LIFESCIENCE: venturism and genetic engineering

[PROFRICHAR@aol.com]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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venturism and cryonics put their special hope in biotechnologies to gain 
immortality:

excerpt from venturists statements (not my opinion): 


Freezing, of course, does inflict substantial damage in large masses of 
tissue, particularly when carried down to the temperature of liquid 
nitrogen (-196øC) where biological activity essentially halts--such 
temperature being advantageous for longterm storage. It is not 
surprising then, that such tissue generally does not recover function 
on rewarming. After all, we are asking a lot through such crude 
thawing methods as are currently available--nothing less than for the 
cells to repair themselves. The possibility of such repair means a frozen 
organism could have suffered considerably more damage than the minimum needed 
to render it 
nonfunctional, and still eventually be made to recover. In particular, we 
would expect that missing body parts could be recreated through 
information contained in the DNA of the remaining tissue. (Debilities 
caused by aging and diseases should also be curable, so the 
organism will emerge in a state of good health.)

What then, is the kind of damage that would preclude the eventual 
repair of cells and restoration of the original specimen to a robust, 
functioning state? This depends on what we mean by "the original 
specimen." If it is held, as many do, that identity, even for humans, is 
primarily genetic, then the requirements seem especially simple: from 
a copy of the DNA one could simply recreate the entire organism, 
including the brain. The new version of the organism will lack the 
earlier memories, and have small physical differences, but will still be 
remarkably similar. If this is sufficient, then even a single, nucleated 
cell of the original should be adequate to restore a functioning state. 

Most of us cryonicists, however, are not satisfied with that, 
but demand also that memory information in the brain be preserved. 
For practical reasons, and because of uncertainty as to exactly which 
structures are essential for encoding memory, as a minimum the 
entire brain is normally stored in a way that will protect it almost 
indefinitely from deterioration: at liquid nitrogen temperature. Since the 
brain is a large mass of nucleated cells, it should be sufficient for the 
other repairs that would be needed for a functioning state. It would be 
reasonable to expect that an acceptable replica of the original body 
could be constructed from the information contained in the brain, and 
the old, repaired brain could be united with the new body to restore the 
functioning organism. Thus the workability of cryonics hinges on the 
question of whether memory information survives in a reasonably 
complete, inferable form, in a frozen brain. 
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