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Science

Freeze Recovery Drug - Step Toward Suspended Animation? 110

Posted by Hemos from the i'll-travel-to-alpha-centauri dept.
arete writes "Apparently a simple injection (in rats and mice so far) can revive body functions before warming. Since you're cold, your brain isn't using oxygen, and doesn't go into oxygen deprivation. But it lets breathing and autonomic functions (like shivering) restart even in the absence of a brain restart. Sounds to me like a big leap towards suspended animation. Of course, you can't be frozen below 0 C using this techique, because all your cells explode when the water freezes. Plausibly with some mild oxygen influx you wouldn't need to be below 0 C, though. " I think I'll wait a while before planning my interstellar trip, tho'.
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Freeze Recovery Drug - A Step Towards Suspended Animation? More

Freeze Recovery Drug - A Step Towards Suspended Animation?

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  • I imagine that cellular chemical reactions will still take place even very close to freezing, so you could not last indefinitely at this temperature, even with this drug to help revive you.

    I think the article mentionned that without this drug people have been successfully revived after an hour with no ill effects. I think beyond an hour they tend not to even try. How long could you last with this drug? Someone needs to try this with a large mammal, a dog perhaps, and see how long he can hang out at just this side of 0degC and still be revived with this drug.

    -josh
  • DUDE! What an EXCELLENT game! I'm glad to hear someone else knows of it! Have you also played the first one? Both of 'em are my favourites!
  • trust me... your head cut off is a better thing
  • clawrockz wrote:
    ...and the crystals that form expand so that cell walls become torn.
    This has been addressed:

    http://www.mailgate.org/sci/sci.cryonics/msg0011 2.html



    Newsgroups: sci.life-extension,sci.cryonics
    From: Tom Matthews
    Subject: Re: a different type of life extension?
    Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 08:20:52 GMT
    Organization: Longevity Unlimited

    Lou Pagnucco wrote:
    >
    > Good information, Doug.
    >
    > Cryonic approaches to suspending animation (in hopes of revival
    > in the future) involve the freezing of organs or organisms at liquid
    > nitrogen temperatures which, although inhibiting most chemical
    > activity, cause significant ice damage to the cells.

    Not if you vitrify the patient, which is where the current research is
    now heading.

    > The type of
    > "freezing" in your abstract must avoid this difficult to repair ice
    > damage.
    >
    > It would be interesting to know how long an organism (i.e., hibernating
    > ground squirrels) can tolerate this temperature.

    The answer is: no more than one year (in fact mostly only one normal
    length winter).
    This is only reasonable. Why would evolution have produced anything more
    robust than it needed?
    And this is why all of these natural animal hibernation/freezing models
    are quite useless for cryonics purposes.

    > After all cryonic
    > freezing advocates seem to believe that cryonic freezing will be
    > required for many years. However, given the hyper-exponential increase
    > in biotechnical knowledge, maybe just a couple of decades may be
    > enough to get us to the point where we can cure nearly any known
    > disease (or the problems of aging) - and reviving an organism kept
    > relatively inert using the same techniques that these squirrels use
    > seem much, much less difficult.

    However, there will always be accidents/diseases/disorders that are
    beyond our reach to repair and need some from of long-term suspended
    animation if the inflicted person is to remain alive.

    Vitrification research is proceeding slowly but surely to eventually
    provide us with fully-reversible, long-term suspended animation.

    Still, like any major operation it will never be 100% and I for one am
    trying very hard to stay alive until the biotechnical advances in
    life-extension for existing adults come forth, so that I don't every
    have to be cryopreserved.

    > Doug Skrecky wrote in message ...
    > >Title
    > > Freeze avoidance in a mammal: body temperatures below 0 degree C in an
    > > Arctic hibernator.
    > >Source
    > > Science. 244(4912):1593-5, 1989 Jun 30.
    > >Abstract
    > > Hibernating arctic ground squirrels, Spermophilus parryii,
    > > were able to adopt and spontaneously arouse from core body temperatures
    > as
    > > low as -2.9 degrees C without freezing. Abdominal body temperatures of
    > ground
    > > squirrels hibernating in outdoor burrows were recorded with
    > > temperature-sensitive radiotransmitter implants. Body temperatures and
    > soil
    > > temperatures at hibernaculum depth reached average minima during February
    > of
    > > -1.9 degrees and -6 degrees C, respectively. Laboratory-housed ground
    > > squirrels hibernating in ambient temperatures of -4.3 degrees C
    > maintained
    > > above 0 degree C thoracic temperatures but decreased colonic temperatures
    > to
    > > as low as -1.3 degrees C. Plasma sampled from animals with below 0 degree
    > C
    > > body temperatures had normal solute concentrations and showed no evidence
    > of
    > > containing antifreeze molecules.
    > >

    --Tom
    Tom Matthews

    The LIFE EXTENSION FOUNDATION - http://www.lef.org - 800-544-4440
    A non-profit membership organization dedicated to the extension
    of the healthy human lifespan through ground breaking research,
    innovative ideas and practical methods.
    LIFE EXTENSION MAGAZINE - The ultimate source for new
    health and medical findings from around the world.

  • I was watching Discovery a long time ago (1997, i think), and they said that if a head is fed (HEY THAT RHYMES!) oxygen and neccesary food, it will regrow a body. Weird, huh? -Rob
  • I saw that also, and I think the moderator was looking at the fact that Josh was mentioning using a big dog as a test subject. The moderator must've been an animal rights activist or somethin' eh?
  • While this would shurely be great for reviving patients after boat accidents, etc..., the article also mentioned military applications.

    Shurely the military want efficient revival methods as well (there usually happens a lot of not so fun stuff to soldiers bodies during warfare), but this could also be used to artificially increase divers tolerance for cold water. Imagine a diver swimming around in cold water, with a computer watching over bodily functions and automatically injecting small doses of EDTA in the bloodstream if the diver experiences cramps, loss of consciousness or other unwanted effects of cold water. This could make it possible to have divers stay much longer under water in a normal dry suit without damaging the mission (or the diver of course, if you care about those sorts of things).

  • A syringe of EDTA plus a barrel of an 18 yr old single malt Scotch.

    Please excuse me while I lie down in the snow.

    (By the way I think the traditional beverage for Saint Barrels is brandy)

    I should definitely get around to getting my SB a barrel

  • Re:Freeze Recovery (Score:3)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @08:11PM (#687769)
    I think its a different story for mammals which tend to be more delicate than insects. Not to mention hibernation is only good for so long, just because this animal can stay near frozen for 1 year doesnt mean it can do 20.
  • The hypothied components of again are metabolism and programed cell-suicide.
    Aging appears corrolated with the speed of your metabolism. Body fuel (atp) is very reactive, just as any good fuel should be. It seems that carring it around create regular damage that has constantly has to be repaired. However, every so often an important piece of dna gets broken which reders that particular cell les efficient, but also all it upcomming child-cells.
    It is no surprise in that case that that all 100+ year elders describe they diet as 'frugal'.

    The second component relates to a protein that repairs the buffering tips of the dna string after each copy. That particular protein is only present in the 'immortal' cells, sperms, ovulas and associated gametes. In other cell, copying strips some length of the buffers each time until it eats important dna code.

    Lowering the body temparature stops problem one and, since a doubt cells can split in such cold conditions, would also stop problem two: effective body suspention.

    As far as consciousness goes, if your brain can't process, you can't be concious. It would fell similar to passing out on boze: you would be terribly confused about where you are, but with a reason.



    -
  • Granted, you arent going to be thawing any human popsicles anytime soon, especially since we dont have cures for most of the diseases they died from, however this is a big advance towards suspended animation, which at present is needed for deep space travel ( assuming humans traveled in deep space. hello? congress?) so it does have a benefit other than reviving people.

  • Sure if you're trying to freeze your head until they find a cure for cancer you'll want to be frosen solid I guess. But for space travel aren't we really only concerned about slowing down life functions?

    For a 60 year trip, the time it might take for a nuclear impulse rocket [nasa.gov] to reach the nearest stars, it wouldn't kill the crew if there bodies aged 6 years.

    I guess everyone focuses on freezing because they want to come back in a thousand years and fight those damm dirty apes!
  • Well, you have to draw the line somewhere.

    Do you ever wash your hands? Every time you apply soap, you're killing millions of bacteria. Odds are that some activity in your daily life ultimately results in the death of some animal (even if you're a vegan). I, personally, draw the line at humans. That is, if you're human, you have a fundamental right to live. Otherwise, it's nice, but I won't worry about it. If another animal is proven to be sentient, then I'll include it. Until then,sorry.
  • Pedantic academics and graduate students have to do something. Icemen are going to be a friggin gold mine. You might not like being the first 10,000 mistakes. Imagine:

    1. Being alive and well but having a gorilla body.

    2. Being alive and well and finding yourself in culture whose language you don't know and conventions you cannot grasp. If its 1million years into the future you may never even come close to understanding what life means to them and you'll end up in a cage somewhere.

    3. Half-dead coma state, coming in and out for a few hundred years.

    4. Finding yourself in a robot body that has about 1% functionality of the human body, etc.

  • The way cryogenics is practiced now most people get embalmed and sit around for a few days then get frozen, instead of freezing immediately.

    Its a scam and a fraud, ice crystals will make you unrepairable regardless. Even the finest nanomachine cannot know exactly where this broken neuron went and so on. If perfected, you would be lucky to be functionally retarded. Why don't you ever hear about the hundreds of animals that should have been frozen now side by side with the humans? Would you like to be the first one they tried to bring back? Unless you're bringing a few gorillas, chimps, and a few hundred mice along with you, you'll be the guinea pig. Be scared, some things are worse than death.

    I'd much rather see more articles and work done on short time hibernation for spacetravel that lasts maybe 6 months to a year and work your way up. And if its ever perfected then you can move up to humans.

    Just the fact that these companies start with humans and shrug when you ask how exactly are they going to revive a rotted then frozen corpse should make you very suspicious.
  • See (1) Mammal vs. Amphibian vs. Insect
  • ...his 100th birthday is coming up.

    I think if we were to thaw him out, Disney could get a lot of people into the parks to see him!

    --- Speaking only for myself,

  • Your suggestion that cryonics companies should be freezing "test animals" is a good one, and at least one cryonics company, Alcor, does have a few animals cryopreserved for just this purpose. In addition, a (relatively) large number of pets (cats and dogs) have been frozen by the existing cryonics organizations.

    As for whether cryonics is a scam, isn't it a bit too early to tell? After all, isn't the premise of cryonics that medical technology 50-100 years in the future will be able to repair the freezing damage? How do you know what future medicine can/cannot do?

    Admittedly, I think the odds are fairly low (< 1%) that current patients will be revived with > 90% fidelity (however you define the term.) within the next 100 years. However, all existing cryonics organizations point out that they don't if or when you will be revived, if at all, nor how well your identity will be recovered. So if you sign up anyway, and you are not successfully revived, how have you been defrauded?

    At worst, I see cryonics as a form of religion--instead of resurrection by God, some cryonicists expect to be revived by the benevolent nanotechnologists of the future. But I don't think that makes them scam artists or frauds.

    Finally, anyone familiar with the finances of cryonics organizations will tell you that cryonics is a terrible way to make money, even assuming it is a scam. I don't know what the exact numbers are, but less than 700-800 people have signed up to be frozen in the 38 years since the Robert Ettinger published The Prospect of Immortality (the first book to seriously propose cryonics.) Of those less than 100 have been frozen. [transhumanist.com] Historically, most people who work for cryonics organizations are volunteers or make little money. For example, the December 1990, Cryonics magazine reported that the Board of Directors of Alcor voted a 25% pay cut for all of the staff, so they could keep their budget balanced. Many of the Directors are also on the staff. The salaries after the cut ranged from $22,500 annually for highest paid full-time employee (the President) to $14,400 for the lowest-paid full-time employee.

  • This is NOT hibernation. These animals are friggin chunks of ice! You could store them in liquid nitrogen indefinetly like sperm and eggs are. The cricket freezes solid every night when the sun goes down, and thaws in the morning. That is not hibernation. They had a really cool fast-time version of the cricket freezing. It had a shitload of iceicles hanging of of it, and then it just walked away after it had thawed out.
  • the technology will exist also to clone you a body to place your head on, and you're good to go.

    Does that mean they have to cut the head off another body in order to sew mine on? I don't think that's very nice. Maybe a robotic body would be just as good.

  • They will unfreeze you for your body parts.
  • Ack! Common misconception! Freezing does not actualy cause cells to rupture! If it did, all frozen food would just turn to goo. Instead, freezing often damages orgonels, and denatures protiens, and stuff.
  • I never did play the first one, but I thought the second one was one of the best game i've ever played! Shodan scared the CRAP out of me! lol

  • I tend to agree.
    Has anyone read the book "Heart of the Comet"
    In it, one of the main characters dies, but its "uploaded" into the computer. they then acknowledge that this is no longer who they knew but a "copy" of the person.
    If your conciousness is dupicated, it isn't you; in the same way that if you close yourself, that clone isnt you, is it? its a copy of you.

    something to think about

  • That would be episode #506: Eegah
  • The point is that the money is not needed until a person is beyond medical help. At that point the choices are 1. burning 2. rotting 3. cryopreservation There are no other alternatives. Once choices 1 or 2 are taken then money is a meaningless concept. Now in the society in which we live lawyers have made it very difficult to leave money reliably for this or anything else. Therefore some money odes have to be spent during life in order to set up a trust and/or take out life insuranmce. But it need not be a lot. Cryonics is reliant on technology progress - all you need do is to invest in technology and if enough progress is there to make cryonics work, then a relatively small amount invested in a technology mutual fund will do the trick. For more on this and investment in general, please see http://www.geocities.com/longev ity rpt/shares.htm [geocities.com] whicvh includes lots of outlinks to technology companies' corporate home pages.
  • When water freezes it expands (that is bad for cells) and forms crystalline lattices (which are sharp) so basically cells do 'burst'.
  • Although I'm not a biologist, I would assume that the aging process would slow down severly simply because aging is a low chemical trick and chemical reactions occur slower at lower temperatures and therefore at a tem of say 3C (for saftey so one wouldn't become too cold) one's chemical reactions would slow down by a great factor (espically because most of one's reactions are catazlyzed by enzymes that are temperature dependant and they would not function properly at such a low temperature)... Since we really don't have a clue how memory works I'm not going to venture a guess, other then if one was to go to sleep prior to being frozen one would probably not know the difference (if you take a two hour nap or a twenty hour doze after a long hacking run and don't look at an alarm clock or outside and feel exactly the same degree of tiredness afterwards do you know how long you slept, no you do not. I see no reason why freezing would be any different although one might have to wake up every (amount of years that is = to one of normal body functiong) or so to eat (and exercise 1/virtual week) something so one didn't starve to death or have their muscles atropy. I'd love to beta test this, but it still appears to be in the alpha stages.
    Nick

  • Why would people from the future unfreeze you!? (Score:5)

    by systemapex ( 118750 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @05:39PM (#687789)
    Let's see... In a thousand years when mankind is capable of unfreezing these carcasses and reviving them back into living people, what will honestly be their reason for doing so? They'll look back in their history "books" and see that our generation was characterized by people who over-consumed, over-polluted, intellectually under-performed (for the most part), and was also characterized by many people who become more excited by the entrance music of some WWF wrestler than by fantastic scientific discoveries that accomplish real work and have practical applications. Right...I'm sure they'll be quick to unfreeze the carcasses circa 20th century - early 21st century:)

  • Re:About freezing for life... (Score:3)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @05:40PM (#687790) Journal

    Worse yet, you could be stuck in that dark tunnel between your body and "the Light" for 1000 years. Sure it's fun to go sliding through it really fast, but after a few decades, it gets rather boring just sitting there watching the souls go by.

  • Age is a measure of cell oxidation and generations of cell division. Neither's going on if you're frozen, so you're fine at that level.
  • HOw do we just assume that a poor animal's life is expendable? How can we be sure that the animals that died did not face the same death pangs or that their close family did not miss them? Even animals seem to protect their kin. And is the number of animals killed less than the number of people going to be saved? You kill 10 poor souls and save 2, is that balanced?

  • Re:Freeze Recovery (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Granted, you arent going to be thawing any human popsicles anytime soon

    Human popsicles? Where would the wooden stick go? (ouch...)

  • Looks like all they need now is an injection that can prevent water from freezing...

    For example, salt water freezes at a lower temperature than pure water, but not really low enough to be significant here. It seems to me that what they need to develop is something that would would get into all of the water in the cells, and lower its freezing point. I'm sure this is easier said than done, but it seems like that could break down one of the main barriers in cryonics.

    Of course, they would probably also have to develop another injection to be given during the revival process to remove this from the body, but I suppose that can wait until they're actually ready to start thawing people out. :-)

  • "Of course, you can't be frozen below 0 C using this techique, because all your cells explode when the water freezes."

    And after the first lab rat exploded in a frozen mass of blood and guts (like when taking the entire blast of a double barrel at point blank in Quake 1), the scientists said:

    "Huh huh. That was cool. Do it again. Make him explode. Now, use FIRE FIRE".

    Save the lab rat campaign anyone?
  • This is interesting. Have the adaptations that these animals have that allow them to freeze without consequences been identified? Do you know where to find more information?

  • The article mentions using this to revive victims of hypothermia, but try this one on for size. The patient is in deep in shock for no apparent reason. Lab tests will tell for sure what's going on. It could be anaphylaxis. Could be poisoning, or something else. The doctors don't know what's causing it or how to counteract it. The patient will be dead inside of five minutes, but the lab tests will be ready in fifteen minutes at the earliest--if they're lucky and depending on which test shows positive. What do they do? Chill the patient rapidly to 16 degrees C and buy themselves some time. The lab tests come in, the doctors ready whatever treatment is appropriate--adrenallin and cortico steriods in the case of anaphylaxis--and revive the patient with the drug in the article.

    I dunno how practical this would really be. Still, based on my own near death experience, I would certainly consider freezer burn to be an acceptable side effect of such a treatment.

  • Looks like all they need now is an injection that can prevent water from freezing...

    Looks like Dr. Forrester might have had something there when he swapped Frank's blood for antifreeze..

    Sure.. They called him mad.. but THEY'LL BE SORRY!!!

    (2 karma for the episode in question.. ;)

    Your Working Boy,
  • Actually, I've read on some of the cryonics web sites out there that there have been some "cryoprotectants" developed which prevent water from freezing and bursting cells. Unfortunately, the only ones that have so far been developed require toxic concentrations to work.

    Interesting side note, the movie Iceman [imdb.com] didn't just ignore the issue of cryoprotectants; they came up with a clever explanation. The caveman had a habit of eating a certain type of flower that acted as a natural cryoprotectant, which saved his cells from bursting, thus allowing him to be revived after thousands of years. That was a pretty good flick; it had a surprisingly intelligent script.

  • The article has nothing to do with cryonics. Typical Slashdot!
  • Try Eric Cartman, South Park
  • Obviously you have seen the grim vision of the future that is Futurama too!
  • The thing to remember is that damage from freezing is not the critical question: the question is whether or not such damage is repairable. Cell structure is the main thing, and structure may be preserved even if full function (for the moment) is not. If, for instance, temperatures fall way below zero in the winter, your car may very well may not start, and if it's left that way long enough, damage may occur and it may not start even when things warm up. But that doesn't mean your car is utterly and completely demolished and unrepairable, as though it had been buried and rusted into particles over the course of centuries. Studies indicate that freezing damage is rather like that: it disarranges brain cells somewhat so that brain activity stops. But it doesn't pulverize a brain cell into dust, so totally that its original, functioning, form is completely obliterated and unrecoverable. On the contrary! It preserves the original structure, which is precisely why the cell - and the brain -- is repairable. Not quite at the moment, granted; but methods currently being developed are bringing that moment closer and closer..
  • I would personally have killed a million monkeys, if it would have advanced science enough to have saved my 5 year old sister from dying of lukemia.
  • Well, you have to draw the line somewhere.
    True, but that does not imply that all "somewheres" are equally justified. Or can I just draw the line at long-haired males under 5'8" of mixed Polish and Irish ancestry?
    If another animal is proven to be sentient, then I'll include it.
    How can you prove to me that you're sentient? There's only one being I know for sure to be sentient, that's me.

    For the rest of you, I have to rely on observed behavior and similarity of physiology. In that respect, the evidence that, say, dogs, are sentient ("capable of sensation and consciousness") is just as strong as the evidence that a pre-verbal child is sentient: both have sophisticted nervous systems, and behave in a way consistent with an internal emotional and (rudimentarily) intellectual experience.

  • Actually, in my belly. And yours, too.

    Stomachs, and livers, even skin - grows to have a taste for it's environment. People have had stomach transplants only to find they prefer the donor's favourite food - there was an article on this in New Scientist a few months ago.

    It's a memory, and it's part of a person.

  • Ok, test on pigs, better?

    -josh
  • Sorry to have to contradict you, but you could *not* place a cricket which solidifies overnight (flies do also) into liquid nitrogen and revive it. Not could you place it into a standard home freezer and revive it even a year latter. Even though it make go below freezing temperature and part of the water in it make actually freeze, the end result is still a type of hibernation - a temporary lowering of body temperature to survive a harsh environement and return to living conditions a short time later. Not all of its liquids are solidifid and biochemical activity still proceeds. I say again that no such animals or insects can last in their suspended state much beyond the standard length of time required by nature. Evolution would not have produce such life to do otherwise.

    The storage of sperm and eggs is only possible with highly delicate and specialized use of cryoprotectant agents to prevent freezing damage, Even so the freezing of sperm is only possible because there are so many that a reasonable death rate is still tolerable. The recovery rate of eggs (ova) is still extremely poor mainly because of the macroscopic size of these relatively large cells. Even 8-celled embryos are only still viable because all cells are equipotent and even if 7 die the embryo can still continue.

    -- Paul --

  • >Well that's real useful... Considering that we've already established that if you get below 0C your cells explode.

    Nonsense! We have established no such thing because is it not even true! The cells *never* "explode. *If* the freezing rate is too fast then cell membranse may be ruptured since the water cannot escape into the interstitial spaces quickly enough and the small increase in density and the lack of membrane flexibility at low temperatures will cause such rupturing. However, even if human body were thrown into a Dewar of liquid nitrogen without any preparation, only the surface layer of cells would be able to cool that quickly.

    In practice what happens is that cryoprotectants are perfused into the body during an operation similar to open heart surgery. These cryoprotectants enter all the cells through the capillaries of the circulation system and together with a controlled cooling rate, *all* the body's cells are prevented from rupturing. At the present time the trade-off involved is between a large cryoprotectant concentration which will totally prevent ice formation and yet will harm cells by toxic biochemical processes, and a smaller cryoprotectant concentration which will give recoverable toxicity but will not completely protect against freezing damage. Fortunately, there is a major effort underway at 21st Century Medicine [21cm.com] to find less toxic and more ice controlling cryoprotectants and that effort is having some success.

    -- Paul --

  • I agree that the evidence for dogs and pre-verbal children are similar, but I'm not comparing individuals, but rather species. (Is that the right plural of "species"?) Humans, as a whole, are sentient as far as I can tell. Other animals aren't. I draw the line there. Where do you draw yours? Animals large enough to see? Only cute ones? Mammals?
  • I'm wonderig... What happens if you go to sleep or pass out? Does your consciousness die and when you wake up you have a new consciousness which is the copy of the one before?

    z.
  • Sure, but remember, such people probably don't expect to be revived anytime in the near future. They freeze their heads, then hope that by the time the technology exists to revive them at all, the technology will exist also to clone you a body to place your head on, and you're good to go.

    But then, it seems kind of silly to me that someone thinks that by freezing themsleves without knowing how the whole process has to work, they'll freeze themselves "properly" in order to be revived. But hey, it's their money... :)
  • What always confused me about cryogenics are thos weird people who jsut freeze their heads. Sure, it's cheaper... but when they revive you... YOU WONT BE ALIVE! and if somehow you are... YOU'RE A HEAD!

  • but I'm not comparing individuals, but rather species.
    Why would you make an ethical decision based on the set of other organisms with which an organism can produce fertile offspring?
    I draw the line there. Where do you draw yours?
    To speak of a "line" is somewhat misleading. Whatever characteristics we specify as the condition for receiving ethical consideration, organisms will have these characteristics to different degrees.

    The relevant characteristic is the presence of a sophisticated nervous system (or analogous structure) that produces an interal experience. As I said, it's impossible to know for sure whether other beings have such an experience, so we must judge based on the organism's behavior and on our knowledge of neurobiology.

    For practical purposes, I do my best to avoid harming other chordates, and I won't deliberately harm invertabrates without good cause.

  • Do you ever wash your hands? Every time you apply soap, you're killing millions of bacteria. Odds are that some activity in your daily life ultimately results in the death of some animal (even if you're a vegan). I, personally, draw the line at humans. That is, if you're human, you have a fundamental right to live. Otherwise, it's nice, but I won't worry about it. If another animal is proven to be sentient, then I'll include it

    I agree with you to a point, right up the part in bold, actually. I do my best not to cause ANY lifeform undue harm, death or suffering. I can't stop the fact that my breathing/washing/walking is destroying millions of bacteria, but I *CAN* pick up the bug on my floor with a little piece of paper and deposit him on the front lawn, rather than smashing him with my shoe or squishing him up in a tissue.

    As far as sentience in animals...

    I have witnessed both cats and dogs execute "planned" activity. One example would be along these lines:

    Two dogs that live together with the same "master" are both given a treat at the same time. The first one gobbles up his treat in a few moments, while the second is taking her time in eating. The first dog runs to the window and begins barking loudly. The second dog drops her treat and also runs to the window to bark. At this point, the first dog stops barking and goes over and munches her treat.

    He had a plan and he used it to deceive another for his own benefit. Sounds like sentience to me.

    -The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)

  • ummm. (Score:1)

    by garcia ( 6573 )
    remember what happened to Mr. Burns when they reanimated him...

    or what happened to Stallone in Demolition Man... Do you really want to end up in a world where sex is through a helmet and you are doomed to eat rat burgers ;-)

    - Bill
  • Quite a while ago I read an incredibly cool SF novel about a guy who had an interesting solution to this problem.

    See, his wife was dying of some incurable disease, so he had her frozen. Now, to get her back he realized that he'd have to be frozen also, and that he'd somehow have to convince these future scientists that he was worth unfreezing.

    So what he did was he started writing biographies of famous people of the 20th century. However, in each case he was careful to imply that each subject had imparted some vital insights to him that weren't to be put into the biography.

    When future scholars read his works they fell for it and had him revived. However the state of the art medical facilities couldn't cure what killed his wife. They did however have relatively advanced spacecraft. To buy himself some time he took his wife (in her little frozen capsule) on a little trip around Pluto at near relativistic speeds. By the time he got back though...

    I'm not intending to write a book review for something I haven't read in several years. I forgot the author's name and the book title, but the story stuck with me. If anyone read this gem please clue us all in. I think it dealt exceptionally with various "future travel" schemes.

  • AFP (Score:3)

    by Round River Cop ( 245356 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @04:55PM (#687819)
    There has been work on the lysing of cells due to freezing. Antifreeze proteins in Antartic and Arctic fish bind to the ice crystals as they grow allowing them only to grow basally. If anyone is interested I have a few citations for reviews I could find. Ta ta for now ladies!
  • Ok, but my understanding (which may be wrong, I'll admit) of cells freezing, is that the crystalling structure that forms is not only sharp, which cuts the cell wall, but larger that it was in a liquid state (I know this is true - water expands when frozen)so the charp edges of the lattice cut the cell wall. so basically, the cell 'explodes', partially from being cut by the sharp lattice, and partially from the water's expansion.

  • I don't know -- better head than dead.

    (sorry)


    --

  • While it might seem like sentience, it is just as likely the result of conditioning.

    It works like this:

    Two dogs are given treats at the same time. This happens every day. On of the dogs always inhales the treat, and the other always takes a little while to finish.

    The first dog, now bored, ususally goes over to the window to check out the neighbor's poodle. One day, there's a strange man in the neighbor's yard. Dog goes nuts. Second dog drops treat to check out the situation. First dog sees the treat & snatches it.

    If this scenario repeats itself, say, twice in one week, the first dog is now conditioned to bark at the window as soon as he's finished his treat. It's an experience thing. You're suggesting that the dog was licking his balls one day & thought to himself: "I know, if I can distract that bitch over there, I can get her treat!"

    Really, it's not sentience any more than a mouse navigating a maze. It's not like the mouse thinks "Okay, that's two rights & a long straightaway...I must be near the outer wall of the maze now - I should turn left at the next intersection." He's simply repeating a sequence that's worked for him in the past.

  • US politics? (Score:3)

    by small_dick ( 127697 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @04:57PM (#687823)
    Maybe they could inject some that stuff into the US presidential race and put an end to this nepotistic nonsense.

  • Freeze Recovery (Score:4)

    by clawrockz ( 220965 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @04:58PM (#687824) Homepage
    Note that any form of re-animation that involves temperature below 0C would require cellular re-construction due to the tearing of cell walls caused by growing ice crystals on the interior of every cell. Water, as you know, becomes less dense and thus of greater volume as it freezes, and the crystals that form expand so that cell walls become torn. Also, the fat cells surounding nerve inter-connections may cut the nerve, causing massive brain failure.
    The simple fact is, without nanotechnology to repair this vast damage, revival of all the 'frozen-in-nitrogen-suspended-animation' people is HIGHLY unlikly.
    This is perhaps MUCH more applicable to transporting organs for transport, and perhaps in reviving hipothermia victims who havn't frozen solid yet.

  • Haiku (Score:4)

    by 575 ( 195442 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @04:59PM (#687825) Journal
    Hemos is correct
    Though it's a great advancement
    I won't beta test
  • You forgot all the self-abusive hedonistic promiscuity
  • that freeze solid in the winter, and then thaw and come back to life in the spring? They somehow can save their celluar membranes... I kid you not..
  • In fact, the most important unknown factor is damage administered to the brain. Cryonics has been touted for many years (I remember when I was much younger, MTV had a big news episode on the fact that Michael Jackson has already payed a company to freeze him when he dies). Though we have lots of people on ICE right now, no-one has ever been brought back. It's generally agreed that the freezing process does damage to brain, but we have no human mice to test the extent of it. It remains to be seen what affects the cyronics (especially a period of time longer than a few minuts) will have on motor functions, short term memory, and long term memory. The article doesn't really mention any of these things. I think the technology is great and has a huge lifesaving potential, but we are no where near the point of suspended animation being a main stream burial practice. Perhaps we have taken the point of the article out of context. It's a huge leap for cyronics, but an even greater discovery for the revival of people caught in such incidents as avalanches, cold weather exposure, or being trapped in near freezing water.
  • "If anyone is interested I have a few citations for reviews I could find. Ta ta for now ladies!
    "

    Yes I am interested.
  • You should really read the page at the link in the parent post, they replace the water with a chemical that doesn't freeze but attains the state of glass (which is a liquid) so there are no crystals to destroy the cells.
  • Then they're idiots. Memories are in many parts of the body, not just the head.

    Morons.

  • Actually, your cells don't explode if you're frozen fast enough. It's the ice crystals that harm the cell's structure. That's why you can't freeze vegetables at home and have them as crisp as commercial, fast-freezed ones.

    Hugo
  • Mankind, er, I mean neanderthalkind, must have actually figured it out a long time ago. After all, how else did OOG THE CAVEMAN [slashdot.org] get here?

    --
  • How long do you think it will be before marathon runners start using this stuff instead of blood doping? It sounds like it would be much safer than blood doping since the user wouldn't have extra blood driving up blood pressure, but instead would be replacing the blood with a more efficient oxygen carrier.

  • And Walt Disney was never frozen either... (Score:5)

    by crasch ( 222290 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @07:46PM (#687835) Homepage
    Just a note of clarification. Although it is true that ice crystallization causes extensive cellular damage, it does not do so by causing cells to explode as the ice expands. Rather, at freezing rates possible in tissues, ice tends to form in the extracellular space first. As ice crystals form in the extracellular space, the chemicals in the unfrozen extracellular fluid become increasingly concentrated (because ice freezes as pure water). Osmotic forces cause water inside the cell to cross the cell membrane. So the cell actually dehydrates and shrinks during freezing. If the cell dehydrates too much, the cell membrane irreversibly collapses into a gel state. (It is true however, that the expansion of ice causes damage to macroscopic structures, such as capillary beds.) Please see this excellent review article [gbhap.com] by Ken Storey, in which he reviews the mechanisms of freezing damage, and discusses naturally freeze tolerant organisms such as the wood frog, Rana sylvatica.

    For a good review of the problems that need to be overcome to achieve suspended animation, see The Contributions of Low Temperature Science to Cryobanking and the Prospect of Suspended Animation for Manned Space Travel [graft-tx.com] by Michael J. Taylor, Ph.D., Debra J. Battjes Siler, M.S., John R. Walsh, Ph.D., Kelvin G.M. Brockbank, Ph.D. in Graft, May 2050, volume 3, issue 3 (also known as Volume 3, Issue 3, May/June 2000).

    In my opinion, the currently most likely near term pathway to suspended animation lies in the use of vitrification. Vitrification involves introducing a sufficiently high concentration of cryoprotectant into an organ such that upon cooling, the fluid within the organ forms a glass instead of a crystal, thereby avoiding the problem of ice crystallization altogether. Please see this review article Organ Cryopreservation [neurocryo.org] by Greg Fahy, PhD. for a succinct review of the approach and numerous references to the available literature.

    Finally, I would caution that the New Scientist is not a particularly discriminating science news source. For example, see the September 28, 1996 New Scientist article (p.22) regarding Olga Visser, a South African perfusionist at the University of Pretoria, who claimed that she had found a technique for successfully cryopreserving rat hearts [cryocare.org] at liquid nitrogen temperatures. In cryobiology circles, this is like someone claiming a cure for cancer. It is one of the "big problems" in cryobiology, that a number of scientists have spent decades trying to solve. Visser's claim could not be duplicated and were never published in a peer reviewed journal. Even worse, Visser later claimed that the same drug she used to achieve the holy grail of cryobiology, dimethylformamide, was also a cure for AIDS [slackinc.com].

  • Yeah, but inanimate objects don't give you Joy Joy feelings!

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Freezing damage to cells is caused by ice crystals. When you freeze something really fast it forms amorphous ice without crystals. A sperm cell is small enough to be frozen instantly when you dip it in liquid nitrogen. A human body is a little bigger. The flow of heat out out the body into the nitrogen is gradual and the temperature of internal parts drops slowly enough for ice crystals to form.

    During cryonic freezing of humans they attempt to minimize this damage by replacing most of the water in your body with other fluids. Of course, it's difficult to replace all water so substantial damage is still caused. With current cryonic freezing techniques it will probably take some of Drexler's little helpers to repair the damage for reviving the individual.


    ----
  • Physically, you are correct about the maximum water density taking place at about +4'C. In fact, that is the reason why lakes freeze on the top instead of the bottom (where the water is denser from the pressure). However, the change of density of water even at the freezing point has little relevance to the problems of perfecting suspended animation by means of cryopreservation. The problem is that when ice crystallizes, just as do all other substances, it tends to form a pure substance. In doing so the concentration of all the disolved chemicals is greatly increased and it is this, now-toxic, soup which caused the most damage to the tissue structures around it. Secondary damage is caused by the sharp crystaline needles of ice that are formed. Finally, a third form of damage is caused by the major differences in reaction rates of various body processes which occurs as different temperatures. Please ask questions for more detail. It is a shame to see all these conversations taking place without anyone around who really understands the problems involved. -- Paul --
  • In answer to your last question re "sleeping", the answer is most likely no. Even for the best of hibernating animals enormous amounts of biochemical activity continues to take place while they are hibernating. If they are kept in a refrigerator at the same temperature for much longer than the normal season length they do not revive when allowed to warm in the natural manner. From an evolutionary pov this actually makes good sense because why should evolution waste any effort in perfecting their hibernating mechanisms any more than is needed? Thus, even if we fully understood hibernation and were able to cause the same changes in a damage-free manner to humans, it would not gain us a great deal in travelling to the future when better life extension methods will be available. In addition, the process would probably not be reversible for the aged and diseased who are the ones most in need of some sort of suspended animation to get them into the hands of advanced future medicine.

    The best hope is to perfect long-term suspened animation by means of cryopreservation. In that process we know for sure that all processes are stopped and, once there, no additional damage will take place for thousands of years. If we could get human to low temperatures without any damage, then the problem of using this technique to prevent death would essentially be solved. Work done with ice blockers and new cryoprotectants in recent years auger well that this last problem is solvable within 10-20 years if with could only get sufficient funding for continuing the program. The amount of funding ($100M) is trivial in terms of what major government programs receive and especially in terms of the importance of the result (truly paradigm transforming), but nevertheless promotion of this effort is not going well. -- Paul --

  • Naturally occuring antifreeze proteins are much too expensive, too large and only work at relatively high temperatures, so they are hardly applicable to human cryopreservation will will need to take bodies down to at least - 120'C in order to solidify all liquids and stop all chemical processes for taking place. However, a company called 21st Century Medicine which is specializing in cryopreservation of large tissue masses has used the idea of these antifreeze proteins to construct small artifical ice blocker chemicals and is beginning to have great success with these.

    -- Paul --

  • Please see my other posts about why the density of water is almost irrelevant to the damage involved. If freezing is slow enough and/or cryoprotectants and ice blockers are used, there is plenty of time for water to cross cell membrances (its very penetrating after all) and no cell bursting takes place. Nor do any membranes or nerve connections need to be cut by ice formation if it it keep either small enough or non-existent which can now be done with the best vitrification methods (vitrifiction means forming a solid glass-like substance without any crystal formation taking place).

    I agree with you that reconstruction of badly damaged cells due to freezing by any conceivable technology, nano or otherwise is highly unlikely. However, that does not mean that fully perfected suspended animation cannot be and will not be achieved.

    -- Paul --

  • As I have explained in detailed on other posts here, this is not applicable to the needs of human suspended animation because these animals will not last more than a normal winter season at their hibernation temperature.

    -- Paul --

  • The is no question that once the body liquids are all solidified at a temperature below -120'C (exact temperature depends on mixture of cryoprotective agents used) all chemical reations cease to occur (there is no possibility for molecules to move into reacting positions wrt each other. Since the body processes (even the brain) are entirely bases on chemical reactions, all brain processes, disease processes and aging (change/deterioration over time) will cease.

    When/if you wake up you will may be chronologically 1040, but you will be biologically still 40. Since antiaging and rejuvenation methods will almost certainly be perfected by that time, in fact, you will wake up as a biological 20 year old in the prime of health and abilities but with the wisdom and knowledge of your original age.

    -- Paul --

  • I think we will find our freeze recovery tools from the human and animal genomes. Biological systems provide enzymes that build and distribute intracellular structure and those that guide and distribute different cells across the entire body. These would be the things we need to repair the damage. The bots will probably be viruses with engineered DNA/RNA payloads.

    I agree that revival of those nitrogen popsicles is a long shot. In the future we will probably focus on pre-conditioning the body before it is suspended. Repair after the fact is probably a lost cause.

  • I'll agree, the same story goes for teleporation

    Spiryt
  • Sounds like this is better suited to hypothermia patients - it would make recovery less traumatic on the brain.
  • I can think of quite a few people that could take as many injections as they can give 'em and it would STILL never help their brain to function any differently...
  • I read the article, but no where did it mention freezing people, who can then be bought back 10000 years later (by freezing, i mean +0c, so cells dont freeze). But at this temperature, or at any temperature, does aging and so on stop? Because it wouldnt be much good if you froze yourself at 40, woke up 1000 years later to die because you are 1040 years old.. are there any biologists out there that can clear this out.. cause it sure would be interesting to see this actually happen.. Also, what about the persons memory.. if you were frozen for 1000 years, would you actually relize you are frozen, or when you woke up, would it just be like you were frozen a few seconds ago? I wouldnt wanna be sitting there for 1000 years going "oh my god wake up!", but i could bare it if everything worked :-). craz

    "Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk ?"

  • yup.....i think i'll freeze my head so i can be one of those ppl in that futurama episode..........hey you never know

  • Re:Talking heads (Score:4)

    by techfreak ( 144299 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @05:08PM (#687850)
    I know some of those people [cryonet.org] planning to freeze their heads [neurocryo.org] when they die, and they do have some reasons-- by isolating the head, the freezing process can be conducted more carefully with less body mass to mess with in the limited timeframe before the body decays too much after death. And they expect that the level of nanotechnology [minduploading.org] neccessary for the cell-repair functions [foresight.org] needed for proper 'reanimation' will also be able to either create a new body for them or 'upload' their consciousness [minduploading.org] into a non-biological state. For further information on cryonics, you can visit Alcor Life Extension Foundation [alcor.org]'s site (they do head-freezes) or the Cryonics Institute [cryonics.org] (they only do whole bodies).


    ---

  • Freezing doesn't truly burst cells... (Score:5)

    by AlephNot ( 177467 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @05:08PM (#687851)
    In Chapter 9 of Drexler's Engines of Creation [foresight.org], the author states, "It is a common myth that freezing bursts cells; in fact, freezing damage is more subtle than this - so subtle that it often does no lasting harm. Frozen sperm regularly produces healthy babies. Some human beings now alive have survived being frozen solid at liquid nitrogen temperatures - when they were early embryos."

    I personally recommend a read of the entire book (it's all online), but this chapter seems to have the most to do with the discussion.
  • i would never want to live in a world where i couldn't indiscriminately stick my dick in things.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • Havn't they ever watched Herbert West's Re-animator? [clara.net]
  • yeah, but leave it to sly to get sex back the way it should be... ;)


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • I wonder if St. Bernards will start carrying EDTA instead of rum in their little barrels?
  • Nature has already invented a solution to this problem. I know of at least one species each of frog and cricket that can be frozen solid and be thawed out repeatedly with no apparent harm. In fact the cricket, witch lives at high mountain elavation, freezes every night during the cold season and thaws in the morning sun. With some advanced genetic engineering, you could produce humans with this mechanism and suspended animation would be as simple as hopping in a freezer. Funny thought, but could these animals be marketed to the public. You would buy them already frozen, and thaw them out when you get home. Then just pop them in the freezer when you get bored with them.
  • Many frogs will survive below freezing temperatures (during the winter). They can do this because their blood contains a lot of glucose and it can help to lower the freezing point of their flesh and fluids. These techniques have also been used to try to stop larger pieces of mammel tissue, like a rat's, from being damaged during freezing.

  • Daffynition: suspended animation (Score:3)

    by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @04:13AM (#687861)
    Suspended Animation: The condition which arises when your Windoze 9X box freezes while attempting to animate your 3DSMAX project.

  • Uploading debate (Score:3)

    by techfreak ( 144299 ) on Saturday October 21, 2000 @05:52AM (#687865)
    Yes, that has been the subject of much debate. I personally agree with you. In my opinion the only way to really get *you*, not just a consciousness identical to you, into a non-biological medium (computer) is something along the lines of having nanobots go to each of your brain-cells, learn to duplicate their composition and chemical input-output processes, and then take the place of that cell. Eventually, theoretically, all the cells would be replaced by nano-devices functioning in the same patterns as the original biological cells. (This process is sometimes referred to as "soft" uploading, as opposed to "hard" uploading, in which the pattern is simply copied into the computer leaving *you* either stuck in your biological body or dead from a destructive scanning process such as the brain-slice method.)

    One of the reasons I think the gradual method is better is because your own biological cells are constantly replacing themselves and yet one doesn't have an end of one's consciousness due to the gradual replacement. Like the "if you gradually replace every part of a car (or computer), it's still the same car (or computer)" thing. By replacing the neurons gradually, with functionally-identical technological counterparts, the other neurons could incorporate the replacements into the functioning of the brain, and hence one's consciousness, until the last biological one has been replaced and *you* are still there but with a non-biological brain.

    The gradualness is what makes the difference, in my opinion. Another possible method of "soft"-uploading, although even more theoretical, is that if/when direct neuro-computer interfaces become available, there is something of a possibility that if someone were to spend enough time with their mind joined with the computer, their consciousness would gradually "spread" to the computer and remain active even once the original biological brain becomes inactive. (All totally theoretical for now, of course. :-) ) But once again, the gradualness of the process is what I think is the key to *you* being the one in the computer and not merely a duplicate of you. Just my opinion.


    ---

  • Won't work. Aging and decomposition will still take place, just at a slower rate. Any single male can attest to what happens when you leave things in the fridge for too long.

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