Diseases such as cancer and AIDS are virtually untreatable today. Yet, possibly in a hundred years or so, doctors should be able to find a cure. It would be great to fall asleep with a terminal illness, and awaken to an over-the-counter wonder drug, chemically composed to heal you, years later. This is no science fiction movie. This is imminent reality.
For centuries, explorers from Ponce de Leon to the pirates of the Caribbean have set out in search of the secrets to health and youth. Now, thanks to medical advancements and cryonics, this has become more conceivable than ever. The science of cryonics is promising to change the definition of life and death, and you'll be able to experience it firsthand for figures ranging from 28,000 USD to as much as 150,000 USD.
Cryonics, derived from the Greek word κρύος (kryos) meaning icy cold, is the low temperature preservation of humans, that can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine until resuscitation may be possible in the future.
Cryonics differs from cryogenics. The latter is the science of very low temperatures, sometimes approaching absolute zero, including the production of very low temperatures and the exploitation of special properties associated with them.
In the United States, cryonics can be legally performed on humans only after clinical death. The central premise of cryonics is that memory, personality, and identity are stored in the structure and chemistry of the brain. While this view is widely accepted in medicine, and brain activity is known to stop and later resume under certain conditions, it is not generally accepted that current methods preserve the brain well enough to permit revival in the future. Cryonics advocates point to studies showing that high concentrations of cryoprotectant circulated through the brain before cooling can largely prevent freezing injury, preserving the fine cell structures of the brain in which memory and identity presumably reside.
The idea behind the current science of cryonics is understandably not relatively modern. Humans have always aspired to extend their existence to a time when all diseases should eventually be curable, not excluding aging. Benjamin Franklin suggested in a famous 1773 letter that it might be possible to preserve human life in a suspended state for centuries. However, the modern concept of cryonics, as a general procedure, applicable when patients are considered beyond help by the medicine of their time, originated in 1962 by Robert Ettinger. He proposed in a privately published book, ‘The Prospect of Immortality’, that freezing people may be a means to reach future medical technology. Even though freezing a person is obviously fatal, Ettinger maintained that what appears to be fatal today may be reversible in the future. Since then, the science of cryonics has experienced some setbacks but has in general, taken off full-force. The largest current practitioners of cryonics are two member-owned, non-profit organizations, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan.
There are many misconceptions surrounding the notion and practice of cryonics. One of which claims that Cryonics preserve dead people. Cryonics supporters confirm that its purpose is to save the lives of living people, not the bodies of dead people. Death is a neurological process that begins after the heart stops. A heart no longer pumping blood, only results in death if nothing is done immediately to revive the heart when it stops. Cryonics proposes to intercept and hinder this dying process within the window of time that it may be reversible in the future. Another misconception argues that Cryonics conflicts with religion. Cryonics advocates point to the fact that their goal is to overcome serious illness by preserving and protecting life. Cryonics is therefore consistent with pro-life principles of both medicine and religion. Another infamous misconception concerns the frozen bodies of famous people. There have been a lot of rumours about Walt Disney being frozen, but it is now thought not to be true. Very few famous people have actually been cryogenically frozen to date. Probably the most prominent person in suspended animation today is baseball giant Ted Williams, whose head was decapitated and frozen. The reason behind such an act is still unknown.
Cryonics faces many obstacles, and is still viewed with skepticism by many scientists and doctors today. Human cryopreservation is not currently reversible, and those who believe that revival may someday be possible generally look towards advanced bioengineering as a key technology. But the mere fact that you can preserve ‘yourself’, with high hopes of impending resuscitation and can sometime in the future experience a futuristic healthy existence, gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘life-span’.
Contacts:
Alcor Life Extension Foundation
7895 East Acoma Drive Suite 110
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
USA
Tel +1 480 905-1906
www.alcor.org
Immortalist Society,
24355 Sorrentino Court,
Clinton Township MI 48035
USA
Tel +1 586 791-5961
