CI's Ben Best responds to C81 talk.

Ben Best doesn't have to qualify his responses to the cryonics community the he did in Cold Filter today. [+]. The blog is the routine way any expert or commentator communicates with the world at large today. He experimented with a blog earlier-- he would do well with one. To correct misperceptions, all he has to do is hear about them or read them briefly and then write a blog entry that rectifies things. No big deal. It's how all poltitician and anyone in a position of influence ought to write these days. And it's best done alphabetically of course. Again, no big deal.

The first issue I would like to address is the question
of whether the 81st patient received better care WITH
Suspended Animation (SA) than he would have received
WITHOUT SA...

By the use of an ice bath, CardioPulmonary Support (CPS)
and an ATP the patient was cooled to below 10oC in about half
the time such cooling could have been achieved by a funeral
director using ice bags...Administration of
streptokinase, vasopressin and antioxidants in addition
to the usual heparin eliminated clots, increased
circulatory capacity and reduced oxidative damage....
Blood replacement with organ preservation solution in a timely
manner avoided reperfusion injury and reduced the cold
ischemic damage the patient would have suffered during
shipment in ice to CI's Michigan funeral home where
vitrification perfusion was performed.

It appears CI doesn't have an ice bath or CPS equipment-- this is news to me-- I didn't realize they had NO equipment. Wow. The ATP (air transportable perfusion) machine-- I can understand that part-- but is that to say that CI has NOT been doing ANY perfusion? Hmmm... I haven't looked at the details of CI for some time-- too busy with Larouche I guess. Serves me right, right?

Before 9/11, CPlatt and I were discussing CI's use of flower water of some sort-- which conversation was never finished because the entire country including me was in shock and majorly distracted. AT the time, I wasn't sure if it was a joke or not-- I've always assumed that CI had some capability beyond that.

Here we see the hint that "blood replacement with organ preservation solution in a timely manner" was something that CI could not have done. Am I reading this correctly? Wow... and I understood that CI had their own vitrification protocol-- so this confuses me. They don't replace the blood with a preservation solution? EVen glycerol?

Here Ben suggest that the cooling by SA was more rapid than CI could have done....

For those who would trivialize the benefits of rapid
cooling achieved by the SA team I quote from the
cooling section of the latter article:

The curious thing here to me is that the ATP machine wasn't really effectively used as far as I recall when reading Cplatt's report-- so the rapid cooling presumaby was done by lung lavage-- hypothermic lung lavage-- but I'll have to re read yet again. I'm not too swift with this material.

Ben makes a solid point in favor of sending C81 to SA. He basically is saying that there's no way CI could have done as good a job as SA and that C81 was not an experimenet for SA. For me, that's credible enough-- but at this point, I'm a little take aback in that I didn't know that CI's capabilities were as poor as they seem to be. I'll look at that a bit more closely in coming weeks and months.

Ben explains his reason for calling on SA and transferring C81 to SA-- the argument he makes revolves around price--

I was aware that the patient had attended the SA conference
in May with his son. I had also been told by CI facilities
manager Andy Zawacki that the patient had not been so impressed
with what he saw at SA. I do not believe that the latter is
the same as saying that the patient would not want SA service
at any price. It is false that I would have opposed the
patient's wishes if I believed he would not want their
services at any price.... I
spoke to Saul Kent and the son about the possibility of SA
taking the case for $8,000... Moreover, I do not believe the
patient's son would have allowed his father to receive SA
services if he had any indication that his father would have
been opposed. And I believe that the patient's son was in
a far better position to know what his father would have
wanted concerning SA services than anyone else....
The agreement between CI and SA for this case
was an "ad hoc" agreement, so the usual contractual
terms did not apply...