Depressed Metabolism

Alcor’s recent news item about its 2009 Annual Board Meeting and Strategic Meeting contains a number of encouraging statements. On the front of institutional reform, however, there is not much news to report. The passage about the need to balance recruiting new Board members and preserving institutional memory reads as a rather uninspired defense of [...]

Once a year I try to attend at least one biogerontology conference. Although I attend biogerontology conferences out of personal interest, and at my own expense, they are the most fruitful grounds for promoting cryonics I have found, and this is especially true of SENS conferences. I have missed none of the four SENS conferences [...]

There is a growing literature that discusses the technical aspects of revival of cryonics patients. The following list of the published literature was compiled by Ralph Merkle and Robert Freitas and published as an appendix of their article on molecular nanotechnology in Cryonics Magazine 2008-4: Robert C.W. Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality, Doubleday, NY, 1964 [...]

This past weekend Motel X, the Lisbon (Portugal) International Horror festival, had its third anniversary. It is one of the smaller international horror festivals around, but this year they managed to have both Stuart Gordon, director of several Lovecraft adaptions, and John Landis, director of the horror classic An American Werewolf in London, as special [...]

Today is the second anniversary of Depressed Metabolism. As of writing, this website has close to 200 feed subscribers. On an average day the website has 150 unique visitors, which is an encouraging increase in traffic since our last update. This is even more remarkable in light of the fact that new blog entries with [...]

Danila Medvedev has translated Ben Best’s  article “Scientific Justification of Cryonics Practice” into Russian. The translation is available on the KrioRus website. The original Engish article was published in Rejuvenation Research and is available as a PDF file at the Cryonics Institute website. ABSTRACT Very low temperatures create conditions that can preserve tissue for centuries, [...]

Back in the late 1980′s, from Lake Tahoe, we published seven issues of short stories devoted to cryonics and where that might lead, primarily to uploading and a future now much like that envisioned in far more detail by Ray Kurzweil in his writings on the Singularity. The early issues were mainly about the emotions of those deciding on [...]

There will be two cryonics meetings in Oregon this weekend. Eugene area cryonics meet-up: Saturday August 15th 5:00pm Cozmic Pizza (coffee, salads, wine, beer and any kind of pizza you’d like from gluten free to regular or vegan) 199 W 8th Ave Eugene, OR 97401 (541) 338-9333 Portland area cryonics meet-up: Sunday August 16th 2:00pm [...]

The 2008-3 issue of Alcor’s Cryonics Magazine contains a number of articles about the pitfalls of (excessive) scientific optimism and its potential adverse effects on the organizational and practical aspects of cryonics. My own contribution contrasts cryonics as medical conservatism with the kind of scientific meliorism that is often associated with movements such as transhumanism [...]

CPR: A Pair of Hands Aren’t Enough: You Also Need a Heart and a Brain “Anyone, anywhere, can now initiate cardiac resuscitation procedures. All that is needed are two hands.” [Kouwenhoven WB, Jude J, Knickerbocker G. Closed chest cardiac massage. JAMA 1960;173:1064–7. Sudden Cardiac Arrest Figure 1: Mortality from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in 2004 [...]

Real estate is all about location, location, location. Location matters in cryonics as well. The objective of standby and stabilization in cryonics is to limit injury to the brain after pronouncement of legal death. Unfortunately, many cryonics patients have not been stabilized promptly after pronouncement of legal death because the cryonics organization did a poor [...]

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7 For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth.  – Sanskrit Proverb In the Beginning… Since the beginning of modern [...]

In 2005 the American heart association revised its standards for CPR increasing the number of compressions from 80 cpm to 100 cpm, eliminating pauses for ventilation, and urging that focus be shifted to compressions (perfusion) rather than ventilation. This latter change is more profound than it might seem at first glance. In the past, a [...]

If conventional cardiopulmonary support (CPS) in cryonics is difficult to perform adequately, and impossible to sustain for more than brief periods (30-60 min) before exhausting even a 3-man standby team, this is even more the case for active compression-decompression CPS (ACD-CPS) using the ResQPump (formerly the Ambu CardioPump). Even in the conventional medical setting of [...]

Sometime in the 1780s the French scientist Jacques Charles’s noted that  at constant pressure, the volume of a given mass of an ideal gas increases or decreases by the same factor as its temperature on the absolute temperature scale. Or, put more simply, the gas expands as the temperature increases. This is known as Charles’ law which [...]

According to this news item the Alcor Life Extension Foundation is taking legal action against the brother and sister of an Alcor member who “denied the foundation’s request for his body and didn’t notify them of their brother’s death until months after he was buried.” Although some may question the wisdom of pursuing this case [...]

Source: ExtroBritannia Why the much anticipated medical breakthroughs of the early 21st century are failing to materialize Saturday 30th May 2009, 2pm-4pm. Room 403 (fourth floor), Birkbeck College, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7HX. There’s no charge to attend, and everyone is welcome. Speaker Mike Darwin has 30 years experience in cutting edge medical research. Co-founder [...]

David Wallace Croft is an Alcor member in the Dallas area where he lives with his wife Shannon and five children, Ada, Ben, Tom, Abe, and Ted.  He is employed as a Java software developer and is a part-time doctoral student.  His contact information and his weblog are available at www.CroftPress.com. 1. How did you [...]

In “Ice Baby” by Tom Mueller, the May 2009 issue of National Geographic announces the recent discovery of a 40,000 year old baby mammoth in Sibera. She is called Lyuba, named after the wife of the Nenet reindeer herder who found her, and is in near-pristine condition, having even her eyelashes. In fact, besides most [...]

It is common medical knowledge that after 5 minutes of cardiac arrest the prospects of successful resuscitation without neurological impairment become progressively bleak. But there is less consensus on the mechanisms of such injury. One strong candidate is what is called the “no-reflow” phenomenon. No-reflow refers to the impairment of perfusion of the brain after [...]

At the hospital where Linda works, nurses and other employees swap many ‘helpful hints’ via email, and one of these ideas recently circulated seemed to be a technique cryonicists could use to increase the chances that their suspension organizations would find out quickly about their situations, in case of an emergency. The way it works [...]

In his article entitled ‘Evidence Based Cryonics’ Aschwin de Wolf unassailably argues that: “There is an urgent need to move from extrapolation based cryonics to evidence based cryonics. This will require a comprehensive research program aimed at creating realistic cryonics research models. It will also require vast improvements in the monitoring and evaluation of cryonics [...]

Basile J. Luyet (1897-1974) can be considered the father of modern cryobiology. His book “Life and Death at Low Temperatures” is a classic in the field and his journal “Biodynamica” evolved into a publication solely dedicated to the study of low temperature biology. Luyet identified the possibility of solidification without crystallization at low temperatures (vitrification) [...]

Cryonics patients can greatly benefit from rapid stabilization after pronouncement of legal death. One fortunate feature of stabilization procedures is that the most effective and validated procedures are relatively inexpensive and easy to perform.  The difference between no stabilization procedures at all and procedures that aim to rapidly restore blood circulation and drop the patient’s [...]

Under ideal circumstances cryonics patients are stabilized immediately after pronouncement of legal death by restoring  blood flow to the brain, lowering temperature, and administering medications. In most cryonics cases, however, there is a delay between pronouncement of legal death and start of cryonics procedures. In some cases there are no stabilization interventions at all. Provided [...]

The association of cryonics with “transhumanism” seems inevitable but is problematic.  It seems inevitable because cryonics should be most attractive to people with a very positive perspective on the future capabilities of technology. Barring rapid advances in mitigating aging, cryonics  offers the only credible option for transhumanists to become a part of that future. It [...]

When I was in New Zealand in 1999, CI Member Cam Christie told me that one of his co-workers was against cryonics because she was a Jehovah’s  Witness and her church had a position against cryonics. I recently found an article about cryonics on the Jehovah’s Witnesses website: The piece contains the statement: “…the use [...]

For Immediate Release, Friday, 24 January, 2009 Date: 23 January, 2009 Introduction I have been informed that Marcelon (Marce) Johnson died on 01/21/2009, was cremated, and not cryopreserved. I understand this information may come as a surprise and as a disturbing shock to many people, especially those who loved and knew Marce, as I did. [...]

The cryonics organizations Alcor and the Cryonics Institute have taken great care to correct some of the persistent myths about cryonics. With so much widespread misinformation being circulated in the media it seems trivial to pay attention to some of the misconceptions that some people who are sympathetic to cryonics hold. But the price of [...]

Patrick Millard is a Michigan based artist who works with different media including photography, painting, mixed media, sound, and installation. He currently works as an adjunct professor of photography at Grand Valley State University and Grand Rapids Community College and is a photography instructor at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids. One [...]

Robert J. White is most known, or perhaps most notorious, for his work on primate head transplants. Less known, but more relevant to the practice of human cryopreservation, is his work in cerebral ischemia, hypothermia, and brain preservation. Most of White’s innovative work was published in the 1960s and 1970s. White also published a substantial [...]