Misplaced Pages

Latest revision as of 05:09, 23 December 2024

Cryonics (from Greek: κρύος kryos, meaning "cold") is the low-temperature freezing (usually at −196 °C or −320.8 °F or 77.1 K) and storage of human remains in the hope that resurrection may be possible in the future. Cryonics is regarded with skepticism by the mainstream scientific community. It is generally viewed as a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery.

Cryonics procedures can begin only after the "patients" are clinically and legally dead. Procedures may begin within minutes of death, and use cryoprotectants to try to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation. It is not possible to reanimate a corpse that has undergone vitrification, as that damages the brain, including its neural circuits. The first corpse to be frozen was that of James Bedford, in 1967. As of 2014, about 250 bodies had been cryopreserved in the United States, and 1,500 people had made arrangements for cryopreservation of their remains.

Economic considerations make it difficult for cryonics corporations to remain in business long enough to take advantage of any long-term benefits. The "patients", being dead, cannot continue to pay for their own preservation. Early attempts at cryonic preservation were made in the 1960s and early 1970s; most relied on family members to pay for the preservation and ended in failure, with all but one of the corpses cryopreserved before 1973 thawed and disposed of.

Conceptual basis

Cryonicists argue that as long as brain structure remains intact, there is no fundamental barrier, given our current understanding of physics, to recovering its information content. Cryonics proponents go further than the mainstream consensus in saying that the brain does not have to be continuously active to survive or retain memory. Cryonicists controversially say that a human can survive even within an inactive, badly damaged brain, as long as the original encoding of memory and personality can be adequately inferred and reconstituted from what remains.

Cryonics uses temperatures below −130 °C, called cryopreservation, in an attempt to preserve enough brain information to permit the revival of the cryopreserved person. Cryopreservation is accomplished by freezing with or without cryoprotectant to reduce ice damage, or by vitrification to avoid ice damage. Even using the best methods, cryopreservation of whole bodies or brains is very damaging and irreversible with current technology.

Cryonicists call the human remains packed into low-temperature vats "patients". They hope that some kind of presently nonexistent nanotechnology will be able to bring the dead back to life and treat the diseases that killed them. Mind uploading has also been proposed.

Cryonics in practice

Cryonics can be expensive. As of 2018, the cost of preparing and storing corpses using cryonics ranged from US$28,000 to $200,000.

At high concentrations, cryoprotectants can stop ice formation completely. Cooling and solidification without crystal formation is called vitrification. In the late 1990s, cryobiologists Gregory Fahy and Brian Wowk developed the first cryoprotectant solutions that could vitrify at very slow cooling rates while still allowing whole organ survival, for the purpose of banking transplantable organs. This has allowed animal brains to be vitrified, thawed, and examined for ice damage using light and electron microscopy. No ice crystal damage was found; cellular damage was due to dehydration and toxicity of the cryoprotectant solutions.

Costs can include payment for medical personnel to be on call for death, vitrification, transportation in dry ice to a preservation facility, and payment into a trust fund intended to cover indefinite storage in liquid nitrogen and future revival costs. As of 2011, U.S. cryopreservation costs can range from $28,000 to $200,000, and are often financed via life insurance. KrioRus, which stores bodies communally in large dewars, charges $12,000 to $36,000 for the procedure. Some customers opt to have only their brain cryopreserved ("neuropreservation"), rather than their whole body.

As of 2014, about 250 corpses have been cryogenically preserved in the U.S., and around 1,500 people have signed up to have their remains preserved. As of 2016, there are four facilities that retain cryopreserved bodies, three in the U.S. and one in Russia.

A more recent development is Tomorrow Biostasis GmbH, a Berlin-based firm offering cryonics and standby and transportation services in Europe. Founded in 2019 by Emil Kendziorra and Fernando Azevedo Pinheiro, it partners with the European Biostasis Foundation in Switzerland for long-term corpse storage. The facility was completed in 2022.

It seems extremely unlikely that any cryonics company could exist long enough to take advantage of the supposed benefits offered; historically, even the most robust corporations have only a one-in-a-thousand chance of lasting 100 years. Many cryonics companies have failed; as of 2018, all but one of the pre-1973 batch had gone out of business, and their stored corpses have been defrosted and disposed of.

Obstacles to success

Preservation damage

Medical laboratories have long used cryopreservation to maintain animal cells, human embryos, and even some organized tissues, for periods as long as three decades. But recovering large animals and organs from a frozen state is not considered possible now. Large vitrified organs tend to develop fractures during cooling, a problem worsened by the large tissue masses and very low temperatures of cryonics. Without cryoprotectants, cell shrinkage and high salt concentrations during freezing usually prevent frozen cells from functioning again after thawing. Ice crystals can also disrupt connections between cells that are necessary for organs to function.

Some cryonics organizations use vitrification without a chemical fixation step, sacrificing some structural preservation quality for less damage at the molecular level. Some scientists, like João Pedro Magalhães, have questioned whether using a deadly chemical for fixation eliminates the possibility of biological revival, making chemical fixation unsuitable for cryonics.

Outside of cryonics firms and cryonics-linked interest groups, many scientists are very skeptical about cryonics methods. Cryobiologist Dayong Gao has said, "we simply don't know if been damaged to the point where they've 'died' during vitrification because the subjects are now inside liquid nitrogen canisters." Based on experience with organ transplants, biochemist Ken Storey argues that "even if you only wanted to preserve the brain, it has dozens of different areas which would need to be cryopreserved using different protocols".

Revival

Revival would require repairing damage from lack of oxygen, cryoprotectant toxicity, thermal stress (fracturing), and freezing in tissues that do not successfully vitrify, followed by reversing the cause of death. In many cases, extensive tissue regeneration would be necessary. This revival technology remains speculative.

Legal issues

Historically, people had little control over how their bodies were treated after death, as religion held jurisdiction over the matter. But secular courts began to exercise jurisdiction over corpses and use discretion in carrying out deceased people's wishes. Most countries legally treat preserved bodies as deceased persons because of laws that forbid vitrifying someone who is medically alive. In France, cryonics is not considered a legal mode of body disposal; only burial, cremation, and formal body donation to science are allowed, though bodies may legally be shipped to other countries for cryonic freezing. As of 2015, British Columbia prohibits the sale of arrangements for cryonic body preservation. In Russia, cryonics falls outside both the medical industry and the funeral services industry, making it easier than in the U.S. to get hospitals and morgues to release cryonics candidates.

In 2016, the English High Court ruled in favor of a mother's right to seek cryopreservation of her terminally ill 14-year-old daughter, as the girl wanted, contrary to the father's wishes. The decision was made on the basis that the case represented a conventional dispute over the disposal of the girl's body, although the judge urged ministers to seek "proper regulation" for the future of cryonic preservation after the hospital raised concerns about the competence and professionalism of the team that conducted the preservation procedures. In Alcor Life Extension Foundation v. Richardson, the Iowa Court of Appeals ordered the disinterment of Richardson, who was buried against his wishes, for cryopreservation.

A detailed legal examination by Jochen Taupitz concludes that cryonic storage is legal in Germany for an indefinite period.

Ethics

Writing in Bioethics in 2009, David Shaw examined cryonics. The arguments he cited against it included changing the concept of death, the expense of preservation and revival, lack of scientific advancement to permit revival, temptation to use premature euthanasia, and failure due to catastrophe. Arguments in favor of cryonics include the potential benefit to society, the prospect of immortality, and the benefits associated with avoiding death. Shaw explores the expense and the potential payoff, and applies an adapted version of Pascal's Wager to the question.

In 2016, Charles Tandy wrote in support of cryonics, arguing that honoring someone's last wishes is seen as a benevolent duty in American and many other cultures.

History

Cryopreservation was applied to human cells beginning in 1954 with frozen sperm, which was thawed and used to inseminate three women. The freezing of humans was first scientifically proposed by Michigan professor Robert Ettinger in The Prospect of Immortality (1962). In 1966, the first human body was frozen—though it had been embalmed for two months—by being placed in liquid nitrogen and stored at just above freezing. The middle-aged woman from Los Angeles, whose name is unknown, was soon thawed and buried by relatives.

The first body to be cryopreserved and then frozen in hope of future revival was that of James Bedford. Alcor's Mike Darwin says Bedford's body was cryopreserved around two hours after his death by cardiorespiratory arrest (secondary to metastasized kidney cancer) on January 12, 1967. Bedford's corpse is the only one frozen before 1974 still preserved today. In 1976, Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute; his corpse was cryopreserved in 2011. In 1981, Robert Nelson, "a former TV repairman with no scientific background" who led the Cryonics Society of California, was sued for allowing nine bodies to thaw and decompose in the 1970s; in his defense, he claimed that the Cryonics Society had run out of money. This lowered the reputation of cryonics in the U.S.

In 2018, a Y-Combinator startup called Nectome was recognized for developing a method of preserving brains with chemicals rather than by freezing. The method is fatal, performed as euthanasia under general anesthesia, but the hope is that future technology will allow the brain to be physically scanned into a computer simulation, neuron by neuron.

Demographics

According to The New York Times, cryonicists are predominantly non-religious white men, outnumbering women by about three to one. According to The Guardian, as of 2008, while most cryonicists used to be young, male, and "geeky", recent demographics have shifted slightly toward whole families.

In 2015, Du Hong, a 61-year-old female writer of children's literature, became the first known Chinese national to have her head cryopreserved.

Reception

Cryonics is generally regarded as a fringe pseudoscience. Between 1982 and November 2018, the Society for Cryobiology rejected members who practiced cryonics, and issued a public statement saying that cryonics "is an act of speculation or hope, not science", and as such outside the scope of the Society.

Russian company KrioRus is the first non-U.S. vendor of cryonics services. Yevgeny Alexandrov, chair of the Russian Academy of Sciences commission against pseudoscience, said there was "no scientific basis" for cryonics, and that the company was based on "unfounded speculation".

Scientists have expressed skepticism about cryonics in media sources, and the Norwegian philosopher Ole Martin Moen has written that the topic receives a "minuscule" amount of attention in academia.

While some neuroscientists contend that all the subtleties of a human mind are contained in its anatomical structure, few will comment directly on cryonics due to its speculative nature. People who intend to be frozen are often "looked at as a bunch of kooks". Cryobiologist Kenneth B. Storey said in 2004 that cryonics is impossible and will never be possible, as cryonics proponents are proposing to "overturn the laws of physics, chemistry, and molecular science". Neurobiologist Michael Hendricks has said, "Reanimation or simulation is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the 'cryonics' industry".

Anthropologist Simon Dein writes that cryonics is a typical pseudoscience because of its lack of falsifiability and testability. In his view, cryonics is not science, but religion: it places faith in nonexistent technology and promises to overcome death.

William T. Jarvis has written, "Cryonics might be a suitable subject for scientific research, but marketing an unproven method to the public is quackery".

According to cryonicist Aschwin de Wolf and others, cryonics can often produce intense hostility from spouses who are not cryonicists. James Hughes, the executive director of the pro-life-extension Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, has not personally signed up for cryonics, calling it a worthy experiment but saying, "I value my relationship with my wife."

Cryobiologist Dayong Gao has said, "People can always have hope that things will change in the future, but there is no scientific foundation supporting cryonics at this time." While it is universally agreed that personal identity is uninterrupted when brain activity temporarily ceases during incidents of accidental drowning (where people have been restored to normal functioning after being completely submerged in cold water for up to 66 minutes), one argument against cryonics is that a centuries-long absence from life might interrupt personal identity, such that the revived person would "not be themself".

Maastricht University bioethicist David Shaw raises the argument that there would be no point in being revived in the far future if one's friends and families are dead, leaving them all alone, but he notes that family and friends can also be frozen, that there is "nothing to prevent the thawed-out freezee from making new friends", and that a lonely existence may be preferable to none at all.

In fiction

Suspended animation is a popular subject in science fiction and fantasy settings. It is often the means by which a character is transported into the future. The characters Philip J. Fry in Futurama and Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek exemplify this trope.

A survey in Germany found that about half of the respondents were familiar with cryonics, and about half of those familiar with it had learned of it from films or television.

In popular culture

The town of Nederland, Colorado, hosts an annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival to commemorate a substandard attempt at cryopreservation.

Notable people

Corpses subjected to the cryonics process include those of baseball players Ted Williams and his son John Henry Williams (in 2002 and 2004, respectively), engineer and doctor L. Stephen Coles (in 2014), economist and entrepreneur Phil Salin, and software engineer Hal Finney (in 2014).

People known to have arranged for cryonics upon death include PayPal founders Luke Nosek and Peter Thiel, Oxford transhumanists Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg, and transhumanist philosopher David Pearce. Larry King once arranged for cryonics but, according to Inside Edition, changed his mind.

Sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein wanted to have his head and penis frozen after death.

The corpses of some are mistakenly believed to have undergone cryonics. The urban legend that Walt Disney's remains were cryopreserved is false; it was cremated and interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery. Timothy Leary was a long-time cryonics advocate and signed up with a major cryonics provider, but changed his mind shortly before his death and was not cryopreserved.

See also

• Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation
• Brain in a vat
• Cryptobiosis
• Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest
• Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation
• Extropianism
• Hibernation
• Life extension
• Supercooling
• Targeted temperature management
• Technological utopianism

References

Footnotes

1. Robert Nelson told the Los Angeles Times that he thought Walt Disney wanted to be cryopreserved, for Walt Disney Studios had called him to ask detailed questions about his organisation, the Cryonics Society of California. However, Nelson clarified that "They had him cremated. I personally have seen his ashes."

Citations

1. ^ McKie, Robin (13 July 2002). "Cold facts about cryonics". The Observer. Archived from the original on 8 July 2017. Retrieved 1 December 2013. Cryonics, which began in the Sixties, is the freezing – usually in liquid nitrogen – of human beings who have been legally declared dead. The aim of this process is to keep such individuals in a state of refrigerated limbo so that it may become possible in the future to resuscitate them, cure them of the condition that killed them, and then restore them to functioning life in an era when medical science has triumphed over the activities of the Grim Reaper.
2. ^ "Dying is the last thing anyone wants to do – so keep cool and carry on". The Guardian. 10 October 2015. Archived from the original on 3 July 2017. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
3. ^ Steinbeck RL (29 September 2002). "Mainstream science is frosty over keeping the dead on ice". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 17 July 2019. Retrieved 17 July 2019.
4. ^ Butler K (1992). A Consumer's Guide to "Alternative" Medicine. Prometheus Books. p. 173.
5. ^ Carroll, Robert Todd (5 December 2013). "Cryonics". The Skeptics Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions. A business based on little more than hope for developments that can be imagined by science is quackery. There is little reason to believe that the promises of cryonics will ever be fulfilled
6. Hendry, Robert; Crippen, David (2014). "Brain Failure and Brain Death". ACS Surgery: Principles and Practice critical care. Decker Intellectual Properties Inc. pp. 1–10. Archived from the original on 23 January 2021. Retrieved 3 March 2016. A physician will pronounce a patient using the usual cardiorespiratory criteria, whereupon the patient is legally dead. Following this pronouncement, the rules pertaining to procedures that can be performed change radically because the individual is no longer a living patient but a corpse. In the initial cryopreservation protocol, the subject is intubated and mechanically ventilated, and a highly efficient mechanical cardiopulmonary resuscitation device reestablishes circulation.
7. Best BP (April 2008). "Scientific justification of cryonics practice" (PDF). Rejuvenation Research. 11 (2): 493–503. doi:10.1089/rej.2008.0661. PMC 4733321. PMID 18321197. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 July 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2013.
8. ^ Miller K (2004). "Cryonics redux: is vitrification a viable alternative to immortality as a popsicle?". Skeptic. 11 (1): 24.
9. Devlin, Hannah (18 November 2016). "The cryonics dilemma: will deep-frozen bodies be fit for new life?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 24 January 2019. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
10. "Death To Dust: What Happens To Dead Bodies? 2nd Edition, Chapter 7: Souls On Ice". Archived from the original on 27 March 2019. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
11. ^ Moen, OM (August 2015). "The case for cryonics". Journal of Medical Ethics. 41 (18): 493–503. doi:10.1136/medethics-2015-102715. PMID 25717141. S2CID 31744039.
12. ^ Stodolsky DS (2016). "The growth and decline of cryonics". Cogent Social Sciences. 2 (1): 1167576. doi:10.1080/23311886.2016.1167576.
13. ^ "The law on cryonics". Human Tissue Authority. 26 September 2018. Archived from the original on 30 September 2019. Retrieved 3 October 2019.
14. Doyle, DJ (2012). "Cryonic Life Extension: Scientific Possibility or Stupid Pipe Dream?". Ethics in Biology, Engineering and Medicine. 3 (1–3): 9–28. doi:10.1615/EthicsBiologyEngMed.2013006985.
15. Germain J (21 October 2022). "200 Frozen Heads and Bodies Await Revival at This Arizona Cryonics Facility". Smithsonian Magazine.
16. Crippen, DW; Whetstine, L (2007). "Ethics review: Dark angels – the problem of death in intensive care". Critical Care. 11 (1): 202. doi:10.1186/cc5138. PMC 2151911. PMID 17254317.
17. "Frozen in time: Oregon firm preserves bodies, brains in hopes that science catches up". Portland Tribune. 18 February 2016. Archived from the original on 11 July 2017. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
18. "Things to consider when making your decision on cryonics". Human Tissue Authority. 26 September 2018. Archived from the original on 30 September 2019. Retrieved 3 October 2019.
19. Fahy GM, MacFarlane DR, Angell CA, Meryman HT (August 1984). "Vitrification as an approach to cryopreservation". Cryobiology. 21 (4): 407–26. doi:10.1016/0011-2240(84)90079-8. PMID 6467964.
20. ^ Fahy GM, Wowk B, Pagotan R, et al. (July 2009). "Physical and biological aspects of renal vitrification". Organogenesis. 5 (3): 167–75. doi:10.4161/org.5.3.9974. PMC 2781097. PMID 20046680.
21. Fahy GM, Wowk B, Wu J, et al. (April 2004). "Cryopreservation of organs by vitrification: perspectives and recent advances". Cryobiology. 48 (2): 157–78. doi:10.1016/j.cryobiol.2004.02.002. PMID 15094092.
22. Fahy, G; Wowk, B; Wu, J; Phan, J; Rasch, C; Chang, A; Zendejas, E (2005). "Corrigendum to "Cryopreservation of organs by vitrification: perspectives and recent advances" ". Cryobiology. 50 (3): 344. doi:10.1016/j.cryobiol.2005.03.002.
23. Lemler J, Harris SB, Platt C, Huffman TM (June 2004). "The arrest of biological time as a bridge to engineered negligible senescence". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1019 (1): 559–563. Bibcode:2004NYASA1019..559L. doi:10.1196/annals.1297.104. PMID 15247086. S2CID 27635898.
24. ^ "Cryonics: the chilling facts". The Independent. 26 July 2011. Archived from the original on 14 June 2018. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
25. "A Dying Young Woman's Hope in Cryonics and a Future". The New York Times. 12 September 2015. Archived from the original on 2 August 2018. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
26. ^ "Inside the weird world of cryonics". Financial Times. 18 December 2015. Archived from the original on 8 September 2016. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
27. "'The ultimate lottery ticket:' Inside one of four cryonics facilities in the world". KOIN (CBS Portland). 18 February 2016. Archived from the original on 4 July 2017. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
28. "Tomorrow Biostasis". Archived from the original on 15 November 2023. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
29. "'Want to live longer? This Berlin startup aims to bring you back from the dead". tech.eu. 26 January 2023. Archived from the original on 11 August 2023. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
30. Crippen DW, Reis RJ, Risco R, Vita N (October 2015). "The Science Surrounding Cryonics". MIT Technology Review.
31. Smith Audrey U (1957). "Problems in the Resuscitation of Mammals from Body Temperatures Below 0 °C". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. 147 (929): 533–44. Bibcode:1957RSPSB.147..533S. doi:10.1098/rspb.1957.0077. JSTOR 83173. PMID 13494469. S2CID 40568140.
32. Fahy GM, Wowk B, Wu J (2006). "Cryopreservation of complex systems: the missing link in the regenerative medicine supply chain" (PDF). Rejuvenation Research. 9 (2): 279–291. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.539.7419. doi:10.1089/rej.2006.9.279. PMID 16706656. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 October 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
33. Fahy GM, Saur J, Williams RJ (October 1990). "Physical problems with the vitrification of large biological systems". Cryobiology. 27 (5): 492–510. doi:10.1016/0011-2240(90)90038-6. PMID 2249453.
34. Wowk B (2011). "Systems for Intermediate Temperature Storage for Fracture Reduction and Avoidance". Cryonics. Vol. 2011, no. 3. Alcor Life Extension Foundation. pp. 7–13. ISSN 1054-4305.
35. Fahy GM, Levy DI, Ali SE (June 1987). "Some Emerging Principles Underlying the Physical Properties, Biological Actions, and Utility of Vitrification Solutions". Cryobiology. 24 (3): 196–213. doi:10.1016/0011-2240(87)90023-X. PMID 3595164.
36. "Alcor Position Statement on Brain Preservation Prize". Alcor Life Extension Foundation. 12 February 2016. Archived from the original on 15 February 2016. Retrieved 20 March 2016.
37. "Mammal brain frozen and thawed out perfectly for first time". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 16 June 2016. Retrieved 6 June 2016.
38. ^ "Frozen body: Can we return from the dead?". BBC News. 15 August 2013. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
39. Karow, Armand; Webb, Watts (1965). "Tissue Freezing: A theory for injury and survival". Cryobiology. 2 (3): 99–108. doi:10.1016/s0011-2240(65)80094-3. PMID 5860601.
40. ^ Dukeminier, Jesse; Sitkoff, Robert (2013). Wills, Trusts, and Estates. Wolters Kluwer Law & Business in New York. p. 507. ISBN 978-1-4548-2457-2.
41. ^ "Patients who are frozen in time". TheGuardian.com. 14 February 2008. Archived from the original on 12 May 2019. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
42. "Conseil d'État du 06/01/2006, n° 260307: Cryogénisation – interdiction". Archived from the original on 7 January 2014. Retrieved 7 January 2014.
43. Chrisafis, Angelique (16 March 2006). "Freezer failure ends couple's hopes of life after death". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 8 January 2014. Retrieved 8 January 2014.
44. Proctor, Jason (16 July 2015). "Immortality sought through B.C. Supreme Court lawsuit". CBC News. Archived from the original on 21 February 2016. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
45. "Terminally ill teen won historic ruling to preserve body". BBC News. 18 November 2016. Archived from the original on 18 November 2016. Retrieved 18 November 2016.
46. "Alcor Life Extension Foundation v. Richardson". 785 N.W.2d 717. 2010. Archived from the original on 7 January 2017. Retrieved 7 January 2017.
47. Taupitz, Jochen; Fuhr, Günther; Zwick, Anna; Salkic, Amina (2013). Unterbrochenes Leben?. St. Ingbert, Germany: Fraunhofer Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8396-0593-6. Archived from the original on 27 December 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2018.
48. ^ Shaw, David. "Cryoethics: seeking life after death", Bioethics 23.9 (2009): 515–521. APA
49. Tandy, Charles (8 February 2017). "An Open Letter to Physicians in Death-with-Dignity States (The Case of a Terminally Ill Cryonicist)". SSRN 2913107.
50. "Fatherhood After Death Has Now Been Proved Possible". Cedar Rapids Gazette. 9 April 1954.
51. ^ Devlin, Hannah (18 November 2016). "The cryonics dilemma: will deep-frozen bodies be fit for new life?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 23 September 2018. Retrieved 22 September 2018.
52. ^ Perry, R. Michael (October 2014). "Suspension Failures – Lessons from the Early Days". ALCOR: Life Extension Foundation. Archived from the original on 16 April 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2018.
53. Darwin, Mike (July 1991). "Dear Dr. Bedford (and those who will care for you after I do)". Cryonics. Archived from the original on 16 March 2020. Retrieved 23 August 2009.
54. Regalado, Antonio (13 March 2018). "A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is "100 percent fatal"". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on 23 January 2021. Retrieved 22 March 2018.
55. ^ Howley, Kerry (7 July 2010). "Until Cryonics Do Us Part". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on 16 May 2016. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
56. Stephen Chen (18 September 2015). "Cheating death? Elderly writer is the first known Chinese to embrace cryogenics, her head now frozen by lab in Arizona". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 20 September 2015. Retrieved 24 September 2015.
57. Jerry D. Leaf (November 1982). "Cryo-82, The Big Freeze" (PDF). Cryonics. Alcor Life Extension Foundation. pp. 5–11, 24. Retrieved 3 December 2024. There are other members of the Society for Cryobiology that are involved in cryonics, but have been told they would be excluded from their chosen profession, cryobiology, if this became public knowledge.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
58. Clarke, Laurie (14 October 2022). "Why the sci-fi dream of cryonics never died". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on 14 October 2022. Retrieved 3 December 2024. The Society for Cryobiology has even dropped its past cryonics-related restrictions.
59. ^ "Position Statement - Cryonics" (PDF). Society for Cryobiology. November 2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 18 July 2019. The Society recognizes and respects the freedom of individuals to hold and express their own opinions and to act, within lawful limits, according to their beliefs. Preferences regarding disposition of postmortem human bodies or brains are clearly a matter of personal choice and, therefore, inappropriate subjects of Society policy. The Society does, however, take the position that the knowledge necessary for the revival of live or dead whole mammals following cryopreservation does not currently exist and can come only from conscientious and patient research in cryobiology and medicine. In short, the act of preserving a body, head or brain after clinical death and storing it indefinitely on the chance that some future generation may restore it to life is an act of speculation or hope, not science, and as such is outside the purview of the Society for Cryobiology.
60. Luhn, Alex (11 November 2017). "'Insurance' against death: Russian cryonics firm plans Swiss lab for people in pursuit of eternal life". Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 28 July 2019. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
61. Jerry Adler (May 2015). "The Quest to Upload Your Mind into the Digital Space". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
62. "Brain Freeze: Can putting faith in cryonics deliver life after death?". Toronto Sun. 6 October 2015. Archived from the original on 12 March 2016. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
63. Dein S (2022). "Cryonics: Science or Religion". Journal of Religion & Health. 61 (4): 3164–3176. doi:10.1007/s10943-020-01166-6. PMID 33523374. S2CID 231745500.
64. Kaiser S, Gross D, Lohmeier J, Rosentreter M, Raschke J (2014). "Attitudes and acceptance toward the technology of cryonics in Germany". International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care. 5 (1): 1–7. doi:10.1017/S0266462313000718. PMID 24499638. S2CID 41185307.
65. McPheeters, Sam (May 2010). "Home Cryonics in the Smirk Age". The Corpse. ViceLand.com. Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 11 January 2020.
66. "Leukemia claims son of Hall of Famer". ESPN.com. 7 March 2004. Archived from the original on 5 January 2016. Retrieved 18 February 2016.
67. Steve Chawkins (4 December 2014). "L. Stephen Coles dies at 73; studied extreme aging in humans". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 27 December 2017. Retrieved 17 April 2020.
68. Greenberg, Andy (29 August 2014). "Bitcoin's Earliest Adopter Is Cryonically Freezing His Body to See the Future". WIRED. Archived from the original on 3 August 2018. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
69. Thiel, Peter (16 September 2014). Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future. Crown Business. p. 1 (chapter 14). ISBN 978-0-8041-3929-8.
70. Brown, Mick (19 September 2014). "Peter Thiel: the billionaire tech entrepreneur on a mission to cheat death". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 18 October 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
71. Pearce, David. "Quora Answers 2015 – 2022 by David Pearce". The Hedonistic Imperative. Archived from the original on 16 January 2022.
72. "Was Larry King Cryogenically Frozen After his Death?". Inside Edition. 27 January 2021. Retrieved 30 January 2021.
73. Leibovich M (26 August 2015). "Larry King Is Preparing for the Final Cancellation". New York Times. Archived from the original on 6 December 2019. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
74. Stewart JB, Goldstein M, Silver-Greenberg J (31 July 2019). "Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 31 July 2019. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
75. Croucher S (1 August 2019). "Jeffrey Epstein Wanted to Freeze His Head and Penis After Dying: Report". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 31 October 2019. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
76. Mikkelson, David (19 October 1995). "FACT CHECK: Was Walt Disney Frozen?". Snopes. Archived from the original on 23 January 2021. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
77. Conradt, Stacy (15 December 2013). "Disney on Ice: The Truth About Walt Disney and Cryogenics". Mental Floss. Archived from the original on 10 January 2019. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
78. The New York Times, "A Final Turn-On Lifts Timothy Leary Off" by Marlise Simons, 22 April 1997

Further reading

• "Mistakes Were Made". This American Life. Episode 354. 18 April 2008. The Public Radio Exchange (PRX). WBEZ Chicago. Transcript.

External links

• Cryonics
• Cooling technology
• Death customs
• Fictional technology
• Life extension
• Pseudoscience
• Scientific speculation
• Funeral-related industry