Is Cryogenics A Choice

[Josco 49]

A few days ago I was listening to a report on Radio 4 about a woman aged 70 who had paid £28,000 (may have been $, but what the hey) to be frozen after death in the expectation of being revived (sic) some time in the future when medicine was more advanced and that her current body could be improved for many more decades of use. Moreover, she had paid a similar amount for her husband too.

 

The radio article included several learned people who pontificated on the wisdom of this and how they might cope with 'returning' to the future maybe a hundred years hence, how all their friends and relatives would be gone and how the world would have changed and so on. The general consensus was that this was not a good choice and that one should be content with ones allotted time span (three score years and ten etc). This made me wonder whether I too, funds permitting, would like to go through with it.

 

Whilst listening I found myself asking why? Why would any future people want to revive a 70 year old early 21st century corpse? What's in it for them? How could one guarantee that the cryogenics company would have your best interests at heart? Who would you sue if they failed to fulfil their part of the bargain. Is it refundable? What state does the body have to be in? I mean I could pay £28,000 now, whilst I am sound in wind and limb, but what if I got mashed up by an omnibus and left as mere tomato sauce on the road? Would they freeze me in bits?

 

So many questions, so few answers......

[Gunjaman5000 30]

It's a bit like having an each-way bet isn't it? Or enternal life for the atheist?

 

I'd say the $28000 woman would hope they're able to reverse the ageing process in the future, or even less likely, the doctors of tomorrow will have found a cure for gullibility.

[time 8,599]

In theory, it sounds a good plan and if you've got a spare £28,000 knocking around doing nothing why not, you can't take it with you (on the other hand, it might come in handy should you ever get revived)! But...

 

As you say there are no guarantees that

 

a. they'll find a cure for whatever killed you (especially if it was death by omnibus),

b. even if they have found a cure they will definitely revive you and administer said cure, or even

c. as soon as they've got your £28,000 they'll just spend a few quid on a quick cremation and pocket the rest.

 

It might also raise further complications with the assisted suicide issue - could you legally assist someone's suicide if you truly 100% believed that they could be brought back to life when medical science had advanced enough to cure whatever they were stricken with?

[Josco 49]

......... could you legally assist someone's suicide if you truly 100% believed that they could be brought back to life when medical science had advanced enough to cure whatever they were stricken with?

If one truly believed that then it couldn't be classed as suicide... just a postponement.

 

Another thought, what about life insurance, would you have to repay it? Or more likely, the insurance company would withhold payment until you had died a second time (after revival) and then there would probably be some small print forbidding it.

 

From a legal point of view, are you the same person, are all your 21st century parking tickets and speeding convictions still valid? What about your possessions, your house and other goods and chattels? Can you claim them back (if you could find them)?

[Star Crossed 33]

If one had the funds, surely one would pay to have all of one's friends preserved too, so you'll have someone to talk to in 300 years when reanimated. Someone who can remember the days before the Great Sunstorm and the rise of the nanobreed...

Which brings me to my point; surely, by the time cryogenics really becomes a viable option it will have been eclipsed by other technologies?

Nanotechnology, for example, is already much further advanced; it will enable us to build humans from scratch, with better memories, more durable bodies, permanently-sweet breath, smaller shell-like ears etc. I imagine by the time Walt Disney's head is being set to defrost in some laboratory canteen microwave, the people operating the microwave will be nanobrick-built superbeings, humankind having transcended the bio-technology schism. We'll all wear silver lycra catsuits to show off our ever-perfect physiques, have huge eyes to watch permanently-streaming internet porn on our ever-increasingly huge televisions, 13 fingers on each hand to make typing posts quicker and enlarged sinuses to cope with the barometric changes as we fly up and down to the Pleasurebases® on Moon in our personal jet-hover-cars.

 

I agree with Gunjaman5k; this is a lesson in gullibility, desperation, hope being the best of all things, whatever you wish to call it. An act of futility. Still, us humans do futile things all the time. It's just that most of our personal follies don't cost £28k and they don't get publicised.

[Josco 49]

Right then, I'll spend the money on something else.....

[Star Crossed 33]

Right then, I'll spend the money on something else.....

Spend it on a world map, like I just did. Always wanted one of these, and I've just ordered one. It's huge, about 6ft x 3ft, but it'll enable me to exercise my fantasies of global domination penchant for mapping the world's renewable energy industry in a nice visual way.

[Magere Hein 1,400]

Right then, I'll spend the money on something else.....

Spend it on a world map, like I just did. Always wanted one of these, and I've just ordered one. It's huge, about 6ft x 3ft, but it'll enable me to exercise my fantasies of global domination penchant for mapping the world's renewable energy industry in a nice visual way.

I see they're markable and washable. That's very useful when you plan your invasions solar array roll-out campaigns.

 

Don't use permanent markers, though, they ruin the map.

 

regards,

Hein

[Monoclinic 39]

Right then, I'll spend the money on something else.....

Spend it on a world map, like I just did. Always wanted one of these, and I've just ordered one. It's huge, about 6ft x 3ft, but it'll enable me to exercise my fantasies of global domination penchant for mapping the world's renewable energy industry in a nice visual way.

 

Is the paper from a renewable source? Is it recycled?

 

I hope you are going to put a nice pin in Belgium, annotated "material of the future". I could even send you a nice picture or TEM micrograph to go with it.

[CarolAnn 926]

Right then, I'll spend the money on something else.....

Spend it on a world map, like I just did. Always wanted one of these, and I've just ordered one. It's huge, about 6ft x 3ft, but it'll enable me to exercise my fantasies of global domination penchant for mapping the world's renewable energy industry in a nice visual way.

 

Oooh, wicked cool.

 

I prefer this one, thought, because the colors are prettier and the breakout of the US allows me to remind myself whether Kentucky or Tennesee is on top. I never can remember.

[Lord Fellatio Nelson 6,218]

A few days ago I was listening to a report on Radio 4 about a woman aged 70 who had paid £28,000 (may have been $, but what the hey) to be frozen after death in the expectation of being revived (sic) some time in the future when medicine was more advanced and that her current body could be improved for many more decades of use. Moreover, she had paid a similar amount for her husband too.

 

The radio article included several learned people who pontificated on the wisdom of this and how they might cope with 'returning' to the future maybe a hundred years hence, how all their friends and relatives would be gone and how the world would have changed and so on. The general consensus was that this was not a good choice and that one should be content with ones allotted time span (three score years and ten etc). This made me wonder whether I too, funds permitting, would like to go through with it.

 

Whilst listening I found myself asking why? Why would any future people want to revive a 70 year old early 21st century corpse? What's in it for them? How could one guarantee that the cryogenics company would have your best interests at heart? Who would you sue if they failed to fulfil their part of the bargain. Is it refundable? What state does the body have to be in? I mean I could pay £28,000 now, whilst I am sound in wind and limb, but what if I got mashed up by an omnibus and left as mere tomato sauce on the road? Would they freeze me in bits?

 

So many questions, so few answers......

All well and good but what about the soul?

[Dave to the Grave 11]

All well and good but what about the soul?

The last time I looked it was in Canvey Island. But that was a lifetime ago.

[Tomb raider 9]

I attended the inaugural speech of the new professor of Medieval History at my university last week. The theme of her lecture was cloning - the point she made was that recent attempts to withstand death (and I suppose cryogenics is another example of that) were not so different from their medieval counterparts as expressed in literature and arts. The worship of bodyparts - for example Hirst's diamond skull or the idolization of the perfect body as expressed by those undergoing plastic surgery - is more or less the same as the way medievals worshipped relics.

 

Many medieval theologians stated that the os sacrum, between the hips at the lower end of the spine, was the bodypart from which all bodies would be reformed at the End of Days. (The Belgian physician Andreas Vesalius mentioned the big toe, however, which was probably due to a mistranslation of some kind.) All you had to do to make sure that you wouldn't miss the resurrection, was to keep your sacrum intact. Special attention had to be paid to the peculiar cases of cannibals. As parts of their bodies was constructed from the flesh of other people, to whom would that flesh be awarded? The answer to this question came closest to the modern concept of cloning.

 

The point I'm trying to make here, is that the unwillingness to let go your physical form is not at all new. It's rooted deeply in our culture and the way we consider life and death, as well as the value of our bodies. Don't judge too early those people who intend to freeze their bodies after death, they're not as eccentric as you might think.

[Magere Hein 1,400]

I attended the inaugural speech of the new professor of Medieval History at my university last week. The theme of her lecture was cloning - the point she made was that recent attempts to withstand death (and I suppose cryogenics is another example of that) were not so different from their medieval counterparts as expressed in literature and arts. The worship of bodyparts - for example Hirst's diamond skull or the idolization of the perfect body as expressed by those undergoing plastic surgery - is more or less the same as the way medievals worshipped relics.

 

Many medieval theologians stated that the os sacrum, between the hips at the lower end of the spine, was the bodypart from which all bodies would be reformed at the End of Days. (The Belgian physician Andreas Vesalius mentioned the big toe, however, which was probably due to a mistranslation of some kind.) All you had to do to make sure that you wouldn't miss the resurrection, was to keep your sacrum intact. Special attention had to be paid to the peculiar cases of cannibals. As parts of their bodies was constructed from the flesh of other people, to whom would that flesh be awarded? The answer to this question came closest to the modern concept of cloning.

 

The point I'm trying to make here, is that the unwillingness to let go your physical form is not at all new. It's rooted deeply in our culture and the way we consider life and death, as well as the value of our bodies. Don't judge too early those people who intend to freeze their bodies after death, they're not as eccentric as you might think.

Interesting points, there. It's all rather philosophical to me, but still a few things escape me.

 

How exactly will cloning contribute to withstand death? It's not the case that a clone is a carbon copy of the original. It's more like a newly born identical twin, another person in all accepted meanings.

 

I'm also not quite sure freezing my body will conquer death. Even if someone in the future would be daft enough to revive it and be able to repair the malfunctioning bits, that surely wouldn't mean I'd live forever, would it?

 

regards,

Hein

[Monoclinic 39]

Stem cells. Clive Dunn's stem cells. That is the elixir of eternal life.

[Rotten Ali 600]

It's what's in your brain that makes you - YOU.

 

Cloned bodies would have to be grown for say 16 years or so to be fully interchangeable viz-a-vi to perform a brain transplant. Even then the opperations to perform such a task would be emense. I can't see it being at all possible within the next hundred years.

[Tomb raider 9]

How exactly will cloning contribute to withstand death? It's not the case that a clone is a carbon copy of the original. It's more like a newly born identical twin, another person in all accepted meanings.

 

You're right, of course. We should probably understand this in a more metaphorical way: the idea that controlling ones physique is the same as controlling the entire individual. Medievals understood the resurrection not as a spiritual matter, a gathering of souls, so to speak, but as actually rematerializing flesh and blood. So it is with cryonics-supporters: it would be much easier (and tidier) to place one's trust in reincarnation, but for some reason people tend to believe that their personality is inextricably bound to their bodies.

 

I'm also not quite sure freezing my body will conquer death. Even if someone in the future would be daft enough to revive it and be able to repair the malfunctioning bits, that surely wouldn't mean I'd live forever, would it?

 

No, it wouldn't. Unless, of course, you could freeze and defrost yourself over and over again... It's one of those golden food conservation rules that you oughtn't do that, though.

 

You could argue that conquering death is not just about eternal life or defying the actual moment of dying. It's also about living on in individual or collective memory. People who choose to freeze their bodies seem to forget that this aspect is crucial if they actually want future generations to revive them. You and Josco were right to point out that we have no reason to assume that those future generations will feel obligated to do so.

[Toast 16,137]

Why would any future people want to revive a 70 year old early 21st century corpse? What's in it for them?

 

As one who dabbles in the ever-fascinating detective work of tracing the family tree, there are certainly a few of my ancestors I would quite like to have a word with.

[Josco 49]

Why would any future people want to revive a 70 year old early 21st century corpse? What's in it for them?

 

As one who dabbles in the ever-fascinating detective work of tracing the family tree, there are certainly a few of my ancestors I would quite like to have a word with.

Some mystery in your past? Some ancestor upset you? Want to bring them back to life so that you could kill them?

[CarolAnn 926]

Why would any future people want to revive a 70 year old early 21st century corpse? What's in it for them?

 

As one who dabbles in the ever-fascinating detective work of tracing the family tree, there are certainly a few of my ancestors I would quite like to have a word with.

 

I have one or two who I really wonder why they reproduced, even though if one hadn't done it I wouldn't be here.

[Toast 16,137]

Some mystery in your past? Some ancestor upset you? Want to bring them back to life so that you could kill them?

 

Oh, lots of mysteries.

 

I would like to ask GG Grandpa where he pissed off to for 30 years, and ask GG Grandma if she knew he wasn't actually dead when she married someone else.

 

I would like to ask another GG Grandpa why he said his father's name was John on his first two marriages, when on his third marriage he said it was William.

 

I would like to talk to Grandad's naughty auntie whose early life of crime is well documented in the local newspapers, only for her to vanish without trace.

 

And lots more. No, they haven't upset me, they give me hours of entertainment.

[Madame Defarge 21]

I found myself asking why? Why would any future people want to revive a 70 year old early 21st century corpse? What's in it for them? How could one guarantee that the cryogenics company would have your best interests at heart?

So many questions, so few answers......

 

More to the point, who could guarantee that the inhabitants of whatever year your arse is thawed would have your best interests at heart? You could find yourself being auctioned off as a cryto-slave in a society of eugenically corrected super-humans. Or there could be a new trend in trophy wives:

 

'hey, I'm thinkin of gettin me one of them frozen chicks. whatdya think?'

 

'meh, I'm not too sure. Just stay away from the 2010 ones. I heard that was a bad year!'

[YoungWillz 21,037]

Two Thai parents believe freezing the brain of their child, who died of brian cancer (huh?), will lead to her resuscitation in the future: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34524771

[Magere Hein 1,400]

Two Thai parents believe freezing the brain of their child, who died of brian cancer (huh?), will lead to her resuscitation in the future: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34524771

 

And how exactly do they plan to check the outcome of that caper?

[Deathray 2,940]

 

 

Two Thai parents believe freezing the brain of their child, who died of brian cancer (huh?), will lead to her resuscitation in the future: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34524771

And how exactly do they plan to check the outcome of that caper?

Presumably they hope it'll happen in their life time.