Change of Blog Focus

One of the reasons I began this blog was to work out, somewhat in a more public arena, some of the ideas I have had. I was hoping to receive a lot of feedback in the form of comments, but the site has not had enough traffic to generate much comment. I haven't tried to advertise the blog, either.

So I would like to take the next step. I will be presenting some of my ideas in a more public form in presentations and a book. I will remove some of the information to resource materials for the Society.

From now on, I think I will use this blog for announcements only. Thank you for listening!

ARC

Earthlings

However painful to watch, this is a must see video.

Someday, humans will rise to empathy for other animals and stop the endless cruelty. Someday we will look back upon this period of human history like the days of cannibalism and headhunting.

The Invention of Man: A Response to C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man

This above all: to thine own self be true.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 1, Scene 3

In his essay, “The Abolition of Man,” C. S. Lewis (Lewis) wrote about the use of science and technology to modify the human mind. In particular, he considered the possibility that human beings in the future would be able to shape and modify their own minds into any form they desired. He argued that humans who exercised such power would destroy themselves and the rest of humanity. Since this essay was written in 1943, it seems even more likely that humans will someday have the ability to shape their own minds, not through “eugenics,” “pre-natal conditioning,” and “education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology,” as Lewis thought, but rather through an applied neuroscience, drugs, computerized implants, brain-machine interfaces, mind uploading, nanoscale devices, or other advanced technologies.

The issues that concerned C. S. Lewis, then, are still of concern to us today. Is it desirable for humans to develop and apply methods for altering their own minds, and if so, in what ways? By what principles should such profound self-shaping be guided? Will “post-humanity” be freer or more enslaved? Is manipulating the core nature of humanity even rational?

In order to think about this more clearly, let us imagine that neuroscience has been perfected and the human mind is perfectly understood in every detail. A technology has been developed which allows every aspect of the mind to be modified in any way that is desired and physically possible. Now human beings can remove, add, or change any aspect of their minds, including their own motivations.

Motivations, in the cognitive psychological sense, may be considered the physical mechanisms or neural pathways by which instincts, drives, desires, wants, or needs predispose an organism to certain thoughts or behaviors under the right circumstances. (The terminology for these things must be loose because the biology underlying these phenomena is still being investigated.) Motivations may be distinguished from emotions, emotional states, moods, and beliefs, or cognitive perceptions or conceptions about states of affairs.

Motivations are not rationalizations for behavior; such rationalizations may arise alongside of, or even after, behavior (Dennett). In a sense, motivations pre-exist rational calculation or even consciousness; they are the foundation of reason, since reason facilitates the fulfillment of motivations. They are also the foundation of our values, since feelings about what is valuable are related to our motives. If the rational application of human instrumental power depends upon pre-existing motivations, we discover a problem in trying to use those pre-existing motivations to change themselves.

Upon what basis could we judge the value of our own motivations when our value judgments depend upon pre-existing motivations? Self-reference in determining values short-circuits the process of evaluating modifications to one’s own motivations. The total power to shape one’s own motivations exposes the lack of an independent framework of purpose from which to do so.

The final stage is come when Man . . . has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have ‘taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho’ and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely will have won it?. . . They are the motivators, the creators of motives. But how are they going to be motivated? . . . However far they go back, or down, they can find no ground to stand on. Every motive they try to act on becomes at once petitio. (Lewis)

Is it reasonable at all to suppose that we would want to modify our motivations, even if we had the power? Perhaps motivations would be blank with regard to themselves, just as the brain, the seat of sensation, is unable to sense itself. Motivations might have a sort of inertia so that those who come into the power to modify them will nevertheless preserve them, continuing on the same trajectory as before.

However, in line with the inertia analogy, objects continue on a straight path only if they are not acted upon by another force. There are always other forces acting upon our motivations. First of all, our motivations act upon each other. A single human mind possesses many motivations, and these can obstruct or contradict or compete with each other. Then there are the forces of other minds – society, and the forces of the general environment of the mind, including everything from the cosmos to the mind’s own embodiment.

Imagine a very non-controversial example: a person who likes to eat chocolate. Suppose that he wishes that he did not want to eat chocolate – a clash between two motivations in one person. Or, suppose that his friends try to talk him into not eating chocolate – that is, society attempts to mould his motivation. Or suppose that the store shelves are empty of chocolate – that is, that the environment decisively blocks the fulfillment of his motivation. For any of these reasons, this person could in theory be convinced to modify his motivations so that he did not like to eat chocolate any more. But would this be the right thing for him to do? On what basis could he judge between his own motivations, or between his own motivations, on the one hand, and what would be more conformable to society or the environment, on the other hand?

This example is fairly innocuous in comparison to the many other possible applications of mind-modification. For example, if mind-modification were possible, some people might eliminate their motivations to commit crimes and anti-social acts, which we might regard as a welcome development. Or frighteningly, some people might make themselves more lacking in compassion or concern for others’ welfare. And yet in either case, our value judgments about these modifications to motivations would draw upon our pre-existing motivations. Those pre-existing motivations may be considered provisional, artificial constructions, because they can be changed at will.

Lewis argued that there were only two things which could possibly guide those who possessed the power to change their own motivations: (1) temporary “survivals, in their own minds” of the Tao, or (2) irrational impulses and whims. By the Tao Lewis referred vaguely to notions of natural law and universal morality which, he supposed, should be self-evidently rational and valid.

In the Tao itself, as long as we remain within it, we find the concrete reality in which to participate is to be truly human: the real common will and common reason of humanity, alive, and growing like a tree, and branching out, as the situation varies, into ever new beauties and dignities of application. While we speak from within the Tao we can speak of Man having power over himself in a sense truly analogous to an individual's self-control. (Lewis)

Lewis described the Tao as “objective value” and conscience apart from instinct. It was supposed to be the common heritage of humanity, but nevertheless, as “the mystery of humanity,” it needed to be taught to children by teachers who would encourage some motivations and weaken others. To illustrate the Tao more concretely, Lewis sketched a universal code of behavior, including such things as benevolence, justice, veracity, mercy, and so on.

There are no doubt commonalities among human cultures along those lines, but there are also many differences among human cultures, and cultures can change over time. Lewis regarded the Tao as self-evidently real and decisive, so he did not really claim to need to prove its existence or value. Because Lewis provided no evidence for its existence and its specific values, it is difficult for us to see the Tao as a foundation for judging motivations.

Nevertheless, there is a certain attraction in Lewis’s notion of looking outside ourselves for a foundation, if no foundation seems to be present in our minds. Lewis’s solution was to be “truly human” by participating in shared human values, the “mystery of humanity.” If there is a discernible set of shared values among human beings, these could serve to guide the modification, if any, of motivations. But if these shared values arise from human nature and the natural environments of human beings, then following them is arbitrary submission to nature. As Lewis noted of those with the power to modify motivations, “If they accept [the Tao], then they are no longer the makers of conscience but still its subjects, and their final conquest over Nature has not really happened” (Lewis). In fact, Lewis regarded the preservation of Tao in such a circumstance as “confusion.”

The second possible guide to modifying motivations, according to Lewis, would be pure impulsiveness. He notes, for example, that “those who stand outside all judgments of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse” (Lewis). The mind decides to act by deciding among weighted inner motivations, so for Lewis, the motivation for action of those who have the power to change their motivations, and who reject the Tao, must rest in the pre-rational selection of motivations by their “felt emotional weight at a given moment.” However, the criteria for determining the emotional strength of impulses come from pre-existing motivations. This ground for preferring one impulse to another, then, cannot “stand outside all judgments of value.”

The motivations of an individual’s mind are what they are because of all the factors that shaped that individual’s mind, from the individual’s remotest ancestors and their environments, down through that individual’s embodiment and experiences since conception. When we look behind our natural motivations, we see an infinite regress of deeply complex causations. So motivations have a history and a reason for being the way they are, but this in itself is no help in evaluating those motivations, because value judgments depend upon pre-existing motivations. We do not even have grounds for judging our impulses “irrational” since they could only be judged so by reference to purposeful action.

For Lewis, human self-manipulation at the most intimate levels of mind would require the reduction of all of humanity to “raw material.”

It is in Man's power to treat himself as a mere `natural object' and his own judgements of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will. The objection to his doing so does not lie in the fact that this point of view (like one's first day in a dissecting room) is painful and shocking till we grow used to it. The pain and the shock are at most a warning and a symptom. The real objection is that if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature . . . (Lewis)

The phrase which vexed Lewis at the beginning of his essay, man’s conquest of nature, sets up a distinction between human beings and the rest of nature that is untenable for true naturalism. If we accept that human beings are natural beings, arising from nature and part of it, then man’s conquest of nature is an incoherent statement. Even if we understood ‘nature’ here as that part of nature which can be distinguished from ‘man’ in the sense of an individual human being, control of nature still could not include control of one’s self. Control of one’s own mind would only make sense if there were parts of the mind which could be distinguished as ‘man’ from other parts of the mind, parts which would be ‘not man’ or ‘less man.’ Thus it may be possible to suppose, according to Lewis’s argument, that humans could possess impulses and motivations which are less distinctively human, less worthy of humanity – impulses and motivations contrary to the Tao.

It is clear, then, that Lewis saw the possession of a particular set of values as an authentic and indispensable criterion for humanness. For Lewis, accessing the power to modify one’s own motivations was abandoning one’s own human nature. Those who would do so

. . . have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what ‘Humanity’ shall henceforth mean. ‘Good’ and ‘bad,’ applied to them, are words without content; for it is from them that the content of these words is henceforth to be derived. . . . It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. . . . Their subjects . . . are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man. (Lewis)

Ironically, according to Lewis and his followers, it was by preserving natural human nature (and its distinctive values and motivations) that human beings should fend off their transformation by nature into undesirable forms and states.

In one sense, Lewis and his followers were right that the power to modify our minds, including our motivations, would not help us to make decisions about what is authentic about us, whether we should like ourselves, or if so, what parts, and what would constitute beneficial or maleficent changes to ourselves. In fact, the power to modify our minds would only give us the ability to change ourselves according to the terms by which we understand ourselves and our qualities, either to modify ourselves (by changing our dispensable features) or to destroy ourselves (by changing our indispensable features). The terms by which we understand ourselves and our qualities arise in turn from the nature of our minds at a particular point in time, since our minds are complex systems and confluences of external influences.

The state of a mind is an open, complex, dynamic system embedded in the rest of nature, and the sense of self, including notions about what is indispensable about it, depend upon the specific state of the mind. Thus, we are prepared to see our notions of what is natural and what is human as contingent phenomena of nature, arising in particular states of mind. There is no need for “seeing through things for ever,” as Lewis writes, because when intention reaches instrumental power over itself, it has indeed come to its foundation, or at least, its source.

Control over one’s own mind does not so much create a feedback loop as expose and tighten one that already exists – the feedback loop between forces within the mind that give rise to a state of that mind, including consciousness and a sense of self, and also the feedback loop between that mind and everything outside of it, from its physical embodiment to the most distant reaches in space and time of the cosmos. The difference between a circuit and a short-circuit depends upon what sort of loop one wants.

There are frames of reference which do not depend upon irrational impulses, or a mystical Tao, and which do not necessarily lead to self-destruction (in the way in which one understands one’s self). Self-knowledge and world-knowledge could enable a state of mind to make wiser and more coherent decisions about self-modification than it would make if it took into account only momentary impulses or a limited subset of authentic human nature. A knower of this sort could be ‘true to itself’ and possess integrity because it would draw upon an understanding of its whole self and its context in the whole cosmos.

By applying human reasoning, we are able to come to understand more of ourselves than a momentary impulse and more of our environment than what is perceived immediately before us. We can grasp a deeper sense of ourselves, extending in time and encompassing our entire natures; we can also grasp a broader sense of the world around us and our fellow human beings. Knowledge about the self and knowledge about the cosmos, including that knowledge which we acquire by the assistance of our fellow human beings, can extend the framework of our decisions about modifying our own minds.

If we made our decisions about modification in the context of understanding our entire minds, then we would draw upon more than our momentary impulses. If we understood the mind as all of its motivations and characteristics and components, not only in the present moment, but also in the past (as in the remembering, narrative self) and in the future (as in rational calculations of possibilities) – however we may harmonize its disparate elements – then our decisions could draw upon a wholeness of self. The same goes with an understanding of the world around us, including the insights of other human beings.

Returning to the example of the person who likes to eat chocolate – he could make a decision about changing his motivation based on profound, comprehensive self-knowledge, about why he likes chocolate, how he likes chocolate, what role this desire has played in his past life, and what role it might play in his future life. Such a decision could also be based on profound, comprehensive knowledge of the world, including the nature of chocolate, how his desire for chocolate evolved, what functions this desire has or might serve, what social meaning and consequences his desire for chocolate may have, what effect it might have on the environment, and so on. Equipped with such knowledge and self-knowledge, this person could be better guided in deciding to modify his desire for chocolate.

Nevertheless, one thing seems clear – that the precise state of mind at the moment a decision is made about whether or not to modify one’s self and how to modify one’s self if so, would be uniquely critical. Everything that would follow from a process of self-modification would depend upon that initial condition. Technology might allow one to restore some changes to their initial state, but whether or not there would be motivation for doing so would depend upon the changes made. It would be easy to imagine that such changes could have undesirable effects (from the vantage point of the initial condition) if the initial state of mind applied insufficient knowledge.

Perfect self-knowledge in real-time, like omniscience about the rest of the universe, may be physically impossible, but what better knowledge would allow one to do would be to make more authentic, integral determinations of one’s own motivations and the contexts of those motivations. It is precisely when our humanity is not a “mystery” that we can make informed, appropriate judgments about ourselves and how to act with regard to ourselves. Far from being “a basilisk which kills what it sees and only sees by killing,” as Lewis described science, scientific understanding of the human mind and the universe at large enables human beings to better discern their own values and the context in which those values have meaning, and applied science and technology provide humans the opportunity to realize those values.

It should be possible for human beings to modify their own minds in such a way as to increase whatever motivations or characteristics they believe are distinctively ‘human’ or indispensable to themselves as they wish to be. In this sort of feedback loop, one might expect amplification. Humans’ ability to modify their own minds might allow them to become more human, that is, possess to a more notable degree whatever characteristics they consider distinctively human. The term superhuman would be an apt description of the result, not in the vainglorious sense, but in the precise sense that the superhuman would be more deeply characterized by human motives and human qualities. For example, if benevolence is an indispensable human characteristic, as Lewis suggested, then a human who could modify himself could make himself more benevolent, and thus more human.

There are no easy answers to what humans should want to become or what humans should value about themselves. Humans have been working on these questions for thousands of years. The approach of mind-modification technologies does not give us a direction; rather, it conveys the urgency for us to pick a direction, because a decision can no longer be delayed, and the consequences may truly be everlasting.

In this essay, I have deliberately avoided discussing Lewis’s dark vision of an elite group of “Conditioners” who use a technology of modifying minds to enslave the rest of humanity. I do not wish to mount here an extensive critique of Lewis’s point that “man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” However, I would observe that it is precisely self-knowledge, made possible by sciences of the mind, that may someday enable human beings to analyze their desire for power over one another.

Although it may be too optimistic to presume that this knowledge will inevitably result in greater mutual understanding and social harmony, surely this knowledge will affect the dynamic play of motivations within human beings. Self-knowledge will be a factor and it will be taken into consideration.

Humans may not be so anxious to dominate each other if the origins of such desires are laid bare as primitive, irrational survivals of innate tendencies to ruthless competition over rank, tendencies which may once have served a useful evolutionary purpose, but which may no longer serve our purposes. The overall trend of history, as FM-2030 (1970, 1973) illustrated, is toward more nonviolence, peace, tolerance, mutual understanding, mutual respect, and freedom. It may be that human beings have been, for the 10,000 years or so since they have acquired modern intelligence, moving ever closer to an accommodation of one another, a rapprochement based on intelligently-realized mutual benefit. If that is the case, more scientific analysis and applied technology could accelerate this trend.

Is humans’ present, relative inability to modify themselves their most human characteristic? Is the reluctance by some today to modify themselves the highest human value? If human nature is to mean anything, it must surely refer to the actual natures of human beings, who typically desire to be free from many of their limitations so they can become happier. It is not the sciences of the mind and technologies for modifying the mind that would most likely lead to the extinction of the human nature that we value. Rather, it is the relinquishment of progress in those sciences and technologies of the mind that would more likely result in the extinction of human nature and all its hopes and dreams, a true ‘abolition of man.’

The English word invent comes from a Latin word meaning find, and it is by finding ourselves, that is, by discerning our natures for the very first time, that we can acquire not only the power but also the wisdom to bring out the potential of what is best in ourselves. We can choose to make a leap – not into a Void, but rather into ourselves and into the fullness of the world unveiled by our investigations. And we can make this leap together, holding each other’s hands.




References

Dennett, Daniel C. Freedom evolves. 2003. New York: Viking Penguin.

FM-2030 (F. M. Esfandiary). 1970. Optimism one: The emerging radicalism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

FM-2030 (F. M. Esfandiary.) 1973. Up-wingers: A futurist manifesto. New York: The John Day Company.

Lewis, C. S. 1943. The abolition of man. 1943. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition3.htm (posted March 6, 2002).

7th Alcor Conference, October 5-7, 2007 Part II

Sunday

First up was a panel discussion and question-and-answer on cryonics and critical care with David Crippen, M.D., a prominent critical care physician, Leslie Whetstine, Ph.D., a bioethicist, and Tanya Jones, of Alcor, moderated by Alcor's Aschwin de Wolf.

The first two panelists did not seem much familiar with cryonics, and they and the audience had some heated discussion, but out of it all came some interesting information and at least the recognition of the emotional difficulty of these issues.

David noted that because physicians can keep brains alive for a long time, it is often not clear when a person is "dead". Hospitals can maintain the heartbeat, breathing, body warmth, and most metabolic functions of a patient indefinitely. Brain death is decided by fulfillment of a checklist of objective criteria, but brain death is more of a process than event; it may not be something that happens all at once.

Normally, brain death is required for organ donation, but if cardiac function has ceased, if there is no request to resuscitate, and progression to death is inevitable, organ donation may proceed. Since cryopreservation is ideally begun on patients who are NOT brain dead, but only dead by cardiac criteria, as with organ donation, there may be serious controversy about whether the patient in this case ought to be considered dead.

David reminded the audience that surgeons scoffed at hand-washing before surgery, until it became REALLY obvious that it would save countless lives. Medical professionals tend to be very conservative, reluctant to change, and they tend to be convinced only by the "gold standard" of peer-reviewed, published medical research. If cryonicists can produce some of this, they may change minds over time. Right now, cryonics operates "under the wire" and the courts have not yet become involved.

Eventually, we may be sure, the courts will become involved, when there is a significant legal challenge.

The legal status quo, reflecting a long-standing social objection to suicide and euthanasia, is that "a person cannot agree to be dead at a particular time." Consent of the patient is irrelevant. This notion ruffled the feathers of many of the strong-willed, freethinking members of the audience, but it is an honest assessment of present legal and social opinion.

Nevertheless, Hugh Hixon captured the applause of the audience when he noted, in regard to the panelists' concern about a 'slippery slope', that if public policy completely ignored the wishes of the patient, they were already AT the bottom of a slippery slope.

Cryonicists, I would say, are caught in a difficult position. They theoretically admit and support the notion that when the patient's brain is 'alive', the patient is alive or at least possibly alive (able in theory to be resuscitated or reconstituted). But they want cryopreservation to be able to be conducted on these 'live' persons, at least when they are 'legally dead'. So cryonicists must support, in practice, the cardiac criteria they do not accept, in theory. Legal, ethical, and medical technology are developing in ways that are driving cryonics toward a confrontation with the rest of society, a demand for a demonstration of their fundamental claim: that their patients ARE potentially alive, both before AND after cryopreservation.

Tanya Jones noted that Alcor makes sure hospital staff are told of the anatomical donation arrangements of the standby patients. The staff are asked NOT to wait for brain death. Alcor has never had a patient declared brain dead. Cannulae can be placed before death pronouncement, even some medicines may be supplied.

Eventually there will be a transition when the brain is considered viable through cryopreservation, so that cryopreservation will have to become a medical procedure, not performed by Alcor, and not in the context of anatomical donation. Tanya said she would like to see Alcor take a more active approach in framing the legal debate of the future rather than waiting passively for legal challenges of others to frame the debate.

Leslie Whetstine maintained her doctoral dissertation's point that "cardiac arrest is a prognosis not a diagnosis, of death. All real death is brain death." The heart can beat in a brain dead body.

Leslie admitted to being confused by cryonicists' position. Cryonicists admit patients aren't really dead, yet they want the legal definition of death applied, transferring the patients' legal rights. On the other hand, where was the ethical controversy? Whole human embryos can be cryopreserved alive legally, so why can whole adults not be?

She argued that whole brain death need not be considered a necessary criterion for brain death. Rather, she said, loss of consciousness, or personhood, should be considered sufficient. Persistent vegetative state would qualify in this sense.

Aschwin wondered whether cryonics might someday be incorporated into long-term critical care medicine.

Next up was Steve Harris, M.D., of Critical Care Medicine, discussing liquid ventilation, the new method ensuring the fastest cooling of patients. The heart-lung machine is faster, but it requires more time to set up, thus making it practically slower. Liquid ventilation can cool 5 degrees in 5 minutes in dog experiments, once the airway ventilation is set up.

There are 300,000 cardiac arrests per year in the U.S., and up to 50% will have moderate or severe brain damage. There is a 67% survival rate after 5.5 minutes down, and it takes paramedics about 5-10 minutes at least to get to the patient. Damage after 10 minutes is enough to reduce non-vegetative survival to essentially zero. Most of the good effects of cooling (clinically induced post-resuscitation mild hypothermia) disappear after 15 minutes.

Liquid ventilation with perfluorocarbons was discovered in 1965, but recent FDA trials were disappointing. (Steve and Mike Darwin from the audience disagreed over the reasons why the trials failed, so I, for one, don't know what to conclude.) The volume, pressure, and other factors must be carefully controlled to prevent damage to the lungs (which can be lethal).

The next speaker was Calvin Mercer, Ph.D., a religious studies professor at East Carolina University. It was refreshing to see a discussion of religious, and specifically Christian, concerns about cryonics, since it is likely that religious people, an overwhelming majority of the U.S. (and world) population, will be decisively influential in how or whether cryonics will be studied, funded, researched, or implemented.

Already, there have been signs of the conservative objections to this new-fangled and unsettling idea, muted only (I would suppose) because of the widespread perception of its infeasibility. But even more disturbing is the rejection by the liberal, 'progressive' religious.

Calvin noted that complete scientific support of cryonics (even if cryonics got it!) wouldn't help if the general public doesn't give cryonics a place in the cultural arena of religion. Religious opinions on cryonics should be important to cryonicists because they will affect membership, legislative support, funding, and legal climate. He said his speech would focus on American Christians since they predominate in the area where cryonics is unfolding.

Calvin noted that SYMBOLS are very important to religious people; they are how religious people construct their identity in the world. Conservative Christians have historically been closed-minded to new science, but religion can, and has, evolved with culture over time. He believes that in the future, when it becomes clear that life extension is inevitable, both 'bioconservatives' and life extension enthusiasts will be found among both religious conservatives and religious liberals.

Religious liberals tend to be anthropocentric, this-wordly, pragmatic, and revisionist. That makes them friendly to science. But they are worried about fairness and access to new technologies for less privileged people. Their support for cryonics will depend on how the issue of justice is addressed by cryonics. How will cryonics affect "the least of these"? The poorest, the least educated?

This is certainly a concern I, for one, share.

Conservative Christians may be evangelicals or fundamentalists (the latter defined as "evangelicals who are angry about something"). They tend to be theocentric; they have a very low view of humans as sinful and weak. Their otherworldly emphasis is on supernatural realms and beings. They value religious understanding handed down from previous generations, unchanging. They hold dogmatic beliefs not open to debate.

Conservatives' longstanding suspicion of science will play some part in their attitudes towards cryonics. But Calvin believes some significant segment of conservative Christians may embrace life extension. They may, for example, think of life extension as a way of avoiding Hell and preparing to be sure they will go to Heaven. They may also be strongly convinced by the notion that cryonics preserves life (note their general pro-life stance). Resuscitation is not raising the really dead, only the apparently dead, they might argue. Resuscitation does not result in spiritual transformation, the way resurrection would. The soul might not 'leave the body' unless the person is really dead.

Christine Petersen of the Foresight Institute gave a quick review of everyday life extension practices such as diet, exercise, adequate quality sleep, and stress-avoidance, and humor. She wisely noted that one should not take just any supplement that MIGHT help since substances in the body may interact in undesirable ways. Authorities disagree on the number and type of supplements that would be advisable (from most conservative to most liberal: doctors, the FDA, RealAge.com, Kronos, Ray Sahelian, Ray Kurzweil, and the Life Extension Foundation). People should rearrange their lives if necessary to avoid "toxic" stress from bosses, commutes, coworkers, spouses, etc. Males benefit from greater quantity of sex, while females benefit from greater quality of sex. Most of her recommendations were of the sort, obviously, that the audience was not quick to object to!

Next up was Chris Heward, Ph.D., president of Kronos Science Laboratory, which has conducted many large population studies on aging. All the while not having any clear definition of what aging IS. Apparently, it may be many different, but interacting, biochemical processes. There are no yet accepted biomarkers for 'aging'. Kronos pays close attention to signs of oxidative stress, but there is significant (huge) variation across time in single individuals.

Life expectancy has increased in recent times, but mainly only due to decreases in infant mortality. Life expectancy increases after 65 years have not been impressive. The 'downward' slope of aging begins around 20 years old. Premature aging of one element of the body is usually responsible for premature death. The top 3 killers in the U.S. are cardiovascular disease, cancer, and cerebrovascular disease.

Alzheimer's disease is increasing, and not entirely because of increasing diagnosis. Five percent of people aged 65-74 will be affected. By age 85, the risk will rise to near 50%. Such figures are obviously disturbing to those of us who wish to extend our natural lifespans, while at the same time preserving our personal identity. Alzheimer's disease, and all forms of age-related dementia, amount to a terrible conflict in our plans. Should we try to live longer, and run greater risk of dementia? Or should we lean wholly on cryonics, a completely unproven technology? One can be sure there are no easy answers.

7th Alcor Conference, October 5-7, 2007 Part I

Another wonderful Alcor conference!! Congratulations and thanks to all the organizers, speakers, and panelists. It was great meeting life extensionists and cryonicists from all over the world.

Friday
Arizona lobbyist Barry Aarons gave the welcome address. It is good to see Alcor's continuing political engagement, which Alcor needs to survive. But this time, there was a hint of something more than just survival expected from current elected leaders ... trying to get Alcor recognized as part of the biotechnology industry in Arizona.

Saturday
Susan Klein emceed. It was great seeing Bruce and Susan Klein, founders of the Immortality Institute, active at this event.

Steve Bridge, former Alcor president, spoke first. He introduced the tone and scope of the conference, clearing up misconceptions for those new to cryonics. We are not interested in cryonics because we are a hare-brained cult, or because we have an obsession with high technology or science fiction. We are interested in cryonics because we seriously want to preserve life.

Steve noted that fewer than 20 scientists in the world are working on cryonics today. Perhaps, as he noted, this is because early cryonicsts did not try hard enough to convince scientists to work on it. I think, however, scientists would have made up their own minds anyway. After it became clear that resuscitation from extremely low temperatures would not be easy, it was obviously not 'low hanging fruit.'

Scientists find big-goal projects intractable. How many cancer researchers think of their research as about a cure for cancer? At most, modestly, they think of their research as perhaps a small brick on the path toward a cure for cancer. They think of their research as positioned in the context of a more immediately tractable problem, of either a theoretical or a practical kind, a sub-goal.

What is a sub-goal for cryonics? Freezing organs for transplantation comes to mind, and it is here that most of the work so far has been done. Yet decades of failure have convinced the organ transplant field not to expect extremely long-term, extremely low-temperature storage of most organs any time soon. Yet there is the possibility that continuing advances in medicine and biology and biophysics will uncover possibilities for new approaches.

Steve also noted that the word 'dead' should be reserved for information-theoretic death, a point that was echoed throughout the conference by other speakers. But if we accept this consensus, what word should we use for the condition in which we would expect biostasis to be applied? In the case of terminal, incurable degenerative brain disorders, this does not even correspond to the fiction of legal death. Inevitable Impending Identity-Critical Information Loss? That would make an awkward acronym. :)

Steve also reminded us that we still do not know if cryonics preserves people. How do we know we are preserving identity? How do we know long-term memories and personality are being preserved? What are the physical correlates of identity in the brain? These questions are really the most fundamental of all. Even if low-temperature biostasis were reversible, if resuscitation from such a state were possible, would the patient be amnesiac? brain-damaged? insane? Information-theoretic criteria are not yet able to be framed in biological terms.

Next, Brian Wowk, Ph.D., from 21st Century Medicine, spoke. He reviewed the process of cryosuspension by vitrification and the theory behind it. The goal of vitrification is to prevent ice formation. In ideal cryonics cases, the brain may vitrify without ice formation, although ice may form elsewhere in the body (in a whole body case). In cryoprotection, 60% of the body's water is replaced by cryoprotectant ("anti-freeze" to prevent ice crystallization). Long-term potentiation (LTP), thought to be a mechanism involved in long-term memory, persists in vitrified brain slices, after rewarming, in an animal model. The machinery for forming memory, if not memory, survives vitrification.

Obstacles to reversing vitrification include cryoprotectant toxicity, ischemic damage, and fracturing. The latter could be solved by higher-temperature storage, though this would be more expensive, risky, and require more care. Methods for repairing damage at the cellular or tissue level (regeneration) need not require nanotechnology, and work on repairing or preventing cell/tissue damage is of course a continuing focus of mainstream medical research.

Stephen Van Sickle, current Alcor Executive Director, spoke next on Alcor's research. How do anti-ischemia drugs relate to cryoprotection? The Critical Care Research drug protocol has still not yet been verified with cryoprotection.

Alcor is setting up a cardiopulmonary bypass research lab with rats. Stephen noted that part of the biostasis protocol is already known to be reversible -- about 2 hours into blood washout and lowering of body temperature to around 2 degrees C. At some point during perfusion of cryoprotectant, though, the process becomes irreversible. It would be interesting to know when! And why. (note: cryoprotectant toxicity above).

Alcor is also continuing to develop intermediate temperature storage (ITS) to prevent fracturing. Unfortunately, fractures can occur well before safe long-term storage temperatures are reached. Sometimes fractures do NOT occur until almost liquid nitrogen temperatures, which suggest it is theoretically possible to avoid fractures with ITS. Alcor is now studying the problem with noninvasive visual imaging, as well as auditory detection. Alcor is also planning to use a fiber optic spectrometer to measure blood low (by near infrared/NIR) to try to measure perfusate volume and flow rate in brain, maybe modeling concentrations in the brain, and also perhaps to determine if there is ice formation in the brain by scattering from ice.

Next, Tanya Jones spoke. She emphasized the importance of stabilization (cooling, cardiopulmonary support, medications, and perfusion with organ preservation solutions). Only about half of Alcor's patients were stabilized. Those who were not were generally nonideal cases who were 'down' too long to initiate stabilization without causing more harm. This is a continuing problem -- that people don't get sick at convenient times and with plenty of advance warning! Stabilization buys between 24-48 hours worth of time to transport patient to Alcor for more cooling and longterm care.

Alcor is moving toward a largely automated whole body perfusion system with literal bells and whistles. Hopefully this will help prevent human error and assist in the gathering of high-quality data. Stabilization kits are also being reorganized, so that there are fewer boxes to fly out when necessary. Alcor continues to work on a stabilization network - working toward improved training and recruiting new medical personnel. About half of Alcor's U.S. patients are resident in California, with the rest mostly in Arizona, Florida, Texas, and New York. Alcor would eventually like to deploy 14 regional stabilization kits for the U.S. and worldwide, and conduct local training on the regional equipment.

Next, Ralph Merkle, Ph.D., spoke. He felt that cryonicists were being too conservative about cryopreservation preserving memory. (Why?) Ralph noted the slow pace of nanotechnology, but observed that resuscitation of cryonics patients was its most ambitious application. He estimated that it would be about 5 years before labs began experimental verification of some of the theoretical work he and Freitas have done. He said practical nanotechnology will result in a revolution in medicine. Cryonics revival will require mature nanotechnology, which in turn will require the funding of long-term system design, which is largely absent now. Almost all spending is on very near-term applications, he said. Nanotech research now is not focused on a goal, what to make with nanotechnology. Cryonics provides the answer, according to Ralph.

The next speaker was Dr. Michael West, a gerontologist and COB of Advanced Cell Technology (a regenerative medicine company) and former CEO of Geron Corporation, without a doubt the most prominent person to address a cryonics conference since I have been going to them. Listening to Michael West was certainly one of the high points of the conference for me.

Interestingly, his presentation touched not only on the technical concepts behind his research, but also the deep cultural, even mythological framework, in which such research might be understood. Perhaps he has developed this approach because of the fierce controversy surrounding human embryonic stem cells, which he and his colleagues were the first in the world to isolate. (On one slides, Michael wryly noted one of his embryonic stem cell lines that President George W. Bush had "blessed".)

Michael reminded the audience that the modern biological distinction between germ (reproductive) cell lines and somatic (regular body) cell lines exposes a dualism that hints at the biological origin of aging and death.

Originally, we may presume, all early life cells were, or at least tried to be, immortal. These early cells were predecessors of today's germ cells (and their renegade imitators, cancer cells) in that they had no fixed lifespan, repaired themselves, and reproduced indefinitely. In one way of thinking about it, somatic cells evolved to help germ cells survive and reproduce, but somatic cells were denied immortality, and this gave rise to death, which continues to beset us multicellular organisms.

Michael compared the differences between germ and somatic lines to the difference between the Greek concepts Zoe and Bios. These are two words for life, one the eternal life of nature, the other the temporary life of an individual person. The mythological analogues of Zoe were Demeter and Dionysus, two gods of the eternal fecundity of nature (in grain and grape harvests). Nature performs the immortal renewal of life. "How do we transfer immortality to individuals?" Michael asked. "How do we conduct 'immortality transfer'?"

Cells can immortalize, he noted. Telomeres shorten in somatic cells over time, whereas germ cells' telomeres don't. Telomeres at the end of chromosomes are like fuses burning down. They cause cells to senesce. Michael again drew comparisons from Greek mythology, this time to the Fates who drew out, measured, and cut the thread of life at its predetermined limit.

Michael and his collaborators have in fact engineered immortal cells. The enzyme telomerase can rebuild the telomeres as they decrease, so that they become effectively immortal. Embryonic stem cells in laboratory petri dishes actually start to form tissues, even brain tissue (neocortex).

Michael dispelled the myth that the cloned sheep Dolly was born with prematurely old telomeres. Untrue, he said. In fact, cow somatic cells, by nuclear transfer cloning, caused cells to OVER-reset, giving them even longer lifespans than normal. Human therapeutic cloning is possible, Michael said. Wakayama et al. (2000) showed in a mouse model that mice clones could have lengthened lifespan. Mitochondria can also be rejuvenated by nuclear transfer, and cells can be cloned so that not they are not just nuclear but also mitochondrial clones.

No one has yet cloned human embryonic stem cells by nuclear transfer, mainly because it is difficult. It has been done in other animals, though. Medical work on embryonic stem cell therapy includes new approaches to macular degeneration and vascular disease. There are so many types of cells that researchers are still studying them to determine how they make complex somatic cells.

Michael's final slide, of Isis and Osiris, was quite moving. In the Egyptian myth, Osiris is killed, but his wife Isis searches until she finds a way to revive him using the Cord of Life. In other words, love conquers death.

The next speaker was Aubrey De Grey, who kindly provided a NEW TALK. The topic was how leaders in various scientific fields and especially publication editors like himself could do more to educate scientists about the legal fiction of death and the possibility of seeing cryopreservation as life-saving critical care. "We have a moral duty to demystify the 'yuck factor,'" he said. It will be difficult to demystify the topic, but Aubrey believes it is possible. "A logical, fair argument is easier to make and most likely to succeed eventually."

Aubrey's presentation was followed by a panel from Alcor's Board of Directors. The most contentious issue raised was the possibility of having Alcor's membership elect its Board (it is currently a self-perpetuating Board). The panel gave a good argument that many special-purpose nonprofits with large assets such as museums or hospitals have self-perpetuating Boards, and a quick show of hands indicated that the majority of the audience (although they may not have been all Alcor members), approved of keeping thing the way they were. 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

The Slow Road Down 2

Well, that was a bit premature of me. I haven't had time to continue the line of thinking from my previous post.

But I can at least point out the obvious.

As you can see from the graph in the previous post, the final appearance is not so very different from the initial appearance. Even after 48 hours, the neural membranes, while indistinct, still seem to be intact. The nucleus and nucleolus may be damaged, but they are still visible. Nissl bodies (rough endoplasmic reticulum) may be being dismantled. Vacuoles emerge, perhaps the cell's attempt to quarantine emerging debris. The axons, while damaged, are still very identifiable.

The cell is in grave crisis. It would not spontaneously revive even with the resumption of circulaton and respiration after a few minutes, as we know from experience. But perhaps new therapies may be developed which could help either slow the damage to the cell or put it in a better position to repair itself, if for some reason circulation and respiration were to resume.

But if we accept the theory that identity-critical information is stored in synaptic circuitry, then the intracellular crisis is in some sense not key. In theory, if the objective were merely to preserve identity-critical information for the future, it might be adequate that the general external structure of the cell and its synaptic connections be preserved. Synapses may be flexibly "stored" in membranes or cytoskeleton, so that even significant distortions of the cell by generalized edema would not erase the "memory" of the memory, so to speak.

It would be useful to know how long-term memories and personality correlates are stored in the brain; for example, how long-term memories are 'consolidated' physically. If we knew the answer to this question we would be in a much better position to know what we were trying to preserve, and thus, we would be in a much better position to know how to preserve it.

If the 48-hour post-mortem brain in the figure in the previous post were to be preserved, would people in the indefinitely-distant future be able to identify the synaptic circuitry from what remained, copy/transfer this information to another medium, and then restore the patient (in this case, a dog) to life? Or, would people in a probably more distant future be able to use this same information to actually repair the heavily damaged cells, perhaps using nanoscale machines? If the unique, identity-critical information is retrievable, then, in theory, the non-unique structure (healthy, normal neurons) could be restored by however much effort.

The Slow Road Down

For many unfortunate people (more all the time), death begins long before the heart stops beating and the lungs stop breathing. The unique personal identity is eroded by loss of memory and disordering of personality from aging, injury, or some other cause or condition.

But for those who manage to make it intact to prolonged cardiac arrest and cessation of breathing, how long does the brain last? How long is there anything left in the brain that future medical technology could use to bring the person back to who they were before?

A person can be brought back even today after 5 minutes, under the best circumstances. Slightly longer times are possible without brain damage if the head or whole body is cooled, by a procedure called clinically induced moderate hypothermia.

If more than 5 minutes have passed and hypothermia is not used, the person is in big trouble. Restarting the heartbeat and breathing can cause a serious brain injury called reperfusion injury. The body may continue heartbeat and breathing, but the brain may never fully recover. The brain may never even receive circulation from the heartbeat. People put on a ventilator may be "brain dead" in a true sense -- the brain is seriously injured and begins the process of death.

If a person is "lucky" enough to be treated as "dead" -- without reperfusion injury being introduced, the process of death proceeds at a pace determined, at least in part, by temperature. Heat provides energy to the various reactions taking place. If there is no circulation, the body's drop to ambient temperature actually helps slow the process. The body being put in a cooler at near freezing temperatures slows it even more.

From there begin a series of changes to the brain. A neat summary (though based on the brains of dogs) is the following:

(Figure from Haines, D. E., & Jenkins, T. W. J. Comp. Neur. 132: 405-418. Studies on the epithalamus: I. Morphology of post-mortem degeneration: The habenular nucleus in dog.)

In the next post I'll talk about the significance of the changes...