Re: reanimated dogs three hours after death

[Judith Rosen <***>]

Hi Steve,

 

Interesting reading, thanks for posting it!

SJ wrote: There are some comments with respect to
cryogenics in Kampis pointing out that if we are able
to revive animals from a frozen state this would be a
remarkable revelation about the nature of life.
Namely, that all the information about the "graph" or
"causal loop" that represents life is contained purely
in the relations between components and none in the
momenta of the particles.

 

I have to ask... Is Kampis saying that the relations between physical parts are all that matter? If he is, then I think his view might have gone too far the other way from reductionism-- and extremes are never good. They also tend to be almost identical to each other. Just as one can end up on the west coast of the United States by flying East, and vice versa, I think it's possible to commit a reductionist act by trying too hard not to. In this case, I think he may be equating total organization with relations and relegating the material structure to being "that which is organized". If so, that's not how my father conceptualized it. He was being facetious when he said "throw away the matter and keep the organization". (That's because he knew that by keeping the organization, you keep the matter, too-- but it doesn't work the other way). The physical structure of any material system is part of total organization, just as the relations and the interaction of space and time are... No organizational aspect is fractionable.

 

On the subject of cryogenically freezing and reviving organisms... I've been wondering what aspects of organization are affected by the temperature drop. It's a well-documented phenomenon that living processes "slow down" when temperatures drop and "speed up" when temperatures rise, within certain parameters. That's why food in the refrigerator stays unspoiled far longer than it does sitting on a picnic table at 90 degrees F. In a sense, time and temperature are linked. So, if science finds a way to cryogenically freeze living organisms such that their organization is maintained (no ice crystal damage in all body cells, etc) then the only thing that has been changed is time, and it cannot be "stopped", it can only be slowed. The tricky part will be the process of putting a living system into this state and the process for pulling them back out of it. I tend to suspect that, even if they do succeed in developing such a technology, there will be health consequences associated with it. In the experiment they took all the blood out of dogs and replaced it with strong saline solution, prior to freezing.... Hmmmm..... That doesn't sound good... strong saline can do a lot of damage to body tissue, not to mention throwing off all the electrolytes in the body, even after they drained the saline and reintroduced the blood. It sounds awful!

 

I wonder how much research has been done into comparing the various modes actual living organisms use to survive extremes? There are creatures which can, and do, have the resources to naturally survive radical fluctuations in environmental conditions, like desiccation or being frozen, and suffer no damage. I can't remember if I mentioned the "waterbear" before on this list? If I have, forgive the redundancy-- The waterbear, also known as Tardigrada:

 

(Cute, isn't he?)

There are something like 400 species and probably a zillion of them can be found in your yard right now; they live all over the planet, including the poles. When they are dehydrated they go into a condition called cryptobiosis and then they can withstand all sorts of deadly forces and extremes, including radiation, heat, cold, different atmospheric pressures and absence of atmosphere, etc. There are lots of websites on these creatures, easily found via google. Here's one:

http://orion1.paisley.ac.uk/courses/Tatner/biomedia/units/mino20.htm 

 

I first learned of these creatures watching "Nature's Most Extreme Animals" with my youngest daughter (a show on the Animal Planet channel). I'd never heard of them, and they are fascinating for several reasons. For example, they are microscopic and yet they are multicellular, articulated animals. Nifty. I'd be studying cryptobiosis if I was interested in developing cryogenic technologies..... my instinct is that we ought to stay as close to nature as we can on this.

 

Judith

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Steve Johnson

To: ***

Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 1:14 AM

Subject: [ROSEN] reanimated dogs three hours after death

I thought this would be interesting reading for the
list. There are some comments with respect to
cryogenics in Kampis pointing out that if we are able
to revive animals from a frozen state this would be a
remarkable revelation about the nature of life.
Namely, that all the information about the "graph" or
"causal loop" that represents life is contained purely
in the relations between components and none in the
momenta of the particles. If life is regarded as a
dynamic process this is an astonishing claim: the
system loses none of its identity, the "loop" can be
restarted at will from degenerate phase where all
velocities are zero.

***


http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15739502-13762,00.html

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating
the canines after several hours of clinical death in
attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.
US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs
after three hours of clinical death, paving the way
for trials on humans within years.

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research
has developed a technique in which subject's veins are
drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt
solution.




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