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“I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living”

hopesandfears.com

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Re: “I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living”

#11

Post by beloch »

Ideally, the process of cryonically preserving someone's brain would be like an extreme form of the stasis we hope to be able to put people in for long space voyages. You might be legally dead by today's standards, but just asleep in practice.

This is where things get incredibly weird for cryonics. Any competent practitioner is going to amass a large number of people who are legally dead today, but may be viewed as "just sleeping" in the future. Where is the boundary between these two states? At what point do these frozen brains transition from specimens with no rights to human beings?

Say that, in the not too distant future, the technology is invented to resurrect the frozen. At this point, the cryonics company will have something clearly different from medical specimens in their tanks. However, what if the resurrection tech is prohibitively expensive? Even at cryogenic temperatures there is atomic movement and, necessarily, slow and subtle degradation. Some frozen "sleepers" might not survive long enough for resurrection to become affordable enough for them, assuming the assets they set aside for resurrection weren't wiped out by bad investments. Do these doomed sleepers have any rights? Will the cryonics company be obligated to revive them at a loss? What if the company goes bankrupt? Could people be brought back as indentured "heads in jars" and expected to work off their debt? Will brains frozen today even have any skills or knowledge the future will want?

Cryonics raises a lot of questions for the present and, potentially, even more problems for the future to solve.

Re: “I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living”

#12

Post by bennettfeely »

pan69 wrote: post #6

What I don't really get from the article is, why? The article seems to be a technical explanation of the procedure to freeze someone's brain. but it doesn't really explain why you'd do that in the first place (probably being revived in the future) and what the actual possibilities of this are.

When you're rich, it's pretty hard to accept the fact that you're eventually going to die and you can't take any of it with you.

It would make an interesting theme for a novel, waking from a dreamless sleep only to face again the pains, disappointments and inevitable deterioration of this life, and this time separated from the people who once gave some solace. Don't sign me up.

Re: “I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living”

#13

Post by beeworker »

bennettfeely wrote: post #12
pan69 wrote: post #6

What I don't really get from the article is, why? The article seems to be a technical explanation of the procedure to freeze someone's brain. but it doesn't really explain why you'd do that in the first place (probably being revived in the future) and what the actual possibilities of this are.

When you're rich, it's pretty hard to accept the fact that you're eventually going to die and you can't take any of it with you. It would make an interesting theme for a novel, waking from a dreamless sleep only to face again the pains, disappointments and inevitable deterioration of this life, and this time separated from the people who once gave some solace. Don't sign me up.

You don't need to be rich. It costs very little to fund a $30k life insurance policy, which will get your whole body suspended with Cryonics Institute. Alcor is more, $80k for just the head.

Re: “I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living”

#14

Post by Mahn »

beloch wrote: post #11

Ideally, the process of cryonically preserving someone's brain would be like an extreme form of the stasis we hope to be able to put people in for long space voyages. You might be legally dead by today's standards, but just asleep in practice. This is where things get incredibly weird for cryonics. Any competent practitioner is going to amass a large number of people who are legally dead today, but may be viewed as "…

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but if I had to guess I'd say cryonics companies don't give a damn about future ethical and/or legal implications as long as it's a profitable business as it stands today. I very much doubt they have plan on what to do with the brains or bodies they preserve, though I'd love to be proven otherwise.

Re: “I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living”

#16

Post by mhartl »

Mahn wrote: post #14
beloch wrote: post #11

Ideally, the process of cryonically preserving someone's brain would be like an extreme form of the stasis we hope to be able to put people in for long space voyages. You might be legally dead by today's standards, but just asleep in practice. This is where things get incredibly weird for cryonics. Any competent practitioner is going to amass a large number of people who are legally dead today, but may be viewed as "…

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but if I had to guess I'd say cryonics companies don't give a damn about future ethical and/or legal implications as long as it's a profitable business as it stands today. I very much doubt they have plan on what to do with the brains or bodies they preserve, though I'd love to be proven otherwise.

On the contrary, such concerns are of paramount importance to cryonics organizations. A good place to start is the Alcor Patient Care Trust [1]:

At Alcor, patient storage costs are paid from the Patient Care Trust. This conservative funding arrangement is designed to cover the cost of patient storage solely from the income from the Trust, thereby assuring that such funding will continue indefinitely into the future. The irrevocable Patient Care Trust is included under Alcor's tax-exempt status, but nevertheless is a separate legal entity that provides liability protection for these assets. This arrangement is one of the reasons our members have confidence in Alcor.

It doesn't do any good to use the most advanced techniques to get our members into cryopreservation unless we can keep them there, as well as build capital to eventually fund revival and reintegration. Ongoing care for cryopreservation patients is the number one element of our purpose in being cryonicists, and financial protection for the patients is a critical component of this. There is no use in starting this possibly centuries-long project, if we don't do centuries-long financial planning. Providing this kind of protection through a conservative, long-term view of storage costs is one of the main reasons why cryopreservation costs so much.

[1]: http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html

Re: “I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living”

#18

Post by coldtea »

mhartl wrote: post #16
Mahn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but if I had to guess I'd say cryonics companies don't give a damn about future ethical and/or legal implications as long as it's a profitable business as it stands today. I very much doubt they have plan on what to do with the brains or bodies they preserve, though I'd love to be proven otherwise.

On the contrary, such concerns are of paramount importance to cryonics organizations. A good place to start is the Alcor Patient Care Trust [1]: At Alcor, patient storage costs are paid from the Patient Care Trust. This conservative funding arrangement is designed to cover the cost of patient storage solely from the income from the Trust, thereby assuring that such funding will continue indefinitely into the future.…

>On the contrary, such concerns are of paramount importance to cryonics organizations.

Legally. Not ethically. Most business owners in this "industry" could not care less.

Re: “I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living”

#19

Post by coldtea »

lassoman wrote: post #5
_ihaque wrote: post #2

If somebody’s been pronounced dead and then you start CPR, you don’t want the embarrassing situation where they start to wake up again. For older people that are really far gone it’s not a concern, but sometimes life can start to come back a bit so general anesthetic takes care of that. That someone is coming back to life is considered "embarrassing", and ought to be stopped with a general anesthetic? That doesn't so…

That's exactly what I though! Holly cow......maybe I should take my name off the organ donors list. Have heard of people 'coming back to life' after being incorrectly pronounced dead (even young ones) and from memory there has been a few cases where people were buried alive, waking up in the coffin only to find out that they will come out of it alive again. If that is the common practice I think that medical practiti…

>That's exactly what I though! Holly cow......maybe I should take my name off the organ donors list.

Heh, doctors have been known to be eager to "be done" with organ donors in some cases that look dead or dying enough. What's a seemingly dying person compared to all those that get to get new body parts, after all?

Combine it with stories of people coming back from comas or near-death, and it doesn't sound that good.

Re: “I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living”

#20

Post by coldtea »

beeworker wrote: post #13
bennettfeely wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're rich, it's pretty hard to accept the fact that you're eventually going to die and you can't take any of it with you. It would make an interesting theme for a novel, waking from a dreamless sleep only to face again the pains, disappointments and inevitable deterioration of this life, and this time separated from the people who once gave some solace. Don't sign me up.

You don't need to be rich. It costs very little to fund a $30k life insurance policy, which will get your whole body suspended with Cryonics Institute. Alcor is more, $80k for just the head.

>You don't need to be rich.

No, but being rich helps with illusions of immortality and going with such a scheme.

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