Last October Aschwin de Wolf replied to misinterpretations of his
presentation at the 2011 CI AGM with the following statement
which he authorized me to reproduce at that time, and which I
will reproduce again here. -- Ben Best
** Aschwin’s comments below *
It has come to our attention that our recent presentation
has caused some controversy on the CI members mailing list.
As far as we can tell, a lot of the criticism is aimed
at how other people (including Alcor Officials) have
interpreted our presentation. In our presentation there
is no comparison between Alcor and CI at all. As a
matter of fact, we deliberately avoided framing the
issue like this. Our presentation just summarized the
practical implications of our research for cryonics. One
of the most robust findings in our studies, and scientific
papers of others researchers going back to the 1960s,
is that cerebral ischemia produces perfusion impairment
in the brain in a time- and temperature dependent manner.
In cryonics such perfusion impairment translates itself into
ice formation. The real difference is not between Alcor and
CI but between people who do not receive rapid stabilization
and cooling and those who do. In ourpresentation we outlined
a number of things CI members can do to reduce warm and cold
ischemia, including relocation and ensuring that there will
be rapid cooling after pronouncement of legal death. We did
not use the phrase “2/3 of CI members” in our slides but we
did point out that the majority of CI members experience
prolonged periods of warm and cold ischemia—this can be
easily verified by checking the case reports on the CI website.
Such ischemic delays produce perfusion impairment and ice
formation. Most CI members can do something about the
probability of this happening to them, so this can hardly
be construed as an endorsement of Alcor. As a matter of fact,
speaking for myself, I prefer a model where a cryonics
organization leaves more flexibility to its members as to
whether and how to make arrangements to prevent injury to
the brain after pronouncement of legal death. We would never
claim that the ischemia that many CI members experience is
catastrophic because we do not know what future cell repair
technologies will be capable of. Of course, this should not
excuse people to limit postmortem damage as much as they can.
Having said all this, this does not mean that research cannot
contribute to mitigating some of the effects of prolonged warm
and cold ischemia. We made a number of recommendations during
our presentation and hope to present a more comprehensive set
of technical recommendations to improve CI procedures in the
near future. We had constructive exchanges about this with
Ben and Andy.
Last October Aschwin de Wolf replied to misinterpretations of his presentation at the 2011 CI AGM with the following statement which he authorized me to reproduce at that time, and which I will reproduce again here. -- Ben Best
** Aschwin’s comments below *
It has come to our attention that our recent presentation has caused some controversy on the CI members mailing list. As far as we can tell, a lot of the criticism is aimed at how other people (including Alcor Officials) have interpreted our presentation. In our presentation there is no comparison between Alcor and CI at all. As a matter of fact, we deliberately avoided framing the issue like this. Our presentation just summarized the practical implications of our research for cryonics. One of the most robust findings in our studies, and scientific papers of others researchers going back to the 1960s, is that cerebral ischemia produces perfusion impairment in the brain in a time- and temperature dependent manner. In cryonics such perfusion impairment translates itself into ice formation. The real difference is not between Alcor and CI but between people who do not receive rapid stabilization and cooling and those who do. In ourpresentation we outlined a number of things CI members can do to reduce warm and cold ischemia, including relocation and ensuring that there will be rapid cooling after pronouncement of legal death. We did not use the phrase “2/3 of CI members” in our slides but we did point out that the majority of CI members experience prolonged periods of warm and cold ischemia—this can be easily verified by checking the case reports on the CI website. Such ischemic delays produce perfusion impairment and ice formation. Most CI members can do something about the probability of this happening to them, so this can hardly be construed as an endorsement of Alcor. As a matter of fact, speaking for myself, I prefer a model where a cryonics organization leaves more flexibility to its members as to whether and how to make arrangements to prevent injury to the brain after pronouncement of legal death. We would never claim that the ischemia that many CI members experience is catastrophic because we do not know what future cell repair technologies will be capable of. Of course, this should not excuse people to limit postmortem damage as much as they can.
Having said all this, this does not mean that research cannot contribute to mitigating some of the effects of prolonged warm and cold ischemia. We made a number of recommendations during our presentation and hope to present a more comprehensive set of technical recommendations to improve CI procedures in the near future. We had constructive exchanges about this with Ben and Andy.