Cryonics Magazine- New Evidence Keeping Brain Sharp and Active Wards off Alzheimer’s
- New Discoveries in Cell Aging
- Eye Trials Give Hope for Stem Cells
- How Stem Cell Implants Help Heal Traumatic Brain Injury
- Victory For Crowdsourced Biomolecule Design
- New Approach to Preventing Fatal Septic Shock
- Alzheimer’s Damage Occurs Early
- Oxidative DNA Damage Repair
- Messenger RNA Self-destruct Mechanism Revealed
- How the Brain Cell Works: A Dive Into Its Inner Network
- Fight Aging!
- Chronosphere
- Cryonics “Castle”
- Doing the Time Warp
- Interventive Gerontology 1.0.02: First, Try to Make it to the Mean: Diet as a life extending tool, Part 3
- Interventive Gerontology 1.0.02: First, Try to Make it to the Mean: Diet as a life extending tool, Part 2
- Interventive Gerontology 1.0.02: First, Try to Make it to the Mean: Diet as a life extending tool, Part 1.
- Fortune and Men’s Eyes
- Interventive Gerontology 101.01: The Basics
- The Kurzwild Man in the Night
- Fucked.
- You Bet Your Life!
Author Archives: Aschwin de Wolf
Annotated bibliography of cryoprotectant toxicity
Introduction Cryoprotectant toxicity should be distinguished from other mechanisms of cryopreservation injury such as chilling injury (injury produced by too low temperatures as such) and cold shock (injury produced by rapid cooling). Cryoprotectant toxicity itself can again be divided into … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Science
Tagged Brian Wowk, Cryobiology, Cryoprotectant Toxicity, DMSO, Ethylene Glycol, Glycerol, Gregory Fahy, Vitrification
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What you don’t eat can’t hurt you
Many people in the life extension community follow some kind of diet. Historically, caloric restriction (CR) has been the most popular and most discussed option. Other popular diets include the Mediterranean diet and the Paleolithic diet. In one sense, comparing … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Health, Personal Genomics
Tagged Alzheimer's Disease, ApoE4, Caloric Restriction, Cryonics, Evolution, Genotype, Mediterranean Diet, Neurodegenerative Diseases, Nutrigenetics, Paleolithic Diet, Saturated Fat, The 10000 Year Explosion
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Steve Jobs’ morbid glorification of death
According to Steve Jobs, death is such a great benefit to mankind that it would have to be invented if it did not exist: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to … Continue reading
Posted in Arts & Living, Death
Tagged Apple, Baby Boomers, Death, Herbert Marcuse, Steve Jobs
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Personalized Cryonics
Personalized Cryonics is an approach to cryonics that emphasizes the use of individual (health) information to optimize a person’s cryopreservation circumstances and outcomes. To exchange information and empower individuals, a moderated discussion list was created by the Institute for Evidence … Continue reading
Intermediate temperature storage in cryonics
The recent issue of Cryonics magazine features a comprehensive update on intermediate temperature storage (ITS). This article contains an important observation: Acoustic events consistent with fracturing were found to be universal during cooling through the cryogenic temperature range. They occurred … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics
Tagged Alcor, Fracturing, Freezing, Glass Transition Temperature, Intermediate Temperature Storage, Thermal Stress, Vitrification
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ApoE4 – The Ancestral Allele
Reportedly, when James Watson and Steven Pinker had their genome sequenced, they declined to know their risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Clearly this is not an option for life extensionists and cryonicists, who are better off knowing whether they have a copy … Continue reading
Posted in Health, Neuroscience, Personal Genomics
Tagged 23andMe, Alcor, Alzheimer's Disease, ApoE4, Brain Aging, Cryonics, Life Extension, Paleo Diet, Patri Friedman
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The double standard about cryonics
One of the most predictable features of public debates about cryonics is that those arguing in favor of cryonics are held to more rigorous standards than those seeking conventional medical treatment. Advocates of cryonics do not just have to prove … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics
Tagged Cell Repair, Cryonics, Emergency Medicine, Neurogenomics, Technological Stasis, Vitrification
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Gerald Feinberg on physics and life extension
Gerald Feinberg, a Columbia university physicist who, among other things, hypothesized the existence of the muon neutrino, had a strong interest in the future of science and life extension. In 1966 he published the article “Physics and Life Prolongation” in … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics
Tagged Brain Repair, Cryobiology, Cryonics, Foresight Institute, Gerald Feinberg, Molecular Nanotechnology
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Neural cryobiology and the legal recognition of cryonics
It has been said that if you want to persuade someone, you need to find common ground. But one of the defining characteristics of cryonics is that proponents and opponents cannot even seem to agree on the criteria that should … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Death, Neuroscience
Tagged B2C, Brain Death, Brian Wowk, Cryobiology, Cryonics, EEG, Gregory Fahy, Information-theoretic Death, M22, Neural Cryobiology, Neuroscience, Robert J. White, Yuri Pichugin
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The case against cryonics
What is striking about cryonics is that those who have taken serious efforts to understand the arguments in favor of its technical feasibility generally endorse the idea. Those who have not made cryonics arrangements usually give non-technical arguments (anxiety about … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Cryonics, Cryonics Criticism, Cryopreservation, Decision Making Under Uncertainty, Decision Theory, Memory, Mike Darwin, Personal Identity, Personal Survival, Vitrification
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The Future of Aging: Pathways to Human Life Extension
This book review was originally published in Cryonics magazine, 1st Quarter, 2011. Editor-in-chief, cryobiologist, and aging researcher Gregory M. Fahy and his associate editors Michael D. West, L. Stephen Cole and Steven B. Harris have compiled what might be the … Continue reading
Posted in Rejuvenation, Science
Tagged Biogerontology, Gregory Fahy, Interventive Gerontology, Joshua Mitteldorf, Michael R. Rose, Michael Rae, Nanotechnology, NENS, Ray Kurzweil, Rejuvenation, Robert Freitas, SENS, Stephen Cole, The Future of Aging: Pathways to Human Life Extension, Thomas Donaldson
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Paul Edwards on the fear of death
In his book God and the Philosophers, the Austrian American atheist philosopher Paul Edwards writes: When we die we do not return to the “bosom of Nature” or the bosom of anything. After death we will have no experiences at … Continue reading
Alcor update from CEO Max More
The Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence blog features a short interview with new Alcor CEO Max More: Q: Where do you see cryonics in the future? We’ll look back on this 50 to 100 years from now — we’ll shake our heads … Continue reading
Suspended Animation Conference 2011
The cryonics company Suspended Animation “will sponsor the conference, “Suspended Animation – The Company and The Goal,” which will be held in Fort Lauderdale in May, 2011. The conference will feature speakers on the latest strategies and advances toward perfecting … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Science
Tagged Cryonics, Greg Fahy, Life Extension Foundation, Suspended Animation
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Support real progress in life extension
As we start the new year, it is helpful to draw attention to the sobering fact that no credible human rejuvenation therapies are available today, and it is doubtful that such therapies will see the light of day in the … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Rejuvenation
Tagged Biogerontology, Brain Preservation, Cryonics, Nanomedicine, Rejuvenation, SENS
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Non-existence is hard to do
A review of contemporary antinatalist writings Originally published in Cryonics, 2nd Quarter, 2010 (PDF) “Coming into existence is bad in part because it invariably leads to the harm of ceasing to exist.” David Benatar “If they could get a corpse … Continue reading
Posted in Arts & Living, Cryonics, Death, Neuroscience, Science, Society
Tagged Antinatalism, Consciousness, Cryonics, David Benatar, Empiricism, Free Will, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hans Reichenbach, Hard Determinism, Jim Crawford, Marquis de Sade, Max Stirner, Thomas Ligotti, Transhumanism
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The diminishing returns of reactive medicine
In an article for Slate, Jay Olshansky argues in favor of a position that one would expect to be common sense at this point: While we can extend life in aging bodies through behavioral improvements and medical treatments, the time … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Science
Tagged Aging, Anti-Aging, Cryonics, Reactive Medicine, Rejuvenation, Rejuvenation Research, S. Jay Olshansky
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Cryonics, trans-temporal communism and future squatters
Cryonics advocate Eugen Leitl puts forward some hard-hitting and thought-provoking observations about cryonics (reminiscent of Mike Darwin’s more recent thoughts on the subject): Cryonics, like Natural Selection, or the theories of General and Special Relativity, is core-smashing in character, and … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Society
Tagged Cryonics, Eugen Leitl, Futurism, Medicine, Mike Darwin, Transhumanism
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Meta-research and medical skepticism
The Atlantic features an important article about “meta-researcher” Athina Tatsioni, who has published a number of influential papers about the quality of biomedical research: He and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much … Continue reading
Posted in Health, Science
Tagged 21st Century Medicine, Athina Tatsioni, Cryonics, Michael Anissimov, Research
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Mark Plus on cryonics and double standards
One of the mysterious things about cryonics is that some of the arguments that are invoked against it would be considered ridiculous, or even insensitive, if they would be raised in the context of other live-saving technologies. As Alcor member … Continue reading
Thought experiments as knowledge
One of the most remarkable aspects about the ongoing debates concerning the technical feasibility of mind uploading is the excessive confidence that some people have that these issues can be resolved without further experimental validation. The (implicit) assumption seems to … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Cryonics, Mind Uploading, Rationalism, Thought Experiments
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Mind uploading, falsifiability and cryonics
On the cryonics discussion list Cryonet cryobiologist Brian Wowk weighed in on the topic of mind uploading in a post that merits quoting in its entirety: I read with interest Bob Ettinger’s recent remarks about Mark Gubrud’s piece in The … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Brian Wowk, Cryonics, David Pizer, Falsifiability, Mind Uploading, Transhumanism
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David J. Chalmers on the Singularity, mind uploading and cryonics
If I would make an argument in favor of mind uploading (or substrate independent minds) it would not be a logical deduction from what we know about neuroscience but from what we don’t know. As one of the leading philosophers … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged David J. Chalmers, Mind Uploading, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Substrate Independent Minds
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Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience
Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson believes that a major reason why the social sciences have made so little progress is that its practitioners have ignored the biological basis of human behavior. He is not impressed with arguments that purport that the … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Society
Tagged Alexis Carrel, Consilience, Edward O. Wilson, Empiricism, Free Will, Hans Reichenbach, Logical Empiricism, Logical Positivism, Sociobiology, Unity of Science
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Buddhism and the scientific worldview
On his blog The Life of Man Qua Man on Earth Mark Plus takes a critical look at Buddhism: Transhumanists who endorse Buddhism tend to annoy me. Buddhism not only has the problems John Horgan points out, but the empirical … Continue reading
Posted in Neuroscience, Society
Tagged Atheism, Buddhism, Calvinism, Free Will, Mark Plus, Neuroscience
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The low-hanging fruit of technological progress
The website Alternative Right has an interesting article on the declining pace of technological progress: The world of 1959 is pretty much the same world we live in today technologically speaking. This is a vaguely horrifying fact which is little … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Society
Tagged Cryonics, Eric Drexler, Molecular Nanotechnology, Singularity, Technological Progress, Technological Singularity
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How many neurons need to survive for cryonics to work?
On this page a calculation is attempted to determine how many neurons need to survive for cryonics to work. The flaw in this approach should be obvious when the author writes : According to The Stroke Association, a stroke is … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics
Tagged Alcor, Cell Death, Cerebral Ischemia, Cryonics, Delayed Neuronal Death, Nanomedicine, Stroke
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Chemical preservation and cryonics research
In the 2009-4 issue of Alcor’s Cryonics magazine I review the technical and practical feasibility of chemical preservation. One of the most interesting aspects of chemopreservation is that it could play a useful role in the cryopreservation of ischemic patients. … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Brain Preservation, Chemical Fixation, Chemopreservation, Cryonics, Ischemia, Vitrification
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The presumption of death
Bertrand Russell once said that “most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.” One does not need to look any further than the many responses to Kerry Howley’s recent article about cryonics and hostile partners in … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Society
Tagged Bertrand Russell, Bryan Caplan, Cryonics, Hostile Relatives, Hostile Wife Phenomenon, Immortality, James Hughes, Kerry Howley, Life Extension, Peggy Jackson, Robin Hanson, Sati, Thomas Donaldson
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Cryonics and fear of the future
To people who have made cryonics arrangements the biggest mystery remains why more people have not made the same decision. The most obvious answer remains that cryonics has not been proven to “work” yet. People who give this answer usually … Continue reading
Official Alcor Facebook Page
Alcor Life Extension Foundation is on Facebook. If you would like to connect with Alcor members and supporters then visit the official Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/alcor.life.extension.foundation Become a fan and encourage interested friends, family members, and colleagues to support Alcor too.