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I'm not convinced that medical science is so far behind determining life. Once a person is pronounced dead, I'm convinced they're brain dead. So it's useless to

by chris11 18y ago

I'm not convinced that medical science is so far behind determining life. Once a person is pronounced dead, I'm convinced they're brain dead. So it's useless to preserve someone when nearly all of their information on the state of their mind has been lost.

aantix 18y ago
http://www.newsweek.com/id/35045 http://www.newsweek.com/id/35045 "The patient couldn't be revived because the tissues of his brain and heart had suffered irreversible damage from lack of oxygen. This process was understood to begin after just four or five minutes. If the patient doesn't receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation within that time, and if his heart can't be restarted soon thereafter, he is unlikely to recover. That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "After one hour," he says, "we couldn't see evidence the cells had died. We thought we'd done something wrong." In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later."
mhartl 18y ago
You're right to be skeptical, but I encourage you to investigate further, since this is a common but erroneous belief: that even a few minutes without oxygen causes irreparable brain damage. In fact, it's the autoimmune response upon revival that causes the damage to the brain, not the hypoxia. And cold prevents the damage; some types of brain surgery require zero blood pressure, and are performed at low temperature (potentially for hours) without harm to the brain.
- chris11 18y ago
  I probably spoke to fast. I could see it being somewhat feasible if the cryonics facility was immediately informed that the patient was dying, and the patient was frozen within hours of clinical death. My main concern is the success of freezing a brain dead person. I also was mainly referring earlier to the loss of information in the brain, not the actual physical brain damage.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theoretical_death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theoretical_death. So if the family refuses or delays to inform the organization, I'm skeptical about whether the information in the brain can be preserved. And there have been bitter legal battles fought over cryonics. http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/is-that-what-love-is-the-hostile-wife-phenomenon-in-cryonics/ http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/is-that-what-love-is-the-...

by chris11 18y ago

aantix 18y ago

http://www.newsweek.com/id/35045 http://www.newsweek.com/id/35045 "The patient couldn't be revived because the tissues of his brain and heart had suffered irreversible damage from lack of oxygen. This process was understood to begin after just four or five minutes. If the patient doesn't receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation within that time, and if his heart can't be restarted soon thereafter, he is unlikely to recover. That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "After one hour," he says, "we couldn't see evidence the cells had died. We thought we'd done something wrong." In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later."

mhartl 18y ago

You're right to be skeptical, but I encourage you to investigate further, since this is a common but erroneous belief: that even a few minutes without oxygen causes irreparable brain damage. In fact, it's the autoimmune response upon revival that causes the damage to the brain, not the hypoxia. And cold prevents the damage; some types of brain surgery require zero blood pressure, and are performed at low temperature (potentially for hours) without harm to the brain.

chris11 18y ago
I probably spoke to fast. I could see it being somewhat feasible if the cryonics facility was immediately informed that the patient was dying, and the patient was frozen within hours of clinical death. My main concern is the success of freezing a brain dead person. I also was mainly referring earlier to the loss of information in the brain, not the actual physical brain damage.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theoretical_death http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theoretical_death. So if the family refuses or delays to inform the organization, I'm skeptical about whether the information in the brain can be preserved. And there have been bitter legal battles fought over cryonics. http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/is-that-what-love-is-the-hostile-wife-phenomenon-in-cryonics/ http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/is-that-what-love-is-the-...