11–20 of 57 posts
Because if not, then we don't know if it works on people who aren't yet dead. And if we can't do that, what hope do we have for reviving the actually dead?
(I'm aware in rare cases people have been massively cooled down and had their heart stopped for operations, but that's not quite the same.)
Serious question: what's to salvage from the brain of a terminal brain cancer child? This strikes me as a very silly way to preserve a human being. If they really wanted to give their child a "chance" to live a full life, they should have cryogenized her sooner, no? (It might be illegal, though.)
I imagine it should be terrifically hard to let go of your child and 'kill' them preemptively, for them to have a hope of later life. Even if the parents did even consider that option.
As far as I see it, cryopreserving a person that is not legally dead ('cryothanasia'?) might be possible, but no cryonics company has procedures in place to arrange for it and I am not aware of anyone that has been preserved this way. At least, it is necessary to move to a country where voluntary euthanasia is legal and the associated autopsy is not mandatory, and you are on your own with this. [1] This is another issue that cryonics companies and advocates prefer to overlook.
Cryonics is still very niche as it is. People are still very reluctant to arrange for cryopreservation beforehand, as it is. Cryonics companies have their hands full with just continuing to operate and convincing people to use their services. For there to exist people that are fully rational about their own or their loved ones' death, and think about it more deeply than the cryonics companies and advocates, is a whole next step entirely: I am unaware of such people yet.
Its impossible to imagine how hard it would be to lose a child, but I can imagine why that state of mind makes even the remotest glimmer of hope for reincarnation seem like a good idea. I thought This American Life's episode on cryonics was riveting, educational and fascinating. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/354/m...
Has any living person ever had their heart intentionally stopped, been cryonically frozen, defrosted, and revived? Because if not, then we don't know if it works on people who aren't yet dead. And if we can't do that, what hope do we have for reviving the actually dead? (I'm aware in rare cases people have been massively cooled down and had their heart stopped for operations, but that's not quite the same.)
Serious question: what's to salvage from the brain of a terminal brain cancer child? This strikes me as a very silly way to preserve a human being. If they really wanted to give their child a "chance" to live a full life, they should have cryogenized her sooner, no? (It might be illegal, though.)
The serious answer is that resuscitation of cryopreserved humans is not currently possible and has never been done. We have no idea whether anything from the brain or the body is salvageable, nor whether starting sooner or later makes any difference. Perhaps one way to think about it is that cryopreservation is a modern alternative to a grave burial, and the thing most salvaged is the hope and memories in the family…
Has any living person ever had their heart intentionally stopped, been cryonically frozen, defrosted, and revived? Because if not, then we don't know if it works on people who aren't yet dead. And if we can't do that, what hope do we have for reviving the actually dead? (I'm aware in rare cases people have been massively cooled down and had their heart stopped for operations, but that's not quite the same.)
Serious question: what's to salvage from the brain of a terminal brain cancer child? This strikes me as a very silly way to preserve a human being. If they really wanted to give their child a "chance" to live a full life, they should have cryogenized her sooner, no? (It might be illegal, though.)
Has any living person ever had their heart intentionally stopped, been cryonically frozen, defrosted, and revived? Because if not, then we don't know if it works on people who aren't yet dead. And if we can't do that, what hope do we have for reviving the actually dead? (I'm aware in rare cases people have been massively cooled down and had their heart stopped for operations, but that's not quite the same.)
Serious question: what's to salvage from the brain of a terminal brain cancer child? This strikes me as a very silly way to preserve a human being. If they really wanted to give their child a "chance" to live a full life, they should have cryogenized her sooner, no? (It might be illegal, though.)
Personally, I'm with you on this. Cryonically suspending a person that died from brain damage or debilitating disease has even more fleeting chance for success. Unless there's a chance that at the moment of death the conscience is still there (due to great redundancy in the brain), it might be futile, after all. This is one issue that I believe all cryonics companies and advocates prefer to wholly overlook. I imagine…
You seem to be arguing that death is a binary state, but I don't think this is particularly well established. There are all sorts of arguments over what constitutes definite proof of death [1]. It seems more likely to me that the process of dying is a transition, and that the exact point along that transition where someone is irreversibly gone depends on our current level of medical technology – which is exactly what cryonics is betting on.
As an analogy, when RAM loses power, the data on it doesn't vanish instantly, but rather degrades over some period of time [2]. Depending on how the information is stored, what you're willing to do without, and what you can piece together, you can declare the data in RAM "gone" at different points throughout that process.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_definition_of_death
[2] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/sec08/tech/full_papers/h...