28 May 2008

Classic of Immortality Available Online

Aschwin de Wolf notified me by email of the online publication of a classic work of immortality literature--Immortality: Physically, Scientifically, Now (HTML)--by Ev Cooper, privately published in 1962.

Link to PDF version (via Depressed Metabolism) If your browser gets bogged down trying to open PDF documents, download it using the "right-click-->Save Link As" option.

Read more about the interesting story of the author, Ev Cooper, at Depressed Metabolism.

The field of cryonics continues to develop slowly. The big breakthrough that is needed is the development of a non-toxic "vitrification" agent--a safe antifreeze for human bodies that prevents freezing damage when the body temperature is taken below the freezing point of water. Some progress has been made, but fish, amphibians, and insect larvae do a much better job of it so far.

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4 Comments:

Blogger IConrad said...

a safe antifreeze for human

That's a rather poor description of what vitrification is, Al. Vitrification could better be described as the process of turning the fluids within the body into a supercooled glass-like state. So what we need is something that allows for freezing while preventing crystallization and yet is non-toxic to humans. (Or at least is sufficiently non-toxic as to permit future generations to easily repair the damages induced by its toxicity).

Wednesday, 28 May, 2008  
Blogger al fin said...

Thanks for the clarification, Conrad. I was striving for simplicity, but your description is more accurate.

Wednesday, 28 May, 2008  
Blogger Aschwin de Wolf said...

Thanks for linking to the Ev Cooper post.

Re: vitrification. In March 2008, I posted a technical review of VM-1, the vitrification agent of the Cryonics Institute:
http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/2008/03/31/vitrification-agents-in-cryonics-vm-1/

Cryonics Institute's president Ben Best has a comprehensive article on the use of vitrification in cryonics here:
http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/vitrify.html

Wednesday, 28 May, 2008  
Blogger al fin said...

Thanks, Aschwin.

Some good videos on vitrification are also available on Google or YouTube.

Thursday, 29 May, 2008  

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