There was an interesting and related TV programme yesterday on BBC Horizon (available on iplayer)

[www.bbc.co.uk]

on the medical research into cooling accident patients in order to operate with less trauma and then warming them back up after the operation.
Given that this is receiving some serious medical attention lately, perhaps those interested in cryonics will look a bit more closely at the complexities of what is involved in cooling and reviving human bodies safely and see these unprofessional hacks for what they are.

This cyonics ambulance sham/scam is interesting. It must depend on the local jurisdiction, and the technical fine print.

Perhaps its time to buy an old ambulance at auction, and then flip the lights and sirens, and get around town a lot quicker.


Perhaps Wikipedia needs to add Cryonics Mortician and Cryonics Salesmen to their Crew list. [en.wikipedia.org]

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Stoic
...calling it an ambulance is just to reassure and impress the living punters, I should imagine, not to actually carry out any procedures in transit.

Guess again. If Styles et. al., are anything like their US counterparts, they fully intend to perform procedures in the vehicle. Catherine Baldwin, (manager of Suspended Animation), allegedly has laymen practicing medical procedures, on pigs, in their vehicle. Keep in mind that when they acquired their Boynton Beach, FL facility, they promised the City Council they would not be doing any animal research in the facility. I'm wondering how the city of Boynton Beach feels about SA circumventing their "no animal research" promise, by using a vehicle.

(Is there a way to have one's posts appear, immediately, on this forum?)

Well, anyone expecting to have these 'procedures' successfully carried out on them in a moving ambulance would be well advised to watch the BBC film of top surgical teams using their own reasonably safe cooling procedures-- before signing away all their rights.

The top surgical teams expect only a window of 40 minutes to an hour of the brain being cooled to a point of all activity ceasing, in a very precise and controlled environment, before the cells are irreparably damaged.

Are these cryonics salesmen--with little or no medical knowledge-- seriously expecting a better result by hacking off the head of an already dead body while travelling in the back of a second-hand van?

One of the points made in the film is that if the heart stops before the brain is cooled then the cell damage begins immediately. So however you cut it, these procedures do not work on people already dead. To have a chance of working the head must be cut off and cooled while the person is still clinically alive, i.e. the heart is still beating at a normal rate.
That is called homicide in any jurisdiction.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/29/2010 03:18PM by Stoic.

Quote
Stoic
One of the points made in the film is that if the heart stops before the brain is cooled then the cell damage begins immediately. So however you cut it, these procedures do not work on people already dead. To have a chance of working the head must be cut off and cooled while the person is still clinically alive, i.e. the heart is still beating at a normal rate.
That is called homicide in any jurisdiction.

I don't believe the cryonics organizations intend to perform decapitations in their vehicles. It is possible to cool the entire body, without a heartbeat, via a perfusion circuit, as is done in open-heart surgery. With that said, I don't believe ANY of the people working at the companies using these vehicles are capable of competently performing those procedures even under the best possible conditions, much less in a vehicle.

Last year, Catherine Baldwin, of Suspended Animation, (Boynton Beach, FL), published a case report for the procedures SA performed on Curtis Henderson, (an historic figure in cryonics). Apparently, Ms. Baldwin doesn't realize one of the best ways to make one's self look incompetent, is to use terminology one is unfamiliar with. (I did a partial review of the case report, but the errors and clumsy use of terminology are too overwhelming to address, in detail, for an audience comprised of mostly laymen.)

I hear the cryos responded to my review of the case report with the usual, "She's just a disgruntled former employee," but my criticisms are valid, and I will stand behind them in any court in this land. It's there, in black and white...Suspended Animation bungled their procedures and kept Mr. Henderson at relatively warm temperatures, for many, MANY hours.

No one has answered my question, regarding Mr. Henderson's status, at SA. Mr. Henderson was certainly aware of SA. The question is: Was he signed up for SA's services, or was this another "freebie," courtesy of Ben Best (CI)and Saul Kent (SA)? The SA case report I reviewed, prior to this, was for a gentleman who was NOT signed up for SA. According to at least two people who knew him, he called SA a "dog and pony show," after attending their conference, and electing NOT to make use of their services. Suspended Animation sent three people WITH ABSOLUTLE NO MEDICAL EXPERIENCE to perform tasks normally performed by medical personnel with years of specialized training. The whole thing was a publicity stunt, in my opinion...a marketing gimmick, on the part of SA/Kent, with Best's rubber stamp.

I believe some cryonics organizations are engaging in intentional deceit, which should constitute fraud, in my opinion. Suspended Animation's most recent case report, (published last year), is filled with medical terminology most people working in cryonics would not understand. I believe that report is exactly what it looks like...a regurgitation of medical terminology designed to deceive the reader into believing the staff members of SA have a lot more knowledge of the medical sciences, and the procedures they are attempting, than they actually have. What's amazing is, they think medical professionals won't see through their clumsy and technically inaccurate descriptions, when reading these reports.

I have an email, from a well-known cryonics insider, blaming me for Baldwin not publicly sharing more information about SA's activities and procedures, (as though that information would help the other organizations get anything right!). My answer to that is: If my criticisms were invalid, Ms. Baldwin would respond in a much different manner, than making her activities more secretive! She doesn't describe SA's activities because she KNOWS it is far too easy for me to use their own information, to discredit them. (No news bulletins in nearly two years, and rarely a case report, from that bunch.)

Read here, to see one example of the many mistakes reflected in Suspended Animation's CI-95 (Curtis Henderson) case report: [cryomedical.blogspot.com]

The example given which kick-started the medical interest in cooling was of Anna Bagenholm, a Finnish doctor and extreme skier who accidently froze and was revived. She was attended at the accident by her fellow skiers, also MD's and had a team of a hundred MD's and nurses working on her revival. It took her six years to recover fully:

[en.wikipedia.org]

and the procedure used to revive her was constant CPR. They reckon she survived because her brain cooled first then when neurological activity ceased her heart stopped.

There was a snippet in the film on research into the 'suicide' mechanism in brain cells. Apparently as soon as blood flow ceases the cells make a decision to die--unless they have already been cooled to inactivity.

What the medics are exploiting is this tiny window of paralysis of the natural inclination of the brain cells to die once the heart stops pumping blood. In the operations the patients own blood is cooled and continues to circulate using a heart/lung machine until it is shut off for the short window of time--40-60 minutes-- that the cells can survive while the tricky heart repairs are carried out.

I can see that happening in the back of a van, all under the direction of some salesman who six months ago was a squaddie, an infantry soldier.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/29/2010 11:08PM by Stoic.

Its important to note, that in fact cooling organs for organ transplantation, and experiments in cooling the body for surgery, in fact have nothing to do with "cryonics".
In fact, it disproves "cryonics".
Because its only a very moderate, short-term cooling, to lower metabolic activity.
If the cooling is any greater, or for a longer period of time, then its cell death and its game over.

So the medical science involved with cooling organs, has nothing at all to do with so-called "cryonics".
Its the opposite of "cryonics".

The liquid nitrogen freezing at such extreme temperatures is instant and permanent cell death.
If you have a wart on your toe, go to the doctor and have them blast it with liquid-nitro. It instantly kills the wart, and it turns black (necrosis) and falls off. This is 3rd grade stuff.
Liquid nitro is instant destruction for cells.

But the Cryonics Corps just want to throw around a bunch of idiotic faux medical-sounding Quackery, as some of them are deluded and don't know any better, others are trying to make a buck, or a million bucks.
Its no different than New Agers talking gibberish about "Quantum Physics".

To those with actual medical training, or common sense, as shown above, the cryonics companies misuse a bunch of medical sounding gibberish, to try and mislead people.
Its like the fake-doctor wearing a fake white-coat on TV to sell a pill.
Its a charade.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2010 05:38AM by The Anticult.

Quote
The Anticult
Its like the fake-doctor wearing a fake white-coat on TV to sell a pill.
Its a charade.

Speaking of white lab coats...There's a photo of Catherine Baldwin, manager of Suspended Animation, wearing one for a cryonics presentation, at the bottom-right of this page: [www.cryonicsfactsheet.co.uk] Note the young people in the audience.

I agree with that AC - Cryoncist also bring up freezing of sperm and embryo's as proof that it can be a "science" - but take a look at this: [www.pacificfertilitycenter.com]
Sounds very similar to what the cryonics salesmen are offering or does it?

This is Real Cryobiology in action again - Look at the care they take over just freezing a few cells and how difficult it is to do - Again if you look at it it kind of disproves cryonics what these people do is very advanced compared to what we are told cryonics company's offer from thier own websites! Also in very nice laymans terms and they also describe the regulation they have to work under "Thawing includes our SurTransferSM protocol. When an embryologist removes embryos from the freezer, a second embryologist is required to witness the act, and verify the identity of the embryos before they can be thawed. Under no circumstances can a lone embryologist remove embryos from the freezer."

They also freely "admit" what they are and are not capable of - "Unfortunately, the technology to freeze human eggs is still being developed. Due to the low success rates of this procedure, Pacific Fertility Center does not routinely offer egg freezing. You may have read reports about babies born after freezing of eggs, these children are exceptional and resulted from a hugely ineffective technology. Much effort has been invested in developing methods for egg freezing, but a useful procedure has not yet been devised. At the forefront of this research is a group of scientists in Italy who have been able to create 16 babies as a result of their efforts. However, they had to freeze 1,600 eggs to get these babies". (more on webpages)

Anyone who is interested in wasting money on cryonics would be better off investing their cash into the research of freezing a Ovum - We need those frozen Ovums to send to Mars - remember Mars needs women!

:)