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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS);faqs.217



Q908. Are "credit repair" agencies legitimate?

    Most of them operate within the law but don't do anything for you
    that you can't do for yourself, at less expense.  (Someone posted a
    quoted price of $395 in early November 1991; you can do the same
    thing for well under $50.)  Before paying them any money, be sure
    you have in writing exactly what they intend to do, and any
    guarantees they make.  Think seriously about saving the money and
    doing the work yourself.

    A typical credit-repair agency requests a copy of your credit report
    and then disputes any unfavorable items on it, whether true or not.
    (The agency doesn't have to give reasons.  Just a mechanical "I
    dispute this" starts the process.)  The credit bureau then follows
    the procedure above ("What exactly will the credit bureau do with my
    correction?").

    The credit repair feature depends on most credit grantors either no
    longer having their records or simply failing to respond within the
    credit bureau's time limit.  Presto!  the unconfirmed item is gone.
    If the credit grantor does confirm the item, it stays in your
    record.  (You can send the bureau a 100-word explanation of the
    item, to be included in the report.)

    Can you do exactly the same thing?  Yes, if you want to.  A "credit
    repair" agency has no more clout than you do.  See section 8,
    "Getting and reading your credit report," as well as the earlier Qs
    in this section.  Remember that there are three separate national
    bureaus.  If you clean up only your TRW report, that doesn't help if
    a credit grantor pulls a Trans Union report when you apply.

    Is this legal?  Strictly speaking, yes.  Is it honest?  In my
    opinion, not when an accurate item is disputed.  If you make
    deliberately false statements it may be illegal (I'm no lawyer).

(end of misc.consumers FAQ on credit)
--
  The opinions expressed above are those of the author and not SPSS, Inc.
                         -------------------
   [e-mail]                                  Phone: [phone]
   Steve Adams        "Space-age cybernomad"       Fax:   [phone]
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From: [e-mail] (Timothy Freeman)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,news.answers
Subject: Cryonics FAQ 1: Index
Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions
   and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving
   very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be
   revived in the future.  It should be read
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 1 Dec 92 08:36:30 GMT
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Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part1

                   Cryonics
            Frequently Asked Question List
        Last Modified Sun Oct 25 13:50:23 1992

Cryonic suspension is an experimental procedure whereby patients who
can no longer be kept alive with today's medical abilities are
preserved at low temperatures for treatment in the future.

Send comments about this list to Tim Freeman ([e-mail]).  The
words "I" and "me" in these answers refer to opinions of Tim Freeman,
which may or may not be shared by others.

There is much information available as cryomsg's.  You can fetch
cryomsg "n" by sending mail to [e-mail] or to
[e-mail] with the subject line "CRYOMSG n".  You can get
a current version of this entire FAQ list by fetching cryomsg "0018".
You can get a current version of section "n" of this FAQ list by
fetching cryomsg "0018.n".

In this list, the acronym "CRFT" stands for "Cryonics: Reaching for
Tomorrow", which is available from Alcor (the first copy is free).
The address of Alcor is part of the answer to Question 6-4.

Much more is said about Alcor than any other cryonics organization
in this list.  There are several reasons for this.  First, Alcor is
the largest, and it gets the most attention.  Second, I am an
Alcor member, and most of the reference material I have on hand was
written by Alcor.  I invite people more familiar with other
organizations to contribute answers to these questions.

This FAQ list needs a new maintainer.  Cryomsg 1242 describes what the
new maintainer would need to do to take over the job.  If you are
interested, send me mail.

This FAQ list would also benefit from a detailed comparison of the
various cryonics operations.  My thoughts about what could go into
this are in cryomsg 1241.  If you want to volunteer to write this
answer, send me mail.

               Section 1: Index

This FAQ list has these sections:

1. Index
2. Science/Technology            -- Is cryonics feasible?
3. Philosophy/Religion            -- Is cryonics good?
4. Controversy surrounding Cryonics -- Dora Kent, Cryobiologists, Donaldson
5. Neurosuspension            -- Whether to take your body with you.
6. Suspension Arrangements        -- The organizations that exist.
7. Cost of Cryonics            -- Why does cryonics cost so much?
8. Communications            -- How to find out more.
9. Glossary & Acknowledgements        -- Important and unimportant jargon.

The following questions are covered.  Questions marked with a "*"
are not yet answered.

              2. Science/Technology
2-1.  Has anyone been successfully revived from cryonic suspension?
2-2.  What advances need to be made before people frozen now have a chance
      of being revived?
2-3.  Is there any government or university supported research on cryonics
      specifically?
2-4.  What is the procedure for freezing people?
2-5.  How can one get a more detailed account of a suspension?
2-6.  Is there damage from oxygen deprivation during a suspension?
2-7.  Do memories require an ongoing metabolism to support them, like RAM in
      a computer?
2-8.  If these frozen people are revived, will it be easy to cure them of
      whatever disease made them clinically die?
2-9.  If I'm frozen and then successfully revived, will my body be old?
2-10. Why is freezing in liquid nitrogen better than other kinds of
      preservation, such as drying or embalming?
2-11. What is vitrification?
2-12. How is the baboon? Did it live? Any brain damage?
2-13. Who has successfully kept dogs cold for hours?  Did they survive? Any
      brain damage?
2-14. Who froze the roundworms?  What happened?
2-15. What were the circumstances under which cat brains produced
      normal-looking brain waves after being frozen?
2-16. Would it be possible to use some improvement on modern CAT or MRI
      scanners to infer enough about the structure of a brain to reconstruct
      the memories and personality?

             3. Philosophy/Religion
3-1.  Are the frozen people dead?
3-2.  Is cryonics suicide?
3-3.  What about overpopulation?
3-4.  When are two people the same person?
3-5.  What if they repair the freezing damage (and install a new body, in
      the case of neurosuspension), and the resulting being acts and talks
      as though it were me, but it isn't really me?
3-6.  What would happen if people didn't age?
3-7.  Would it be better to be suspended now or later?
3-8.  Why would anyone be revived?
3-9.  Is there a conflict between cryonics and religious beliefs?
3-10. Is attempting to extend life consistent with Christianity?

           4. Controversy surrounding Cryonics
4-1.  Why do cryobiologists have such a low opinion of cryonics?  How did this
      start, and how does it continue?
4-2.  Who made the statement about reviving a frozen person being similar to
      reconstructing the cow from hamburger?
4-3.  What was the Dora Kent case?
4-4.  What about that fellow in the news with the brain tumor?

               5. Neurosuspension
5-1.  What are the pros and cons of neurosuspension (only freezing the head)?
5-2.  How many people have chosen neurosuspension over whole-body
      suspension? (This question has only a partial answer.)

               6. Suspension Arrangements
6-1.  How many people are frozen right now?
6-2.  How is suspension paid for?
6-3.  How will reanimation be paid for?
6-4.  What suspension organizations are available?
6-5.  How can I get financial statements for the various organizations to
      evaluate their stability?
6-6.  How hard will these people work to freeze me?
6-7.  What obligations do the suspension organizations have to the people
      they have suspended?  Will they pay for revival and rehabilitation?
6-8.  How long has this been going on?
6-9.  How much of the resources of the cryonics organizations are reserved
      for reviving patients?
6-10.*What should I do if I want to be frozen but my relatives hate the idea?
6-11. How can I pay for my own revival and rehabilitation, and keep some of
      my financial assets after revival?

               7. Cost of Cryonics
7-1.  Why does cryonics cost so much?
7-2.  Is anyone getting rich from cryonics?  What are the salaries at these
      organizations like?
7-3. *How do cryonics organizations invest their money to last for the long
      term?

                8. Communications
8-1.  How can I get more information?
8-2.  What is a cryomsg?  How do I fetch one?
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From: [e-mail] (Timothy Freeman)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,news.answers
Subject: Cryonics FAQ 2: Science/Technology
Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions
   and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving
   very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be
   revived in the future.  It should be read
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 1 Dec 92 08:36:48 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.part2_723198982
Expires: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 08:36:22 GMT
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Sender: [e-mail] (Usenet News System)
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Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part2

            Section 2: Science/Technology

(You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to [e-mail] or
to [e-mail] with the subject line "CRYOMSG n".  The index
to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1".)

2-1.  Has anyone been successfully revived from cryonic suspension?

No.  Fortunately, successful cryonics is a two-step process:
  (1) put the patient in suspension and
  (2) revive the patient from suspension
For cryonic suspension to be worthwhile, we only need to master
step (1) right now and have reasonable expectation that we might
master step (2) later.

2-2.  What advances need to be made before people frozen now have a chance
      of being revived?

A number of advances in basic areas of research such as medicine,
microbiology, engineering, and information sciences are required
before any serious attempt can be made to revive patients suspended
with current technology.  Nanotechnology, the design and fabrication
of molecular scale machines, is an emerging technology that will
probably be both necessary and sufficient for revival.

2-3.  Is there any government or university supported research on cryonics
      specifically?

There was suspended animation research sponsored by NASA as late as
1979 at the University of Louisville, Kentucky.

2-4.  What is the procedure for freezing people?

Read an account of a cryonic suspension.  Briefly, circulation is
restored by CPR, and the blood is replaced by other substances that
prevent blood clots and bacteria growth and decrease freezing damage.
As this happens the body is cooled as quickly as possible to slightly
above 0 degrees C. After the blood has been replaced the body is
cooled more slowly to liquid nitrogen temperatures.

2-5.  How can one get a more detailed account of a suspension?

Cryomsgs 601 and 602 is The Transport of Patient A-1312 (28K bytes)
and cryomsgs 696, 697, and 698 are The Neurosuspension of Patient
A-1260. (35K bytes).  These messages give a first-hand description
of the initial stages of two suspensions.

2-6.  Is there damage from oxygen deprivation during a suspension?

Not if the suspension happens under good circumstances.  One of the
big goals of the suspension procedure is to get the HLR machine onto
the patient as soon as possible, to prevent this damage.  The
barbiturates they give reduce brain metabolism, as does cooling.  In a
well done suspension, the damage from oxygen deprivation should be
minor.  In a more perfect world, the suspension procedure would be
able to start before legal death, which should reduce the damage from
ischemia even more because there wouldn't be any time when the
heart is stopped and the body is warm.

2-7.  Do memories require an ongoing metabolism to support them, like RAM in
      a computer?

Not long term memories.  When children nearly drown in cold water,
they can often be revived after having no apparent metabolism and
still have their memories.  Likewise large doses of barbiturates can
suppress all measurable brain waves without destroying long term
memories.

2-8.  If these frozen people are revived, will it be easy to cure them of
      whatever disease made them clinically die?

Repairing the freezing damage looks much harder than curing any
existing disease, so if revival is possible then curing the disease
ought to be trivial.  This doesn't include diseases that lose
information in the brain, such as Alzheimer's, mental retardation, or
brain tumors; in these cases, even if the disease were cured and the
person revived, the problem of replacing the lost information looks
hard.

2-9.  If I'm frozen and then successfully revived, will my body be old?

No.  Old age is a disease that ought to be easier to cure than the
freezing damage.

2-10. Why is freezing in liquid nitrogen better than other kinds of
      preservation, such as drying or embalming?

Straightforward chemical arguments lead to the conclusion that
significant amounts of decomposition do not occur at liquid nitrogen
temperatures.  (See Hugh Hixon's article "How Cold Is Cold Enough?"
from *Cryonics* magazine, January, 1985, or fetch cryomsg 0015.)
This isn't true for either dried or embalmed tissue kept at room
temperature.

Also, Alcor and Trans Time have done experiments with dogs that
demonstrate that part of the suspension process does not cause
damage.  Dogs have been anesthetized, perfused with a blood
substitute, and cooled to slightly above 0 C for several hours.
After rewarming and replacing the original blood, the dogs revived
with no obvious brain damage. Experiments like this cannot be done
with drying or embalming.

Another option that may become possible in the future is vitrification.

2-11. What is vitrification?

(Next paragraph copied from CRYOMSG 6)

The cover article of the Aug. 29, 1987 issue of Science News describes
vitrification, which achieves cooling to a glassy state without the
water crystallizing into ice.  The advantage of this is that the cells
do not suffer the mechanical damage from the crystallization.  The
main disadvantage is that the concentration of cryoprotectants
required to achieve this is toxic.  It is also, currently, a
technically difficult and expensive process requiring computer control
of cooling rates, perfusion, etc.  The March, 1988 issue of Cryonics
magazine ("The Future of Medicine", Part 2 of 2) suggests that
vitrification may not be needed for ordinary organ banking, since
other, cheaper methods may be good enough.  For tissues and cells,
though, it has a lot of promise for the commercial market.  Thus,
commercial research into vitrification may stop short of what is
needed for making it viable for preservation of large organs or whole
bodies required by cryonics.

2-12. How is the baboon? Did it live? Any brain damage?

According to Art Quaife as of 14 Jul 92, the baboon is well and has
no signs of brain damage.

This is part of what CRYOMSG 865 has to say about the baboon:

Berkeley, California, May 29 1992.  BioTime Inc. has, for the first
time, successfully revived a baboon following a procedure in which
the animal's deep body temperature was lowered to near-freezing and
its blood was replaced with BioTime's patent-pending blood-
substitute solution.

The animal was anesthetized, immersed in ice and cooled to below 2
degrees Celsius, using the BioTime solution with cardiopulmonary
bypass procedures.  After being bloodless and below 10 degrees
Centigrade for 55 minutes, the animal was rewarmed and revived.  The
baboon is presently under study by BioTime scientists to determine any
long-term physical effects.

The company intends to conduct further experiments on primates, using
its blood-substitute solutions.

2-13. Who has successfully kept dogs cold for hours?  Did they survive? Any
      brain damage?

Several people have achieved that.  The first cryonics organization to
do so was Alcor, in the mid 1980's.  For example, the Jan. 1986 issue
of Cryonics magazine describes, in the article "Dixie's Rebirthday", a
German Shepherd dog named Dixie who "experienced the privilege (and
the peril) of having all her blood washed out and replaced with a
synthetic solution and then being cooled to 4 C.  For four hours she
was held at this temperature: stiff, cold, with eyes flattened out,
brain waves stopped, and heart stilled.  Then, she was reperfused with
blood, warmed up and restored to life and health."  She made a total
recovery.  Several variations, with different perfusates and slightly
different temperatures and/or times were also performed by Alcor.
Later, ACS performed a similar experiment on a beagle named Miles and
recently (1992) BioTime successfully cooled and revived a baboon.

In comparison, hypothermic cardiac surgery was pioneered on humans
decades ago, although the temperatures used were not nearly as low as
in the dog experiments above.  More recently, the October 1988 issue
of The Immortalist described successful surgery on a brain aneurysm in
which the patient was cooled to 15 C for almost an hour.  During that
time the patient's blood remained drained from the body, there was no
respiration, the heart did not beat, and the brain barely functioned.

2-14. Who froze the roundworms?  What happened?

(This text is quoted from CRYOMSG 790)

Gerry Arthus, our New York Coordinator, has announced preliminary
results of an experiment which was designed to investigate whether
memories will survive cryonic suspension.

For his experiment, Gerry used Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode
(tiny worm) that's one of the simplest living creatures. It has a
complete nervous system, however, and can be "trained" in a
rudimentary way. Worms that are raised in a warm environment will
"remember" it and will prefer it if they are given the choice.
Conversely, worms that were raised in a cooler area will tend to
prefer that environment.

Gerry placed a small number of worms in a cryoprotective solution and
froze them to -80 degrees Celsius for two hours.  After he revived the
worms, the ones that survived the experience still "remembered" their
former environmental preferences. So far as we know, this is the
world's first experiment designed to verify that memory is chemically
encoded and will survive the freezing process.

The sample that Gerry used is too small to prove anything
conclusively. Soon, however, Gerry hopes to repeat the experiment with
a larger sample. He also intends to devise tests to eliminate the
possibility that the worms changed physiologically to adapt themselves
to warmer or cooler environments.

2-15. What were the circumstances under which cat brains produced
      normal-looking brain waves after being frozen?

This was reported by I. Suda and A.C. Kito in Nature, 212, 268-270 (1966).
The cat brains were perfused with 15% glycerol and cooled to -20 C
for five days and, upon rewarming and perfusion with fresh blood,
showed normal brain function (as measured by EEG).  Since this experiment
was done so long ago, and technology has improved considerably since
then, there is some interest in redoing these experiments to see how
well we can do now.

The April 1992 Cryonics, volume 13 number 4 page 4, talks more about
this and gives more references. Appendix B of CRFT talks about the
plausibility of repair in general.

2-16. Would it be possible to use some improvement on modern CAT or MRI
      scanners to infer enough about the structure of a brain to reconstruct
      the memories and personality?

This was discussed on the cryonics mailing list some time back.  The
conclusion was that using radiation to infer the structure of the
neurons in a brain in a reasonable amount of time would require enough
radiation to vaporize that brain.  Then the discussion moved on to
nuclear-bomb x-ray holography devices in outer space that record the
results on film that has to be moving by at an astronomical speed so
it doesn't get caught in the blast.  Cremation and immortality, all in
one convenient package.  I find nanotechnology-based approaches more
believable, albeit less spectacular.

To read about this yourself, fetch articles from the cryonet archive
with the words "brain scan" in the subject.  There are 18 as of July
30, 1992.  See the "What is a cryomsg?" question below.
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From: [e-mail] (Timothy Freeman)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics,news.answers
Subject: Cryonics FAQ 3: Philosophy/Religion
Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions
   and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving
   very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be
   revived in the future.  It should be read
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 1 Dec 92 08:37:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.part3_723198982
Expires: Thu, 14 Jan 1993 08:36:22 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Usenet News System)
Followup-To: sci.cryonics
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Lines: 208
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Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part3

            Section 3: Philosophy/Religion

(You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to [e-mail] or
to [e-mail] with the subject line "CRYOMSG n".  The index
to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1".)

3-1.  Are the frozen people dead?

Using the definitions in the glossary, they are legally and
clinically dead but they may or may not have reached
information-theoretic death, depending on how memory is stored in
the brain and how much this is affected by freezing damage.  A
person who has been cremated is dead in all senses of the word.
People who have been buried and allowed to decompose are also dead.
People can only legally be frozen after they are legally dead.

3-2.  Is cryonics suicide?

No.  People only get suspended if they are legally dead.
Suspending them sooner can lead to charges of homicide.
(The Dora Kent Case was about a suspension performed immediately
after clinical death, which the local coroner suspected may have
been done before legal death.)
Suicides, murders, fatal accidents, etc. almost always result in
autopsy from the local coroner or medical examiner.  The resulting
brain sectioning and extended room-temperature ischemia (inadequate
blood flow) may easily cause true death.

3-3.  What about overpopulation?

At present, an insignificant fraction of the population is
participating in cryonics.  Thus, by any measure, cryonics with the
popularity it has now will never contribute significantly to
overpopulation.

Assuming an exponentially increasing population, immortality only
changes the population by a constant factor.  Thus it doesn't
change the nature of the crisis, only the details.  Also, before we
overpopulate the earth, we will have ready access to outer space,
which will, of course, give us much more room for expansion than
just our home planet.

Also, as countries become wealthier, they tend to have fewer
children.  This is because children are much more likely to survive
in wealthy countries, and thus the parents do not need to try as
many times to have children that survive to adulthood. Any
civilization sufficiently advanced to revive people in cryonic
suspension will be sufficiently wealthy and advanced that people
will not need or desire as many children as people do in the third
world today.

If cryonics and other paths to life extension were prevented to keep
population under control, then that would be killing one person so
another person can have children.

CRYOMSG's 398, 582, 583, and 585 through 589 have more on this topic.

3-4.  When are two people the same person?

Cryonics and, especially, the technologies required to reanimate
people from cryonic suspension, open new questions about who we are.
People interested in cryonics often disagree about questions of
identity that arise in various conceivable circumstances.

One way to resolve this is to treat it as a matter of definition.
We can define two people to be the same if they remember the same
childhood, and if the process by which they came to remember the
same childhood also copied most of their other memories and other
skills.  Of course, there are other possible definitions.

Another approach is to use the person-as-software metaphor.
Deciding whether two people are the same is a similar problem to
deciding whether two pieces of software are the same.  The
applicability of this simplier problem to the problem of comparing
people is debatable, but the exercise is a good one especially in
light of current debates on software copyrights.

Or one can defer to medicine.  The identity questions raised by
cryonics are identical to those faced in medicine today when
considering partial amnesia, stroke survival, brain diseases, etc.

Another alternative is to suppose there is some as-yet-explained
physiological feature which acts as the seat of consciousness.  In
this case, two people are the same person if they share this
particular piece of flesh.  Preserving this feature becomes
important, and replacing it during revival is not an option.

Last but not least, some people believe in souls.  With this
notion, two people are the same person if they have the same soul.
Since the laws that souls obey have not been empirically
explored, this model doesn't make clear predictions about the
consequences of cryonics.

3-5.  What if they repair the freezing damage (and install a new body, in
      the case of neurosuspension), and the resulting being acts and talks
      as though it were me, but it isn't really me?

The answer to this obviously depends on which notion of
person-equality you subscribe to.  If we use the definitional
approach, then someone who behaves identically to you is you.
Dealing with the other approaches is left as an exercise for the
reader.

3-6.  What would happen if people didn't age?

Ecology: We might be better stewards of this planet if we
knew that we would have to live with the results of our actions.

Human relations: We will have to learn to treat each other
better if we are going to live in the same world together for a
very long time.

The situation I envision is that people will die of something other
than biological accidents like old age.  They will die from making
mistakes, which seems to me to be a more interesting way to die.
We'll get stories like this:

   Joe died because he didn't bother buying enough redundancy in the
   life support system of his space ship.

   Bill died because a machine was developed that could do his job
   better than him, and before he could retrain for a different job he
   ran out of money and couldn't afford his anti-aging regimen any
   more.