Cryonics–A futile desire for everlasting life.

Finished 6-2-06
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“Believing cryonics could reanimate somebody who has been frozen is like believing you can turn hamburger back into a cow.”

-Arthur Rowe

Imagine opening your eyes one day, feeling the same feeling that occurs when you go to sleep and wake up as your clock alarm goes off, seemingly minutes later. But imagine that instead of waking from sleep, you’ve woken from death centuries after the lifetime you knew, your pains healed, your diseases cured.

But imagine also another scenario, this one far different. Once awake, you are nothing but a vegetable. Your mind either does not exist inside your body, you are in an irreversible coma, or you are in intense pain. Perhaps you are aware that you are alive, but you cannot move. You try to open your eyes but find that it’s impossible, and attempt to touch your eyelids with your fingers, but your arms won’t lift. In fact, you cannot even feel your arms, you are completely numb to physical feelings, you are paralyzed and there’s nothing you can do to save yourself. One of these horrible possibilities may occur if you decide to be cryonically preserved after death.

The process of cryonics is based purely, from top to bottom, on assumptions. Assumptions that the relatively new science of nanotechnology will work, assumptions that scientists will find just the right way of going through the process, and assumptions that mankind will somehow be able to cross all the debatable social, scientific, and philosophical obstacles that block our way when trying to accomplish the lofty goal of bringing back the dead.

The science of cryonics–an area often called a pseudoscience–aims to quell the worries of those who wish to return to life after death. Cryonics (often confused with cryogenics, which is the study of low temperatures) is the practice of preserving a human who has chosen to go through with this process which begins directly after death, in order to resurrect the person when medical technology has advanced enough to restore life in the preserved body. Whether the body can be revived or not is based on guesswork, desperate hope, and a gamble that mankind will someday have the ability to restitute life.

The entire body–or just the head–can be preserved (if just the head is being preserved, it is removed after the blood has been drained) indefinitely. The preservation process is quite quick, in order to help prevent the spoiling of the organs. Once a person is declared legally dead, the body is filled with liquid and put on ice for the trip to a cryonics center. When the body arrives, glycerol, a type of antifreeze, is pumped into the arteries, after which the patient is submerged headfirst–if thawing occurs, the feet will go first and the rest of the body will still have a chance to presumably make it into the future–into a vat of liquid nitrogen where it is frozen at -319 degrees Fahrenheit. The body may wait patiently for perhaps centuries in this state.

The idea of cryonics was first fully developed in the 1960’s, and soon after the first “patient,” Dr. James Bedford, was preserved in 1967. People began to take an interest in the science, for certain activists supported and made cryonics known to the public. However, when the practice of cryopreservation was first established, it was very awkward and many mistakes were made, mistakes that cryonicists could only hope would be fixed in the future. Because cryopreservation was still primitive, many of the patients frozen at that time sustained a great deal of damage that may or may not be reversible depending on the extent technology goes to in the future. The sad part is, cryonics has not increased in efficiency since those early days and still remains just as shaky as ever it was, due to very minor progress in finding ways to better and more effectively preserve patients (Platt).

In the early days of cryonics, there was a scandal based on the negligence of the Cryonics Company of California, ran by Robert Nelson. Six patients were frozen and kept that way in the company building. However, cryonics being the low-profit business that it is, funds soon ran down and Nelson simply disregarded the regular replacement of liquid nitrogen for the patients, causing them to thaw. There was no excuse or reason for this to happen, for when one is entrusted and preserved into the care of a company, it is expected that they should remain so. The company eventually shut down due to this scandal and their lack of money for research, etc. The incident, luckily, was not repeated, and all other companies maintained more ethical standards (Platt).

Alcor is the primary company that deals with the cryonics patients. They’ve preserved people such as Ted Williams, the famous baseball player, Charlie Matthau, an actor, and an Iranian-American who changed his legal name to FM-2030, in the hopes of being revived in the year 2030. They’ve also battled lawsuits and debates over certain intricacies having to do with their business. As of right now, Alcor’s cryopreservation rates amount to $150,000 initially–and that’s just to be preserved! Each year after that, another $960.00 is added on to the bill. If a person is kept in the Alcor institute for hundreds of years, this sum can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the average middle-class individual, this sum is far too much to afford. Alcor offers a life insurance policy that will apparently pay for the procedure, but this too costs money, money that many people simply are not able to pay (Home Page).

If one is able to pay for the procedure and puts their remaining funds in a bank account of some sort, it may gather interest over the years, but by the time the person is revived, inflation will have raised prices considerably, perhaps making the money in the bank account worth an extremely small amount. Taxes must also be paid on the funds, and one may not have enough money by the time they are revived to survive in the new age.

Despite all the costs of cryopreservation, most cryonics companies (including Alcor) are woefully short on funds. Alcor only makes about $100,000 a year, and many other companies are nonprofit. Unless cryonics experiences an extreme boom of popularity, it may not make enough money in the end to make it worth the cryonicists time to actually continue with the business or even with research. The money preserved patients must pay to be preserved does not amass to enough funds in order to cover the high expenses that come with cryopreservation and upkeep of cryonics patients.

Arguments supporting cryonics include the ratio of benefit and the statement that there is nothing to lose by being cryopreserved. Dr. Art Quaife states that “Right now the only alternative to oblivion is cryonic suspension (Brown).” Many reason that one may as well be cryopreserved; if they are and it works, then they would be alive. If they are preserved and it does not work, then the patient would be dead, but dead just as they would be had they not chosen cryopreservation. A theory which is closely related to Blaise Pascal’s argument that one should believe in God, for there is nothing to lose by doing so. By this logic, the amount of money invested into cryonic suspension would be worth it. On the opposing side, there are so many facts working against the ability of cryonics to work that it hardly seems reasonable to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into the shaky and perhaps worthless method, when this money could be used for better things, such as heritage for one’s family, or perhaps for benefitting the sick or poor.

Alcor claims itself that it is “a startup company” and “not comparable with mainstream medicine (Home Page).” This supports the argument that cryonics is not a reputable science. Indeed, it is mainly based on a gamble. Cryonicists are willing to bet that eventually nanotechnology, a new form of science directed towards creating mechanical and electrical devices from molecules and atoms, will be able to give life back to a preserved person. Nanotechnology is technology on a scale so small that it would potentially be able to work with very small portions of the human body, better enabling scientists and doctors to fix previously non-fixable things. Blood will be put back in the body, and using nanotechnology, scientists will fix any destroyed tissue, cells, diseases, and organs. But is there any guarantee that this will ever be possible? Not at this point in time.

Many argue that reanimation has already been achieved. It does occur naturally, as in the case of a type of cold-blooded creature, a wood frog. These creatures “hibernate” in the winter, and during these times do not have any sort of bodily activity which suggests life whatsoever. But after the hibernation period is over, the frogs will thaw and resume their lives. This occurs because wood frogs produce glucose which works as a natural antifreeze. The frog’s cells absorb so much glucose that the cells are not frozen, but suspended and do not freeze completely.

But those are cold-blooded creatures, whose bodies work in very different ways than those of humans. Only one successful experiment has been performed on mammals. Dogs used for the experiment were drained of their blood, which was then replaced by a salty solution. Three hours after being declared legally dead, the dogs were brought back to life when their blood was replaced and they were given an electric shock. Reports say that no brain damage was suffered. However, the time that the dogs were dead only amounted to three hours. In comparison, it is very likely that a human would suffer brain damage from being preserved for a century or two (Stroh).

Both of those examples are not nearly enough to help scientists improve on the technologies needed to revive a person. The straightforward facts show that so far, it is impossible to freeze a body without rupturing cells. The damage done to the brain (the most important part of the body when it comes to cryonics) is extreme also, not fixable by today’s standards. Another obstacle to cryonics is that different types of cells and tissues in the body require different antifreezing agents. For example, if a body is frozen with one type of antifreeze, the heart may be preserved, but the liver may not. There is no one antifreeze that will preserve every tissue. Obviously this poses problems for advancement, as a method must be worked out that uses different types of antifreeze for different areas of the body, without allowing them to mix. At this point, the only hope seems to be nanotechnology, which hasn’t been progressing very fast. Although scientists are always advancing, the rate at which they do so is not quick enough.

If nanotechnology does indeed end up working, then it would be used to cure diseases and illnesses such as AIDS, cancer, or even old age. But one type of disease which is contingent, is Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Alzheimer’s victims lose neurotransmitters in their brain, which may turn out to be very hard to repair. Even if they can be repaired, the memory is still being affected, and not only memories such as how to do a math problem, but personal memories are also lost. If these cannot be replaced, then again the cryopreserved patient would not be in very good form upon potential reanimation (Cryonics–Frequently).

But assuming that one day cryonicists are somehow able to revive a preserved body, what would be the outcome? If technology will be good enough in the future to bring a person back to life, then it would be able to cure any diseases that one had before death, not to mention any cell and tissue breakage that had occurred during the preservation. For those who chose to have only their head frozen, a body would have to be made. This body would either be cloned or manufactured. Manufacturing would involve transferring one’s mind (a mind perhaps uploaded from the patients brain and kept digitally) into a robot form, which would be used as the cryonics patient’s new body. But if non-reversible brain damage happened, the mind and personality would not be able to be duplicated, thus canceling the benefits of a new body and cryonic preservation.

Which brings up another issue. What would happen to a person’s mind once unfrozen? Since nobody knows what happens after death, the mind pattern may not even exist in the body at that point. In that case, if a body was revived, it would be nothing but an empty shell, pointless to keep alive. On the other hand, maybe technology would be so good that people would be guaranteed eternal life. In that case, the world would become incredibly overcrowded, causing the economic, political, and environmental problems that go hand in hand with overpopulation. Plus, being faced with the inevitability of never being able to die is a thought most find repugnant.

Over one-hundred people have been preserved (most in the United States) and about a thousand more are signed up to be preserved at death (People and Products). Presumably more will decide to be cryopreserved within the next few decades and after that. But if a cure for death is discovered and scientists gain the ability to revive someone, there are several factors that may get in the way of the cryonics process. Firstly, the cryonics business would fail. Nobody would be signing up to be cryopreserved, because the technology at that time would supposedly be enough to prevent anyone from dying, and therefore cancel the need for cryopreservation. This instance would have an impact on those who were frozen. Scientists may lose interest in resuscitating the patients, and may not do it. There is no guarantee that future man would wish to bring cryopreserved people back either. After all, uses for the revived patients would be little. Historical value might be important, but other than that, each reanimated patient would be yet another human cluttering the Earth.

Ethical issues are important in cryonics. Many state that cryonics is unethical because the chance of successful revival is too small to be considered a worthwhile way to manage a dead body. Also, it is illegal to freeze somebody until after they are declared legally dead. There have been several cases dealing with this kind of situation. In the particular case of Donaldson v. Van de Kamp, Thomas Donaldson petitioned for the right to be cryonically suspended before his death. He had been diagnosed with a brain tumor which was certain to ultimately result in his death, after wasting away to a vegetative state. Since Donaldson knew for certain that he was going to die, he sought his constitutional rights to be preserved before he died of natural causes. Doctors upheld his claim, stating that were Donaldson to wait until natural death to be preserved, the tumor would have destroyed his brain to a point where it would be permanently damaged, even with the potential help of nanotechnology. The doctors also confirmed that were Donaldson to undergo the process, afterwards he would be legally dead by California law. However, the courts did not rule in Donaldson’s favor, its reason being that Donaldson’s death would be assisted, and therefore not legal (Pommer). This is but one of the debates over the legality of cryonic preservation before natural death.

The case of Dora Kent is yet another. An 83-year old lady and about to die, Kent was transported to the Alcor center to await cryonic suspension, an act which was not usually done. Most people were transported to the center after their legal death. She was to have a neuro suspension, that is, her head only was to be preserved. After the process was finished, there was an investigation into Kent’s preservation. An autopsy was performed, and the coroner claimed that Alcor had murdered Kent by failing to let her die of natural causes before preservation. Alcor had began the preservation process after Kent’s assumed death, instead of waiting for the declaration of her legal death and the acquirement of a death certificate. Authorities probed into the issue and a battle began between Alcor, California, and Kent’s son, who was charged with homicide for allowing his mother to be transported to Alcor before death (Newsgroup FAQ’s). Eventually, Alcor won the case, but the ethical question still looms large.

Both examples dabble too much in ethics, a very controversial and widely argued over topic. Being as patients are kept on resuscitators up until the beginning of the preservation process in order to keep the body from the beginnings of decay, often the line between life and death is very thin, thin enough that critics may not look upon cryonics favorably. Until cryonics companies begin to develop a method of preservation which is constant enough to keep debates such as the aforementioned from occurring, they shall always have to encounter people who are ethically and morally against cryonics. Which is another reason why cryonics cannot last.

For people of various religious persuasions, cryonics comprises a very severe moral argument. Many religions believe in a form of existence after death, often Heaven or Hell. If their ideas and teachings are true, then it would be impossible for one’s soul to be pulled back to mortal life on Earth after moving on. Again, if as most people believe, the soul departs from the body after death, cryonics would not be beneficial in any form. While the body would exist, the mind would not and preserving the mind, one’s self, is one of the goals of cryonics.

If the cryonics process works and a person is brought back to full health, then it is logical to assume that technology would be sufficient to prevent a person from dying (again) altogether. While immortality might be exciting for a century or two, it could quickly get boring and tedious. There could potentially be a rise in suicide rates not to mention mental trauma for immortals. Overall, the possible consequences of immortality are overwhelmingly awful.

In conclusion, cryonics is a fruitless effort to achieve mankind’s ages-old and often sought after dream: to be able to evade certain death. But the argument over cryonics goes deeper than simply a desire . . . it permeates the minds of thousands of individuals to the point where their fixation on it advances into the grounds of financial, philosophical, and scientific realms of argument. However, until reanimation has been achieved–if, indeed, the seemingly futile goal ever is achieved–cryonics will forever be regarded as a pseudoscience.

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