From: hkhenson@cogeco.ca (Keith Henson)
Subject: Re: Vanilla Sky review for Mark
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 06:18:16 GMT
Organization: Temple of At'L'An
Message-ID: <3c21271a.71318197@news2.lightlink.com>
On 18 Dec 2001 19:47:12 GMT, jimdbb@aol.com (JimDBB) wrote:
snip
>>Minor clear up here. Alcor stores people whole body or head only
>>depending on what they ask for and pay for. We can store at least a
>>dozen heads in the place of a single a single whole body patient which
>>reduces the cost by about half. Of the 18 I helped freeze, about half
>>were heads only and the rest were whole body.
snip
>Keith, are you serious? Are you really involved with this madness?
Sure, part of the public record. There are two or three long writeups
of cases I did that you can find in the archives on sci.med,
sci.cryonics and other places.
Mind you, it took reading and editing Eric Drexler's first book for
five years back in the late 70s and early 80s to convince me cryonics
had merit--and a deep background in chemistry, biology, physics,
engineering and programming to understand that there are no good
arguments against nanotechnology. I was one of the first to be
brought into cryonics through nanotechnology.
Nanotech promises being able to manipulate matter on the scale of
atoms--crudely demonstrated with a scanning tunneling microscope
almost ten years ago at IBM.
A few data points. Five or six years ago Scientific American did a
hack job making fun of nanotechnology. This year the September issue
(which is always on one really hot topic) was devoted to
nanotechnology. Inside that issue was an analysis of how much money
is being spent. The number for 2001 was $1.3 billion, with a doubling
time of 18 months.
Another point, mid 2000 there were 80,000 references on Google, mid
2001 there were 160,000 references. Last I looked there were 235,000.
So the subject is getting a lot of attention.
Alcor does it without the need for extensive surgery now, but back in
the early to mid 90s I trained up to put Alcor's patients on cardiac
bypass. Here is a posting from those times. If you consider some of
the things I have done in my life solo picketing scientology does not
look like much of a risk.
From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com (H Keith Henson)
Message-Subject: Cryonics "wet work"
Message-ID: <73660@cup.portal.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 93 10:50:47 PST
There have been several recent postings on highly theoretical areas of
cryonics. I have recently been training as a "dire circumstances"
surgeon and wrote up a list of how you go about putting in heart
bypass plumbing--which is necessary before perfusing patients with
cryoprotectants. If the "wet work" phase of cryonics is of interest,
read on. The squeamish should hit "D" now.
1. Prep and drape. Clean a large area around midline on the chest
with Betadine. Attach drapes with towel clamps leaving a 2 inch wide
space on the midline. (Towel clamps hook through the drapes *and* the
skin.)
2. Open incision through skin with #10 blade. Cut down to bone with
electrocautery. This will leave you and the entire area smelling of
incinerated meat for the next two days. However, burning through does
seal up the wound edges so they don't leak a lot of perfusate later.
3. Cut through bone on midline from the xiphoid tip to the collar
bone with a Stryker (or Sarns) saw. Some of you may know what a
Stryker saw looks like, since they are often used to open casts. The
Stryker oscillates a half circle of saw through about 20 degrees. It
tends to throw little chunks of bone and marrow all over. A Sarns saw
(less messy) looks much like a saber saw with a protective guide on
the blade. When through, open chest 5-6 inches with a retractor. Rub
bone wax into the marrow surfaces of the bone to keep leaking down.
4. Locate heart and remove excess fat from the surface of the
pericardium. Pick up and *carefully* split the pericardium on the
front surface.
5. "Tent" the pericardium by sewing it in 4-6 places to the skin
edges of the wound. This raises the heart and makes the next phase
much easier to do. If the patient has a history of heart surgery,
there *is* no pericardium, it is hard to identify structures, and the
entire procedure is about ten times as hard. (First time I saw this
done, it was on a patient with a history of *two* bypass operations.
The whole area around the heart was a mess of scar tissue.)
6. Put a purse string suture on the aorta. Using a monofilament type
suture with half-inch-long semicircular needles attached, sew a loop
*in* (not through!) the wall of the aorta. The aorta is fully four
inches down from the chest wall, so use a needle holder (which looks
like a blunt pair of hemostats) to make the stitches. Put in 5 or 6
stitches in a circle twice the size of the cannula to be used. Leave
5-6 inches of suture on each end, and thread the ends through a 2 inch
long chunk of stiff red rubber tube (made by chopping up a Robinson
bladder catheter). Put a hemostat on the tube leaving the suture
loose. (The whole complex is called a snare.)
7. Fill an arterial catheter of the appropriate size by submerging it
in a bowl of normal saline. Clamp with a tubing occluder. Inspect
for bubbles, and get all of them out.
8. Make an incision in the aorta, using a number 11 blade. Start
most of the way over on one side of the suture circle with the blunt
side of the blade to the outside. Try not to go entirely *through*
the aorta.
9. Insert the arterial cannula into the slit you just made. Tighten
the purse strings by pulling back on the suture and pushing down on
the red rubber. Clamp them tight through the rubber tube. Secure
cannula with basket tie or other clips to make sure it will not come
out under pressure.
10. Repeat steps 6-9 for the much smaller pressure-measuring cannula.
11. Clamp off half to three quarters of an inch of the tip of the
right atrium with an appropriate instrument. (A DeBakey Auricle Clamp
or similar is best, but a large curved hemostat will do in a real
pinch.) Put purse strings around the heart side of the clamp. Four
stitches will do. Thread through red rubber and clamp as above.
12. Cut off the exposed atrium tip. Fill the venous cannula, release
clamp, grab the edges with 2-3 hemostats, and insert cannula. May
need to open up the hole a little with reversed action on some Mayo
scissors.
13. Pull strings up and clamp inside red rubber tube. Secure with
basket tie or better.
14. Connect to the perfusion machine tubing. Work bubbles out as you
stick the ends of the tubing into the cannulas.
15. For an extra thrill, try this with an AIDS patient--and stick a
needle through your glove.
Keith Henson
