 essay, “The Death of Death in Cryonics,” I can also justifiably speak to this issue myself, since I am a peer-reviewed, medical journal published, ‘expert’ in this area, see the article “Pro-Con Ethics Debate: When is Dead Really Dead?” The use of this terminology by a cryonics organization, after so much reparative work and effort, is shocking. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the CI press release is a step back from the press release announcing Dr. Bedford’s cryopreservation, which was sent out on 14 January, 1967; 44 years ago (see Figure 4, below)!

Figure 4: The January, 1967 press release announcing the cryopreservation of Dr. James H. Bed-ford was more detailed, more hopeful and more informative by far than the CI press release announcing the cryopreservation of Robert Ettinger on 23 July, 2011.

To appreciate the degree of dysfunctionality in contemporary cryonics with regard to public relations, it is probably necessary to go back in time to 1990, when Dr. Thomas K. Donaldson unsuccessfully sued the Attorney General of the State of California for the right to an elective cryopreservation in order to prevent the destruction of his brain by a malignant brain tumor. Much of the media coverage surrounding the Donaldson lawsuit was neutral to slightly sympathetic. And a disproportionate amount of the “supposed” public reaction was sympathetic, or asked questions in a positively loaded way. This was the case because there was a coordinated letter writing effort. Not only did many Alcor members write letters themselves, many hundreds of hand written, typed and computer-typed (daisy wheel generated) letters also went out in packages from Alcor in Riverside, to re-mailers, who then re-posted them to local papers, TV stations, and the like, so that they would have local postmarks, and thus and local credibility. This is how it is done in the real world of public relations.

Whether you approve of that kind of approach in public relations is neither here nor there in the context of how cryonics is being publicly handled today. Things have gotten so bad that the cryonics organizations themselves don’t know whether their patient’s are dead, alive, in suspended animation, or in a fourth, and far less certain state called cryopreservation. That last state is the one the public most needs to be educated about, and it is ostensibly the job of the cryonics organizations to do it. This press release appears to have be written by David Ettinge, and one is tempted to shout out the question:

“But as an Ettinger, aren’t you the least bit curious about it? Doesn’t bringing back to life what was once dead pose any contradictions for you?”

Figure 5: The number of views Chronosphere receives per month has been increasing steadily since its launch, and will likely reach or exceed 10K per month, by the end of July, 2011.

I do not know what the traffic is like on the various cryonics organization websites, and my inquiries for this data have gone unanswered in the past. Judging from the average number of hits per month Chronosphere is now receiving, my guess would be that for Alcor and CI, that number is orders of magnitude greater.

We have a lot of work to do.

Posted in Administrative, Cryonics History, Cryonics Philosophy, Culture & Propaganda | 11 Comments

Would You Like Another Plate of This?

Posted on July 27, 2011 by admin

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere –Tracy Chapman

By Mike Darwin

The mAD Men

Cryonics has a history, beginning at almost Day 1, of public relations “experts” who would set about telling us why cryonics hasn’t taken over the planet like a wildfire in a tinder dry California summer. At Day 1, or maybe even Day 1,000, they might have had some credibility. But today, they don’t. They are mostly ignorant, and a lot of them are idiots, in the bargain. Arguably, the only people more idiotic are those cryonicists who continue to listen to them, at this late date.

The most important, the most obvious and the most factual reason why cryonics is not more widely accepted is that it fails the “credibility sniff test” in that it makes many critical assumptions which may not be correct, such as that the cryopreservation techniques used are adequate to preserve the structure that encodes person-hood, that person-hood is, in fact, a function of structure (ultrastructure), that technological civilization will endure uninterrupted long enough to allow for recovery of today’s cryonics patients, that your personal odds of entering cryopreservation with an intact brain are probably no better than 1 in 3, and that any of the other myriad practical obstacles, ranging from the ability of patients to integrate into a future world to what kind of “jobs” they will have, can be resolved favorably…

Figure 1: Film critic Roger Ebert suffered from papillary thyroid cancer in 2002. He initially chose conservative treatment options which left his appearance intact and his ability to speak unimpaired. The tumor recurred and invaded his salivary gland with metastases to the lymph nodes of the neck. The only procedure which offers any reasonable proven prospect of a cure (~ 5%) is radical neck surgery in conjunction with intensive and relatively wide-field radiation (typically neutron beam) of the neck. The black turtleneck which Ebert now wears covers the cervical support collar which helps hold his head erect. Radical neck dissection typically removes so much muscle (and other structure) that the patient cannot hold his head erect. Ebert has no functioning larynx and cannot eat using his mouth – he is tube fed via a feeding gastrostomy. Despite these horrific procedures and the attendant suffering, he has returned to productive work. Few patients with head/neck cancers choose this treatment option, even when the alternative is certain death. Even now, statistically, Ebert’s chances of survival into old age are small.

The Hard & Simple Reality

In other words, cryonics is not proven. That is a plenty valid reason for rejecting any costly procedure; dying people do this kind of thing every day for medical procedures which are proven, but which have a very low rate of success and (or) a very high misery quotient. Some (few) people have survived metastatic head/neck cancer – the film critic Roger Ebert, is an example (Figure 1). However, the vast majority of patients who undergo radical neck surgery for cancer die anyway. For the kind and extent of cancer Ebert had, the long term survival rate (>5 years) is ~5% following radical neck dissection and ancillary therapy: usually radiation and chemotherapy. This is thus a proven procedure – it works – and yet the vast majority of patients refuse it.

Figure 2: Pay attention to what the marketplace is saying. If we are uniformly portrayed as crazy and absurd, then there are only a few possibilities as to why that is happening, and none of them are good.

Cryonics is not proven, and it is aesthetically disturbing (indeed even disgusting) to many people. It is also costly, and not just in terms of money alone. It is costly in countless other ways, ranging from the potential for marital discord, social alienation, ridicule, social isolation, disruption of family relationships (and with grief coping mechanisms) during the dying process, and on and on and on. And it does cost a lot of money, because if you figure the lost present value of capital for life insurance, dues, and end of life expenses related to cryonics, then that is a very significant dollar amount; my guess is that for a whole body patient who signs up at age 35 with Alcor, it is in the range of ~ $500,000 to $750,000 2010 dollars!

Those are perfectly valid reasons for people not to choose cryonics. Again, there is no direct evidence it will work – NONE – it costs a lot of money and even if it does work, it is unlikely to work for YOU because odds are you will be autopsied, die unnoticed for days, or die of Alzheimer’s Disease long before you are pronounced legally dead. The facts are plenty dismal enough to explain its lack of widespread adoption.

Beyond this, many other factors come into play, such as perceived interference, or lack of competitiveness with religion by cryonics, lack of endorsement by authority figures, such as physicians and scientists, actual marketing faux pas’s, such as the Chatsworth debacle and the use the words “death” and “dead” to describe cryonics patients. Then come factors which would, if cryonics were proven to work, be down in the noise, or more accurately, nonexistent, such as they way the current cryonics facilities look, the appearance and qualification of staff and so on. But there are some other factors that are material, and our PR friends have consistently missed them, and mostly, so have we. What are those factors are what should we do about them?

Listen to the Marketplace, Stupid

An elementary but seldom followed rule of enterprise is to listen to what your customers are saying. This is extraordinarily hard for most would be entrepreneurs to do, because it is in the nature of the entrepreneur to believe, passionately, that he understands the market better than anyone else, and that his vision of the product or service he wishes to offer is not only better, it is also fundamentally new and different. Sometimes this is so, and great success ensues. However, even then, such success will be temporary if the entrepreneur or innovator fails to listen to the marketplace: his customers, or potential customers.

Over the past few days, with the passing of Robert Ettinger, cryonics has received a level of planet-wide media attention it has not received in decades. One interesting and valuable result of this is that various news venues have solicited public comment about cryonics, and what’s more, about immortalism, or radical life extension. As usual, cryonicists have been deaf to the criticism, expressed and implied in these remarks from the “marketplace. Or worse, they have been contemptuous, without being clever in their contempt and in their responses.

Kumbaya

Anyplace is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we’ll make something
But me myself I got nothing to prove –Tracy Chapman

The most common remarks made by people who say they wouldn’t want to live a long time, excluding the very pragmatic ones I give above, are as follows:

Once is enough for me, I can’t imagine going on like this for centuries, let alone forever.
An eternity of ____________________ (fill in the blank), no way! Life is hard enough as it is.
How boring, imagine having to just keep on living the way I do now, but forever! Argh!
The world is in a bad state, and with global warming and the like, there will be power cuts and organizational failures and those people will thaw out. In any event, civilization on the skids so it doesn’t matter.

What do these remarks mean? Well, they mean exactly what they say they mean in most cases. That may be hard to understand, especially if you look at the demographic data for how “happy” people are the world over. What you will find, if you do, is that people in Western Developed nation-states are extraordinarily happy. In fact, they are unbelievably happy (Figure 3).

DEFINITION: This statistic is compiled from responses to the survey question: “Taking all things together, would you say you are: very happy, quite happy, not very happy, or not at all happy?”. The “Happiness (net)” statistic was obtained via the following formula: the percentage of people who rated themselves as either “quite happy” or “very happy” minus the percentage of people who rated themselves as either “not very happy” or “not at all happy”.

Figure 3: A nation-by-nation evaluation of the extent to which the population of the planet’s nation-states is happy with their temporal existence. In Developed countries the satisfaction rate approaches 100% – especially in racially and culturally homogenous states with extensive social welfare programs and a tax mandated state of (relative) financial and social equality (e.g., the first 9 countries on the list). SOURCE: World Values Survey 2005: http://www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSIntegratedEVSWVS.jsp?Idioma=I

So, if everybody is so happy, why do the majority of these same populations consistently say they wouldn’t want to live for vast periods of time, let alone forever? There are several correct contributing answers to that question. But first, an important thing to understand about such studies is that they measure only reported, “superficial” and above all, relative happiness.

Figure 4: Your life and future prospects can still be grim and relatively hopeless and yet your evaluation of your satisfaction with life vary dramatically depending upon whether you have a full belly, or even if you’ve had a meal in the past few hours.

How is this possible? The answer is that happiness is complex and exists on many different levels. The most important and the most difficult to measure is existential happiness. The issue of their existential happiness is something most people rarely, if ever confront, and almost never do so in public when asked (unless you ask them in the right way, such as, “Would you want to live forever?”). The reason for this is that if they respond by saying “My life is a boring exercise in getting from day-to-day with a lot of nagging miseries and frustrating inconveniences,” they would appear as failures, as whingers , and as losers. Few people find that acceptable! So, the happiness demographers go about their business and they ask people “How happy are you?” They use all kinds of metrics, such as, “would you fight for your country?” “Are you happy with your income?” “Are you satisfied with your relationships?” “Are you satisfied with your government?” And they get answers that correlate quite well with the level of affluence, the level of social harmony and the level of social equality.

An empty belly, a barren room with nowhere to go, a society in conflict riddled with fear, and societies where it is easily possible to see that everyone else is doing a lot better than you are, do not make for reports of happiness, let alone even basic satisfaction with life. Consider the two children with the dinner plates pictured in Figure 4. Which one is likely to say he is “content” or “happy?” Both photos were snapped in the regions now undergoing famine in Africa. Both children have similar long term prospects. But one has food going into his belly, and one doesn’t.

The Issue of Existential Happiness

You got a fast car
And I got a plan to get us out of here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
We won’t have to drive too far
Just ‘cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
And finally see what it means to be living –Tracy Chapman

Now consider the populations of the richest, most developed and most equitable nations on earth. By any historical standard they are brilliantly well off. They are better off on average than any human population ever has been since we started walking erect as a species. But, what are their lives really like? What is their existential state of happiness? Let’s take a look.

Figure 5: Humans were not evolved to be confined to a fixed space day-after-day and to do boring and repetitive work which is usually personally meaningless, and is done on the orders of others who are also omnipresent to supervise its execution. That is the working definition of hell for hunter-gatherers and they are uniformly both horrified and disgusted to see “civilized” man behave in this way.

The alarm clock goes off. You must get out of bed and start your day. You wanted to stay up later the previous night and catch that late TV program, chat a little longer with friends at the pub, but you couldn’t… You are sleepy and you really want to turn the alarm off and go back to bed. Of course, you can’t do that, because you must go to work. For the vast majority of people that is not a prospect that fills them with joy or anticipation. Your work is OK, or at least not “bad,” but you have to go to the same place every day, and you have to do what one or more other people tell you to do. You have a little negotiating room on this issue, but not much. Similarly, you have a little wiggle room. There are some minutes when you can steal a little time “of your own.” But mostly, you have to do one thing after the other that someone else tells you to do. What’s more, you must do it when and how they tell you to do it (Figure 5).

Then there are the other people you must necessarily interact with. Several of the people you work with are complete monsters, in fact, they despise you and they go out of their way to make your job and your hours at work more difficult. And the customers! Most are OK, but some are horrible – encounters with them leave you shaking, and sometimes fearful for your job. Speaking of which, there is always some degree of apprehension present that you might lose your job; you might screw up, the economy may take a nosedive… In any event, your survival is critically dependent upon your job.

Figure 6: This is what work is like for a good percentage of people on the planet – including people in the so-called Developed World.

Others whom you work with are better compensated, and those that own the enterprise you work for are getting rich from it, and that rankles. But, beyond these concerns, this isn’t what you really wanted to do with your life and your time. When you were fifteen, you wanted to _______________, to travel, to see the world, and to meet interesting people and do interesting things. Instead, here you are. And every day you are a little older and a little more run-down. The clock is ticking. When you looked in mirror this morning, you had to face it yet again; you aren’t young anymore and you aren’t going to get any younger.

I remember we were driving driving in your car
The speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
And I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone –Tracy Chapman

You had such high hopes for your marriage and children. But instead of being something that greatly amplified your joy, they have proved a source of frustration, and in some cases, almost unbearable irritation and grief (Figure 7). The sexual spark that enervated your relationship with this current wife scarcely survived the third year of marriage. Now, sex is desultory, clinical, and rarely offers much satisfaction. You feel guilty watching people on the Internet have what looks like really fantastic sex, and you feel even guiltier when you cheat on your wife just to get a quick and mediocre bit of sexual variety from someone who is likely just as inexperienced and clumsy at sex as you are. And you worry not just about getting caught, but about the many possible complications that will ensue if the person you are cheating with becomes obsessed, jealous, or god forbid, pregnant.

Reproduction as a Barrier to Happiness?

You see my old man’s got a problem
He live with the bottle that’s the way it is
He says his body’s too old for working
I say his body’s too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody’s got to take care of him
So I quit school and that’s what I did

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
We leave tonight or live and die this way –Tracy Chapman

Figure 7: In the absence of the extended family and in the increasing presence of single-parent “families,” children have become an increasingly liability and a source of heartache, rather than joy. They are also increasingly sociopathic; not infrequently something right out of “The Bad Seed,” as a result of these gross defects in their family and social environment.

Now you realize that your children have lives of their own and that they are incredibly selfish and greedy. And this makes you sad and reflective, because it informs you of what you once were yourself, when you were young. And you don’t know if that’s good, or bad, or just the way things are or are supposed to be.

Meanwhile, the few good people in your life start to get picked off by death. The mentors, the special people who managed to stay cheerful and see life as good and worth living, and make you able to see that too, start to disappear. The people you have loved and who have who made you feel safe and secure, begin to die. Your parents become old and sick and must be put in care – which makes you feel sad and very guilty. And when they die, you are, for perhaps the first time, really open-face slapped with the reality that you too are going to die, and that there is no escaping it.

And frankly, why should you even try? You were raised with a very limited repertoire of interests, ambitions, and capabilities. It is so hard to survive in this world, even in this relative paradise of Western Technological Civilization, that mostly what you had to learn and spend your time thinking about were how to acquire the skills to compete and to make a living and support your offspring and your dying parents. All so that this cycle can be repeated, yet again (and to what end?). You laugh at people who talk about what makes the stars shine, how long the universe will last, where all the dark matter is, are there multiverses, what would it be like to “see” in the full electromagnetic spectrum, or even what it would be like to sit down and talk with Chinese workers, or Egyptian shop keeps, and find out what they really think about Islam, democracy or the USA, without someone on the TV telling you what they think (and getting wrong)?

You got a fast car
And we go cruising to entertain ourselves
You still ain’t got a job
And I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You’ll find work and I’ll get promoted
We’ll move out of the shelter
Buy a big house and live in the suburbs
You got a fast car
And I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I’d always hoped for better
Thought maybe together you and me would find it
I got no plans I ain’t going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving –Tracy Chapman

Figure 8: Most people have a very limited scope of interests and of knowledge. They are stuck in a rut, and so used to looking at dirt from dawn till dark, that they’ve forgotten the wonderful possibilities life offers.

Your sphere of options is incredibly narrow. You don’t see it that way, but that is the reality. Except for 2 weeks a year, and scattered holidays in between, your life is mostly the same – and it isn’t exciting and you don’t enjoy being told what to do all the time. In fact, if you didn’t need the money, you’d beat your boss senseless, or at very least, walk out and never come back.

And in the end, you are old and sick and ultimately DEAD.

Religion looks pretty good in such a world. And that is the reality that most people, the world over, labor under almost every day of their lives.

The fundamental problems are these, in no special order:

Most people lack autonomy in their daily lives. Next to life itself, freedom is the most precious value; and most people’s lives are functionally devoid of it. Many cryonicists fail to see this, because they are self employed, are in jobs that offer them compensating satisfaction, or that they don’t perceive as “work” (e.g., they are not watching the clock just waiting for the torture to be over for another day).
Most people have a very limited range of interests and possibilities for gratification. This problem cannot be fixed for most by giving them more money, or even more money and autonomy. Do that, and they will drown themselves in what they already have, or kill themselves with drugs. How many cars, planes, and pairs of shoes or houses can you really gain joy from?
The vast majority of people over 30 don’t feel well a significant fraction of the time. They have colds, flu, osteoarthritis, and most importantly, they are poorly conditioned as a result of jobs that enforce immobility and make them sedentary. As a result, they are tired and drained from their work and home responsibilities at the end of each day, and worst of all, they spend that part of the day when they feel the best and are most alert, doing what other people tell them to do – not what they want to do.
They are losing their own youth and health and watching others suffer and die around them. How’s that for a satisfying life experience? Every day they turn on the news or talk to friends or family, and find that another fixture in their life is dead, or dying. As John Donne said, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”[1]

We humans were not designed to spend our days taking orders from others. We were first and foremost hunter-gathers and we are happiest when we roam, explore, think and grow in playful ways.[2] We are miserable when we are confined, and even more miserable when we are ordered about and forced to care for our offspring alone and in the absence of extended families. The nuclear family is a special kind of hell created by the Protestant bourgeoisie to generate wealth for the sole end of pleasing a psychopathic god (you aren’t even allowed to really enjoy it). If agriculture inflicted great and enduring misery on the masses, then hierarchical social structure, slavery, serfdom and employment magnified it into hell on earth.

Those are some of the real reasons why people don’t want to live forever. And why should they, if they are fundamentally existentially miserable? I’ve seen a number of cryonicists abandon cryonics, and ultimately life itself, because of these very reasons – often because of having a family and children under the dreadful conditions imposed by the nuclear family society of the West.

You’ll note that on the list of nation-states happiness rankings, the Philippines comes in number 12 – and yet it is a poor, Third World country. What it does have is (currently) security and a great culture of extended family. Having children in the West is associated with decreased happiness of long duration,[3] as well as the obvious material deprivation associated not just with child rearing, but with the astronomically high and rising cost of higher education, or post secondary school job training.

Smart & Unhappy?

You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so you can fly away
You gotta make a decision
You leave tonight or live and die this way –Tracy Chapman

Finally, as the writer Ernest Hemingway sagely noted shortly before killed himself in 1961, “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” Emotional development in humans is perhaps best defined as the ability to cope with risky or stressful situations, especially over long periods of time, and to work and play well with others while doing so. These skills are best learned by dynamic interaction with cohorts with whom the growing child is well matched socially and intellectually. Unfortunately, high intelligence is socially isolating; children don’t want to associate with those who are ‘outsiders’ or ‘different.’

Figure 9: In a society that devalues and ridicules the very source of its technology, its art and its wealth, the highly intelligent individual will be marginalized, and in all too many cases, socially crippled. This is unacceptable.

Thus, when it comes to happiness, people who are socially inept and who have trouble coping emotionally with the exigencies of life are, on average, the least happy. It should thus come as little surprise that our prisons are currently filled with a disproportionate number of people who are more intelligent than average and who lack the social coping skills to get on in society. They are also smart enough to know that many of the rules and orders given them are arbitrary and have no basis in reason beyond maintaining the status quo. As sociologist and educator Bill Allin has observed: “People with high intelligence, be they children or adults, still rank as social outsiders in most situations, including their skills to be good mates and parents.”[4]

The relevance of this to cryonics should be obvious to most cryonicists; cryonics attracts, with massive disproportionality, the highly intelligent. Indeed, many of the arguments that make cryonics credible, require a remarkable degree of both intelligence and scholarship. Inability to understand the enabling ideas and technologies usually means the inability to understand, let alone embrace, cryonics. A disproportionately unhappy population of smart people translates to a disproportionately large population of ideal market candidates for cryonics being unwilling and indeed, unable to embrace it.

So How Do We Fix It?

There is no one solution or easy fix. The first step is to realize that what the marketplace is telling us is true: many people don’t want to live because the existential ground state of their lives is a gray-state of dysphoria at best, and at worst, a state of active misery, relieved only occasionally by a few quickly snatched minutes of relief, or if they are lucky, joy. That state of affairs can only be addressed by showing people very real and concrete ways in which the quality of their lives can be improved, both here and now, and in the future. Heaven isn’t waking up from cryopreservation and having to go into work two weeks later – FOREVER. That is the very definition of hell for most people. And the mystics have been smart enough to carefully exclude any mention of time-cards from their hereafters. The Mormons and the Islamists have even had the good marketing sense to offer up eternities where each man commands his own world, or at the least, his own harem.

We cryonicists need to offer concrete, if incremental practical and immediate, or at least near-term solutions to the existential woe of both the masses, and to that subset of them that are highly intelligent. We need to offer an improved quality of life today, using emerging technology, and not just talk about “the wonderful future” that will someday be there (not here, but there). And by our actions in developing and improving cryonics now, today, we need to offer an opportunity for a broad cross section of people to get involved, and to take satisfaction from their actions to extend their own lives. People respond to activism. They respond to organizations that urge them to take steps to improve their lot and inform them how to do it.

The passing of the father of cryonics, Robert Ettinger, is a case in point. His impending cryopreservation has been obvious to all who were plugged into the community for at least a year, and yet there was no planning by any cryonics organization to respond to the inevitable media blitz or, much more importantly, to the pro-death, ignorant and uniformed (but nevertheless opinion-shaping) commentary that must inevitably follow. The same was true of the recent attacks on cryonics by Johnson, Maxim, et al. If the cryonics societies can’t think that far ahead, and can’t think that strategically, how on earth are they to be trusted to have enough sense, or even the cojones, to cryopreserve, care for us and revive us?

We need to realize that we’ve got a fast car in cryonics, fast enough to fly away in; and that we leave tonight, or that we live and die this way.

References

[1] Meditation XVII: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Donne

[2] Ambrose, S. Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors, Anchor, 1996: ISBN-10: 0385479662

[3] Abma, J.C. & Martinez, G.M. (2006). Childlessness among older women in the united

states: trends and profiles. Journal of Marriage and Family. 68, 1045-1056.

Ali, L. (2008). True or False: Having Kids Makes You Happy. Retrieved May 19,

2011 from Newsweek.com < http://www.newsweek.com/id/143792>

Doss, B., Rhoades, G., Stanley, S., & Markman, H. (2009). The Effect of the Transitionto Parenthood on Relationship Quality: An 8-Year Prospective Study. Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 601-619.

Duffy, J. (2003). The pursuit of happiness (with or without kids). Retrieved May 22,2011 from BBC News Online Magazine

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3270029.stm

[4] http://billallin.com/

Posted in Cryonics Philosophy, Culture & Propaganda | 39 Comments

Robert C. W. Ettinger: News Media Obituaries, the Raw Feed

Posted on July 26, 2011 by admin

Introduction

Reproduced below is the raw feed of obituaries for Robert Ettinger. There are many more, most repetitive and based on the same primary sources (i.e., news services and THE WASHINGTON POST). Examining a representative of the raw feed is instructive because local news outlets will frequently cut, edit, or add to their primary source and they will also impact public perception of the story by how they title and illustrate it. What follows is thus an attempt to capture the quality and quantity of the regional coverage of Robert Ettinger’s cryopreservation. – Mike Darwin

THE DETROIT NEWS
Last Updated: July 26. 2011 1:00AM

Ettinger, father of cryonics movement, dies; placed in deep freeze

Kim Kozlowski/ The Detroit News

Robert Ettinger devoted his life to providing an option that could possibly lead to eternal life with the help of science.

But that type of science had yet to evolve when he died over the weekend.

So the body of the man whom many hail as the father of the cryonics movement on Monday was being prepared for storage in a liquid nitrogen tank in Clinton Township beside 100 others who shared his views. His hope: future technology will resurrect him, cure what ailed him and give him everlasting life.

“I am very sad about it,” said his son, David Ettinger. “But at the same time, the nice thing about cryonics is that hopefully I will see him again one day.”

Ettinger, 92, became the 106th patient at the organization he founded 35 years ago, the Cryonics Institute. Only one other major cryonics facility exists in the world.

The five-day process for preparing Ettinger’s body involved packing it on ice, perfusing it with chemicals to limit freezer damage and slowly cooling it to the temperature of liquid nitrogen. It began within minutes of his death on Saturday afternoon, his son said, to assure the least amount of damage. He is expected to be submerged upside down in a tank, known as a cryostat, filled with liquid nitrogen by Thursday.

Those who were inspired by Ettinger said he leaves behind a profound mark.

“Bob Ettinger inspired at least two generations of young visionaries to consider humanity’s long-term future and their place in it with a level of rationality that had rarely been applied to that topic hitherto,” said Aubrey de Grey, chief science officer of the SENS Foundation, which is working to advance rejuvenation therapies. “He showed us that cryonics makes sense. … Until he benefits personally from his vision, he will be sadly missed.”

Ettinger was 14 when he read a science fiction story that spawned cryonics. The story, “The Jameson Satellite,” relayed how a professor sent a corpse into Earth’s orbit for indefinite preservation. Millions of years later, aliens found the body, took the brain out and put it in a mechanical body. Ettinger thought the author missed the point of his own story.

“Why wait for aliens?” Ettinger told The Detroit News in 2009. “Why not do it ourselves?”

Ettinger served in World War II, where he was injured in Germany. He spent months in the hospital and discovered science was accelerating the concept of cryonics.

He self-published a book in 1962: “The Prospect of Immortality.” Two years later, Doubleday published the book, which was eventually translated into several languages.

“I thought the premise was so logical,” said Ettinger, who taught physics and math at Wayne State University and Highland Park Community College.

He founded the Cryonics Institute in 1976, first located in Detroit. For years, membership was in the single digits, but it has grown to more than 900 people from around the globe. All want either to preserve themselves, DNA or pets.

Ettinger joins his mother, Rhea Ettinger — who was the first cryopreserved corpse at the institute, in 1977 — and his first and second wives, Elaine and Mae Ettinger, the institute’s No. 2 and 34 patients, respectively.

kkozlowski@detnews.com

(313) 222-2024

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110726/OBITUARIES/107260364/Ettinger–father-of-cryonics-movement–dies–placed-in-deep-freeze#ixzz1TFZeYchG

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DAILY MAIL (London, UK)

Frozen in time: ‘Father of Cryonics’ entombed at -321F after dying aged 92

Body of Robert Ettinger committed to his own institute

Placed alongside his mother and two wives

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 1:47 PM on 26th July 2011

• Comments (19)

A pioneer of the cryonics movement which advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again in the future has died at the age of 92.

Robert Ettinger, from Clinton Township, Detroit, became the 106th person to be stored at the Cryonics Institute which he founded in 1976.

The World War Two veteran, who taught physics at Wayne State University, was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Bulge and spent years in hospitals.

Legacy: Robert Ettinger, 92, has been frozen in the Cryonics Institute he founded after his death.

High tech: The institute, in Detroit, Michigan, already has Mr Ettinger’s mother and two wives as patients

Bone graft surgery that saved his legs inspired his optimism about the future prospects of preserving life through technology, a statement from the Cryonics Institute said.

His son David Ettinger said he had been inspired by science fiction writings about deep-freezing the dead and expected researchers to make serious progress toward developing the idea.

But when nothing seemed to be happening, he wrote a book in 1964 entitled ‘The Prospect Of Immortality’, introducing the concept of cryonics.

He wrote: ‘If civilisation endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death.’

‘Sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us,’ said Ettinger

Optimist: Mr Ettinger was inspired by successful bone graft surgery he underwent after being injured during World War Two. Right, the 1964 book he wrote in which he introduced the idea of freezing humans after death

BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE

Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals with the hope that they will be able to be ‘brought back to life’ when science is able to do so.

It is often confused with cryogenics, the study of the production of very low temperatures and how materials react to them.

The procedure has to be begun within minutes of cardiac arrest. Cryoprotectants are used to prevent ice crystals forming between body cells, which would then cause irreparable damage if the victim was then ‘thawed’.

The belief is that memories and identity could survive the freezing process.

Only around 200 people have been preserved cryonically since it was first proposed in 1962.

Films featuring cryonics include Woody Allen’s 1973 Sleeper, James Cameron’s Aliens in 1986 and the 1992 movie Forever Young, starring Mel Gibson (pictured).

He added: ‘No matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing techniques are still crude when we die, sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us.’

Mr Ettinger promoted his theory in other writings and appearances on television talk shows.

The Cryonics Institute has 900 members. Similar facilities for preserving dead bodies operate in Arizona, California and Russia.

He also established the Immortalist Society, a research and education group devoted to cryonics and extending the human life span.

The institute charged $28,000 to prepare a body and store it long-term in a tank of liquid nitrogen at minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit.

The first person frozen there was Mr Ettinger’s mother, Rhea Ettinger, who died in 1977.

Both his wives, Elaine and Mae, are also patients at the institute.

His son said he was never bothered by ridicule and was a ‘reluctant prophet’.

‘He did what he thought was necessary and appropriate and didn’t worry much about what people thought,’ he said.

‘The people who are scoffers are like the people who said heavier-than-air flight won’t work.’

Robert Ettinger died at his home in Detroit after weeks of declining health.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2018628/Pioneer-cryonics-movement-92-body-frozen-institute-death.html#ixzz1TFa8WYRI

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NEW KERLA NEWS (Melbourne, AU)

Process to freeze dead body of father of cryonics Robert Ettinger starts

Melbourne, July 26 : The body of late Robert Ettinger, who is known as the father of the cryonics movement, is currently undergoing a five-day process to cool it for storage at a very low temperature.

According to the Detroit News, Ettinger, who died July 23 at the age of 92, will become the 106th patient at the organisation he founded, the Cryonics Institute, in Clinton Township, Michigan.

Once there, he will join his mother, who was the first cryo-preserved corpse at the institute in 1977, and his first and second wives, who were numbers two and 34 respectively.

The paper said Ettinger did not want a memorial service because he believed he may return.

The five-day process to preserve Ettinger’s body began within minutes of his death and involved packing the body on ice, using chemicals to limit freezer damage and slowly cooling it to the temperature of liquid nitrogen.

It quoted his son, David, as saying the body was expected to be ready to be submerged upside down in a liquid nitrogen filled tank by July 28.

“He really has been viewed as the inspirational leader of the cryonics movement, and thousands of people around the world have looked up to him and will be upset that’s gone but hopeful that he will be back,” News.com.au quoted David as saying.

–ANI

Read More: http://www.newkerala.com/news/2011/worldnews-35581.html

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KYIVPOST.COM

Cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger dies, body frozen

Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement

Yesterday at 12:22 | Associated Press

TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan (AP) — Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again someday, has died. He was 92.

Ettinger died Saturday at home in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township after weeks of declining health, son David Ettinger said.

His body became the 106th to be stored at the Cryonics Institute, which he founded in 1976.

“My father devoted himself to doing what he could to enable his family, his friends and others to come back and live again,” David Ettinger told The Associated Press. “Whether he will achieve that nobody knows at this point, but we think he has a good shot.”

Robert Ettinger, who taught physics at Wayne State University, was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and spent years in hospitals.

The bone graft surgery that spared his legs inspired his optimism about the future prospects of preserving life through technology, a Cryonics Institute statement said.

His son said Ettinger also was inspired by science fiction writings about deep-freezing the dead and expected researchers to make serious progress toward developing the idea.

But when nothing seemed to be happening, he wrote a 1964 book, “The Prospect of Immortality,” introducing the concept of cryonics.

“If civilization endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body,” he wrote, “including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death.”

He added: “No matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing techniques are still crude when we die, sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us.”

Ettinger promoted his theory in other writings and appearances on television talk shows.

The Cryonics Institute has 900 members. Similar facilities for preserving dead bodies operate in Arizona, California and Russia.

Ettinger also established the Immortalist Society, a research and education group devoted to cryonics and extending the human life span.

The Cryonics Institute charges $28,000 to prepare a body and store it long-term in a tank of liquid nitrogen at minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit.

The first person frozen there was Ettinger’s mother, Rhea Ettinger, who died in 1977. His two wives, Elaine and Mae, also are patients at the Institute.

Ettinger was never bothered by ridicule and was a “reluctant prophet,” his son said.

“He did what he thought was necessary and appropriate and didn’t worry much about what people thought,” David Ettinger said. “The people who are scoffers are like the people who said heavier-than-air flight won’t work.”

Read more: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/world/detail/109397/#ixzz1TFb2u9yV
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UPI
U.S. News

Cryonics pioneer Ettinger dead at 92

Published: July 26, 2011 at 2:49 AM

CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich., July 26 (UPI) — Robert Ettinger, who pioneered cryonics — the idea of freezing people’s bodies to be resurrected in the future, has died in Michigan at 92, his family said.

His son David told the Michigan news Web site MLive.com his father died Saturday at his home in Clinton Township. The Detroit News reported he died of respiratory failure.

Robert Ettinger was an early proponent of storing people’s bodies at very low temperature after death in hopes that future technology would allow for revival and curing of aging and disease.

Appropriately, upon his death he became the 106th person to go through the process at the organization he founded, the Cryonics Institute, the News said.

Over a period of five days, Ettinger’s body was being slowly cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen, and by Thursday is expected to be ready to be submerged upside down in a tank filled with liquid nitrogen, his son said.

“He really has been viewed as the inspirational leader of the cryonics movement, and thousands of people around the world have looked up to him and will be upset that’s [he's] gone but hopeful that he will be back,” David Ettinger said.

Robert Ettinger had said he was inspired in his effort by reading the science fiction story “The Jameson Satellite” when he was 14 years old, the News said.

David Ettinger said his father, a former Wayne State University physics professor, believed in taking facts and logic “and see where it leads you,” MLive.com said.

“Hopefully it leads us to see him again,” he said.

© 2011 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI’s prior written consent.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/26/Cryonics-pioneer-Ettinger-dead-at-92/UPI-70501311662990/#ixzz1TFbPYARV

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TEXARKANA GAZETTE

Founder of Cryonics Institute Robert Ettinger dies, body frozen

By: Associated Press – Texarkana Gazette

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich.—Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again someday, has died. He was 92.

Ettinger died Saturday at home in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township after…

Published: 07/26/2011

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NEW SCIENTIST

Dead cryonics founder is frozen as planned

22:37 25 July 2011

Health

Science In Society

Ferris Jabr, reporter

Ettinger (right) entertains visitors (Image: Cryonics Institute)

In Clinton Township, Michigan, in what looks like just another drab office building, more than 100 people float peacefully inside giant bottles filled with liquid nitrogen. Before they died they asked the Cryonics Institute to freeze them in the hopes that one day doctors will have technology to revive them.

Robert Ettinger, founder of the cryonics movement, has finally become a human popsicle himself after dying on 23 July from unspecified causes following weeks of declining health. The 92-year-old joins his mother, Rhea, his first wife, Elaine, and his second wife, Mae, who were all cryopreserved at the Cryonics Institute as well. The minimum price tag: $28,000.

Other organisations charge upwards of $200,000 and offer the option of “neuropreservation”: instead of freezing their whole bodies, clients freeze only their heads. The idea is that one’s personality and memories will be preserved in the brain and could be uploaded to a computer or artificial body in the future.

Ettinger was inspired by the Neil Jones short-story “The Jameson Satellite,” which tells of a professor who has his corpse launched into space, where – millions of years later – a race of robotic men resuscitate the professor by transplanting his brain into a mechanical body. The work of French biologist Jean Rostand, who froze and defrosted frog sperm without serious damage, also enthused Ettinger.

(Image: Sipa Press/Rex Features)

No one really knows whether we can ever return consciousness to frozen corpses, but cryopreservation is a genuine phenomenon in the animal kingdom and a useful technique in medicine.

Many living animals have evolved tricks to survive sub-zero temperatures and thaw out after temporary periods of icy paralysis. And scientists have made significant headway in freezing living tissues and even whole human organs for medical purposes. To the disappointment of Jurassic Park fans and enthusiasts of prehistoric life, the notion of resurrecting a frozen mammoth has not panned out so far.

Other people who have been cryonically preserved include American baseball player and manager Ted Williams and his son John Henry Williams, University of California psychology professor James Bedford and mathematician Thomas Donaldson.

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THE ATLANTIC

Cryonics Founder Dies, Now Patiently Awaiting His Comeback

By Rebecca J. Rosen

Jul 26 2011, 4:47 PM ET 2

Robert Ettinger, 1918-2011?

Cryonics Institute

Ettinger is now frozen in a facility in Michigan along with his two wives. “If both of my wives are revived,” he said, “that will be a high class problem.”

Over the weekend, Robert Ettinger, founder of the cryonics movement, died at his home in Michigan and was quickly frozen. “We’re obviously sad,” said his son David in an obituary in The Washington Post. But “we were able to freeze him under optimum conditions, so he’s got another chance.”

For the uninitiated: Cryonics is the preservation of dead people — “patients” in cryonics-speak — at very low temperatures in preparation for a time when medical advances allow them to be thawed and brought back to life. At the top of the page, take a look at the facilities, machines, and people that are working to keep more than 100 people and several dozen animals frozen in the suburbs of Detroit.

A dream of a world where death can be undone raises some nasty ethical problems, but cryonicists are not to be deterred. In a New Yorker profile of Ettinger two years ago (subscription required), Jill Lepore wrote:

But if no one ever dies, won’t there be too many people on the planet? “The people could simply agree to share the available space in shifts, Ettinger suggested, “going into suspended animation from time to time to make room for others.” There will be no childbirth. Fetuses will be incubated in jars. “Essentially, motherhood will be abolished.” Then, too, eugenics will help keep the birthrate down, and deformed babies could be frozen against the day that someone might actually want them, or figure out how to fix them. “Cretins,” for instance, or babies born with cerebral palsy. For the weak-minded, who might find making such a decision difficult, Ettinger offered a philosophical rule of thumb: Ask yourself, “If the child were already frozen and it were within my power to return him to deformed life, would I do so? If the answer is negative, then probably the freezer is where he belongs.”

Regardless of your position on the movement’s moral standing or the odds you’d give of anyone ever being revived, it is clear that cryonics presents an immense technological challenge. How do you freeze a body for hundreds of years? Machines break, electricity fails, people shirk their responsibilities. If a body warms up, even for a short while, decomposition will set in and any hope of awakening will be dashed. (For a fantastic look at the difficulties faced when trying to keep bodies frozen, check out this episode of This American Life.)

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THE AGE.COM.AU

Cryonics pioneer is coolly waiting for second chance

John Flesher

July 27, 2011

In storage … Robert Ettinger.

TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan: Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again, has died. He was 92.

Mr Ettinger died on Saturday at home in Detroit after weeks of declining health, his son, David Ettinger, said. His body has become the 106th to be stored at the Cryonics Institute, which he founded in 1976.

”My father devoted himself to doing what he could to enable his family, his friends and others to come back and live again,” David Ettinger said. ”Whether he will achieve that nobody knows at this point but we think he has a good shot.”

Advertisement: Story continues below

Robert Ettinger, who taught physics at Wayne State University, was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and spent years in hospitals. The bone graft surgery that spared his legs inspired his optimism about the prospects of preserving life through technology, a Cryonics Institute statement said.

His son said Mr Ettinger also was inspired by science fiction writings about deep-freezing the dead and expected researchers to make serious progress towards developing the idea. But when nothing seemed to be happening, he wrote a book in 1964 called The Prospect of Immortality, introducing the concept of cryonics.

”If civilisation endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body,” he wrote, ”including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death.”

The institute charges $US28,000 ($25,890) to prepare a body and store it long term in a tank of liquid nitrogen at minus 160 degrees. The first person frozen there was Mr Ettinger’s mother, Rhea, who died in 1977. His two wives, Elaine and Mae, are also held by the institute.

David Ettinger said his father was a ”reluctant prophet”. ”He did what he thought was necessary and appropriate and didn’t worry much about what people thought … Scoffers are like the people who said heavier-than-air flight won’t work.”

Associated Press

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/cryonics-pioneer-is-coolly-waiting-for-second-chance-20110726-1hymi.html#ixzz1TFciv96e

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THE GUARDIAN UK

Would you want to be brought back to life after death?

Tuesday 26 July 2011 14.44 BST

Robert Ettinger, a pioneer of the cryonics movement, has died and had his body stored in a tank of liquid nitrogen, in the hope that medical technology may one day bring him back to life. If Ettinger’s technology worked, would you be tempted to have yourself laid to rest in a deep-freezer?

1. Yes

2. No

Cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger dies

Ettinger’s body is frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at the institute he founded, along with those of his mother and wives

Robert Ettinger, a pioneer of the cryonics movement, has died and had his body stored at the facility he founded in the hope that medical technology will enable him to live again one day.

Ettinger died at home on Saturday, aged 92, in a suburb of Detroit after weeks of declining health. His body became the 106th to be frozen and stored at the Cryonics Institute, which he founded in 1976.

“My father devoted himself to doing what he could to enable his family, his friends and others to come back and live again,” said his son David. “Whether he will achieve that nobody knows at this point, but we think he has a good shot.”

Ettinger, a university physics teacher, was seriously wounded during the second world war at the Battle of the Bulge and spent years in hospitals. The bone graft surgery that saved his legs inspired his optimism about the prospects of preserving life through technology, a statement from the institute said. .

His son said Ettinger was also inspired by science fiction writings about deepfreezing the dead, and expected researchers to make serious progress toward developing the idea. But when nothing seemed to be happening, he wrote a 1964 book, The Prospect of Immortality, introducing the concept of cryonics.

“If civilization endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death,” he wrote.

“No matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing techniques are still crude when we die, sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us.”

Ettinger promoted his theory in other writings and appearances on television. There are now similar facilities for preserving bodies in Arizona, California and in Russia. Ettinger also established the Immortalist Society, a research and education group devoted to cryonics and extending the human life span.

The Cryonics Institute charges $28,000 (£17,000) to prepare a body and store it in a tank of liquid nitrogen. The first person frozen there was Ettinger’s mother, Rhea, who died in 1977. His two wives, Elaine and Mae, also are stored at the institute.

Ettinger was never bothered by ridicule and was a “reluctant prophet”, his son said. “He did what he thought was necessary and appropriate and didn’t worry much about what people thought,” he said. “The people who are scoffers are like the people who said heavier-than-air flight won’t work.”

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THE HERALD SUN

Robert Ettinger, father of cryonics, joins his mother and two wives on ice

• From: NewsCore

• July 26, 2011 6:38AM

1940s photograph of Robert Ettinger, who served in the US Army in Belgium during World War II. Picture: Wikipedia Source: Supplied

THE man known as a father of the cryonics movement has died at 92 and his body is currently undergoing a five-day process to cool it for storage at a very low temperature.

The Detroit News reported Robert Ettinger, who died Saturday, will become the 106th patient at the organisation he founded, the Cryonics Institute, in Clinton Township, Michigan.

Once there, he will join his mother, who was the first cryo-preserved corpse at the institute in 1977, and his first and second wives, who were numbers two and 34 respectively.

The paper said Mr Ettinger did not want a memorial service because he believed he may return.

The five-day process to preserve Mr Ettinger’s body began within minutes of his death and involved packing the body on ice, using chemicals to limit freezer damage and slowly cooling it to the temperature of liquid nitrogen, the News reported.

Mr Ettinger’s son David told the paper his father’s body was expected to be ready to be submerged upside down in a liquid nitrogen filled tank by Thursday.

Read more at: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/robert-ettinger-father-of-cryonics-joins-his-mother-and-two-wives-on-ice/story-fn7celvh-1226101952473

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NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Father of cryonics, Robert Ettinger, dead – for now?

BY DOAK JANTZEN

DAILY NEWS WRITER

Monday, July 25th 2011, 8:25 PM

Richard Lee/Detreoit Free Press /AP

Robert Ettinger, former president of Cryonics Institute is shown at the institute facilities in Clinton Township, Mich., July 29, 2002.

Robert Ettinger, a founder of the cryonics movement in the US, died — and began the process of cryopreservation — on Saturday, July 23, 2011.

With his blood replaced by antifreeze, Ettinger will spend the foreseeable future swimming in liquid nitrogen – at minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit.

He will be housed at the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan, which was founded in 1976 and is where Ettinger first froze his dead mother, followed by his first wife.

The founder will be the 106th patient to be frozen.

Ettinger was born in Atlantic City in 1918. In the 1920s his family moved to Detroit and he began reading science-fiction in Hugo Gernsback’s “Amazing Stories” magazines.

According to a New Yorker profile, it was Neil R. Jones’ story “The Jameson Satellite,” published in the magazine in 1931, which first sparked his interest in immortality.

In 1964 he published his cryonics manifesto, “The Prospect of Immortality,” which envisioned a world in which no one ever dies, overcrowding is handled by sharing the earth in shifts, and science, perfected over the ages, can cure all human ailments.

The process of cryonics aims to render the patient immortal by keeping their body around long enough for the science of reanimation to catch up. According to the Institute’s website, liquid nitrogen cools the body “to a temperature where physical decay essentially stops,” so that, while dead, one’s body does not rot.

Over 900 people worldwide have signed up as members of Ettinger’s Cryonics Institute alone. Besides the 106 frozen patients, the wearhouse holds 179 human tissue/DNA samples, 51 pet tissue/DNA samples, and 78 pets in cryostasis according to its website.

Most famously, Boston Red Sox left fielder Ted Williams’ head was cryonically frozen after his death in 2002, though not at the Cryonics Institute, but at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona, a rival company founded in 1972 by Fred and Linda Chamberlain.

Read more at: http://www.nydailynews.com/tech_guide/2011/07/25/2011-07-25_father_of_cryonics_robert_ettinger_dead__for_now.html

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WALL STREET JOURAL

Robert Ettinger | 1918-2011
Pursuing A Frozen Path

By STEPHEN MILLER

Robert Ettinger was the leading apostle of cryonics, the practice of freezing corpses in the hope that one day science will bring them back to life, cure what killed them and restore them to youth and vigor.

Robert Ettinger

Mr. Ettinger, who died Saturday at age 92, popularized cryonics in his 1962 book, “The Prospect of Immortality,” where he wrote, “Sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us.”

In 1976, Mr. Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute in a Detroit suburb, where he eventually stored more than 100 bodies in giant vats of liquid nitrogen, at 320 degrees below zero. Clients must be declared legally dead prior to immersion.

The price for preservation at the institute is about $30,000, including perpetual care. Mr. Ettinger is now preserved there.

“Our patients are not truly dead in any fundamental sense,” he told the New Yorker in a 2010 profile. None have ever been brought back to life, and many scientists are skeptical about cryonics.

Mr. Ettinger’s enthusiasm for suspended animation proved infectious: At least a half-dozen other cryonic-suspension organizations exist in the U.S., Russia and Portugal, with hundreds of frozen clients awaiting revivification.

The son of Jewish immigrants who ran a furniture store in Detroit, Mr. Ettinger grew up reading science fiction and studied physics and mathematics in college. He went to teach physics at Wayne State University and Highland Park Community College, both in Michigan.

Mr. Ettinger fought in World War II and was badly injured by German mortar fire, which left him with a permanent limp. While recuperating in a hospital stateside, Mr. Ettinger began musing about mortality and in 1948 published “The Penultimate Trump,” a science-fiction story about a man who is frozen and revived centuries later.

Inspired in part by British advances in freezing and thawing living cells, Mr. Ettinger began producing nonfiction articles on the topic for magazines. He then wrote “The Prospect of Immortality,” which garnered newspaper articles and interviews on TV and radio. Cryonics societies sprang up in New York and California. In 1967 the first human was cryonically preserved, a California psychology professor, kicking off what Mr. Ettinger called “The Freezer Era.”

He rejected cloning as an alternative route to immortality, because “all it does it get you a twin.”

Mr. Ettinger went on to found the nonprofit Cryonics Institute where the first client to be preserved was his mother. He went on to preserve his wife after she died. He remarried and his second wife was also preserved upon death. But he failed to persuade his father or his brother to join the frozen members of his family.

“That was one of my major sorrows,” Mr. Ettinger said in 2010. “He was my brother. I had hoped to save him from death.”

Unlike other cryonic organizations, Mr. Ettinger’s Cryonics Institute freezes only entire bodies, not just heads as some organizations do, at reduced cost. This practice—neurocryopreservation—became notorious when it was revealed that baseball slugger Ted Williams had undergone the procedure after death.

Write to Stephen Miller at stephen.miller@wsj.com

Read more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904772304576468460105071604.html

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ABC NET.COM

US cryonics founder dies, has body frozen

Posted July 26, 2011 06:54:24

Robert Ettinger, the founder of a movement that advocates storing bodies at ultra-low temperatures after death until new technology allows them to be revived, has died and his body frozen at the institute he founded, his family said Monday.

Mr Ettinger died on Saturday at his home in Clinton Township, Michigan and “has been frozen at the Institute,” a statement sent to AFP by his son David said.

The Cryonics Institute, which Mr Ettinger founded in 1976 as a “non-profit organisation that could freeze and store patients at death” has more than 900 members around the world and “106 patients in storage,” the statement says.

Born in 1918, Mr Ettinger went public with his theory of cryonics in 1964 with the publication of his work The Prospect of Immortality.

In the book, he contends that “at very low temperatures it is possible, right now, to preserve dead people with essentially no deterioration, indefinitely.

“If civilisation endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death,” he said in the book.

Mr Ettinger’s keen interest in the life-saving promise held by future medical technology was sparked, according to the statement, by the years he spent in hospitals after he was seriously wounded in combat in World War II.

“His legs were saved as a result of then innovative bone graft surgery. That sparked Mr Ettinger’s interest in the promise of future medical technology,” the statement says.

AFP

Topics: human-interest, death, united-states

Read more at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-26/cryonics-founder-dies/2810076

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SYDNEY HERALD SUN

Father of cryonics Robert Ettinger dies, body starts freezing process

• From: NewsCore

• July 26, 2011 6:38AM

THE man known as a father of the cryonics movement has died at 92 and his body is currently undergoing a five-day process to cool it for storage at a very low temperature.

The Detroit News reported Robert Ettinger, who died Saturday, will become the 106th patient at the organisation he founded, the Cryonics Institute, in Clinton Township, Michigan.

Once there, he will join his mother, who was the first cryo-preserved corpse at the institute in 1977, and his first and second wives, who were numbers two and 34 respectively.

The paper said Mr Ettinger did not want a memorial service because he believed he may return.

Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.

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• Cryogenics advocate dies, body frozen Herald Sun, 17 hours ago

• I have seen the future The Australian, 8 Jul 2011

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• Deep freeze as an injury aid Adelaide Now, 7 Apr 2011

• Man dies as thieves target hair extensions Herald Sun, 19 Mar 2011

End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.

It quoted his son, David, as saying the body was expected to be ready to be submerged upside down in a liquid nitrogen filled tank by Thursday.

Read more at: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/father-of-cryonics-robert-ettinger-dies-body-starts-freezing-process/story-e6frf7jx-1226101738208

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THE AUSTRALIAN AGE

An idea frozen in time that promises life hereafter

July 26, 2011

CA Residents Save $400, Exp 8/22. In support of CA cord blood policy

Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger.

ROBERT CHESTER WILSON ETTINGER IMMORTALIST 4-12-1918 – 23-7-2011

ROBERT Ettinger, the intellectual father of the cryonics movement, whose members have themselves frozen at death pending scientific resurrection, has died at his home at Clinton Township in, Michigan, in the United States. He was 92.

Ettinger styled himself an ”immortalist”, since he argued that whole body or head-only freezing (”neurological suspension”) was only one means of achieving indefinite life. His rationale for pursuing this goal was contained in his book The Prospect Of Immortality (1964), which revealed him as an unquenchable optimist about mankind’s technological future.

Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger.

A physics teacher with an interest in science fiction, he predicted the evolution of machines that would manufacture from raw atoms all that humans needed. He foresaw intergalactic settlement, and argued that science would produce medical machines that would cure all diseases.

What now seemed to be a fatal illness would be no more than a twinge by 2050. From this it followed that the dead might be ”cured” by the doctors of the future.

Introducing what he called the Freezer Era, Ettinger described a world in which people would become nobler and more responsible as they were confronted with the reality of living forever. And if Earth became too crowded with long-lived humans? ”The people could simply agree to share the available space in shifts,” he wrote, ”going into suspended animation from time to time to make room for others”.

Ettinger proposed that governments immediately initiate a mass-freezing program. He suggested that this might have huge social benefits. To pay the premiums on their frozen families, people would need steady work and would be compelled to live responsible lives. He predicted that when immortality was achieved, crime would become extinct, since criminals would be afraid of justice pursuing them beyond the grave. Immortality would secure for man a higher, nobler nature.

The authorities remained unmoved. But his book proved popular and did inspire a number of cryonics organisations. In 1967, the first man was drained of blood and permeated with cryoprotectant (a sort of human antifreeze) and placed in a vat of liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees.

Despite Ettinger’s lofty aims, there were also opportunists, who imagined that cryonics would become big business, and outright ghouls. In the 1970s, one Californian cryonics society went bust without informing the relatives of its dozen ”patients”, who found their loved ones decomposing in packing cases in a suburban crypt. The head of that business had found alternative work repairing television sets.

The movement is hated by orthodox scientists, who hold that resurrecting a frozen body would be like ”trying to turn a hamburger back into a cow”.

The Cryonics Institute in the United States claims there are about 900 dues-paying members around the world (payments range between $US28,000 and $US150,000) who plan to be frozen when their time comes. The Cryonics Association of Australia says at least eight Australians have been frozen at death and the association has 25 affiliates, with a number of others also signed up.

The son of Russian immigrants of Jewish stock, Ettinger was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and went to school in Detroit after his family moved there, and then on to Wayne State University, where he studied physics and maths. He grew up a determined atheist.

During World War II he served as a second lieutenant (pictured, left) and was wounded before the Battle of the Bulge. The scenes of destruction he witnessed during the war had little effect on his immortalist views.

After the war he taught physics at Wayne State University and at a college near Michigan. He had begun brooding on the possibilities of cryonics in the 1930s, and was later inspired by The Jameson Satellite, a science-fiction short story by Neil Jones, about a man who has his corpse placed into orbit in the belief that the cold of outer space would preserve him. Millions of years passed, and the human race died out. Then a race of advanced aliens came along with mechanical bodies; they took the man’s frozen brain, and put it in a mechanical body.

”It was immediately obvious to me,” Ettinger said, ”that the author had missed the main point of his own story – namely that if there was any sense at all in expecting a frozen person to be revived someday, there was no point in waiting for aliens to do it in millions of years. We could do it ourselves in a very short time, and not just for a few eccentrics, but for everybody.

”We have to wait for the technology of revival. But we have to see to the arrangements of freezing ourselves, because most of us are going to die long before the technology is there.”

In 1947, Ettinger wrote a short story on the theme, fully expecting that other more influential people would pick up on his idea. When, by 1960, no mass freezing program had been initiated, Ettinger wrote an essay on the subject, dealing mainly with ”the insurance aspect”, which he sent to about 200 people selected at random from Who’s Who In America.

There was ”virtually zero response”, so he wrote The Prospect of Immortality, which was first published privately. The sequel, Man Into Superman, appeared in 1968.

Ettinger retired from teaching in 1972, but to the end remained convinced that cryonics would catch on. ”Someday there will be some sort of psychological trigger that will move all these people to take the practical steps they have not yet taken. When people realise that their children and grandchildren will enjoy indefinite life,” he said, ”that they may well be the last generation to die.”

He took encouragement from advances in nano-technology, the manipulation of computers at a microscopic level, which he thought would provide the machinery to successfully repair frozen corpses.

Ettinger’s frozen body has joined those of his mother and two wives in cold storage. His first patient was his mother, Rhea, who died in 1977. ”I don’t know if she was very enthusiastic about it,” he said, ”but she was willing.” A decade later, he froze his second patient – his wife Elaine, who died in 1987 and with whom he had two children. The next year he married his second wife, Mae. When she died in 2000, she was the institute’s 34th patient.

Cryonics was a serious topic for Ettinger, but he had a sense of humour. ”If both of my wives are revived,” he said last year, ”that will be a high class problem.”

He is survived by a son, David, and daughter, Shelley, from his first marriage, both of whom are active immortalists.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/obituaries/an-idea-frozen-in-time-that-promises-life-hereafter-20110725-1hx1f.html#ixzz1TFh7ox00

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TELEGRAPH (LONDON, UK)

All Headline News

Father of Cryonics dies, has body frozen

Cost for cryo-freezing starts at $30,000.

Source: (AHN)

Reporter: Ayinde O. Chase

Location: Traverse City, MI, United States Published: July 26, 2011 03:18 pm EDT

Topics: Human Interest, Curiosity, Science And Technology, Technology, Human Interest, People

Robert Ettinger, founder of the cryonics movement in the United States has died and had his body placed in a tank of liquid nitrogen. It is his hope that someday in the future medical technology can bring him back to life.

Ettinger, who died Saturday, will become the 106th patient at the organisation he founded, the Cryonics Institute, in Clinton Township, Michigan.

He is now joined at the facility with his mother, who was the first cryo-preserved corpse at the there in 1977. He is also in the company of both his first and second wives, who were numbers two and 34 respectively.

He also said, “No matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing techniques are still crude when we die, sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us.”

The price for preservation at the institute is about $30,000, including ongoing perpetual care.

One of Etttinger’s final wishes was that no memorial service be held because he believed he may return.

The 92-year-old pioneer died in his home in a suburb outside of Detroit after weeks of fighting declining health.

Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90055380?Father%20of%20Cryonics%20dies%2C%20has%20body%20frozen#ixzz1TFhgvFBK

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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES

Life After Death: Cryonics Pioneer Robert Ettinger Dies

By IBTimes Staff Reporter | July 26, 2011 12:53 AM EDT

Robert Ettinger, the founding father of the cryonics movements that believes in the low-temperature preservation of the dead with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future, died on Saturday. He was 92.

Ettinger died in his home in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township. His health had been declining in recent weeks, his son David Ettinger said. Ettinger’s body became the 106th to be stored at the Cryonics Institute which he founded in 1976.

Etiinger, the son of Jewish immigrants, served in the U.S. military during World War II and was severely wounded in battle in Germany. While recuperating in hospitals, Ettinger nurtured the idea of preserving life through technology.

Ettinger who grew up on Science fiction was especially inspired by a Neil R. Jones story, “The Jameson Satellite, which he read when he was 12. The tale, about a man who has his corpse placed into orbit in the belief that the cold of outer space would preserve him and was discovered millions of years later by an advanced race of aliens who put the man’s brains in a mechanical body, got Ettinger brooding on the possibilities of cryonics in the 1930′s. It was Ettinger’s founding document on cryonics, “The Prospect of Immortality” that made him an overnight celebrity and garner a lot of media attention. Following the publication of the document, which describes the practical and moral aspects of deep-freezing the dead, Ettinger made a lot of television appearances with David Frost, Johnny Carson, Steve Allen, among others.

“The Prospect of Immortality” led to various Cryonics societies springing up in New York and California. In 1966 Ettinger was elected the President of the Cryonics Society of Michigan which was later transformed under his direction into the Cryonics Institute in 1976. More than 100 bodies are stored at the institute in giant vats of liquid nitrogen, at 320 degrees below zero. The price for preservation at the institute is about $30,000, including perpetual care. Ettinger’s mother became the first to be preserved there. He went on to preserve his first and second wife at the Institute. The Cryonics Institute has 900 members. Similar facilities for preserving dead bodies operate in Arizona, California and Russia.

Ettinger who taught physics at Wayne State University strongly believed that someday medical science and technology would become advanced and sophisticated enough to heal the preserved bodies and bring them back to life.

“He did what he thought was necessary and appropriate and didn’t worry much about what people thought. The people who are scoffers are like the people who said heavier-than-air flight won’t work,” David Ettinger told the Associated Press.

Read more at: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/186694/20110726/robert-ettinger-cryonics-immortality.htm

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WIRED.CO.UK

Founder of the cryonics movement dies (and is frozen)

By Katie Scott

26 July 11

Robert Ettinger — the founder of the cryonics movement –has died aged 92, and his body has now been frozen.

Ettinger died at his home in Michigan and his body has now beencryopreserved at the Cryonics Institute. Among the 105 people already stored at the facility are his mother Rhea, and his two wives: Elaine, and former editor of The Immortalist magazine, Mae. The Wall Street Journal adds that Ettinger’s father and brother refused to be frozen.

Born in 1918, Ettinger was a university physics lecturer whose interest in medical engineering came about after sustaining a serious injury in the Second World War. He had to have bone graft surgery — which, at the time, was a nascent technique — and, says the Cryonics Institute, “sparked his interest in the promise of future medical technology.”

In 1964, Ettinger penned The Prospect of Immortality — a book “advocating and explaining the cryonics thesis”. In it he wrote: “If civilisation endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death…Hence we need only arrange to have our bodies, after we die, stored in suitable freezers against the time when science may be able to help us.

12 years later, in 1976, Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute– a non-profit organisation, which freezes and then stores patients in liquid nitrogen at 320 degrees below zero — a process that costs around $28,000. The Institute has more than 900 members worldwide. Ettinger also founded the Immortalist Society and wrote other titles including Man into Superman.

His son, David Ettinger told the Guardian: “He did what he thought was necessary and appropriate and didn’t worry much about what people thought. The people who are scoffers are like the people who said heavier-than-air flight won’t work.”

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+ MASS DEVICE

Founder of cryonics movement dies, is cryogenically frozen

July 26, 2011 by MassDevice staff

Robert Ettinger, founder of the Cryonics Institute, is stored in a freezer after death in hopes of being revived one day.

MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Cryonics Institute founder Robert Ettinger was stored in a freezer alongside his mother and first and second wives after passing away over the weekend in hopes of being revived in the future.

Ettinger is considered by some to be the father of the cryonics movement, through which sick or dying humans and animals who can’t be sustained by contemporary medicine are preserved at low temperatures under the assumption that science will one day unlock the key to reanimating the lifeless body and curing what ailed it.

“At very low temperatures it is possible, right now, to preserve dead people with essentially no deterioration, indefinitely,” Ettinger wrote in his 1962 novel, The Prospect of Immortality. “If civilization endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death.”

Ettinger popularized the cryonics movement during the 1960s and 1970s by publishing novels and making the rounds at a television talk shows, including an appearance on The Tonight Show. He founded the Cryonics Institute in 1976, a non-profit organization that has over 900 members worldwide as well as 106 patients in storage, according to a press release.

Ettinger was 92 years old when he was frozen.

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NEWSER

Cryonics Founder Robert Ettinger Dead … for Now

He’s frozen at 92

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Jul 26, 2011 2:39 AM CDT

DiggFarkLinkedInStumbleUponDeliciousGoogle BuzzRedditTumblr(Newser) – After a lifetime pushing the benefits of freezing dead people in the hope that they can someday be revived by medical science, Robert Ettinger has died—and been frozen. The 92-year-old father of the cryonics movement has joined 105 other people—including his mother and two wives—frozen in liquid nitrogen at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan he founded in 1976, AP reports.

Ettinger, a professor of physics, was seriously wounded in World War II and got the idea for preserving life through technology after receiving bone graft surgery to save his legs. “He did what he thought was necessary and appropriate and didn’t worry much about what people thought,” his son says, describing his father as a “reluctant prophet” who was unafraid of ridicule.

Read more at: http://www.newser.com/story/124302/father-of-cryonics-robert-ettinger-dead-at-92.html

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UPI

U.S. News

Cryonics pioneer Ettinger dead at 92

Published: July 26, 2011 at 2:49 AM

LINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich., July 26 (UPI) — Robert Ettinger, who pioneered cryonics — the idea of freezing people’s bodies to be resurrected in the future, has died in Michigan at 92, his family said.

His son David told the Michigan news Web site MLive.com his father died Saturday at his home in Clinton Township. The Detroit News reported he died of respiratory failure.

Robert Ettinger was an early proponent of storing people’s bodies at very low temperature after death in hopes that future technology would allow for revival and curing of aging and disease.

Appropriately, upon his death he became the 106th person to go through the process at the organization he founded, the Cryonics Institute, the News said.

Robert Ettinger had said he was inspired in his effort by reading the science fiction story “The Jameson Satellite” when he was 14 years old, the News said.

David Ettinger said his father, a former Wayne State University physics professor, believed in taking facts and logic “and see where it leads you,” MLive.com said.

“Hopefully it leads us to see him again,” he said.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/26/Cryonics-pioneer-Ettinger-dead-at-92/UPI-70501311662990/#ixzz1TFjrUP8T

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WASHINGTON POST

Man Who Vowed to Live Forever Died Over the Weekend

Charlie Jane Anders

Robert C.W. Ettinger, who famously said that death was for the unprepared and the unimaginative, died on Saturday. But the physics teacher and science fiction writer may be coming back — his family froze his body cryogenically.

Ettinger, widely considered the founder of the cryogenics movement, is being stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen in a facility just outside Detroit, along with 100 other “immortalists” who were frozen at death. Ettinger wrote The Prospect of Immortality in 1962, arguing that people would become nobler and more responsible if they were going to live forever — and if the world got too crowded, everyone could take turns going into suspended animation. He told the New Yorker last year that his frozen clients are “not truly dead in any fundamental sense.”

Among those 100 people already frozen are Ettinger’s two deceased wives, one of whom died in 1987 and the other of whom died in 2000. If both women are revived at once, along with Ettinger himself, “that will be a high-class problem,” Ettinger once admitted. [Washington Post]

Photo via Cryonics.org.

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THE DETROIT NEWS

Last Updated: July 25. 2011 6:07PM

Ettinger, father of cryonics movement, dies; placed in deep freeze

Kim Kozlowski/ The Detroit News

One of the founders of a movement to store people’s bodies at very low temperature after death in hopes that future technology would allow for revival and curing of aging and disease has died of respiratory failure. He was 92.

Robert Ettinger — the Clinton Township man widely regarded as the father of the cryonics movement — has become the 106th patient at the organization he founded, the Cryonics Institute, housed in a nondescript industrial park off Interstate 94 in Clinton Township.

The five-day process — which involved packing Ettinger’s body on ice, profusing with chemicals to limit freezer damage and slowly cooling to the temperature of liquid nitrogen — began within minutes of his death on Saturday afternoon to assure the least amount of damage. He is expected to be ready to be submerged upside down in a tank, known as a cryostat, filled with liquid nitrogen by Thursday, according to his son, David Ettinger.

Robert Ettinger was 14 years old when he read a science fiction story that spawned the idea that today is known as cryonics.

The story, “The Jameson Satellite,” relayed how a professor sent a corpse into the earth’s orbit for indefinite preservation. Millions of years later, aliens found the body, took the brain out and put it in a mechanical body. Ettinger thought the author missed the point of his own story.

“Why wait for aliens?” Ettinger told The Detroit News in 2009. “Why not do it ourselves?”

Ettinger served in World War II, where he was injured in Germany. He spent months in the hospital and discovered science was accelerating the concept of cryonics. He wrote to scores of people in Who’s Who of America, trying to persuade them to get behind the concept and do something about it.

When he got no response, he self-published a book in 1962 called “The Prospect of Immortality.” Two years later, Doubleday published the book, which was eventually translated into several languages, including French, German, Dutch and Italian.

“I thought the premise was so logical,” said Ettinger, who taught physics and math at Wayne State University and Highland Park Community College.

Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute in 1976, first located in Detroit. He also founded the Immortalist Society, an organization devoted to education and research relating to cryonics and life extension.

He eventually relocated the institute to Clinton Township.

For years, membership was in the single digits, but it has exploded 500 percent since 2000 to more than 900 people from around the globe. All want either to preserve themselves, DNA or pets. The facility has preserved more than 64 animals, mostly dogs and cats, but a few birds and a hamster.

Besides his son, Ettinger leaves behind a daughter, Shelley Ettinger, who is not a member of the Cryonics Institute.

At the institute, Ettinger joins his mother, Rhea Ettinger, who was the first cryopreserved corpse at the institute, in 1977. He also joins his first and second wives, Elaine and Mae Ettinger, who were the institute’s No. 2 and 34 patients, respectively.

Ettinger didn’t want a memorial service because he believed he may come back again. But his son said there was discussion about having one during the annual meeting of the Cryonics Institute in September.

Memorials may be made to the institute or the Immortalist Society Research Fund.

kkozlowski@detnews.com

(313) 222-2024

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110725/METRO/107250393/Ettinger–father-of-cryonics-movement–dies–placed-in-deep-freeze#ixzz1TFkooMUE

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MLIVE

Cryonics founder Robert Ettinger dies at 92, but family hopes to see him alive again in future

Published: Monday, July 25, 2011, 11:41 AM Updated: Monday, July 25, 2011, 1:36 PM

By Jonathan Oosting | MLive.com

Courtesy Photo Robert Ettinger

Robert Ettinger, the “father of cryonics,” died at his Clinton Township home on Saturday at the age of 92, but the movement he helped create gives his family hope they will see him again.

“My father didn’t believe in deferring to authority,” David Ettinger told MLive.com this morning. “He always said you take the facts, you take the logic and you see where it leads you. Hopefully it leads us to see him again.”

The former Wayne State University physics professor died of natural causes following weeks of poor health. His body was suspended in liquid nitrogen at the nonprofit Cryonics Institute, which he founded in 1976 after hypothesizing similar technology in his 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality.

He joins 105 other “frozen” patients at the Macomb County facility, including his wife and mother, which suspends bodies in an indefinite state of “cryostasis” as they await scientific breakthroughs that may allow them to be revived and rejuvenated.

David Ettinger described his father as a “reluctant prophet” who first began thinking about cryonics in the 1940s and — since no one else did — wrote a book and — since no one else did — opened the nonprofit in order to turn his idea into a “practical option.”

Robert Ettinger would go on to popularize the cryonics moment as a regular guest on The Tonight Show and through interviews with David Frost, Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin. He continued to publish books, and the Cryonics Institute saw a surge in popularity in recent years.

Asked about his father’s legacy, David Ettinger said it could be decades before his life’s work might reward him with additional life.

“I never had a conversation about how he would be remembered,” David Ettinger said. ” Memorial services and funerals didn’t interest him. He was interested in pracitically preserving his life.”

Related topics: Buzz, Cryonics Institute, Robert Ettinger

Read more at: http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/07/cryonics_founder_robert_etting.html

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PR NEWSWIRE

Founder of Cryonics Movement Dies, is Frozen at Cryonics Institute

CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich., July 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Robert Ettinger, the founder of the cryonics movement and of the Cryonics Institute, died on Saturday, July 23, at home in Clinton Township, Michigan, and has been frozen at the Institute. The cryonics movement advocates storage at very low temperatures after death in the hope that future technology will permit revival and the cure of aging and disease.

Mr. Ettinger wrote The Prospect of Immortality in 1962, a book advocating and explaining the cryonics thesis. From The Prospect of Immortality:

The fact: At very low temperatures it is possible, right now, to preserve dead people with essentially no deterioration, indefinitely…

The assumption: If civilization endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death. . .

Hence we need only arrange to have our bodies, after we die, stored in suitable freezers against the time when science may be able to help us. No matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing techniques are still crude when we die, sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us.

The Prospect of Immortality has been published around the world, with new editions currently in print or planned in South Korea, Taiwan and China.

Mr. Ettinger popularized the cryonics movement in the 1960s and 1970s through appearances on a wide variety of talk shows, including The Tonight Show and the David Frost, Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin programs.

Other books by Mr. Ettinger further discussed the cryonics thesis and the promise of future technology. They include Man Into Superman (1970) and Youniverse (2009). New Asian editions of Man into Superman are also currently planned. The Philosophy of Robert Ettinger (2002) is a collection of academic essays discussing Mr. Ettinger’s ideas.

Mr. Ettinger was born in 1918, and served in the U.S. Army in Belgium during World War II, where he was seriously wounded. Mr. Ettinger spent several years in hospitals after the war, and his legs were saved as a result of then innovative bone graft surgery. That sparked Mr. Ettinger’s interest in the promise of future medical technology.

Mr. Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute in 1976 in order to create a non-profit organization that could freeze and store patients at death. CI (www.cryonics.org) has over 900 members worldwide in addition to 106 patients in storage. As advances in research have further confirmed the likelihood of dramatic improvements in future medicine, the cryonics movement has grown to include thousands of supporters worldwide, including organizations in Russia, Australia, Germany and other locations.

Mr. Ettinger also founded the Immortalist Society, an organization devoted to education and research relating to cryonics and life extension.

SOURCE Cryonics Institute

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SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Cryonics founder dies and has his body frozen … at 92

Robert Ettinger … founder of the Cryonics Institute.

Robert Ettinger, founder of a movement that advocates storing bodies at ultra-low temperatures after death until new technology allows them to be revived, has died and his body has been frozen at the institute he founded.

Mr Ettinger died aged 92 at his home in Clinton Township, Michigan, in the US on Saturday.

His body “has been frozen at the institute”, his son David said in a statement.

Advertisement: Story continues below

Born in 1918, Mr Ettinger went public with his theory of cryonics in 1964 with the publication of his work, The Prospect of Immortality.

In the book, he contends that “at very low temperatures it is possible, right now, to preserve dead people with essentially no deterioration, indefinitely”.

“His legs were saved as a result of then innovative bone graft surgery. That sparked Mr Ettinger’s interest in the promise of future medical technology,” the statement says.

New editions of The Prospect of Immortality are in print or in the planning stage in South Korea, Taiwan and China.

AFP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/cryonics-founder-dies-and-has-his-body-frozen–at-92-20110726-1hxob.html#ixzz1TFm1Uyg8

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BELFAST TELEGRAPH

Cryonics pioneer frozen after death

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope medical technology will enable them to live again some day, has died. He was 92.

The Cryonics Institute in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township said Mr Ettinger died on Saturday and was promptly frozen.

Son David Ettinger said his father’s health was failing for some time.

Mr Ettinger senior first proposed storing dead bodies at low temperatures to await future revival in a 1964 book. He continued promoting the idea for decades in writing and public appearances.

He founded the Cryonics Institute in 1976. He is the 106th person whose body is stored at the institute at minus 321F (minus 196C) in liquid nitrogen.

David Ettinger said his father was a “reluctant prophet” who was not bothered by people ridiculing his ideas.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/cryonics-pioneer-frozen-after-death-16027918.html#ixzz1TFmdekHM
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ASSOCIATED PRESS

Cryonics Pioneer Robert Ettinger Dies, Body Frozen

Published July 26, 2011

| Associated Press

, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again someday, has died. He was 92.

Ettinger died Saturday at home in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township after weeks of declining health, son David Ettinger said. His body became the 106th to be stored in at the Cryonics Institute, which he founded in 1976.

Robert Ettinger, who taught physics at Wayne State University, was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and spent years in hospitals. The bone graft surgery that spared his legs inspired his optimism about the future prospects of preserving life through technology, a Cryonics Institute statement said.

His son said Ettinger also was inspired by science fiction writings about deep-freezing the dead and expected researchers to make serious progress toward developing the idea. But when nothing seemed to be happening, he wrote a 1964 book, “The Prospect of Immortality,” introducing the concept of cryonics.

Ettinger promoted his theory in other writings and appearances on television talk shows. The Cryonics Institute has 900 members. Similar facilities for preserving dead bodies operate in Arizona, California and Russia. Ettinger also established the Immortalist Society, a research and education group devoted to cryonics and extending the human life span.

The Cryonics Institute charges $28,000 to prepare a body and store it long-term in a tank of liquid nitrogen at minus-321 degrees Fahrenheit. The first person frozen there was Ettinger’s mother, Rhea Ettinger, who died in 1977. His two wives, Elaine and Mae, also are patients at the Institute.

Ettinger was never bothered by ridicule and was a “reluctant prophet,” his son said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/07/26/cryonics-pioneer-robert-ettinger-dies-body-frozen/#ixzz1TFnBoAfa

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FORBES

Associated Press

Cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger dies, body frozen

By JOHN FLESHER , 07.26.11, 08:34 AM EDT

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again someday, has died. He was 92.

Robert Ettinger, who taught physics at Wayne State University, was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and spent years in hospitals. The bone graft surgery that spared his legs inspired his optimism about the future prospects of preserving life through technology, a Cryonics Institute statement said.

Ettinger was never bothered by ridicule and was a “reluctant prophet,” his son said.

Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/07/25/general-us-obit-ettinger_8583693.html

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NEW YORK NEWSDAY

Cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger dies, body frozen

Originally published: July 25, 2011 7:04 PM

Updated: July 25, 2011 8:18 PM

By The Associated Press JOHN FLESHER (Associated Press)

Cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger dies, body frozen at institute in hope of future resurrection

(AP) — Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again someday, has died. He was 92.

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CBS MONEY WATCH

Cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger dies, body frozen

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS | JUL 26, 2011 8:35 AM ET | 0 COMMENTS

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again someday, has died. He was 92.

Robert Ettinger, who taught physics at Wayne State University, was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and spent years in hospitals. The bone graft surgery that spared his legs inspired his optimism about the future prospects of preserving life through technology, a Cryonics Institute statement said.

Ettinger was never bothered by ridicule and was a “reluctant prophet,” his son said.

Read more: http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/news/cryonics-pioneer-robert-ettinger-dies-body-frozen/6265145/#ixzz1TFotOjDT

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GANT DAILY.COM

Father of Cryonics dies, has body frozen

July 26, 2011 at 11:18 AM by AHN • Leave a Comment

Ayinde O. Chase – AHN News Staff

Traverse City, MI, United States (AHN) – Robert Ettinger, founder of the cryonics movement in the United States has died and had his body placed in a tank of liquid nitrogen. It is his hope that someday in the future medical technology can bring him back to life.

Ettinger, who died Saturday, will become the 106th patient at the organisation he founded, the Cryonics Institute, in Clinton Township, Michigan.

The price for preservation at the institute is about $30,000, including ongoing perpetual care.

One of Etttinger’s final wishes was that no memorial service be held because he believed he may return.

The 92-year-old pioneer died in his home in a suburb outside of Detroit after weeks of fighting declining health.

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TRUTHDIVE.COM

Cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger dead

Post a Comment July 26, 2011 – 5:53 pm By News Desk | Permalink | Print This Article |

Detroit (US), July 26 (ANI): Robert Ettinger, a pioneer of the cryonics movement, has died at his home in Detroit. He was 92.

Ettinger, who died on Saturday, has had his body frozen and stored at the facility he founded in the hope that medical technology will enable him to live again one day.

Ettinger’s body is the 106th to be frozen and stored at the Cryonics Institute, which he founded in 1976, the Gaurdian reports.

“My father devoted himself to doing what he could to enable his family, his friends and others to come back and live again,” said his son David.

“Whether he will achieve that nobody knows at this point, but we think he has a good shot,” he added.

His son said Ettinger was also inspired by science fiction writings about deep freezing the dead, and expected researchers to make serious progress toward developing the idea.

But when nothing seemed to be happening, he wrote a 1964 book, The Prospect of Immortality, introducing the concept of cryonics.

Ettinger promoted his theory in other writings and appearances on television.

There are now similar facilities for preserving bodies in Arizona, California and in Russia.

Ettinger also established the Immortalist Society, a research and education group devoted to cryonics and extending the human life span. (ANI)

Read more at: http://truthdive.com/2011/07/26/Cryonics-pioneer-Robert-Ettinger-dead.html

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CRAINS DETROIT

Originally Published: July 25, 2011 12:55 PM Modified: July 25, 2011 3:50 PM

Founder of cryonics movement frozen and stored in Clinton Township institute he began

By Ellen Mitchell

Robert Ettinger, the founder of the cryonics movement and the Cryonics Institute, died respiratory failure July 23 at home in Clinton Township and has been frozen at the institute he founded.

He was 92.

The cryonics movement advocates storage of bodies at very low temperatures after death in the hope that future technology will permit revival and the cure of aging and disease.

Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute in 1976 as a nonprofit that freezes and stores patients after death. CI, based in Clinton Township, has more than 900 members worldwide and 106 patients in storage.

Ettinger popularized the cryonics movement in the 1960s and 1970s and wrote “The Prospect of Immortality” in 1962, advocating and explaining the cryonics thesis.

Read more at: http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20110725/FREE/110729933#

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SIOUXS CITY JOURNAL

Cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger dies, body frozen

ASSOCIATED PRESS | POSTED: MONDAY, JULY 25, 2011 7:18 PM

Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again someday, has died. He was 92.

Robert Ettinger, who taught physics at Wayne State University, was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and spent years in hospitals. The bone graft surgery that spared his legs inspired his optimism about the future prospects of preserving life through technology, a Cryonics Institute statement said.

Ettinger was never bothered by ridicule and was a “reluctant prophet,” his son said.

Posted in National on Monday, July 25, 2011 7:18 pm Updated: 9:02 pm. |

Read more: http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/news/national/article_8645c6a4-7f3f-561e-b631-dc1cfc425966.html#ixzz1TFqTxY7V

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Robert C.W. Ettinger | 1918-2011

Father of cryonics chilling in freezer after his death

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 03:07 AM

By Emma Brown

The Washington Post

Robert C. W. Ettinger, a physics teacher and science-fiction writer who believed death is only for the unprepared and unimaginative, died Saturday at his home in Clinton Township, Mich.

He was 92 and had been in declining health, said his son David, who could not specify a cause. “We’re obviously sad,” he said, but, “We were able to freeze him under optimum conditions, so he’s got another chance.”

Ettinger is widely considered the father of the cryonics movement, whose adherents believe they can achieve immortality through quick-freezing their bodies at death in anticipation of resurrection.

Ettinger’s frozen body is being stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen at a nondescript building outside Detroit, home to more than 100 fellow immortalists – including his mother and two wives – who are awaiting revival.

If all goes as Ettinger envisioned, he will remain in a period of icy stasis for however long it takes for doctors, armed with technology of the future, to defrost him and restore him to good health.

Ettinger was a little-known community-college professor in the mid-1960s when he wrote the founding document of cryonics, “The Prospect of Immortality.”

Introducing what he called the Freezer Era, Ettinger described a world in which people would become nobler and more responsible as they were confronted with the reality of living forever.

And if Earth became too crowded with long-lived humans? “The people could simply agree to share the available space in shifts,” he wrote, “going into suspended animation from time to time to make room for others.”

Originally self-published in 1962, the book was put out by Doubleday in 1964. It launched Ettinger as a celebrity.

Ettinger’s dogma was covered in The New York Times and Newsweek, and he was invited to appear on talk shows hosted by Johnny Carson and David Frost.

Ettinger’s book helped spur the development of a number of organizations devoted to deep-freezing the dead, one of which – the now-defunct Cryonics Society of California – successfully froze a person for the first time in 1967.

The next decade, Ettinger founded his nonprofit Cryonics Institute. Today, his institute houses 106 human patients and dozens of dogs, cats and at least one parrot.

About 900 dues-paying members throughout the world plan to be frozen when their time comes. Total fees at his institute start at about $28,000.

Robert Chester Wilson Ettinger was born Dec. 4, 1918, in Atlantic City, N.J. He was a boy when he moved to Detroit and read a short story that sparked his interest in immortality.

“The Jameson Satellite,” by Neil Jones, told of a dying professor who launched himself into space, where he was found eons later by aliens who brought him back to life by transplanting his brain into a mechanical body.

Ettinger’s first patient was his mother, Rhea, who died in 1977.

A decade later, he froze his second patient: his wife Elaine, who died in 1987 and with whom he had two surviving children, David and Shelley.

The next year he married his second wife, Mae. When she died in 2000, she became the institute’s 34th patient.

“If both of my wives are revived,” Ettinger told the Detroit News last year, “that will be a high-class problem.”

Read more at: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/national_world/stories/2011/07/26/father-of-cryonics-chilling-in-freezer-after-his-death.html?sid=101

SOME LINKS TO STORIES NOT REPRODUCED HERE:

MIAMI HERALD: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/25/2330666/cryonics-pioneer-robert-ettinger.html

BANGOR DAILY NEWS: http://bangordailynews.com/2011/07/25/news/nation/robert-ettinger-founder-of-the-cryonics-movement-dies-at-92/

TULSA WORLD: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=13&articleid=20110726_11_A11_Robert679564&rss_lnk=1

DELTASELF: http://www.deltaself.com/2011/07/robert-ettinger-founder-of-the-cryonics-movement-dies-at-92/

ANDHRANEWS INDIA: http://www.andhranews.net/Intl/2011/Cryonics-pioneer-Robert-Ettinger-dead-dead-12810.htm

Posted in Cryonics Biography, Cryonics History, Cryonics Philosophy, Culture & Propaganda | 48 Comments

Sexual Senescence in Humans: A Propaganda tool for Cryonics and Life Extension?

Posted on July 25, 2011 by admin

By Mike Darwin

Sex and Aging

It is so common place as to be almost axiomatic. The ‘rake’ or ‘slut’ who, in middle or old age, has become not merely transformed into a moralistic prude, but is completely unable to remember what it was like to be young and horny. For those of you who are young (under 40) and reading this, the full impact of what I’m saying here will be lost. That’s because you have to see this transformation in your cohorts and in your own lovers and spouses to believe it – let alone to really appreciate it.

How is it that people who once reveled in the joys of sex and even pushed or went well beyond the boundaries of permissible so uniformly become transformed into little ladies of either sex? Is it bad experiences? Is it improved social station and the respectability that often accompanies it? Mostly the answer to these questions is, “No, it is none of these things so much as it is the biology of the aging brain.”

Figure 1: How is it that what both men and women once reveled in and found unspeakably beautiful in youth, they regard with indifference or even revulsion in middle and old age?

As Robert Ettinger wisely observed, “a great many people have to be coaxed into admitting that life is better than death, healthy is better than sick, smart is better than stupid, and immortality might be worth the trouble! [1] So far, we cryonicists have not managed to find any particularly successful strategy for achieving those ends. Perhaps we should take a leaf from how successful marketing and propaganda work in most other spheres of human activity, ranging from commerce to religion, principally that sex sells.

The Big Business of Sex: Implications for Cryonics & Immortalism?

It has been estimated that the pornograophy industry in the US was a ~12 billion dollar industry in 2003. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/interviews/mcalpine.html). In 2005 the national sales of the guanyl cyclase inhibitor anti-impotence drugs, such as Viagra® were reported to be $1.6 billion, Cialis® sales were $747 million and Levitra® sales were $327 million. That’s over $2 billion dollars and it does not include the cost outlay for OTC products such as Extenz, nor for mechanical aids such penile vacuum pumps and surgical interventions. A conservative estimate is that today the sex assistance business is well in excess of $5 billion per year – and that is just in the US. If the aggregate of all sexually based marketing is considered then the figure is possibly in excess of $100 billion per annum. Thus, it is hard to argue that sex doesn’t sell.

Sexual Mortality: the Data Speak

In talking with people, young and old, about their personal sexual futures, a striking common thread emerges: virtually all of the subjects I interviewed anticipated that they would experience fairly constant, or at best mild to moderate reductions in their sexual performance with aging. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. So called “normal healthy aging” kills sex. The sexual death rate, even amongst healthy individuals in highly developed countries, is astonishingly high. Just how bad is it? Well take a look at the graph in Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: The data above reflect the real, measured life expectancy and sexually active life expectancy inUS men and women based on data from a national survey of midlife development in the United States (MIDUS). Lindau, ST, Gavrilova,N. Sex, health, and years of sexually active life gained due to good health: evidence from two US population based cross sectional surveys of ageing BMJ 2010; 340:c810: http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c810.full

As can be seem from the data, on average, you have about as much chance of being sexually functional (let alone functional at the level you were in your teens or 20s) at age 55 or 60, as you would have had of living to age 75 in 1800 (the mean lifespan was ~40 years then).

Figure 3: Decline in sexual function compared with decline in cognitive function in normal, healthy human aging.

What surprises those to whom I show the data in Figure 3, above, is that sexual mortality occurs much earlier than does the loss of cognitive function. This isn’t really surprising when considered in the context of evolutionary biology. Selection pressure has optimized human reproduction to occur in the early teens to mid-20s. Reproduction in females would typically begin almost immediately after menses commenced, at age 13-14, and it was complete typically before menopause, which occurred in earlier generations at ~ 40-45 years of age. Men can (and do) reproduce longer, and their sexual viability curve reflects this. Why women have a significantly shorter sexual lifespan than men is not known with certainty, but the evolutionary biology of the female reproductive cycle, as well as the increased vulnerability of women to infection and other dysfunction of their reproductive systems, may be part of the explanation.

Sexual Morbidity

It is also important to point out that the MIDUS study data shown above only reflect sexual mortality, not sexual morbidity. If you want to see what happens to the ability of men to perform sexually as a function of age, you have only to loook to the graph in Figure 4, below. If you are male, by the time you are 40 you will a 39% chance of having erectile dysfunction to such an extent that you can no longer perform reliably sexually. As someone who has had the unique, or at least not commonplace opportunity to observe this phenomenon in a cross section of gay men, I can tell you that these numbers are very accurate, and may even be low. Many men in their late 20s and 30s are already using aids such as “erection” or “cock rings” to maintain an erection, or to achieve one hard enough to allow for penetration (see Figure 5).

Figure 4: The incidence of erectile dysfunction in aging men by decade of life. The Epidemiology and Pathophysiology of Erectile Dysfunction. The Journal of Urology 1999 Jan; 161(1):5-11

Whilst some cock rings are used as jewelery, the primary use for these devices, in all their many variations, is to assist in overcoming ED. Nor have the guanyl cyclase inhibitors, such as Viagra, Levitra and Cialis, eliminated the problem. The usual pattern of effect of this class of anti-impotence drugs is that they work reliably and well for most men in their 30s and 40s, becomes less reliable after age 50, and cease to work adequately for a large cohort of men past age 60. There are, of course, many exceptions, but this is the general pattern. From my own questioning and research, I would estimate that ~60% of men using guanyl cyclase inhibitors who are over 55, also rely on either erection rings or penis vacuum pumps with a penile constriction band.

Figure 5: Metal cock ring on an erect penis. Image courtesy of the Wikipedia Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erect_Penis_with_C-Ring.jpg

If my focus here seems to be heavily slanted towards men, as opposed to women, there are several reasons for this (aside from misogny). First and foremost, there is comparatively little data about the incidence of sexual dysfunction in women versus age. One reason for this is that in women this complaint must necessarily present as a symptom , rather than as a sign. A symptom is a “subjective” complaint, such as, “I feel hot,” whereas a sign is “measuring a patient’s temperature with thermometer and noting that it is elevated above normal.” It is possible to measure ED, includingthe degree of ED very easily and effectively in men, using a device such as an erectile dusfunction snap-test gauge. Such objectification is not as easy in women.

Additionally, most recruits and most potential recruits to cryonics are, and are likely to remain men. And men, on average, are disproportionately more concerned with sexual dyasfunction and with the preseervation of sexual vitality into old age than are women. Having made these observations, I would be both interested and gratified to see a similar article to this one written about women, and would gladly publish it here.

Lost Libido and the Transformation of the Person

I would be doing a gross disservice to the devastating impact of aging on sexuality if I did not return to the theme I opened with, namely the obliteration of not just the libido, but of the very memory of what it was like to be a sexual being. A substantial, but unfortunately unknown percentage of people turn into little old ladies of either sex, as they age. They lose not only their ability to perform sexually, but also their desire to do so, and what’s worse, even the memory of what it was like to feel sexual excitement and passion. Such people often become critical of sexual desire and sexual activity in others, and often take to accusing their partners, or younger people with whom they interact, of being excessively preoccupied with sex, or of being “sex fiends,”or in modern parlance, “sex addicts.” While they may have had quite active and adventurous sex lives when younger, they are now judgmental and incredulous at levels of sexual activity in others that would be modest, even for middle aged people!

This is a special kind of horror, because it represents the loss of part of one’s personhood. Sexual activity and sexual desire are a not just a normal part of life, they are one of the most critical predictors of both healthy aging and of longevity. Their absence is not something to be accepted as healthy, but rather, as a potent indicator of a pathological change.

Figure 6: The loss of libido and the transformation of the person from libertine to prude is primarily as function of the degeneration of the brain associated with “normal healthy” aging.

Mistaking drugs to treat ED for drugs to treat loss of libido and atrophy of even the capacity to remember and identify with healthy sexual desire and functioning would be a tragic mistake. These drugs work to restore the ability to get and maintain an erection by increasing the levels of nitric oxide in the body – and in the erectile tissues of the penis, in particular. They do not restore the brain-derived basis of sexuality – libido and its passionate execution. There are drugs which restore libido and mounting behavior in aged animals, and there is evidence that they work in some humans. I will be covering that topic here in the near future.

In the meantime, a potentially powerful message is that our sexual longevity is much, much shorter than our lifespans, and what’s worse, our healthy and vital sexual longevity is much shorter still – for both men and women.

There are many take home messages from these data. For one, enjoy sex as much and as often as you can when you are young. It won’t be there nearly as long as you think – and practice and varierty do, in fact, improve the quality of the experience. Pay attention to what you may be able to do to extend your years of both peak and total sexual functioning.

Finally, use these data relentlessly to reinforcve the point that life is too short and that vital sexual life is much shorter still. The ultimate answer to those problems is extension of the youthful, healthy lifespan and, when all else fails, cryopreservation until we reach a point in time when these problems are not merely tractable – but possibly a thing of the past – with not just treatment of disease – but enhancement of sexual function being a taken for granted reality. If you doubt the latter and you are under 30, or better still, 20 or 25, just try the particular flavor of guanyl cyclase inhibitor that works for you. You will quickly come to see my point here, because you will, at that moment, realize that you have forgotten what it was like to be 16 years old.

The choices are simple really, do you want to be in this position…

…or in this one:

Selected Bibliography

Lindau ST, Schumm P, Laumann EO, Levinson W, O’Muircheartaigh, C, Waite L. A national study of sexuality and health among older adults in the US. N Engl JMed 2007;357:22-34.

Davey Smith G, Frankel S, Yarnell J. Sex and death: are they related? Findings from the Caerphilly Cohort Study. BMJ 1997;315:1641-4.

Palmore EB. Predictors of the longevity difference: a 25-year followup.Gerontologist 1982;22:513-8.

Laumann EO, Nicolosi A, Glasser DB, Paik A, Gingell C, Moreira E, et al. Sexual problems among women and men aged 40-80 y:prevalence and correlates identified in the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors. Int J Impotence Res 2005;17:39-57.

Schoenfeld DE, Malmrose LC, Blazer DG, Gold DT, Seeman TE. Selfrated health and mortality in the high-functioning elderly—a closer look at healthy individuals: MacArthur Field Study of Successful Aging. J Gerontol (AMedical Sciences) 1994;49:109-15M.

Laumann EO, Michael RT. Sex, love, and health in America: privatechoices and public policies. University of Chicago Press, 2000.

DioknoAC, BrownMB,HerzogAR.Sexual functionintheelderly. Arch Intern Med 1990;150:197-200.

Burke JP, Jacobson DJ, McGree ME, Nehra A, Roberts RO, Girman CJ, et al. Diabetes and sexual dysfunction: results from the Olmsted

County study of urinary symptoms and health status among men. J Urol 2007;177:1438-42.

Solomon H, Man JW, JacksonG. Erectile dysfunction and the cardiovascular patient: endothelial dysfunction is the common denominator. Heart 2003;89:251-3.

Hartmann U, Philippsohn S, Heiser K, Ruffer-Hesse C. Low sexual desire inmidlife and older women: personality factors, psychosocial development, present sexuality. Menopause 2004;11:726-40.

US Food and Drug Administration. Drug details: Viagra. Washington, DC, 2009.

AvisNE, Brockwell S, Randolph JF, Shen SH, Cain VS, OryM, et al. Longitudinal changes in sexual functioning as women transition through menopause: results from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation. Menopause 2009;16:442-52.

43 Matthias REL, James E, Atchison KA, Schweitzer SO. Sexual activity and satisfaction among very old adults: results from a community dwelling Medicare population survey. Gerontologist 1997;37:6-14.

Posted in Cryonics Philosophy, Culture & Propaganda, Gerontology | 4 Comments

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Science Fiction, Double Feature, 2: Part 3

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Science Fiction, Double Feature, 2

Science Fiction, Double Feature…

Status Report: 28 July, 2011

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Robert C. W. Ettinger: News Media Obituaries, the Raw Feed

Sexual Senescence in Humans: A Propaganda tool for Cryonics and Life Extension?

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