// Depressed Metabolism: The Science of Personal Survival

Cryonics Reports was the publication of the Cryonics Society of New York (CSNY). In April 1968 a call to arms to conquer aging was published. This editorial stressed that the problems of aging will not be solved until we decide that we want to conquer aging and extend our lives.

Heart disease and cancer are not isolated phenomena, but merely manifestations of the general progressive degeneration of our bodies. We call this progression aging because it affects our entire organism and is time dependent. It is the ultimate disease.

Read the complete editorial.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

In his January 2008 Journal of Emergency Medical Services (JEMS) article, “Nothing but the Truth,” Criss Brainard provides examples of two cases where voice recording technology could aid in clearing the names of emergency personnel who had been accused of inappropriate conduct during patient transport. While cryonics standby team members may not need to worry about such allegations, it is obvious that voice recording can be useful in clarifying any questions regarding the specifics of a case. In fact, nearly every aspect of a cryonics case can be voice recorded including logistical operations, start of procedures, medication administration, physiological measurements, descriptions of complex procedures, and real-time reporting of equipment malfunctions and concerns.

Voice recording technology has existed for at least as long as cryonics has, and yet cryonics organizations have rarely made consistent use of it during standby, stabilization, transport and cryopreservation. Instead, cryonics has often relied solely on the services of a “scribe,” whose duty it is to take written notes of all procedures. Voice recording not only provides a more accurate and reliable method of documentation, but also can free up a person to assist with procedures when a clip-on microphone is used. This feature also enables use of voice recorders by multiple team members, including team members performing procedures that are often hard to observe by the scribe, such as surgery. The utility of voice recording can be further strengthened by training team members how to describe specific technical cryonics procedures and to recognize important events.

Brainard points out that the San Diego Fire Department has used voice recording as a standard practice for over two decades to provide objective information about thousands of cases. He writes:

As a best practice, every EMS system should want the truth, good or bad. We should ensure that we’re on the front end of an incident, equipped with all the facts, not just recollections of the facts. If we make a mistake, we must own it; and if we’re being falsely accused, we should want that to come out also.

In addition, voice recording makes case reporting more rigorous and less prone to speculation, which helps to improve quality of care for future patients. Lack of voice recording shrouds cryonics in an aura of secrecy that damages credibility and makes it difficult to factually defend actions of cryonics team members.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

After legal pronouncement of death, cryonics patients benefit from rapid stabilization to protect the brain from injury. The most fundamental intervention is induction of hypothermia. Unlike other interventions such as cardiopulmonary support (CPS) and administration of neuroprotective medications, induction of hypothermia is an intrinsic part of cryonics. Unfortunately, surface cooling with ice is not a very effective way to rapidly drop the core temperature of the patient. There are a number of alternative cooling methods such as peritoneal, colonic, and gastric lavage but these cooling methods can be logistically challenging and require specific (surgical) skills. As a consequence, application of these cooling methods in cryonics is rare. To date, rapid cooling in cryonics is achieved during blood washout, which requires surgical access to the circulatory system of the patient.

Because the neuroprotective effects of hypothermia on the brain are so profound it would be very desirable to be able to induce rapid cooling without the need for surgery and extracorporeal perfusion. In the mid-1990s, cryonics researcher Mike Darwin realized that one might be able to reap some of the benefits of cardiopulmonary bypass-induced cooling by using cold cyclic lung lavage with an inert liquid. Because all of the patient’s blood travels through the lungs, the lungs can be utilized as an endogenous heat exchanger to cool the patient. With his colleagues at 21st Century Medicine and Critical Care Research (CCR), a number of prototypes were built to deliver and remove chilled perfluorocarbons. Initial canine experiments using this technology were successful and in 2001 a paper was published that documented that cooling rates of 0.5 degrees C/min could be achieved. A number of different terms for this technology have been used including liquid ventilation, mixed-mode liquid ventilation (MMLV), and cold cyclic lung lavage, depending on which aspect of the technology needs emphasis, breathing or cooling.

A basic version of cold cyclic lung lavage with perfluorocarbons was used on Alcor patient A-1876 in 2002. This case constitutes the first documented case of cold cyclic lung lavage in cryonics. Although the case summary states that “the combination of external cooling in the ice bath and fluorocarbon cooling via the lungs had reduced her core temperature from around 36 degrees Celsius at the time of death to approximately 9 degrees in just two-and-a-half hours,” no specific details on the equipment or procedure are given. The report does indicate that rapid indication of hypothermia by delivering and removing cold perfluorocarbons from the lungs is technically feasible in cryonics patients. In 2007, the cryonics company Suspended Animation and CCR reported on the development and fabrication of advanced automated prototypes to induce liquid ventilation that can achieve cooling rates superior to the prior art. The recent prototypes are scaled for human lung volumes and could be used in a cryonics case if people are appropriately trained. Although the concept of liquid breathing is not new, the application of such technologies to induce rapid hypothermia to protect the brain is another example of how cryonics research can contribute to mainstream (emergency) medicine.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Before the scientific conquest of death became a serious topic of conversation, philosophers, writers and poets had to resign themselves to the inevitable demise of the individual in this world. Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), the “Shakespeare of Divines,” gave poetic expression to the brevity and fragility of life in his The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651), parts of which later were used by the experimental / folk project Current 93 in the lyrics of The Dream of a Shadow of Smoke:

A man is a bubble, (said the Greek proverb), which Lucian represents with advantages and its proper circumstances, to this purpose; saying, that all the world is a storm, and men rise up in their several generations, like bubbles descending a Jove pluvio, from God and the dew of heaven, from a tear and drop of rain, from nature and Providence; and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having had no other business in the world, but to be born, that they might be able to die: others float up and down two or three turns, and suddenly disappear, and give their place to others: and they that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion, restless and uneasy; and, being crushed with a great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth; the change not being great, it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing that it was before. So is every man: he is born in vanity and sin; he comes into the world like morning mushrooms, soon thrusting up their heads into the air, and conversing with their kindred of the same production, and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulness - some of them without any other interest in the affairs of the world, but that they made their parents a little glad and very sorrowful: others ride longer in the storm; it may be until seven years of vanity be expired, and then peradventure the sun shines hot upon their heads, and they fall into the shades below, into the cover of death and darkness of the grave to hide them. But if the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop, and outlives the chances of a child, of a careless nurse, of drowning in a pail of water, of being overlaid by a sleepy servant, or such little accidents, then the young man dances like a bubble, empty and gay, and shines like a dove’s neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose very imagery and colours are fantastical; and so he dances out the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a storm, and endures only because he is not knocked on the head by a drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a load of indigested meat, or quenched by the disorder of an ill-placed humour: and to preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities is as great a miracle as to create him; to preserve him from rushing into nothing, and at first to draw him up from nothing were equally the issues of an almighty power. And therefore the wise men of the world have contended who shall best fit man’s condition with words signifying his vanity and short abode. Honour calls a man “a leaf,” the smallest, the weakest piece of a short-lived, unsteady plant. Pindar calls him “the dream of a shadow:” another “the dream of the shadow of smoke.” But St. James spake by a more excellent spirit, saying, ‘Our life is but a vapour,’viz, drawn from the earth by a celestial influence; made of smoke, or the lighter parts of water tossed with every wind, moved by the motion of a superior body, without virtue in itself, lifted up on high, or left below, according as it pleased the sun, its foster-father. But it is lighter yet. It is but appearing;a fantastic vapour, an apparition, nothing real; it is not so much as a mist, not the matter of a shower, nor substantial enough to make a cloud; but it is like Cassiopeia’s chair, or Pelop’s shoulder, or the circles of heaven, fainorena, for which you cannot have a word that can signify a vernier nothing. And yet the expression is one degree more made diminutive; a vapour, and fantastical, or a mere appearance, and this but for a little while neither,the very dream, the phantasm, disappears in a small time, “like the shadow that departed; or like a tale that is told, or as a dream when one waketh.” A man is so vain, so unfixed, so perishing a creature, that he cannot long last in the scene of fancy: a man goes off, and is forgotten, like the dream of a distracted person. The sum of all is this: that thou art a man, than whom there is not in the world any greater instance of heights and declinations, of lights and shadows, of misery and folly, of laughter and tears, of groans and death.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

One concern about chemical fixation as a low cost alternative to cryonics is that current fixatives may not be able to permanently fix all biomolecules that are important to preserve the identity of the person. A related concern is that postmortem delays may not permit adequate perfusion of the brain, resulting in pockets of decomposed tissue. On this issue, biostasis at cryogenic temperatures (cryonics) has a distinct advantage because extreme cold will also preserve tissues that were not, or were poorly, penetrated by the cryoprotectant agent.

But even if cryoprotectant toxicity will be overcome to enable reversible vitrification of humans, the procedures of cryoprotectant perfusion, cryogenic cooldown, long term care, rewarming, and resuscitation may often involve (unintended) imperfections that will require advanced cell repair technologies for successful resuscitation.

Perhaps those same advanced technologies could produce a form of biostasis that avoids the crude consequences of contemporary chemical fixation by making precise modifications within and between cells to arrest metabolism and decomposition.

Looking for discussion of this idea, Brian Wowk pointed this writer to Eric Drexler who envisioned such a form of warm biostasis in Engines of Creation. In chapter 7 (section 5) Drexler calls this form of warm biostasis “anesthesia plus:”

To see how one approach would work, imagine that the blood stream carries simple molecular devices to tissues, where they enter the cells. There they block the molecular machinery of metabolism - in the brain and elsewhere - and tie structures together with stabilizing cross-links. Other molecular devices then move in, displacing water and packing themselves solidly around the molecules of the cell. These steps stop metabolism and preserve cell structures.

This procedure would produce a state in which the person will appear to be dead (and warm) for all practical purposes:

If a patient in this condition were turned over to a present-day physician ignorant of the capabilities of cell repair machines, the consequences would likely be grim. Seeing no signs of life, the physician would likely conclude that the patient was dead, and then would make this judgment a reality by “prescribing” an autopsy, followed by burial or burning.

Such a form of warm biostasis would not only produce a true molecular alternative to cryonics, it would also enable long-duration space travel and could be employed as a means to provide trauma care in emergency situations. These kind of applications of molecular nanotechnology are extremely advanced and, as a result, literature, either fiction or non-fiction, about them is virtually non-existent. It seems that the first rigorous treatment of cellular and whole-body warm biostasis will be published in Robert Freitas’ Nanomedicine Volume IIB and Nanomedicine Volume III (personal correspondence).

Perhaps the future of biostasis will be an advanced form of chemical fixation after all.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West is a man of science, not superstition. Following Ernst Haeckel, he believes that “all life is a chemical and psychical process,” that the soul is “a myth,” and that “unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as life.” Not satisfied with conventional medicine, West devotes his life to creating a solution that will restore artificial life after death. Like many biomedical researchers would find out after him, the same solution can have different effects on different species. But what West is really after is reanimation of humans. And reanimation of humans requires experimentation on humans.

West does not only anticipate the future science of resuscitation, but also the phenomenon of selective vulnerability of certain brain cells because we know that West fully realized “that the psychic or intellectual life might be impaired by the slight deterioration of sensitive brain-cells which even a short period of death would be apt to cause.” As a consequence, his corpses cannot be “fresh” enough. Artificial resuscitation turns out to be a step towards bigger things when we learn that West has ventured into the area of “warm” whole body preservation (suspended animation) by creating a “highly unusual embalming compound” that keeps the body fresh for future resuscitation efforts. Still not satisfied, the “materialist” West moves on to prove that there is nothing special about the brain when he attempts to create mental life by pharmacologic modulation of nervous tissue in a decapitated body. One can only guess what direction West’s research would have taken after these bizarre experiments. Science is hard, but for this medical student of Miskatonic University, resuscitation, suspended animation, and stem cell research are all in a days work.

The greatest mystery in Lovecraft’s “Herbert West - Reanimator” is that West succeeds in reanimating anything at all. Injection of West’s solution is not followed by artificial circulation, which makes one wonder how such a solution can confer such profound benefits.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The blog Practical Ethics reports on pioneering research from a group of scientists in Cambridge who are using fMRI scans to study the brains of people who have been diagnosed as being in a vegetative condition. A Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) is a condition that is characterized by a state of wakefulness without detectable awareness. The researchers found that some patients who have been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state were able to respond to certain stimuli, indicating the possibility of awareness. Although it is encouraging that new medical technologies can assist in preventing misdiagnoses of patients with severe brain injury, the fact remains that few of these patients will ever recover with their former personality and memories intact.

Patients who have been diagnosed with conditions such as Persistent Vegetative State (such as Terri Schiavo) or the Minimally Conscious State (MCS) often suffered serious damage to the brain as a result of severe stroke or cardiac arrest. Although there are rare cases of remarkable recoveries, most patients with such diagnoses have ceased to exist as persons because the parts of their brains that encoded their personalities have ceased to exist.

It is now a well established fact that brain cells do not immediately die after severe hypoxic insults such as stroke or cardiac arrest. Actual necrosis (or apoptosis) takes many hours, or sometimes even days (as a result of a phenomenon called “delayed neuronal death.”). Unfortunately, ischemic insults to the brain exceeding 5 minutes are often sufficient to set parts of the brain on an irreversible path to destruction of the person, even if resuscitation of the patient is possible. Currently, there is no single approved neuroprotective agent that can salvage these brain cells from destruction. Although hyperacute combination therapy may offer hope for people suffering severe hypoxic insults, most of such patients currently would be better served by placing them in a state of biostatis through cryonics before the complete ischemic cascade can run its course.

Although cryonics is often dismissed as speculative, it can be argued that long term preservation of the neuroanatomy of such patients through vitrification offers better hope of recovery as the same person (or any person at all) than immediate resuscitation after the insult. But for acceptance of cryonics as a treatment for patients at great risk of (delayed) severe brain damage to become acceptable, the general public will need more exposure to the technical feasibility of cryonics and perspectives on death that offer a more prominent place to the concept of personhood.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The objective of cryonics stabilization is to arrest metabolism of the patient so that he can be preserved indefinitely until resuscitation and rejuvenation technologies are available. Induction of hypothermia is the principal method employed in cryonics to reduce metabolism, thereby slowing down the rate of all chemical reactions in the body, including the ischemia-induced cellular cascades leading to cell injury and eventual post-mortem decay. Consequently, in order to mitigate ischemic damage that occurs at initially high “post-mortem” body temperatures, hypothermia is induced in cryonics patients as rapidly as possible after pronouncement of legal death.

While several factors limit achievable surface cooling rates (e.g., ratio of body mass to surface area, subcutaneous fat thickness, and current technological capabilities for cooling in the field), an often overlooked and less understood limitation arises from the normal physiological mechanism of thermoregulation, or the body’s own attempt to maintain physiological temperature.

Core temperature in humans is normally kept within a range of 36.5 - 37.5 degrees Celcius, known as the “interthreshold range.” Compensatory mechanisms are triggered when core temperature rises above or falls below this range.

Thermoregulatory processes during cold defense fall broadly into two categories: heat conservation and heat production. The body conserves heat by regulating skin blood flow (cutaneous vasoconstriction) and by piloerection (i.e., erection of the hair on the skin). The body also produces heat via two mechanisms: shivering thermogenesis (skeletal muscle activity) and non-shivering thermogenesis (increased heart rate and brown adipose tissue sympathetic nerve activity). Of these, shivering presents the largest obstacle to metabolism reduction and temperature management. The hypothalamic region of the brain plays an important part in shivering by integrating temperature input from the body and controlling efferent responses to temperature variations.

Therapeutic hypothermia, such as used to manage patients with acute cerebral injury, is known to cause shivering, which can make rapid induction of hypothermia impractical. Rapid and effective induction and maintenance of therapeutic hypothermia requires that shivering is inhibited. Several pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions have been evaluated for their efficacy in shivering inhibition.

In a recent (2007) paper, Mahmood and Zweifler review the various treatments for shivering inhibition. Their review includes discussions of several drug classes, including anesthetics, opioids, α2 agonists, 5-HT uptake inhibitors, 5-HT agonists/antagonists, cholinomimetics, and NMDA antagonists, as well as physiologic maneuvers and skin surface warming.

General anesthesia impairs thermoregulation and can increase the interthreshold range up to 4.0 degrees Celcius. Mahmood and Zweifler report that both classes of anesthetics, thermogenesis inhibitors (i.e., volatile anesthetics) and thermogenesis non-inhibitors (nonvolatile anesthetics), reduce the shivering threshold proportional to the vasoconstriction threshold in a dose-dependent manner. Propofol, in particular, markedly impairs the vasoconstriction and shivering thresholds. Propofol is the current anesthetic of choice in cryonics to reduce cerebral metabolism and prevent return to consciousness during stabilization procedures.

Opioids are peptides that can effect changes in body temperature, generally by stimulating formation of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), which increases thermosensitivity in neurons. The authors report that meperidine “is unique among opioids due to its special antishivering effect,” decreasing the shivering threshold by almost twice as much as the vasoconstriction threshold. Because of its effectiveness, meperidine has played an important part in many protocols of therapeutic hypothermia. Disadvantages include respiratory suppression, nausea/vomiting, and potential induction of seizures with prolonged administration – all of which are arguably non-important to cryonics patients. Fentanyl and butorphanol have also been shown to be effective antishivering agents, though more research into these agents is necessary.

Clonidine is an α2 agonist that lowers the threshold for cutaneous vasoconstriction and shivering and has been widely investigated for its antishivering benefit. In trials directly comparing clonidine with meperidine for prevention of postoperative shivering, 89% of patients in clonidine groups did not shiver, while 85% of meperidine groups did not shiver.

5-HT is reported to impact thermoregulatory responses through its action on different sites in the hypothalamus, midbrain, and medulla. The authors note that “these actions appear to be site and species specific and it is likely the balance between the modulatory 5-HT and norepinephrine inputs that is important for short and long-term thermoregulatory control of the shivering threshold.” Studies have shown that 5-HT uptake inhibitors such as tramadol and nefopam, both analgesics, have antishivering properties comparable to those of clonidine. Additionally, the 5-HT1A partial agonist busprione acts synergistically with meperidine in reducing the shivering threshold.

The cholinomimetic drug physostigmine has been shown to be as effective in controlling postanesthetic shivering as meperidine and clonidine, and more effective than mefopam, though its mechanism remains unknown. Magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) is effective in postanesthetic shivering control, is a neuroprotectant, and has also been shown to increase cooling rate during surface cooling. However, it only modestly reduces the shivering threshold. The NMDA antagonist ketamine has also been shown to be equivalent to meperidine in prevention of postoperative shivering.

Another agent that reduces the threshold for shivering is dantrolene, although dantrolene produces relatively little central thermoregulatory inhibition. Dantrolene is also interesting as a neuroprotective agent because it inhibits excitotoxicity-induced calcium release from the endoplasmic reticulum. Dantrolene further enhances the action of CNS depressants through its effects on GABA receptors. However, conflicting observations about its blood brain barrier permeability exist.

The authors also report the apparent effectiveness of physiologic maneuvers such as breath holding, muscle relaxation, exercise, upright posture, and mental arithmetic on shivering inhibition. Obviously, such maneuvers are not practical for cryonics patients, who are not conscious. Skin surface warming, especially focal facial warming, is also reported to facilitate therapeutic hypothermia by lowering the shivering threshold in some studies but failed to produce clinically significant shivering inhibition in other studies.

Many other pharmaceutical agents have been tested for antishivering properties, though the majority of these drugs have been evaluated in the peri-operative setting because induction of hypothermia and shivering are perceived to be undesirable in postoperative recovery. Pharmacologic inhibition of shivering for therapeutic hypothermia has been largely neglected as an area of study, therefore data specific to the achievement of this goal remain limited.

There are currently no specific agents in cryonics stabilization protocol to inhibit shivering. There are no case reports that document shivering in a cryonics patient, although it is a possibility that the lack of shivering in cryonics patients is the consequence of rapid administration of general anesthetics such as propofol. Other possible explanations for the absence of shivering in cryonics patients include old age impairment of thermoregulation, the long terminal and agonal phase that most cryonics patients experience, and the adverse effects of circulatory arrest, ischemia, and hypoperfusion on thermoregulation.

In the past metocurine has been administered in cryonics to inhibit shivering. Neuromuscular blockers, however, are not recommended for treating cryonics patients because of the risk of criminal prosecution. Because it is questionable that most “post-mortem” cryonics patients have a properly functioning hypothalamus that registers the temperature drop induced by hypothermia, specific antishivering agents may be redundant, especially in light of the fact that the first medication typically given at the start of cryonics procedures, propofol, has a mitigating effect on shivering as well.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The journal Neuropharmacology recently published a new review of the current state of the art in neuroprotection for ischemic stroke. A strict definition of a neuroprotectant excludes agents that have as their goal circulatory patency or the reversal of vascular occlusion, such as thrombolytics and anticoagulants. As a consequence, the only medication that is approved for (ischemic) stroke patients, tPA, is not a neuroprotectant. Despite the explosion of interest and research in the field (as documented in Ginsberg’s review), no single neuroprotective agent has successfully survived human clinical trials. The author discusses a number of reasons why encouraging results fail to translate into human success and stresses the fact that most agents in clinical trials are administered too late to confer positive benefits, and even states that “there is practically no evidence that neuroprotection for acute ischemic stroke is possible with any agent beyond ~6h.” It is no surprise, then, that the author does not report many promising neuroprotective strategies except for therapeutic hypothermia, high-dose human albumin therapy, and hyperacute magnesium therapy.

What does this mean for cryonics? As discussed in this review about medications in human cryopreservation stabilization, neuroprotection in cryonics has never been approached as a quest to find one single “magic bullet” to protect the brain after cardiac arrest. Cryonics stabilization medications protocol consists of a number of agents that intervene at different points in the ischemic cascade, reverse and inhibit blood clotting, and improve circulation. If rapid stabilization is possible, the time-window for treatment in cryonics is usually excellent in comparison to (focal) ischemic stroke where treatment within 1-2 hours is considered “hyperacute.” But cardiac arrest after an (often) long terminal and agonal period is not equivalent to (focal) ischemic stroke, and evidence that the medications that are given to cryonics patients are of great benefit is confined to a series of (non-published) experiments on (young) healthy animals in cryonics-associated laboratories.

When the author discusses future directions to find successful neuroprotective agents, he highlights the challenge of finding funding for neuroprotective trials that include metabolic treatment and combinations of (non-proprietary) drugs. In light of the predictable failure of mono-agents that the author reports, the discussion of the potential of combination treatment is remarkably brief and confined to the point that potential neuroprotectants need to be validated in combination with thrombolytic treatment. There is now an accumulating number of research papers on combination treatment in animal models that would warrant a more systematic analysis than the obligatory acknowledgement that combination therapy might produce better neuroprotection. Perhaps the most novel part of this new review of neuroprotective agents is the discussion of the author’s own research into high-dose human albumin therapy and the brief mention of a new paper (2007) that discusses the prospects of neuroprotective strategies that “are based on the principle that drugs should be activated by the pathological state that they are intended to inhibit.”

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Arthur C. Clark ( 1917-2008 ) was no stranger to cryonics. The famous science fiction author even assisted the cryonics organization Alcor during its legal battles. As he states in a letter in support of cryonics, “Although no one can quantify the probability of cryonics working, I estimate it is at least 90% — and certainly nobody can say it is zero.” For a long time, Alcor’s Cryonics Magazine had one subscriber in Sri Lanka, presumably Arthur C. Clark.

When asked about becoming immortal through cryonics or mind uploading, he answered that the question of immortality for humans is meaningless “since nobody really lives for more than about ten years anyway — after that we’re a different entity!” (as quoted in Ed Regis’ “Great Mambo Chicken & the Transhuman Condition”).

To many people, the demonstration of the technical feasibility of cryonics is not sufficient to make cryonics arrangements for themselves. Although cryonics can be presented as an advanced form of critical care medicine, one important difference between conventional medical treatment and cryonics is the duration of care, during which the patient is not conscious. As a consequence, contemporary cryonics is intrinsically tied to resuscitation in a far, and unknown, future. While this may be part of its appeal to some, it seems to produce feelings of angst and vulnerability in many others. This is not a trivial matter and needs careful thought by those offering cryonics services.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!