The document discusses the potential for nanomedicine and cryonics to revolutionize medicine in the future. It describes how nanotechnology could enable the precise arrangement of atoms to create molecular machines like robotic arms and computers smaller than cells. These devices could guide cell repair and restore lost functions, preserving life. The document also discusses cryonics and the possibility that those preserved could be revived in the future when medical technologies are advanced enough to repair the damage of freezing.

1. Nanomedicine and Cryonics Ralph C. Merkle Distinguished Professor of Computing Georgia Tech College of Computing

2. Health, wealth and atoms

3. Arranging atoms Flexibility Precision Cost

4. Ultimate limits Arrange atoms in most of the ways permitted by physical law Get almost every atom in the right place Achieve manufacturing costs not much greater than the cost of the raw materials and energy Nanotechnology

5. Molecular machines

6. Disease and ill health are caused largely by damage at the molecular and cellular level Today’s surgical tools are huge and imprecise in comparison Impact Nanomedicine

7. In the future, we will have fleets of surgical tools that are molecular both in size and precision. We will also have computers much smaller than a single cell to guide those tools. Impact Nanomedicine

8. Impact Mitochondrion ~1-2 by 0.1-0.5 microns Size of a robotic arm ~100 nanometers 8-bit computer

9. Impact “ Typical” cell: ~20 microns Mitochondrion Size of a robotic arm ~100 nanometers

10. Mitochondrion Molecular computer + peripherals “ Typical” cell

11. Correcting DNA

12. Respirocytes http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Respirocytes.html

13. Nanosensors, nanoscale scanning Power (fuel cells, other methods) Communication Navigation (location within the body) Manipulation and locomotion Computation http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine Nanomedicine Volume I

14. Today’s surgery: intelligent guidance, crude tools Drugs: no intelligence, molecularly precise tools Cell repair systems: intelligent guidance, molecularly precise Types of medical treatment

15. Today, loss of cell function results in cellular deterioration: function must be preserved With future cell repair systems, passive structures can be repaired. Cell function can be restored provided cell structure can be inferred: structure must be preserved A revolution in medicine

16. 98.6 º F -320 º F Cool Revive Time Temperature (Decades) Cryonics 98.6 º F

17. Select N subjects Vitrify them Wait 100 years See if the medical technology of 2100 can indeed revive them But what do we tell those who don’t expect to live long enough to see the results? Clinical trials

18. It works It doesn’t work Sign Up Do Nothing Live Die Die Lose life insurance Die The choice

19. Mammalian Organs and Organized Tissues Successfully Preserved by Slow Cooling to  60 Degrees Centigrade. * Partial success only; pancreases supported life. Adapted from Analysis of “Solution Effects” Injury: Rabbit Renal Cortex Frozen in the Presence of Dimethyl Sulfoxide , by Gregory M. Fahy, Cryobiology 17, 371-388 (1980) Adrenal cortex Anterior pituitary Arterial smooth muscle Atrial fragments Bone marrow Cartillage Cerebral cortex (fetal) Corneas Embryos Epididymus Fallopian tube Hearts (fetal) Heart valves Intestine & intestinal smooth muscle strips Kidney tissue Legs (in vivo) Livers* Microvasculature* Ovarian tissue Pancreases (adult* & fetal) Parathyroid tissue Prostate tissue Seminal vesicles Skin Spleens* & splenic tissue Superior cervical ganglia Testicular tissue Thymus glands Thyroid tissue Tooth germs Trachea (fetal) Ureters Uteri and uterine horns* Veins (jugular) Ventricular tissue Cryopreservation

20. The choice

21. “Don’t leave him in the hands of 20th Century medicine!” Dr. Leonard McCoy of the Starship Enterprise Circa 2185 The future perspective

22. END OF TALK End

23. Future descendants of SPMs could rapidly scan the surface of cryofixed tissue with molecular precision Electrostatic Van der Waals Conductivity Many others Surface scan

24. Surface scan EM image of metal replica of the surface

25. Frozen Kidney Vitrified Kidney -130°C

26. A “sticky” probe could remove individual surface molecules Carbene Boron Metals etc. Surface scan

27. SURFACE PROBE STICKY Surface scan

28. SURFACE PROBE STICKY Surface scan

29. SURFACE PROBE STICKY Surface scan

30. SURFACE PROBE Surface scan

31. Surface scan

32. Volume of the brain: 1350 cc Repair devices: 3 x 10 15 Repair time 10 8 seconds (~three years) Proteins in brain: 1.2 x 10 21 250 seconds/protein Atoms in brain: 10 26 0.003 seconds/atom Volume scan

33. Microbivore Eats Bacterium

34. Medical Hypotheses Vol. 39, 1992; 6-16 One of six articles on “cryonics” in PubMed The only article assessing feasibility Simple “brute force” approach: scan everything, repair as needed http://www.merkle.com/cryo/techFeas.html Published articles The Technical Feasibility of Cryonics

35. “ ...having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country!” Benjamin Franklin 1773 A visionary

36. Cryobiologists are often asked how long cells can remain viable at -196 degrees C, the temperature of boiling liquid nitrogen (which is the usual cryogenic fluid). The answer is clear — more than 1000 years. Peter Mazur Stopping Biological Time: the Freezing of Living Cells. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 541: 514-531, 1988. Cryopreservation

37. Although several aspects of synaptic structure appear to change with experience, the most consistent potential substrate for memory storage during behavioral modification is an alteration in the number and/or pattern of synaptic connections. The anatomy of a memory: convergence of results across a diversity of tests William T. Greenough and Craig H. Bailey, Trends in Neuroscience , 1988, Vol. 11, No. 4, pages 142-147. Memory

38. As Hardy et al. stated, it is apparent that both human and rat brain tissue frozen to -70 degrees C with almost no cryoprotection has synapses "closely comparable to [those from]... fresh tissue." The cryobiological case for cryonics, citing Hardy, J.A., P.R. Dodd, A.E. Oakley, R.H. Ferry, J.A. Edwardson, and A.M. Kidd, Metabolically active synaptosomes can be prepared from frozen rat and human brain, J Neurochem, 40, 608-614 (1983). Preservation of synapses

39. The scientific literature allows no conclusion other than that brain structure and even many brain functions are likely to be reasonably well preserved by freezing in the presence of cryoprotective agents, especially glycerol in high concentrations. The cryobiological case for cryonics Preservation of brain structure

40. Web pages www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/ www.zyvex.com/nano

41. “ Everyone who has died and told me about it has said it’s terrific!” Shirley MacLaine