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The Cryonics Institute Offers a Chance at Immortality (Video)
Do you want to be frozen after you die, in hopes of being revived a century or two (or maybe ten) in the future? It can cost less than an electric car. That's what the Cryonics Institute (CI) offers. David Ettinger, today's interviewee, is both the son of CI founder Robert Ettinger and CI's lawyer. In this video, among other things, he talks about arrangements that were made for his father's demise, and how they were able to start the cryopreservation process almost immediately after he expired. Is Cryonics the best chance at immortality for those of us likely to die before the Singularity arrives, and gives all of us the tools we need to live forever? David Ettinger obviously thinks so. (This is Video #1 of 2. The second one is scheduled to run tomorrow. It's an interview with CI Director Andy Zawacki, who takes us into the facility where the frozen bodies are stored.)
I know a couple guys whose wives have been freezing cold for awhile and still move around and spend money.........
Also, it's not immortality if they freeze you after you die.
Immortality means not to die at all.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Okay, I had to say it.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I don't want to live forever, just merely a very very very long time. Is that so much to ask for?
If they really believe in their technology, they should have no problem with a payment plan that starts when you wake up...
First, the crude cryonics they use today is not going to work well, and may well not leave anything that can be revived behind.
Second, why would anybody want to revive some corpses at huge expense when making a few children more is so much easier? Or why would anybody go through the effort of reviving anybody, when the world is over-populated in the first place? Well, maybe if you freeze some truly exceptionally people (like Fields-medal winners), that one may be different, but I doubt it. Everybody else is just going into the trash at some indefinite time in the future.
And third, why would anybody reasonably want to be unfrozen, when the world is massively changed and everybody they knew and cared about is gone? There are a few SF books that use long-term "storage" as punishment for the criminal, and they have it right.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm not seeing an advantage here. If I wake up in an age with a lobster, cyclops, rastafarian bureaucrat and obnoxious robot, I might be inclined to exclaim, "Excellent news everyone!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ted Williams would roll over in his freezer if he read this. At least, his head would. . . .
Okay, I had to say it.
Sparky the Penguin says, "Hi!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The Bible outlines the one and only path to immortality. All other attempts are futile.
Because I don't want to wake up with freezer burn.
...where things are spoiled before they get preserved.
If someone walked into an archaeology lab and said "Hey, we found this Neanderthal in the ice, and I think we can fix him" don't you think they'd give it a go, especially if they knew it would work?
It's likely that once society has advanced enough that we can revive geezercicles, we'll not begrudge them the expense of doing so.
Permanent brain damage starts within 5 minutes of not receiving red blood cells with oxygen. So you would have to be frozen before then, and in such a way as to prevent ice crystalization from permanently damaging cells, which is not done with current cryogenic techniques. Otherwise you would lose so much of your personality, intellect, memories, and consciousness from brain damage, that even if they could regenerate all of that grey matter in the future, your brain would no longer be you, but would be someone else. (So what is the point?)
Aside from that, no matter how cheap it is to freeze someone, it's is likely going to cost a lot more to revive someone who is frozen, and regenerate their body into a functional state. How many people looking at cryogenics are budgeting for revival costs? Maybe they hope the future will be some socialist utopia, which is funny considering the global tend for wealth concentration and reduction of public services, including healthcare for the living.
Nailed it in one. Quack science is for quacks, and no amount of explaining why it's quackery will convince them otherwise.
Seriously. Cryonics has been around since the dark ages (pre Unix/Moon Landing/Arpanet). Cryonics Institute almost as long.
Wake me up when they sucessfully freeze and reanimate a mammal, even a mouse.
Let me pull out a rhetorical stick I've been beaten with more than once: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
Show me the evidence that ressurecting a dead organism of any kind -- even a bacterium, even a plant -- will ever be possible. *Ever.*
(crickets chirp ...)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Or you'll like what you fine when you thaw out? Corpsicles in Sci Fi
I specifically remember reading Larry Niven's "Rammer."
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Not if they found a million Neanderthals, all of whom would want jobs and a place to live.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
It's likely that once society has advanced enough that we can revive geezercicles, we'll not begrudge them the expense of doing so.
How do we know that "once society has advanced enough," they won't simply decide that the geezercicles aren't worth the time or energy? Or, if they do decide reviving an ancient relic of a bygone era (one they probably won't be able to communicate with, any more than we could communicate with a caveman), what makes you think they'll use the person as anything but a laboratory rat?
I suppose the point I'm trying to make is 2-fold - 1, some shit just ain't worth the effort, and 2, be careful what you wish for.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That book might give you an idea why cryonics might not be a good idea. Even if it works.
Scenario:: You are immortal but we have destroyed all our resources so you are trapped on a polluted resource planet with 50 billion other undying souls. Enjoy.
There are a number of things that would have to happen before the future would consider using frozen bodies for anything other than solyent green.
He didn't. By the time you get unfrozen, the World Leader will be Tom Morrow.
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If you think about it, the reasons are pretty much the same. They probably would even have used cryogenic technology (possibly with a long-half-life nuclear battery) if it was available
sorry about the anonymous comment of same name...didn't realize I wasn't logged in.
I put a fly in the freezer for a week, let it unfreeze on the table at room temperature after that. After an hour or two, it flew away.
The weird thing is, a week later I received a job offer from Veridian Dynamics.
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Who doesn't want immortality? The lifespan of the average person is fucking bullshit. It's just enough to get a taste and not enough to satisfy. Unfortunately, freezing you after you die is a problem. The damage the freezing does to you is a problem. The cost of doing the entire body is a problem. The probability of something going wrong with the storage and maintenance of patients for hundreds or thousands of years is a problem. Should everything work out, you then have to realize that when we are finally able to reach this potential, nobody will want to bother bringing you back to life (and, in fact, may legally be forbidden from doing so). The last thing people who may have nearly infinite life would want to do is bring back people who have no connection to them (because it'd be hundred of years and not just a few decades) to compete for precious resources in the face of ever-growing populations.
Also, it's not immortality if they freeze you after you die.
Immortality means not to die at all.
Define death.
It used to be that you died when your heart or breathing stopped. But now we can restart both. We even stop them regularly to repair the organs in question. Even brain death is problematic, when some drugs or conditions like hypoxia can temporarily shut down electrical activity. This is one reason that most hospitals require multiple checks a few hours or even a full day apart before declaring legal death. We are constantly pushing against the boundaries of what death is.
So, if your body fails, your brain is frozen, and you are repaired at a later date into a functional, conscious state, then did you ever really die?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I thought the world leader would be Tom Riddle.
If they really believe in their technology, they should have no problem with a payment plan that starts when you wake up...
Pray that never happens.
Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
An embryo is a small collection of cells, which are most definitely living. The act of freezing halts cell division and replication. It's not as if the mother's soul reanimates a dead embryo when it's implanted in the womb.
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Turn your preservation into a local tourist attraction and party: Frozen Dead Guy Days.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Please people, I mean... really. We've heard this crap before, we know it doesn't work. So, just stop. Really. These people are snakeoil salesmen, parasites. Yeeesh.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Still, they've got a clever answer: given infinite time, we can solve that problem.
Conveniently, they won't be around in infinite to be accountable if it doesn't work.
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That's always been the argument that's put me off cryonics. If you were to say, have a heart attack and faint, would 5 minutes still apply? Does that 5 minutes apply as soon as breathing stops basically?
Have people been resuscitated after say, 30 mins or even an hour, and managed to have their brain functions relatively intact?
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This American Life did a piece on how horribly bad things went in the early days of cryogenics. The episode was called Mistakes Were Made.
Jhyrryl
Wow a million neanderthals that want to do work in exchange for money? How is this different than 7 billion homo sapiens wanting the same thing?
A million neanderthals would be a drop in the bucket. If all were reanimated in the US, our population would go up by 0.3%, and the world's would go up by 0.014%
Hmm, I'd rather not be the frozen corpse they try to resurrect for grins long after sentient immortality is achieved, instead just scan me in and utilize me as a blueprint now.
I mean, I'm a hacker and researcher of cybernetics and neuroscience, so folks like me would be the best canditades since we could help you wake us up from the inside if we catch a glimmer of awareness. That is: We could escape the "Chinese Box" if we found ourselves in it. I've got so many things to do, but not enough life-span to do it all, and being digitized means we could over-come that glacial 20Hz organic brain cycle limit... Digitize me, bro. What could possibly go wrong?
Mua haha ha Ha!
Doesn't the freezing process done by modern cryogenics still destroy the body quite considerably? I was under the impression the idea of reviving you would not only be curing your initial reason for death but also repairing all the damage the ice crystals that formed caused to your body, which would almost mean giving you a whole new body.
Will we ever reach a position medically where that much damage can be repaired?
I clicked on all the links but I didn't find the bloody video. Where is it?
-- Cheers!
No I don't. The quest for immortality has been around for thousands of years. Kings build pyramids for it. Alchemists sought after it. Exploration of the New World was often fueled by the quest for the fountain of youth. In the end all those people died. As will I, and as will you. Accepting your mortality is part of growing up. Shedding your fear of death enables you to really live! You can spend your entire life in fear of that moment and scheming for ways to avoid it, or you can embrace it and laugh in Death's face when he finally gets you. Either way you're going to end up in the same place in the end. Yes, even if you freeze yourself (And I can make that statement with near-absolute certainty that it is correct, much as I can state with near absolute certainty that any reader of this post will never win a lottery jackpot.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The five minute meme is a common misconception.
From the linked article:
"Contrary to common perception, brain and other cells in the body can live for many hours after a person dies. There are different estimates on how long cells can survive without a blood supply and oxygen after death: bone cells for four days, skin cells for 24 hours. Although the oxygen and energy supply to brain cells is depleted within four to five minutes, brain cells remain viable but non-functioning for up to eight hours."
Have people been resuscitated after say, 30 mins or even an hour, and managed to have their brain functions relatively intact?
Absolutely. Look up "Mammalian Diving Reflex".
Brain damage from short-term clinical death happens primarily after revival. The valves routing blood to the parts of the brain that need it stick in the state they were in when the oxygen finally failed.
Muscles contract with stored energy and require metabolism to relax. "Valve off" is contracted, so when blood flow and oxygen is restored, the valves for regions of the brain that were turned down don't get oxygen and can't reopen - and without the blood flow they can't get oxygen, in a viscous circle. Raising the blood pressure to try to force them just blows the vessels, causing a stroke. The
nerves die over a half hour to an hour (and kill each other off through glutamate cascade, as dying nerves release glutamate that causes others to fire, deplete their remaining energy reserves, and die in turn.
Mammals, though, have a reflex related to deep diving. When diving deep, the increased pressure increases the partial pressure of oxygen, keeping things running until most of the oxygen is used up. Then coming back back up lowers the pressure further and can leaver the brain oxygen starved for long enough to produce the "valves stuck" phenomenon. To prevent this, mammals have the following reflex: When oxygen is running out AND the body (I think it's the back of the neck) is cold, the valves all open up, so any that get stuck are in the open position. Once oxygen is restored the blood flows, the nerves survive, the muscle gets repowered, and all is well - if thing hadn't been shut down long enough that too many cells died meanwhile.
This was discovered when some victims of drowning in cold water recovered just fine, with no brain damage, after half an hour or more of clinical death. I think the time before damage sets in is something between 25 and 45 minutes.
I don't know how CI's current protocols work. But ALCOR's are designed to include activating the diving reflex, if possible, so the brain's valves stick in the open position.
(This is more to encourage better perfusion of cryoprotectants than to try to make the brain restartable: As of the last time I looked the thought was that brains preserved - even by the best techniques available at the time - would require rebuilding by nanotechnology, so the idea was to preserve as much as possible of whatever might encode memory and personality.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How many times must people be told, when the cells are frozen, they are destroyed by ice crystals. Ask any chef (Ramsey says it constantly and can tell by taste).
It's a scam.
A bunch of Walt Disney wannabes. It still amazes me that people actually believe that this kind of technology holds any promise unless your trying to create zombie armies of the undead.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
"David Ettinger, today's interviewee, is both the son of CI founder Robert Ettinger and CI's lawyer. "
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/mistakes-were-made?act=1#play
The various incarnatins of the (now) CI has a /spotless/ history, don't it?
This is "We need more money for a process we know doesn't work. But trust us anyway."
--
BMO
...that anyone a hundred years or so from now would bother awakening them. Probably just use their carcasses for fertilizer. Unless, of course, they need some exhibits for the zoo.
How do we know that "once society has advanced enough," they won't simply decide that the geezercicles aren't worth the time or energy?
We don't know that. Most people probably wouldn't want to be revived into such a cold world anyway... Of course, the world we currently live in is probably that cold as it is right now. Replace "frozen people" with desperate living refugees on ships and we have pretty much the same situation.
Most of the comments here assume that you would only freeze someone who has already died. What about freezing terminally ill patients in the hopes of thawing them when the cure for their disease (eg. pancreatic cancer) has been found? That way we don't have to worry about getting the corpse to the freezer within five minutes of the time of death, etc. It would also simplify revival because you're not starting with a body that was already so messed up that it died naturally.
I see advertisement for this "opportunity" every few years or so. Have they even demonstrated that they can freeze the brain without the usual ice build up ?
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forgot this ---> /
where's edit when you need it bah.
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So what you're saying is you'd prefer the certainty of information theoretic death that comes from burial or cremation over the as yet unproven, long-shot possibility that, having reduced further decay to practically zero, science will eventually be able to repair whatever killed you plus the freezer damage? That's quite a nihilistic preference you've got going.
Would be illegal in the Us. You have to be declared legally dead before you can be cryogenically frozen.
This isn't new, and unfortunately it isn't science either. Fact of the matter is brain death is brain death, total and absolute degenerative collapse of the nervous system. Whether it's whole body cryogenics, or the low cost "head" only operation, the only thing that cryonics can promise you is that some day someone may take out your frozen remains and make a clone of them. And that's of course assuming the company actually remains afloat and doesn't go belly up as at least one cryonics company did, leaving thier "clients" high and ... rather warmed over.
It might even look like you. But it won't be you, it won't have your memories, and probably not even your personality. Nothing has changed since the decades this came out to make it any less pseudoscience than it was back then.