Comments on: Dead cryonics founder is frozen as planned

By: Luke Parrish

Luke Parrish — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:01:11 +0000

Ceasing to function doesn’t mean it loses all structural integrity. You can fix broken things. And the case of stroke victims is distinct from cryonics in that the ischemic cascade has had time to set in and destroy the tissue permanently due to runaway apoptosis and necrosis.

Many stroke victims do not lose functioning for hours after the event as their tissue is still in relatively good condition — it gets worse due to the ischemic insult because metabolism is still active. Slight reduction in metabolism via mild hypothermia can dramatically increase their chances by interrupting this process, and is employed in hospitals today. Some patients recover after hours of “brain death”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_ischemia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_hypothermia

By: Berber Anna

Berber Anna — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:29:08 +0000

Paul: Well, to be braindead, your brain has to be damaged beyond the point where it can still function. Whatever the cause of death on the certificate, the body itself is just a life support system for the brain. If you look at people who survived traumatic brain injury or a stroke, you can see that even partial brain damage leads to major loss of function. Function is only recovered by the use of undamaged parts of the brain. If the brain is damaged beyond functionality, there aren’t too many of those left.
It’s not comparable to deleted data on a computer. If you must compare it to a computer (a very different entity), compare it to a defragged disk, or more likely a disk that’s had a meeting with a giant magnet.

And again, why would future humans spend resources on frozen dead people?

By: Paul Crowley

Paul Crowley — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 06:23:05 +0000

@Berber Anna: Please could you write up the biological detail of the “irreversible damage” of which you speak? No-one has, so far. See http://blog.ciphergoth.org/blog/2010/02/14/an-open-letter-to-scientific-critics-of-cryonics/ and linked articles.

By: Kaiser

Kaiser — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:57:58 +0000

Retarded. Let’s say an unwell person wants to be frozen near death cos he thinks a possibility in the future technology might thaw him nicely and there might be a cure. Dead is dead, ain’t no bringing back.

By: Chantelle

Chantelle — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:54:35 +0000

In my honest opinion this is all a load of nonsense I mean why on earth would you wanna do that when dead?

It’s beyond me. I mean no one ever knows if it’s gonna be worthwhile (I think it’s highly unlikely to ever work) and I agree with Berber, do you honestly think people would wanna bring back all their ancestors?

I mean the world’s getting overpoulated as it is O_o

Lunacy in my personal opinion. It’s just people trying to mess with life/nature & playing God really isn’t it?!

By: Berber Anna

Berber Anna — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:22:36 +0000

The problem with cryonics isn’t the whole freezing and defrosting process, imho, it’s the fact that these people believe that a) death will be curable (I can buy freezing live people for stasis purposes, but death tends to mean irreversible brain damage BEFORE freezing) and that b) in this future world, where death is apparently curable, people will want to add to the population by defrosting and curing their ancestors. It made for a nice Star Trek episode, but I don’t think it will ever be reality.

By: Paul Crowley

Paul Crowley — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:51:13 +0000

Bob, Phillis – you’re right, this is an extraordinary phenomenon, and should at least slow people’s skepticism that low temperatures means total destruction. But frogs are pretty small and not mammals, and in this experiment at least it looks like they’re cooled to -18C, not the -196C of liquid nitrogen. The best demonstration I know of that function can survive such temperatures is this one – a rabbit kidney was vitrified (as in cryonics) and cooled to -130C, and was later transplanted as the sole kidney of a rabbit that went on to live for 9 days following the transplant. However kidneys are much simpler than brains – I think massive advances on today’s technology will be needed to get brains working again.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/

By: T

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:49:50 +0000

Imagine if the first wife died *and then* he got remarried… how gutted would she be when they all wake up..

By: Paul Crowley

Paul Crowley — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:31:50 +0000

@Other Paul – Ettinger is having his entire body cryopreserved, not just his head.

By: Don

Don — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:38:31 +0000

I have long been interested in cryonics. A few years ago I went to see ‘Walt Disney on Ice’ and was enormously disappointed.