Deep freeze for all the family
November 8th 2006 13:32
A story did the news rounds a couple of months back about a biologist, Philip Rhoades, who is planning to build the world's third cryonics centre -- in Cowra, NSW.
Cryonic procedures can only legally be performed just after clinical death. And the sooner the better -- when the heart stops pumping, the cells start dying.
Some procedures will preserve just the head, whereas others are whole-body. In Rhoades' case: "bodies are drained of blood, pumped full of chemicals and dipped in liquid nitrogen to preserve them. They are snap-frozen and entombed upside down in cylinders." (SMH)
Says Wikipedia: "The most common method of paying for cryonics is life insurance, which spreads the cost over many years. Cryonics advocates are quick to point out that such insurance is especially affordable for young people. It has been claimed that cryonics is 'affordable for the vast majority' of people in the industrialized world who really want it and plan for it."
Now, for me, there are three questions to ask.
Is it wrong?
Well, why should it be? The main issue I can think of is consequentialist. You've had your fair share of life, and the money you're spending on sci-fi science would do far more good elsewhere.
But I'd find the matter unclear if, in response to consequences, someone played the rights card, or if I were presented with the example of a person who's saved their whole life for nothing other than the chance of more life.
Should you do it?
Well, I don't see why you shouldn't -- assuming the answer to the first question is "No", and assuming no other factors (like the question of leaving your money to loved ones). In the final second of a basketball game, you might as well try your luck from the halfway line.
But to what extent should you plan for it, save for it? How does it weigh against the other things in life on which you could have spent the money? -- I do not know.
And I do not know whether one should be willing to undertake such a procedure before one dies, if this gives a better shot at preservation. I don't know how much certain life you should trade for possible life, just like I don't know how to resolve the similar questions that cancer patients face -- expensive experimental painful techniques that might leave them worse off, or kill them, or might heal them completely, vs current or diminishing quality and amount of life.
There is, after all, a sense in which life is priceless and compensation impossible, in which no amount of money can equal, for instance, a lost limb. But it should be pointed out that judges are forced to, and do, put dollar sums to lost life and disability all the time, and that the general populace does trade life all the time: for instance, they trade it for the pleasures of smoking and McDonald's; and they trade it for harder or longer work with better pay.
What is death?
There's a sense in which death is increasingly a decision. Kerry Packer refused further treatment. Medical advances have pushed the frontiers of when recovery is impossible. And -- who knows? -- the cryonics advocates might be proven correct, and revival, in the future, might be possible hours, days, weeks after the point at which we now give up on people -- perhaps even years, if fantasies about reconstructing from DNA become reality.
The general lesson I take is that language depends on knowledge. Words are tools for navigating an environment, and their usefulness is affected by changes in that environment. Old concepts can come apart. Star Trek matter transporters would force a rethink of "self". And successful cryonics technology would force a rethink of "death".
Notes
-- This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
-- The image of Han Solo came from Jon Dodson's movie blog and is used for the sake of commentary.
-- The image of the Dewar human preservation unit came from the Wikipedia article Cryonics. This "bigfoot" Dewar is custom-designed to contain four wholebody patients and six neuropatients immersed in liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees Celsius. The Dewar is an insulated container which consumes no electric power. Liquid nitrogen is added periodically to replace the small amount that evaporates. Photo courtesy of Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
-- Wednesday 30 March 2011: Recent Stanford article on how to determine when someone is dead, and problems with DCD.
Some procedures will preserve just the head, whereas others are whole-body. In Rhoades' case: "bodies are drained of blood, pumped full of chemicals and dipped in liquid nitrogen to preserve them. They are snap-frozen and entombed upside down in cylinders." (SMH)
Says Wikipedia: "The most common method of paying for cryonics is life insurance, which spreads the cost over many years. Cryonics advocates are quick to point out that such insurance is especially affordable for young people. It has been claimed that cryonics is 'affordable for the vast majority' of people in the industrialized world who really want it and plan for it."
***
Now, for me, there are three questions to ask.
Is it wrong?
Well, why should it be? The main issue I can think of is consequentialist. You've had your fair share of life, and the money you're spending on sci-fi science would do far more good elsewhere.
But I'd find the matter unclear if, in response to consequences, someone played the rights card, or if I were presented with the example of a person who's saved their whole life for nothing other than the chance of more life.
Should you do it?
Well, I don't see why you shouldn't -- assuming the answer to the first question is "No", and assuming no other factors (like the question of leaving your money to loved ones). In the final second of a basketball game, you might as well try your luck from the halfway line.
And I do not know whether one should be willing to undertake such a procedure before one dies, if this gives a better shot at preservation. I don't know how much certain life you should trade for possible life, just like I don't know how to resolve the similar questions that cancer patients face -- expensive experimental painful techniques that might leave them worse off, or kill them, or might heal them completely, vs current or diminishing quality and amount of life.
There is, after all, a sense in which life is priceless and compensation impossible, in which no amount of money can equal, for instance, a lost limb. But it should be pointed out that judges are forced to, and do, put dollar sums to lost life and disability all the time, and that the general populace does trade life all the time: for instance, they trade it for the pleasures of smoking and McDonald's; and they trade it for harder or longer work with better pay.
What is death?
There's a sense in which death is increasingly a decision. Kerry Packer refused further treatment. Medical advances have pushed the frontiers of when recovery is impossible. And -- who knows? -- the cryonics advocates might be proven correct, and revival, in the future, might be possible hours, days, weeks after the point at which we now give up on people -- perhaps even years, if fantasies about reconstructing from DNA become reality.
The general lesson I take is that language depends on knowledge. Words are tools for navigating an environment, and their usefulness is affected by changes in that environment. Old concepts can come apart. Star Trek matter transporters would force a rethink of "self". And successful cryonics technology would force a rethink of "death".
***
Notes
-- This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
-- The image of Han Solo came from Jon Dodson's movie blog and is used for the sake of commentary.
-- The image of the Dewar human preservation unit came from the Wikipedia article Cryonics. This "bigfoot" Dewar is custom-designed to contain four wholebody patients and six neuropatients immersed in liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees Celsius. The Dewar is an insulated container which consumes no electric power. Liquid nitrogen is added periodically to replace the small amount that evaporates. Photo courtesy of Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
-- Wednesday 30 March 2011: Recent Stanford article on how to determine when someone is dead, and problems with DCD.
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Comment by Ahmed
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Comment by Adrian
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Comment by Ahmed
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People also said we'd be living on the moon by 1976 if you recal
Somethings are impossible, creating life, travelilng faster than the speed of light, all of that, impossible.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Here you go: the for-what-it's-worth wisdom of Wikipedia:
"Cryonics is viewed with skepticism by many scientists and doctors today. However, there is a high representation of scientists among cryonics supporters.[1] Scientific support for cryonics is based on projections of future technology, especially molecular nanotechnology and nanomedicine. Some scientists believe that future medicine[2] will enable molecular-level repair and regeneration of damaged tissues and organs decades or centuries in the future. Disease and aging are also assumed to be reversible."
Comment by Ahmed
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My baby boomer society and environments teacher liked to talk abotu two things: The cold war, and how science didn't cure all diseases.
Needless to say all diseases weren't cured, its just hype.
Comment by katyzzz
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You've raised questions but it seems you've not maintained your "normal" position as a skeptic.
I'd take the view that it is all impossible but how people decide to spend their own money, is their decision.
I wouldn't want to return to life in such circumstances but I want to live out this lifespan as long and as well as possible.
I want that for others too.
There's nothing much new about what you're saying, I suppose it does make some people angry. I think the notion is ridiculous but if others want to pusue it, let them.
Personally, I'd not want to be involved at any level and I'm surprised that scientists and surgeons are.
There are very strict limitations that I impose on myself and actually expect[without much success] from others.
I do not think one should go to any lengths to earn money. That is my ethical and moral perspective.
katyzzz.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Why do you think that the idea of cryonics makes people angry?
And what limitations that you set on yourself and expect from others would cryonics violate?
I don't think, for instance, that it involves going to any lengths to earn money.
Comment by katyzzz
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I think it makes people angry because it's such 'dodgy' science.
As regards the work I think skilled people can use their skills elsewhere for the betterment of our current society. Aas for the unskilled they probably get paid a little more for the unpleasant nature of the work.
I think they'd be better off earning less and enjoying it more elsewhere, and freeing up their life and mental capacities.
I think that about a lot of work that people do.
Sometimes, they have no choice but I would not say that about cryonics.
I maintain the right at all times to express a view without explanation at all, but will generally be happy to express why I feel the way I do, but I do not feel it necessary to put myself up for skeptical scrutiny.
Such arguments mostly lead nowhere, I have better things to do with my time. But, I must admit I do have certain misgivings about the worth of blogging whether related to money making? or not.
katyzzz I fear I have digressed a little. No more, please explain on this one, but I don't mind the odd comment or two about blogging. One becomes almost indecently exposed.
Comment by Damo
So far any attempt to freeze a live person is deadly. Freezing a dead person has proven pointless. There is no cure for death.
Even if we could repair the body and make it function through a future scientific breakthrough does it mean the person is alive?
This borders on the Ghost in the Machine questions. Are we just a functioning body that projects us or is the body just a vessel to hold us?
Also I find the scientific explainations to be as dodgy as any snake oil sale pitch. Desperate people wanting to live just a little longer are being offered dodgy hope. Exploitation is the real question.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Damo, I think you put it nicely when you speak of snake oil and desperation, although I think another motivating factor in cryo-supporters is simple curiosity. What would it be like to wake up in a Futurama world?
As to no success in freezing live people and the pointlessness of freezing dead people... Well, live people have been frozen for at least short periods -- hypothermia patients being revived after their vital signs stopped. And the pointlessness of freezing "dead" people depends on what you mean by death -- after all, cryo supporters would argue that what we currently define as death (cessation of vital signs), isn't really death (non-revivability of the personality).
I'm sure that advances will continue to be made in freezing and reviving the living, and in redefining "death", just as they've been made many times before. Wouldn't you agree? Though of course I don't know whether they'll ever be made up to the years- or centuries-long time scales that cryo-supporters are hoping for...
Katy, I respect your view that the whole thing is dodgy or ridiculous, but I wouldn't count the adjectives as an argument. I think it's perfectly reasonable to believe, as you do, that scientific effort is better directed elsewhere. And while I respect your desire not to want to be forced to justify everything or expose your beliefs to possible skeptical attack, I think there is great value in skepticism (a topic for another post, perhaps; but I'd imagine you'd agree despite your comment that "Such arguments mostly lead nowhere").
And guys, please don't think I'm unskeptical of cryonics! The title of my post and the description of the procedure are geared towards skepticism.
But I'm also skeptical of being dogmatically skeptical. That is, since there's no rule-out on logical grounds, I don't see any reason that the whole thing is impossible -- or that any effort expended is pointless. For instance, even if cryonics/cryogenics research doesn't get closer to freezing and reviving "dead" people, the technology of cold might generate any number of applications for other areas of life.
No comment on the ghost in the machine...
Comment by Damo
There is health skepticism and there is the australian skeptics
Comment by Lilla
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Reading your post this morning bought two movies to mind : Vanilla Sky and Woody Alan's Sleeper : both excellent hypothesis on this very question. I guess if I had the money, why not....?
"Cremation, Burial or Deep Freeze..sir, please take your pick our death plan covers the first two, but with a 'top-up' premium of just $3.00 per week, you can opt for the budget Cryonic option outlined here in paragraph 4, section 5b. You'll see there are no guarantees... however with the extra $6 option C in paragraph 5, section 6d; you can have stem cells taken and be recloned as well if you don't make it back from our patented defrosting process....this is followed by a disclaimer...all care no responsibility"
Please sign the dotted line X here.....
yep, the rich and famous will go for it, for sure... I read somehwere that Walt Disney was already in cryonic freeze?
Lilla...
Comment by Damo
A bit like they saved Hitlers brain.
Comment by Lilla
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Now what would be the point of either... as Adrian says....?
Comment by Damo
Pointless from my view point.
Unless you are trying use them as a weapon. Drop a frozen head on your enemies foot and watch him scream.
Comment by PokerPro
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
Arthur C. Clark
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Comment by Adrian
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"He died on December 15, 1966 at 9:30am, ten days after his 65th birthday. He was cremated on December 17, 1966 at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. Roy Disney continued to carry out the Florida project, insisting that the name be changed to Walt Disney World in honor of his brother. Roy O. Disney died just three months after the Magic Kingdom opened for business in 1971.
There has been a long-standing urban legend that after his death, Disney was cryogenically frozen so he may be revived at a later date. However, this has been refuted on numerous occasions. In fact, Disney was cremated, and his ashes were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale."
"After intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were spotted within a block or two of the Reich Chancellory in the city centre, Hitler committed suicide in the Führerbunker on April 30, 1945 by means of a self-delivered shot to the head (it is likely he simultaneously bit into a cyanide ampoule). Hitler's body and that of Eva Braun (his long-term mistress whom he had married the day before) were put in a bomb crater, partially burned with gasoline by Führerbunker aides and hastily buried in the Chancellory garden as Russian shells poured down and Red Army infantry continued to advance only two or three hundred metres away. He also had his dog Blondi poisoned around the same time.
When Russian forces reached the Chancellory, they found his body and an autopsy was performed using dental records (and German dental assistants who were familiar with them) to confirm the identification. To avoid any possibility of creating a potential shrine, the remains of Hitler and Braun were repeatedly moved, then secretly buried by SMERSH at their new headquarters in Magdeburg. In April 1970, when the facility was about to be turned over to the East German government, the remains were reportedly exhumed, thoroughly cremated, and the ashes finally dumped unceremoniously into the Elbe. According to the Russian Federal Security Service, a fragment of human skull stored in its archives and displayed to the public in a 2000 exhibition came from the remains of Hitler's body uncovered by the Red Army in Berlin, and is all that remains of Hitler; however, the authenticity of the skull has been challenged by many historians and researchers."
Comment by Damo
As a matter of interest I can't see much wrong with falling asleep and waking up a thousand years later. If it ever becomes possible. Bringing the dead to life is a bit too zombie for me. So I won't go there.
Would I pay for the privalige of taking a one way trip to the future? Would I leave everyone I know die out and wakeup as a stranger in a strange land? Would I take the risk that the world is a better place? Would I have to consider my self another uneducated migrant from the past trying to cut it in the future with out the correct skill to make a living? Would I trust that I any would care about me in this place?
The answers to these questions keep satisfied me here in my imperfect present.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
It's like Mission to Mars, or a somewhat like 2001 Space Odyssey, or a little like Close Encounters. The one-way trip, leaving everything behind, without assurance that you'll find anything at all, but with the possibility that you'll find something transcending everything you know.
I think most sci-fi stories where cryonics patients are revived are either comic (Futurama; Spy Who Shagged Me) or tragic, with the patients unable to adjust, or quickly dying anyway. The Mel Gibson movie might be an exception -- slightly happy ending.
You've just given me an idea for a blog entry...
Comment by Always Eighteen
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I thought this was about Christmas dinner. Anon
Comment by Adrian
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I haven't tried to verify the reports, but apparently:
-- a baboon has been drained of blood, frozen for 55 minutes, and revived
-- a dog has been drained of blood, frozen for 4 hours, and revived
-- during brain surgery, a human was drained of blood and revived after an hour (but brain activity continued during that time).
"Berkeley, California, May 29 1992. BioTime Inc. has, for the first time, successfully revived a baboon following a procedure in which the animal's deep body temperature was lowered to near-freezing and its blood was replaced with BioTime's patent-pending blood-substitute solution.
The animal was anesthetized, immersed in ice and cooled to below 2 degrees Celsius, using the BioTime solution with cardiopulmonary bypass procedures. After being bloodless and below 10 degrees Centigrade for 55 minutes, the animal was rewarmed and revived. The baboon is presently under study by BioTime scientists to determine any long-term physical effects."
"2-13. Who has successfully kept dogs cold for hours? Did they survive? Any brain damage?
Several people have achieved that. The first cryonics organization to do so was Alcor, in the mid 1980's. For example, the Jan. 1986 issue of Cryonics magazine describes, in the article "Dixie's Rebirthday", a German Shepherd dog named Dixie who "experienced the privilege (and the peril) of having all her blood washed out and replaced with a synthetic solution and then being cooled to 4 C. For four hours she was held at this temperature: stiff, cold, with eyes flattened out, brain waves stopped, and heart stilled. Then, she was reperfused with blood, warmed up and restored to life and health." She made a total recovery. Several variations, with different perfusates and slightly different temperatures and/or times were also performed by Alcor. Later, ACS performed a similar experiment on a beagle named Miles and recently (1992) BioTime successfully cooled and revived a baboon.
In comparison, hypothermic cardiac surgery was pioneered on humans decades ago, although the temperatures used were not nearly as low as in the dog experiments above. More recently, the October 1988 issue of The Immortalist described successful surgery on a brain aneurysm in which the patient was cooled to 15 C for almost an hour. During that time the patient's blood remained drained from the body, there was no respiration, the heart did not beat, and the brain barely functioned."
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Comment by Ahmed
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Comment by Adrian
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I don't know if John Paul's brain has been attached to a monkey. But I do think it's an open question whether freezing is death, if death is defined in terms of non-revivability (see the comment just above re successfully freezing a dog).
Dear Ahmed,
I suppose the people who are into cryonics believe that the spirit's in the brain, or that there's no spirit, or that life is possible without spirit.
Comment by Ahmed
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Comment by Anonymous
" I'm not saying its possible and at the same time I'm saying it isn't. "
Obviously should be:
" I'm not saying its possible and at the same time I'm not saying it isn't. "