Re:You Only Live Twice
by mhartl on Saturday December 13, 2008 @01:08AM
(#396535)
You're right to be skeptical, but I encourage you to investigate further, since this is a common but erroneous belief: that even a few minutes without oxygen causes irreparable brain damage. In fact, it's the autoimmune response upon revival that causes the damage to the brain, not the hypoxia. And cold prevents the damage; some types of brain surgery require zero blood pressure, and are performed at low temperature (potentially for hours) without harm to the brain.
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I probably spoke to fast. I could see it being somewhat feasible if the cryonics facility was immediately informed that the patient was dying, and the patient was frozen within hours of clinical death. My main concern is the success of freezing a brain dead person. I also was mainly referring earlier to the loss of information in the brain, not the actual physical brain damage.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theoretical_death. So if the family refuses or delays to inform the organization, I'm skeptical about whether the information in the brain can be preserved. And there have been bitter legal battles fought over cryonics. http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/is-that-what-love-is-the-...