Personally, I think even primitive methods of cold lung lavage with saline, (which is probably a lot easier to get, and transport, than perfluorocarbons), would be of great benefit to cryonics patients, (given that the primary goal would be the benefits of rapid cooling, not oxygenation).
I wrote this in a blog entry, back in December:
...from the February 2000 issue of Life Extension Magazine (note the year "2000"):
"The most recent breakthrough made at The Critical Care Research Project is an Automated Liquid Ventilation System that can lower whole-body temperature extremely rapidly with a (sic) an automated system that introduces cooled liquid perflurocarbon into the lungs without causing lasting injury. What remains is to make the system portable, so that it can fit into an ambulance for use at the scene of automobile accidents, heart attacks and strokes."
All that remained in February 2000 was "to make the system portable" and nearly eight years later, Critical Care Research has not accomplished that?" http://cryomedical.blogspot.com/2007_12_16_archive.html
Charles Platt was working on this project while I was at SA, (perhaps even before I arrived on the scene, in March 2006), and no doubt it's one of the projects at his new LEF-funded workshop, in California.
Are Bill Faloon and Saul Kent paying any attention, at all, to the lack of progress at the LEF-funded organizations of CCR and SA? Seriously. What has been going on, for the last eight years, at CCR? Does anyone know?
I can't think of any logical reason to delay bringing this technology to the field. To argue "lung damage" would be ridiculous, since cryonicists expect future technology to cure existing disease and repair all other types of damage. A good percentage of cryonics patients are neuros, who are expecting a whole new body, anyway, so what's a set of lungs?
I hope Alcor isn't letting the Wowk, Harris, et al., patent hold them back, as there are too many ways around it, in regard to rapid cooling via lung lavage. While a company might patent a specific device that is superior to other devices, in some proprietary fashion, there is simply too much "prior art" in regard to lung lavage to get a monopoly on it. There are papers on liquid ventilation, dating back to the 1920's, and experiments were carried out during World War I; it is not a "new" concept. The Wowk, Harris, et al., patent was filed eight years ago, which means, at the rate they are going, it may expire before the device is ever brought to the field. I suppose this patent made people (including Bill and Saul) think something was actually being accomplished by the LEF-funded facilities, but it seems like just more wasted time and money, to me. In fact, it may have been detrimental to progress in cryonics, by instilling some sort of fear of patent infringement liability on other cryonics organizations interested in this technology.
My guess is, at least a few consultants and employees of the LEF-funded organizations have already "earned" tens of thousands of dollars on this project, and I have no doubt they're willing to keep working on this project, for many years to come, perhaps under the guise of striving for that "perfection" FD mentions. Is it possible some people may be more motivated to making endless modifications to this project, than to completing it?