Robert Ettinger, 1918-2011

Robert Ettinger, the father of modern cryonics, passed away yesterday on July 23 at the age of 92. He will primarily be remembered for his 1962 book, The Prospect of Immortality, and his 1968 book, Man into Superman, both of which are considered pioneering works in the cryonics and transhumanist movements. From the Telegraph:

After the war he returned to teach physics at Wayne State University and at a college outside Michigan. He had begun brooding on the possibilities of cryonics in the 1930s, and was later inspired by The Jameson Satellite, a science-fiction short story by Neil Jones, about a man who has his corpse placed into orbit in the belief that the cold of outer space would preserve him.

Millions of years passed, and the human race died out. Then a race of advanced aliens came along with mechanical bodies; they took the man's frozen brain, and put it in a mechanical body.

"It was immediately obvious to me," recalled Ettinger, "that the author had missed the main point of his own story – namely that if there was any sense at all in expecting a frozen person to be revived someday, there was no point in waiting for aliens to do it in millions of years. We could do it ourselves in a very short time, and not just for a few eccentrics, but for everybody."

"We have to wait for the technology of revival. But we have to see to the arrangements of freezing ourselves, because most of us are going to die long before the technology of revival is there."
In 1947 Ettinger wrote a short story on the theme, fully expecting that other more influential people would pick up on his idea. When, by 1960, no mass freezing programme had been initiated, Ettinger wrote an essay on the subject, dealing mainly with "the insurance aspect", which he sent to some 200 people selected at random from Who's Who In America.

There was "virtually zero response", and he therefore wrote The Prospect of Immortality, which was first published privately. The sequel, Man Into Superman, appeared in 1968.

Ettinger retired from teaching in 1972, but to the end remained convinced that cryonics would catch on.

"Someday there will be some sort of psychological trigger that will move all these people to take the practical steps they have not yet taken. When people realise that their children and grandchildren will enjoy indefinite life," he said, "that they may well be the last generation to die."

Brain Preservation Foundation featured in the latest Cryonics Magazine

The new issue of Cryonics Magazine features an article by Ken Hayworth, president of the Brain Preservation Foundation, in which he explains the thinking behind his organization's Technology Prize.

The prize, says Hayworth, draws inspiration from both the Ansari X-Prize, which incentivized the development of low-cost manned spacecrafts for use in the commercial space industry, and the as-yet-unclaimed James Randi Educational Foundation's Paranormal Challenge Prize, which challenges individuals claiming paranormal abilities to demonstrate them and win $1,000,000. In the spirit of those prizes, Hayworth believes the Technology Prize will both accelerate the development of low-cost, high-quality whole brain preservation technologies and legitimize these technologies for neuroscientists, who have so far been skeptical of cryopreservation and related techniques.

The issue also contains a response to Hayworth's article written by Alcor representative Mike Perry.

Download the complete issue of Cryonics Magazine here. For more information on the Brain Preservation Foundation and the Technology Prize, visit www.brainpreservation.org.

Sebastian Seung @ TED: I am my connectome

Neuroscientist Sebastian Seung recently gave an extremely insightful and informative TED talk called, "I am my connectome." I highly recommend this as it touches upon a number of timely subjects, including the Human Connectome Project, the important work of Harvard neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth, cryonics, and (peripherally) whole brain emulation.

Eucrio set to launch on October 1

Via Accelerating Future:

Eucrio will officially launch on Friday, October 1st.

From the website:

The Company

EUCRIO is an organization that specializes in providing state-of-the-art standby, stabilization, and transport procedures for cryonicists in the European Union. EUCRIO is pleased to assist members of the three main cryonics storage provider organizations.

The People

EUCRIO employs a wide variety of professionals: including physicians, perfusionists, emergency medical technicians, engineers and scientists, throughout the European Union. EUCRIO has staff members ready to intervene across the European Union and all are ready to respond to clients at all times (24 hours a day, 7 days per week).

NYT: Until Cryonics Do Us Part

The New York Times has published a piece about cryonicists and how not all family members buy into it. The article focuses on Robin Hanson, a name that should be familiar to most readers of this blog:

Among cryonicists, Peggy’s reaction might be referred to as an instance of the “hostile-wife phenomenon,” as discussed in a 2008 paper by Aschwin de Wolf, Chana de Wolf and Mike Federowicz.“From its inception in 1964,” they write, “cryonics has been known to frequently produce intense hostility from spouses who are not cryonicists.” The opposition of romantic partners, Aschwin told me last year, is something that “everyone” involved in cryonics knows about but that he and Chana, his wife, find difficult to understand. To someone who believes that low-temperature preservation offers a legitimate chance at extending life, obstructionism can seem as willfully cruel as withholding medical treatment. Even if you don’t want to join your husband in storage, ask believers, what is to be lost by respecting a man’s wishes with regard to the treatment of his own remains? Would-be cryonicists forced to give it all up, the de Wolfs and Federowicz write, “face certain death.”

Link.

The Brain Preservation Foundation: Better preservation through plastination

I've often thought that cryonics, the practice of storing tissue (namely the brain) in a vat of liquid nitrogen, may eventually come to be seen as a rather primitive and naive technique for preservation. While it may be the only current option for those hoping to capture and restore their brain states for future reanimation, cryonics as a concept may not stand the test of time. More sophisticated methods have already been proposed, including warm biostasis and plastination.

While warm biostasis remains a largely theoretical endeavor, brain plastination was recently given a considerable boost through the founding of the Brain Preservation Foundation. Launched by Accelerating Studies Foundation founder John Smart and Harvard neuroscientist Ken Hayworth, the BPF is seeking to facilitate the development of any technology that will effectively preserve the brain for eventual reanimation. While the foundation members' pet interest is in plastination, they are not married to any particular technique. As far as they're concerned, the successful development of any kind of brain preservation technology means that everyone wins.

To this end, the Foundation has launched the Brain Preservation Technology Prize – a prize for demonstrating ultrastructure preservation across an entire large mammalian brain and verified by a comprehensive electron microscopic survey procedure. Think of it as an X-Prize for brain preservation technology. The Foundation wants to encourage researchers to develop techniques “capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic imaging techniques.”

The current purse is for $100,000, but they expect this prize amount to increase as donors chip-in. And in anticipation of success, the BPF has created a Brain Preservation Bill of Rights.

As noted, the BPF has a special interest in brain plastination, mostly on account of Smart and Hayworth's extensive work in this field. If you've ever seen seen a Body Worlds exhibit, then you know about plastination. It is thought that brain-state may be preserved through the chemical conversion of brain matter into a non-degradable substrate, which is why the proposed technique is also referred to as chemical brain preservation. For example, it might be possible to flood a brain shortly after death with glutaraldehyde to fix proteins, followed by osmium tetroxide to stabilize lipids and other compounds. Essentially, this process could turn a deceased brain into a chunk of plastic that will last indefinitely.

Smart envisions the day when this technology is refined and streamlined to the point where preservation may cost as little as $2,000. Not a bad price for a radically extended life.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Smart and Hayworth about their project at the Humanity+ Summit that was held in early June. A few of us conference attendees were given an informal guided tour of Hayworth's lab at Harvard. It is here where Hayworth uses electron microscopy to delineate every synaptic connection from plastinated mouse brains, a process that preserves both structure and molecular level information. Essentially, while they're working on technologies to preserve, image, and analyse mouse brains--an essential step toward a whole mouse brain connectome--Hayworth and his team are developing the theory and technologies that will be required to preserve human brains as well.

The tour of Hayworth's lab was jaw dropping on many levels. Not only did I get a chance to see slides of brains at the nanometer scale, I got a chance to see real researchers doing real work in a real lab. It's transhumanism under construction; this wasn't airy-fairy armchair futuristic fantasy - this research is actually happening.

Hayworth noted that, "Over the next decade or two these or other techniques will be developed and will allow the creation of a synapse-level atlas of the entire human brain - something that has been dubbed the 'human connectome'." As for mind uploading from a plastic embedded brain, Hayworth believes that's about 50 years off.

Make a donation to the Brain Preservation Foundation today. Your life may depend on it.

BNT interviews Jason Silva on radical life extension

Ian MacKenzie of Brave New Traveler talks to Jason Silva, a 26-year old film maker and outspoken immortalist.

MacKenzie asks, "You quote The Immortalist in your film - how did you come across it and why does it resonate with you?" Silver responds:

After watching the brilliant film Vanilla Sky, I spent hours on the internet researching Cryonic Suspension.

This idea that we could preserve ourselves until the technology was there to repair the wear and tear of aging and eventual pathology.

Like the lucid dream that was presented in the film, if we removed finitude from the human condition, life could be transformed into an eternal now- no more existential anxiety.

I started reading about Ray Kurzweil and Aubrey de Grey, brilliant thinkers who professed that through scientific engineering we would someday conquer death.

The philosophical implications and motivations behind this, however, were best described by Alan Harrington’s masterpiece, “The Immortalist”- a manifesto of sorts that dared to challenge our cosmic inferiority complex and complacent attitude about our “inevitable” demise, and instead challenged us to engineer (with SCIENCE) an ageless and divine state of being.

This is where science would satisfy the yearnings of existential man, who for too long was suffering as a consequence of being aware of his mortality.

Here's Silva's short film, "The Immortalists":

Convergence08: Tanya Jones discusses Alcor, present and future

Tanya Jones of Alcor has opted for a Q&A format.

Whole body vitrification: largely depends on the fluid which is a cryopreservant that prevents the formation of ice crystals in the body. Works particularly well for organs, which was its intended application. Automated systems are being built that are dramatically improving the perfusing process. Large animal tests are planned before it's used on a patient, giving unprecedented control over the perfusion process. It's build on bypass operations used in hospitals.

Whole body vitrification isn't perfect yet, as some tissues accept the cryopreservant better than others. There's also still a struggle to get all patients vitrified at the facility. And like any medical procedure that's done today, "time is trauma." Alcor is working to minimize the damage.

Sources of funding: third by membership dues, third from cyro procedures themselves, third from private donations. Alcor can't sustain operations to the level they've built their operations at, mostly because of their optimistic and ambitious strategy. Currently re-focusing on revenue generating strategies.

Alcor currently maintains an ambulance vehicle that can be driven to a 1,000 mile radius. Jones says this makes a very large difference to the cases in which they're used. The ambulance has been used in two cases in particular thus far.

Pronouncement of death must happen before the vitrification process can begin. This is because the body is technically speaking an anatomical donation.

Air-transportable perfusion systems have been redesigned around new airline regulations. Kits have decreased in size and weight. This has positive implications for quick team mobilizations. It's also become easier to train people -- a team that's mostly made up of non-medical professional volunteers. It's an extremely efficient system to prime.

Most recent case was an individual who suffered cardiac arrest while snorkeling in Barbados. It took Alcor 5 days to get the body. He was packed in dry ice for shipment for 3 days before Alcor got him. After 5 days it's impossible to do a vitrification so it was a straight freeze in liquid nitrogen. It's a two stage process -- first plunge to -110, second to optimal freeze level.

Alcor is currently working on the fracturing problem (e.g. brains cracking like ice cubes thrown in water). They believe it's possible to develop a protocol to eliminate fracturing. The key is to get pure cryprotectant down to -196: the temperature of liquid nitrogen. If you do it right, you can keep objects preserved for 1,000 years when immersed in liquid nitrogen.

Alcor is also concerned that fracturing is not the only problem -- that there's something else from preventing the organs from being revived.

Alcor recently received a grant for readiness capability. They're going to use this money to improve their kits and all their technologies. They're distributing the new med kids, to build the new perfusion systems for the teams (once they've decided that they work as intended). Currently looking to other plans, taking it slow and carefully.

Funding aspect is still a place where Alcor is behind where they need to be. Before a marketing strategy can be put into place, Alcor wants to suss out where potential members are coming from. What makes people really choose to sign up? And success could be detrimental if suddenly a thousand people signed up overnight. Alcor's scaling model simply wouldn't allow for it.

Alcor's demographic chart resembles the bell shaped distribution of the United States.

Long term vision: Alcor knows that bureaucracy can impede smooth vitrification processes. Jones claims that legal impediments exist in every jurisdiction they work in. They want to smooth this process.

Alcor would like to do whole body vitrification on site, and then transport the bodies at the optimal preservation temperature for delivery to Alcor's facility in Arizona. They're even considering something on an airplane.

Jones says that it can take some people from 1o to 20 years to make a decision about signing up for cryonics -- which doesn't take sudden death into account.

Training is in hiatus until the new kits get sorted out. Teams will be flown to Arizona and be given hands-on training.

Is it safer to do neural or whole body? Neural is still slightly better because of the time it takes for the cryopreservation process to be completed.

Latest podcast posted: 2008.04.08

The latest episode of the Sentient Developments Podcast is now available. Alternative audio formats are also available.

This episode:

Eight tips to dramatically improve your chances of living forever

Exploring George's existential angst

Eight tips to dramatically improve your chances of living forever

There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to Man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident. And even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation. -- J.R.R. Tolkien

Death, as a proposition, doesn't have much going for it. Given the opportunity, many of us would rather opt out of the whole aging and dying thing and live a life of perpetual health and vitality.

Trouble is, the scientific know-how to stop the processes of aging won’t exist for some time to come.

But don’t despair--the life extension revolution is coming. It's not a matter of if, but when.

Owing to the pioneering work of such gerontologists as Aubrey de Grey, Cynthia Kenyon and Michael Rose, the goal of achieving negligible senescence has never been closer; the theory is starting to take shape and the road map is being drawn as we speak. Aging is finally being regarded as a disease that can be overcome.

So, if you're patient and follow some common sense guidelines, you may be able to stick around and see Halley’s Comet return in 2061.

And again in 2137.

Indeed, all bets are now off for predicting life expectancy rates in the 21st Century. Pending breakthroughs in biotechnology, nanotechnology and information technologies will soon make it possible for us to treat an aging body in the same way we would repair an old and worn out machine.

Future treatments are going to make Viagra and Botox look downright medieval:

Your kidneys are failing? No problem, you’ll grow new ones from your own stem cells.

Got cancer? Don’t fret – it’s nothing a bit of cellular reprogramming can’t fix.

Suffering from Alzheimer’s? Sounds like you could use a neural-prosthesis.

Too futuristic? Maybe, but a number of key thinkers are making a strong case for radical life extension arriving as early as two to three decades from a now – a list of thinkers that includes de Grey, futurist Ray Kurzweil, and philosopher Nick Bostrom. Entire communities have arisen to support the prospect, including transhumanists and the immortalists.

More to the point, though -- are you going to risk potential immortality by not taking these predictions seriously? Is that mega-gulp of soda and greasy bag of chips really worth squandering ever lasting life?

Because we don’t know for certain when true life extension will come, it’s imperative that you extend your healthy lifespan to the maximum degree possible and not miss out out on the greatest prospect to ever face humanity.

For those of you who are serious about living forever, here are eight things you can do to help you achieve longevity escape velocity:

1. Eat the right foods

In the midst of today’s obesity epidemic and health crisis, it’s hard to believe that food can actually function as medicine. Not only is this proving to be true, but some of the world’s tastiest foods are also the most healthiest.

Take wine, for example, and what’s known as the French Paradox. The French are notorious for having a diet rich in saturated fats, but have relatively low incidences of coronary heart disease. It is widely suspected that regular red wine consumption – another favorite French pastime – has something to do with it.

In fact, research is increasingly revealing that antioxidants – which can be found in red wine – can play a crucial role in extending healthy lifespan. An antioxidant is a molecule that slows or prevents the oxidation of other molecules. Oxidation is a chemical reaction that produces free radicals in the body which start chain reactions that damage cells. This damage often goes by another name: aging.

Wine contains a powerful antioxidant called resveratrol which is a sirtuin stimulant that’s been shown to extend life in mammals. Sirtuin is a remarkable class of enzyme that has actually been shown to retard the aging process.

Specifically, it can help control age-related disorders such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, type II diabetes and Parkinson's. It’s also suspected of being able to fight cancer, heart disease, and degenerative nerve diseases. Remember, though: it has to be red wine; these compounds are typically found in the skins of red grapes.

If you don’t care for red wine there are other food options. The top ten common high antioxidant foods include:

Walnuts

Pomegranates

Sunflower seeds

Blackberries

Cranberries

Blueberries

Dried apricots

Ginger

Raspberries

Prunes

In addition to antioxidants, you need to ensure that you’re getting enough phytonutrients which can be found in fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and teas. Not only do they serve as a source of antioxidants, they can enhance immune response and cell-to-cell communication, alter estrogen metabolism, convert to vitamin A, cause cancer cells to die, and repair DNA damage cause by toxins.

You’ll also want to ensure that you’re eating enough fiber to ensure proper digestion – an often undervalued component to proper health. Fiber can be found in prunes, whole wheat, corn bran, flax seed ligands and vegetables such as celery, green beans and potato skins.

And don’t forget to eat your essential fatty acids (EFA’s). You may know these as Omega 3, 6, and 9. Your body can’t produce these on its own, so you need to enrich your diet by eating oily fish like salmon or getting it via supplementation. EFA’s will help your immune response, muscle maintenance, nerves, hormone system, cell division, oxygen transport and kidney function. And as an added benefit, Omega 3’s are also regarded as 'brain food.'

Finally, ensure that you’re getting enough water. But it can’t be just any water. According to Kurzweil, "consuming the right type of water is vital to detoxifying the body's acidic waste products and is one of the most powerful health treatments available." He and Dr. Terry Grossman recommend 8 to 10 glasses of alkaline water per day.

2. Avoid the wrong foods

It’s not enough to eat all the stuff that's supposed to be good for you – you also have to avoid the crappy foods that sabotage your body and accelerate the aging process.

As with most things in life, moderation is the key. You need to avoid consuming too much saturated fats, trans fats, cholesterol, animal protein, chemical additives, and overly processed foods. As Dr. Andrew Weil preaches time and time again, learn to read labels. If you feel lost and out of control when it comes to eating, read Weil's book, Eating Well for Optimum Health.

While good food can act as medicine, bad foods are virtually poisonous over time.

Eating too much sugar and starches will cause you to crave carbohydrates, leading to weight gain and an increased chance of diabetes. Too much sugar can also cause metabolic syndrome and high levels of inflammation which can lead to such conditions as Alzheimer’s, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. A diet rich in fat and protein will increase your risk of heart disease, arteriosclerosis, glucose intolerance and other degenerative processes.

You will also want to avoid foods that are prone to too much pesticide saturation. The following foods contain the most pesticide residue:

Apples

Bell peppers

Peaches

Spinach

Strawberries

If you're going to eat these foods, just make sure that you wash them extremely carefully.

Ultimately, you will want to reach and maintain your optimal weight. This will go a long way in reducing your chance of developing a number of degenerative diseases like cancer and hypertension.

3. Adopt a calorically restricted diet

Perhaps the most proven method available for increasing healthy lifespan today is caloric restriction (CR). Yes, it’s a radical thing to do, but short-term pain will yield long-term gain.

Very long-term gain.

Numerous studies have shown that mammals live longer when kept near starvation levels. The exact mechanism behind this process is still largely unknown, but there is a likely explanation: when the body is starving it is not in a position to reproduce successfully; our genes know this, so they invest their body’s energy on surviving into the future. A starving body is put into survival mode until the famine is over.

For a calorically restricted diet to work properly it is recommended that men consume about 1,800 calories per day and women about 1,500. It is an involved process that requires much discipline and patience. Virtually every piece of food that is prepared and enters your mouth has to be measured for caloric content and recorded.

But research shows that it does work. Some animal studies reveal as much as a 40% increase in maximum life span. Moreover, CR also provides a number of secondary benefits, including a significantly lowered risk for most degenerative conditions of aging.

4. Supplement your diet with vitamins and minerals

As Ray Kurzweil says, “Be aggressive with your supplementation.” He should know. He consumes hundreds of pills a day. Indeed, according to the American Medical Association, "Most people do not consume an optimal amount of all vitamins by diet alone."

Kurzweil and Grossman, in their seminal book Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, recommend that people get their required daily dosages:

13 essential vitamins: Vitamins A, C, D, E, K, and the B vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, biotin, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and folate)

17 essential minerals: including calcium, magnesium, potassium, selenium, chromium and zinc

2 essential fatty acids: Omega 3 and 6

Among other things, a proper vitamin and mineral regimen will help you reduce your chances of cancer, irregular neurotransmission and cardiovascular disease.

5. Exercise and be active

We’re becoming an increasingly sedentary society and our health is suffering for it. Being physically active is as important as maintaining a healthy diet. Regular exercise will do wonders for your body and contribute to your overall well-being and health – including lifespan.

There are basically three types of exercise:

Flexibility exercises (such as stretching) will help you improve the range of motion of muscles and joints.

Aerobic exercises such as cycling, walking, running, hiking, and playing tennis will increase your cardiovascular endurance.

Anaerobic exercises such as weight training, functional training or sprinting will increase your short-term muscle strength.

Frequent and regular physical exercise boosts the immune system, increases bone density, and helps prevent diseases like heart disease, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity. It also improves mental health and helps prevent depression.

In addition to regular exercise you need to engage in life and keep active. Keep challenging yourself, remain social and work to maintain strong self-esteem and reduce boredom. Keep your brain active and healthy by participating in mind games like puzzles, brain teasers and chess. Studies have shown that a vibrant mind will stand a far better chance of fighting off neurological degeneration like Alzheimer’s.

6. Avoid dangerous activities and unhealthy habits

Avoid activities that yield a high probability of risk. Quitting smoking is the most obvious thing you can do to prevent disease onset.

But as we all know, life can be dangerous, and no matter what we do there's always the chance of an untimely or accidental death. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accidents are the fifth leading cause of death -- a rate of nearly 40 people per 100,000. This is not too far off compared to the other Big Killers, namely heart disease (219.1), cancer (188.7) and diabetes (48.4).

According to the National Vital Statistics of 2002, the leading causes of accidental death are:

1. Motor vehicle (MVA): 44.3%
2. Falls: 17.8%
3. Poison (liquid and solid): 13.0%
4. Drowning: 3.9%
5. Fires, burns, and smoke: 3.4%
6. Medical/surgical complication: 3.1%
7. Other land transport: 1.5%
8. Firearms: 0.8%
9. Other (nontransport): 17.8%

I'm not advocating that you live a life of extreme risk aversion. Just exercise common sense and care. Eastern philosophies, for example, advocate a mindful existence in which you are encouraged to be fully aware of yourself and your environment at any given moment. A mindful approach to living is not only mentally healthy, it may also prevent careless accidents.

In addition to being more careful, work to ensure that your life is low stress and minimize your exposure to environmental toxins and pollutants. Visit your doctor regularly for checkups and consider hormone replacement therapy and rejuvenation treatments.

7. Support life extension causes and be socially active

It’s not enough to engage in life extension practices and cross your fingers that somebody out there is working on the problem. For some twisted reason life extension is not a public priority; there are very few people working on the problem and with very little resources.

There are a number of things you can to do help expedite the life extension revolution.

First, support those organizations and institutions who are actively working on life extension and the development of anti-aging interventions. Aubrey de Grey’s Methuselah Foundation is one such group. Find out if your local university has a department working on the problem and what you can do to help, whether it be a donation or your technical expertise.

Second, support the development of ancillary biotechnologies that will be part of the entire anti-aging spectrum of interventions. Specifically, advocate on behalf of regenerative medicine (stem cells, cloning), genomics and molecular nanotechnology.

Third, be active in your community. Create a life extension group in your city and hold regular meetings. Raise awareness. Be an activist. Write letters and start a blog. Educate your local politicians about life extension and let them know what they can do to help facilitate its development.

8. Sign up for cryonics just to be safe

If medical science can’t fix you today, then perhaps the doctors of the future can. The idea behind cryonics is that you should preserve your body after death at an extremely low temperature in the hopes that a future civilization will have the technological know-how to bring you back to life. This is what cryonicists refer to as reanimation.

In all likelihood the technology required would be molecular assembling nanotechnology. The trick is to ensure that the preservation maintains all the "information" in your brain that comprises your mind.

If you're looking to be preserved, the two main players in this industry are Alcor and the Cryonics Institute.

Cryonicists like to joke that being frozen in vat of liquid nitrogen is the second worst thing that can happen to you. Their point is well taken. Cryonics is a low probability solution, but it has a nonzero chance of working. Death without preservation, of course, is a zero probability proposition.

Crossing bridges two and three

Admittedly, these eight strategies are very limited in their approach to bona fide life extension. They are simply meant to help you get to 'bridge two.' According to Kurzweil, this second phase of life extension will give us the tools to reprogram our biology and its biochemical information processes.

As he notes, "We're in the early stages of that revolution already, but in fifteen years we will have, to a large extent, mastery over our biology. That will take us to the third bridge, the nanotechnology revolution, where we can rebuild our bodies and brains at the molecular level. This will enable us to fix the remaining problems that are difficult to address within the confines of biology and ultimately allow us to go beyond the limitations of biology altogether."

Once we hit this third phase we will have uncovered humanity’s true holy grail: indefinite life.

I hope to see you there.

Latest audiocast posted: 2008.02.19

The latest Sentient Developments Podcast is now available. You can subscribe to this feed. Go here for alternative audio formats.

In this episode I discuss a conversation I had with Alcor's Tanya Jones, why the Drake Equation is obsolete, and Anonymous's war on Scientology.

Chatting with Alcor's Tanya Jones at TV07

It’s funny how these things go. There I was at the TransVision 2007 celebrity reception last Thursday, drinking white wine, munching on hors d’oeuvres and eagerly awaiting the arrival of William Shatner. I was looking forward to a once in a lifetime opportunity.

And then I realized that I was in the company of Tanya Jones, chief operating officer for Alcor. I had never met Tanya before and I have yet to visit their facility in Arizona. I was very impressed with her TV07 presentation from earlier in the week and I was bursting with questions.

So, as we were waiting for Shatner to arrive, we began to chat.

To freeze and protect

During her talk two days prior, Tanya gave conference attendees the rundown on some of Alcor's more recent work and initiatives. It was a fascinating glimpse into the world of cryonics and what it takes to run a company on the technological and social fringe.

She noted how Alcor teams can be rushed to the bedside of dying patients as they ready for the suffusion of cryoprotectants in preparation for freezing. Without this highly engineered liquid, preservation would be completely disastrous with each cell suffering a host of problems, including ice crystallization and the eventual threat of it losing all its physical integrity upon reanimation. The cryoprotectant gel, which replaces the blood after death, essentially converts the body into a glass-like state upon contact with liquid nitrogen. The body’s informational state is thus retained at the highest level currently possible.

Consequently, getting the patient into cold storage quickly is paramount. As Tanya noted during her presentation, “time is trauma.” During the cocktail reception I asked her how long would be too long. She replied that any kind of delay is detrimental, but that after 24 hours the real serious and irrevocable damage starts to occur, namely cellular degradation and host of other neural problems as the brain begins to lose its cohesion and organization.

I asked her if Alcor has a policy for refusing the receipt of severely damaged corpses, say a body that had been terribly damaged by autopsy or by a motor vehicle accident. She answered that in such cases, where information theoretic death is all but assured, it is not up to Alcor but rather the predetermined wishes of the deceased. When an individual signs up with Alcor they specify the various extremes to which they will still agree to be cryonically preserved. Alcor unquestioningly adheres to the wishes of the patient.

Tanya also described the freezing process which is done under strictly controlled conditions. The body is slowly brought down to the optimally low temperature and is carefully monitored for fracturing. Quite frustratingly, every preservation that has ever been conducted at Alcor has suffered from fracturing of some sort. Tanya described the sound as ice-cubes popping in a drink.

I squirmed in my seat listening to this description, wondering how our high tech descendants will repair this sort of “information theoretic” brain damage.

Honesty, integrity, credibility

I was impressed with Tanya’s honesty and I told her so. By being open about current limitations, they come across as being less interested in the “sell” aspect and more concerned with creating a credible and legitimate industry. Along these lines I asked Tanya about regulation and whether or not she believes there will ever be such a thing as a monitored cryonics industry.

Not only did Tanya whole heartedly agree, she is convinced that it is inevitable and that a big battle is looming. “But Alcor,” claimed Tanya, “is ready.” She quickly outlined her plans and strategy for what she thinks will be a long and drawn out struggle to get the kind of regulation in place that would be to the benefit of Alcor and the burgeoning industry of cryonics – a battle that she believes will come sooner rather than later. As it currently stands, Alcor is 'regulated' under the Anatomical Gift Act, which makes Alcor a kind of glorified research lab and organ storage facility. Which I suppose is better than being acknowledged as a funeral parlor.

It’s this lack of recognition and backwards thinking that has arguably landed Alcor in trouble. The scandalous Ted Williams affair, which Tanya claims is finally all over and done with (including cash in hand), is an example of how a new and unrecognized industry can face undue challenges and public scrutiny. More formal and cogent regulation will not only give Alcor needed credibility as they work to create a viable business, it will also result in a safer and more effective industry.

From grave to cradle
Interestingly, while Alcor is primarily concerned with preservation, they are also looking ahead to a time when reanimation will finally become possible. They project themselves as being an all-in-one facility. Today they freeze bodies; tomorrow they hope to be the company that brings the dead back to life.

To this end they are creating a research lab in which rats will be cryonically preserved and experimented upon. This approach makes perfect sense. It will allow them to not just look ahead, but to gauge the effectiveness of current preservation procedures and technologies.

Jokingly, I complained to Tanya about their use of rats. “The thought of a little cryonics lab filled with frozen rats in tiny dewars is unsettling," I said, "Who wants to see a reanimated rat running around? Why couldn’t you guys have used cute little bunny rabbits instead – it would be much better PR to see a bunch of revived bunny rabbits hopping around.” Tanya laughed and noted how animal experimentation will in fact escalate and eventually come to involve more complex organisms such as pigs.

Cool company
I have yet to sign up for cryonics. My reasons are, admittedly, personal, complicated and even non-nonsensical. There may come a day, however, when I've reconciled my broader existential outlook with the prospect of cryonics.

Until then, however, I will laud the efforts of Alcor and continue to advocate for the right to a long life. They are certainly blazing a fascinating trail into the future.

Oh, and I totally missed the opportunity to meet William Shatner. I barely even noticed that he was in the room when I was chatting with Tanya.

Now why do you suppose I have absolutely no regrets about that?