Aurelia Song

I present this as evidence that it's possible to preserve large mammals' brains in a traceable state, every synapse intact, and keep them stable for more than a hundred years, the hundred years part we will address in a future post on the thermodynamics of preservation.

But ASC is not the whole story, because it must be done pre-mortem.

End-of-life laws throughout the world weren't designed with preservation of terminally ill clients and don't allow ASC as an option.

In order to create something workable, I had to either find a way to do preservation post-mortem or work to incorporate ASC into end-of-life laws.

I chose to make preservation work post-mortem.

Heading In the field Andrew Critch and the SFF

Making preservation work in the real world turned out to be conceptually easy.

The original protocol needs three modifications to work post-mortem.

1.

Cardiac arrest must happen quickly in order to avoid premortem brain damage.

We found that medical aid in dying, made, is required.

2.

You must use blood thinners before cardiac arrest.

3.

You have to do the surgery fast.

The perfusion needs to start less than about 12 minutes after death.

My dad used to tell me a story of a biology professor he had in college.

The first day of class, the professor had everyone open their textbook and read the first paragraph in one of the last chapters.

The professor then told everyone that it had taken him 30 years to write that paragraph.

I now better understand how that professor must have felt.