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RESUSCITATION:
A SPECULATIVE SCENARIO FOR RECOVERY
by Mike Darwin What follows is a purely speculative exploration of how revival might be carried out. It is presented here to help visualize many of the cell repair ideas presented in the previous sections. (A more detailed technical examination of cell repair concepts can be found in the article on Nanotechnology in the May, 1988 Cryonics and the article on Cell Repair Technology, immediately preceding this article.) *
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Prelude It has been a long, hard battle. First youth slipped away to be replaced by old age, with all its limitations. Finally, inside some nameless cell, a change occurs. A few atoms become misarranged and the instructions governing the cell's operation and replication suffer a critical error. The error propagates as the cell begins to divide blindly. Millions, then billions of copies of the errant cell are made. Vital structures are displaced and damaged, toxic molecules are spewed forth, resulting in the death of countless normal cells and the inability of many others to perform properly. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy fail to stem the rising tide of cancer. A man is dying and there is nothing that 20th century medicine can do to reverse his decline. A heart stops. A physician gives up and pronounces death. But it is not the end. Unlike most of his contemporaries, the old man with the stilled heart and the malignancy which caused it has looked into the future unflinchingly -- with vision and foresight. Waiting outside the hospital room where the patient lies is a cryonics transport team.