I like that Nectome uses this approach and those standards; I think it’s a very valuable organization to have as part of the brain preservation ecosystem.
I think exploring some form of standards, or at least some options for third party quality reviews would be very valuable.
I want preservationists of this era to be able to be sued for malpractice because their technique was sloppy and they didn’t deliver preservative chemicals to a dime-sized brain region within 15 minutes post-mortem.
I imagine you’re not making the following strong claims, but I can’t tell for sure, so would like to check.
You’re not saying “It should be illegal for someone to get their brain preserved if it takes more than 15 minutes to start the procedure because the medical intervention wouldn’t be good enough so they should be forced to completely die instead and not attempt to preserve them.”, right? I would strongly disagree if that’s what you were saying.
You’re not saying “It should be illegal for someone to prioritize other preservation metrics over methods that allow for easier microscopy verification of structural preservation even if that’s what they prefer”, right? I would also disagree with that, both because I want people to be able to do whatever they want, and also because there’s still enough uncertainty that I don’t think we can be sufficiently confident about some alternative approaches not being actually meaningfully superior in some ways. (I do assign more probability mass to prioritizing structural preservation, and that influences my decision making for myself, but also I’m not aware of research proving that cryonics without fixative does not preserved important structure, and forcing people to not use that seems at the very least premature.)
Absolutely not saying either of those things. If nothing else, I don’t think the government has any business telling people what they can do with their own brains, or what kind of medical procedures they can hire someone to perform on them.
We’ll get into more detail in future posts about what kind of mechanisms for accountability we are excited about. Broadly speaking, though, we’re interested in labeling and certification, not in any kind of prohibition on alternative services. The hope is fundamentally that ordinary laypeople will be able to easily understand the stance of the scientific community at large and what procedures meet a reasonable standard of care.
I like that Nectome uses this approach and those standards; I think it’s a very valuable organization to have as part of the brain preservation ecosystem.
I think exploring some form of standards, or at least some options for third party quality reviews would be very valuable.
I imagine you’re not making the following strong claims, but I can’t tell for sure, so would like to check.
You’re not saying “It should be illegal for someone to get their brain preserved if it takes more than 15 minutes to start the procedure because the medical intervention wouldn’t be good enough so they should be forced to completely die instead and not attempt to preserve them.”, right? I would strongly disagree if that’s what you were saying.
You’re not saying “It should be illegal for someone to prioritize other preservation metrics over methods that allow for easier microscopy verification of structural preservation even if that’s what they prefer”, right? I would also disagree with that, both because I want people to be able to do whatever they want, and also because there’s still enough uncertainty that I don’t think we can be sufficiently confident about some alternative approaches not being actually meaningfully superior in some ways. (I do assign more probability mass to prioritizing structural preservation, and that influences my decision making for myself, but also I’m not aware of research proving that cryonics without fixative does not preserved important structure, and forcing people to not use that seems at the very least premature.)
Absolutely not saying either of those things. If nothing else, I don’t think the government has any business telling people what they can do with their own brains, or what kind of medical procedures they can hire someone to perform on them.
We’ll get into more detail in future posts about what kind of mechanisms for accountability we are excited about. Broadly speaking, though, we’re interested in labeling and certification, not in any kind of prohibition on alternative services. The hope is fundamentally that ordinary laypeople will be able to easily understand the stance of the scientific community at large and what procedures meet a reasonable standard of care.
wonderful!