Cryonics Doesnt Work

That is not dead which can eternal lie ... and with strange aeons even death may die. -- HpLovecraft, "The Call Of Cthulhu"

Freezing makes ice crystals grow to destroy biological structure on all levels. Try refreezing meat to see this happen - the grocers call it "freezer burn". Crystallization doesn't just burst cell walls, it causes flows in unfrozen flesh that just tear things to bits. Frozen brains are riddled with ice-filled holes where vital connections once were. Cryonicists [http://merkle.com/merkleDir/cryo.html] had thought that MolecularNanoTechnology would fix this damage, and since brains at liquid nitrogen temperature can keep for 10K years or more, they could just stay frozen until that technology was developed.

But AlCor? are now vitrifying brains instead of freezing them. Vitrification causes flesh to form a glass rather than crystallize upon freezing. Electron micrographs reveal these techniques preserve biological structure on all levels. Hippocampal slices show at least 75% cell viability after thawing even without nanotech fixes, and that's ramping up fast. Vitrifying agent toxicity is being decreased at the same rate. Within the next decade, vitrification might actually permit revival of frozen folk just by careful thawing.

So cryonics doesn't work. But it might shortly.

Ahem. It turns out this really isn't as great as these folks have claimed. See http://www.cryonics.org/Dec_00_2.html

Dig deeper. The correspondent quoted there, RobertEttinger?, is an old and embittered opponent of all things to do with Alcor, including their vitrification breakthroughs. Ettinger's outfit, CI, uses the same old technology that's been converting brains to hamburger for thirty years now. http://www.alcor.org/eventsb.html provides lots more details on why vitrification is a big step forward. Toxicity and ice crystals are no longer a difficulty. Finding a body to attach to your revived head, on the other hand, seems a little more problematic. You'll need to go all the way to Europe to get a clone made ...

But would a defrosted brain have a soul? I seem to remember some thriller movie along this line...

Does any brain have a soul? What the heck's a soul anyway? Cryonics presumes there's nothing particularly important about your identity except what emerges from your biology. You're a signal processor; if you believe otherwise, don't get froze. We'll miss you.

"frozen == dead ... otherwise freezing == homicide" ... doesn't anyone else see the error in that logic?

They freeze 'em after legal death. If they're already legally dead, you can't be killing 'em, right? The supposition in cryonics is "legal death != technological death".

The big hurdle, that will exist even if the technological issues are solved, is legal. As of right now, the people who are frozen are legally dead - otherwise those freezing them would be subject to homicide charges. Currently, one would need to set up a trust with the beneficiary being the dead person. I cannot believe that the legal system will let such a situation stand. -- PeteHardie

The trusts are set up with the freezer orgs as the beneficiary, and with multiple layers of contracts, checks and balances to try to make certain the funds can't be used for anything but freezing and maintaining the frozen. A description of one such arrangement is at http://www.alcor.org/faqcost.html.

As to the larger legal issues, well, if it doesn't work, then you're dead and just perversely embalmed, no problem. If it does work then you're not dead, just really, really, really ill. Same deal as for a coma patient, so again no problem.

The problem is will the law allow a "dead" person to be the beneficiary of any wills or trusts? If not, how is the cryonic storage paid for? Would you spend all of your inheritance keeping Uncle Bob frozen, just so that when there was a cure for his disease, he could be thawed and take whatever money was left?

It's UncleBob's decision, not yours. He doesn't have to leave you a dime if he doesn't want to. Nothing stops him leaving whatever he likes to whoever he likes. But if he has an ounce of sense, he'll do like all the other cryonics enthusiasts do - fund the arrangement up front with a life insurance policy. The premiums cost him less than a pizza a week. Let's face it, UncleBob could stand to lose a little weight anyway.

Life insurance policy? That means he's DEAD. So when he shows up revived, he's party to fraud.

Sorry chum, no fraud involved. Life insurance agencies are quite particular in spelling out their criteria for payment. Lots of fine print, carefully worded - a contract. If their contract doesn't take pending technological advances into account, that's not UncleBob's problem. Besides, the number of signed-up cryonicists in the world is, what, about 2000? I don't think the insurance brokers are losing sleep over this.

As for the law and trusts, etc., there are several perfectly untried schemes whereby corpsicles might leave themselves money in trusts while they sleep through the decades. Probably won't pay off in reality - but they've already paid for the storage and resuscitation so working for a living once revived doesn't seem much of a problem after all that.

It's not a problem. Since the wealthy and powerful make the rules, when it becomes expedient to do so, they will do so. Trusts and foundations are already doing this. Someone must be paying the liquid nitrogen bill that keeps Walt Disney's head frozen. -- AndyPierce

That's an urban myth. Uncle Walt is ashes. So is RobertHeinlein, sad to say.

I hope they saved the ashes. I've got pretty good faith in the restorative powers of MolecularNanoTechnology, plus ashes are a lot cheaper to store long-term.

Where do you think the information to do the reconstruction would come from? A pile of ashes carries a lot less data than a vitrified brain. No, faith or no faith, if you don't save the information, the person can't come back.

Besides, if Walt was frozen, it would be Disney Inc paying the bill, although I can't see why they'd waste the money....

The money for the resuscitation is part of the cryonics org's fee - if Walt was frozen, his heirs and their corporations simply don't have any say in it.

Paid to whom, and in what account? Any given corpsicle company can go out of business, and the decision to attempt revival must reside with a nonfrozen person, who can always be suborned. Basically, freezing is gambling, not only on technology, which may be a safe bet, but on human nature and long-term economics, which are much less sure.

Paid to carefully arranged trusts - see http://www.alcor.org for details of their arrangements. Freezing certainly is gambling, and human nature and economic systems certainly suck. But when it's the only game in town, what else are you going to do?

A friend of mine did a film documentary on cryonics as his senior film school project. He met with Timothy Leary and many cryonics advocates, and took a tour of Alcor's facilities. He started with an open mind, but eventually came to the conclusion that cryonics is as likely to lead to eternal life as mummification was, and serves the same psychological need (inability to accept death). -- KrisJohnson

This is a very common experience. A vanishingly tiny percentage of humans have any interest in prolonged life. The cryonics community are a fractious, splintered, and deeply weird bunch of people, mostly academics, authors and ubergeeks. The technology may have improved significantly over the last few years, but still no one has revived anything larger than a frog. Or even a frog. Not exactly confidence inspiring, is it?

Then there's procrastination to overcome. Who wants to think about their own death, much less their own sawn off head? And the large pile of paperwork. And the objections of friends and family. And the prospect of never seeing same again. Almost anyone who looks into this seriously is likely to get very discouraged.

Inability to accept death, however, characterizes only a few cryonicists. Most have experienced all too much of it. They just see no good reason to die when a revival technology might come within the next century. For the very few without spiritual, ethical, legal, or psychological barriers to overcome, the question is, what's the problem? Presuming resuscitation works, we might one day put the shoe was on the other foot. Those who opt to die permanently are unable to accept life.

See also: SixBillionNonCryonicistsCantBeWrong?, PositiveReasonToSignUpForCryonics