Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

bigthink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 599 posts

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#31

Post by purpleflame1257 »

tempestn wrote: post #18

This actually reminds me of something I was thinking about a couple days ago. You know how people can be resuscitated after hours with their hearts stopped, if they were in near-freezing conditions? Like people who have drowned in frozen lakes and then been brought back hours later? Someone coined the phrase, "You're not dead until you're warm and dead." Well, I wonder if that could be done long term. I'm guessing al…

Good thought, and we are in fact working on it. Here's a layman's article about it from WIRED https://www.wired.com/story/mars-hiberators-guide-to-the-gal...

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#32

Post by worldsayshi »

RajT88 wrote: post #17
drchiu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose what I didn’t reveal is that I spent a lot of time before medicine trying to coax cells whether in a culture or some other medium to grow in the way I wanted it to grow. And it was hard. It’s been a while, but if I could recall correctly, cells tended to have a finiteness in their very nature. I think at some subconscious level, I interpreted this as nature’s way of expressing that is how things are designe…

> It’s been a while, but if I could recall correctly, cells tended to have a finiteness in their very nature. This is known: https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Hayflick_limit

Yes, but:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#33

Post by pessimizer »

beebeepka wrote: post #19
cultureulterior wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree, and you shouldn't force those of us who don't agree to die.

You'd have someone else wipe your ass rather than embrace death? How dignified.

No post body was provided.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#34

Post by smaddox »

RajT88 wrote: post #21
Veedrac wrote: post #2

As far as I can tell, the thesis of this article amounts to ‘cryonics is a weird idea, but what's even more weird is believing in the future.’ If you put aside the overt scorn, it's actually a fairly interesting article, and surprisingly upbeat at that.

That scorn seems earned. Little progress has been made on raising the dead in 50 years. I mean, CPR has gotten better for sure. But that's just for people who are mostly dead. Not going to work on people who are all-the-way-dead. Anyone claiming high chances of resurrection in some sci-fi future are just blathing.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Scientists have successfully sliced, imaged, and analyzed (i.e. determined the connectome for) the entire brain of very small animal, the common fruit fly, Drosophila. We're still a long way from turning that into a virtual simulation of the creature, but it's a significant step towards it.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#35

Post by PragmaticPulp »

drchiu wrote: post #10

Years ago when I was in medical school, I concluded to improve quality of life, no matter how finite, is a better endeavour than to prolong it. There's something tremendously philosophically satisfying to recognizing that death is just the recycling of life so that new life can happen.

> I concluded to improve quality of life, no matter how finite, is a better endeavour than to prolong it.

Seems like a false dichotomy.

Aside from life support in one's final days, most practical medical interventions for prolonging life also result in significant improvements in quality of life.

For example, healthy diet and exercise contribute to extended lifespan, but they also improve quality of life significantly during all stages of life.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#37

Post by smaddox »

adolph wrote: post #11

The article refers to cryonic storage units as Dewars: The vacuum flask was designed and invented by Scottish scientist Sir James Dewar in 1892 as a result of his research in the field of cryogenics and is sometimes called a Dewar flask in his honour. While performing experiments in determining the specific heat of the element palladium, Dewar made a brass chamber that he enclosed in another chamber to keep the palla…

> it could be used to keep cold drinks cold and warm drinks warm

The classic dad joke: So if I put my cold beer and my hot soup in there, how does it know which is which?

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#38

Post by VoodooJuJu »

drchiu wrote: post #10

Years ago when I was in medical school, I concluded to improve quality of life, no matter how finite, is a better endeavour than to prolong it. There's something tremendously philosophically satisfying to recognizing that death is just the recycling of life so that new life can happen.

Absolutely. Place aux autres - make room for others.

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#39

Post by sigmar »

tempestn wrote: post #18

This actually reminds me of something I was thinking about a couple days ago. You know how people can be resuscitated after hours with their hearts stopped, if they were in near-freezing conditions? Like people who have drowned in frozen lakes and then been brought back hours later? Someone coined the phrase, "You're not dead until you're warm and dead." Well, I wonder if that could be done long term. I'm guessing al…

There are a bunch of examples of that (mostly referred to as suspended animation) and a few that even have been covered in medical journals. There are examples on wikipedia[1]. I researched it as a topic for a very strange class I took in college and remember there were more than a few gov't research projects (DARPA and others) trying to achieve various means of suspended animation for military and space applications.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspended_animation#Basic_prin...

Re: What happened to the first cryogenically frozen humans?

#40

Post by version_five »

drchiu wrote: post #10

Years ago when I was in medical school, I concluded to improve quality of life, no matter how finite, is a better endeavour than to prolong it. There's something tremendously philosophically satisfying to recognizing that death is just the recycling of life so that new life can happen.

That seems to be the literal opposite of almost all public health advice - we always seem to focus on how there may be some potential negative consequence of everything and ignore the impact on quality of life (I'm mainly thinking of food and drink, but I think it extends e.g. to covid hysteria). In the end, advice just gets ignored, or forms part of a puritanical shaming system that nobody adheres to but everybody judges others based on. It would be nice if more public health institutions adopted your attitude and realized life is worth living and isn't just about living as long and boring a life as possible.
Post reply on HN