Depressed Metabolism

Several of my clients and friends have asked me for observations regarding securing their cryonics arrangements even with contrary wishes of friends and relatives.  Given the recent Mary Robbins case in Colorado, and multiple previous cases available in some detail on the websites of both CI and Alcor, structuring your affairs in the most secure [...]

One of the most common criticisms of cryonics is to argue that cryonics can only be a legitimate endeavor when there is (peer reviewed) demonstration of whole body suspended animation. Advocates of cryonics  point out that this is an unreasonable position because it sets a standard for rational decision making (certainty) that is rarely encountered, [...]

Advocates of human cryopreservation argue that death is not an event but a process. Cryonics patients are stabilized at low temperatures in anticipation of a second medical opinion in the future. This raises an important ethical issue. What is the moral status of cryonics patients? It is not possible to argue that cryonics patients will [...]

There are various competing strategies how to achieve meaningful life extension or rejuvenation, including , but not limited to, genetic manipulation, periodical elimination of damage, caloric restriction,  molecular nanotechnology and mind uploading. A useful review of these strategies has been published in the book The Scientific Conquest of Death: Essays on Infinite Lifespans (2004) by [...]

“The crisis of empiricism, expressed in David Hume’s scepticism, was the product of a misinterpretation of knowledge and vanishes for a correct interpretation – such is the outcome of a philosophy grown from the soil of modern science. The rationalist has not only presented the world with a series of untenable systems of speculative philosophy [...]

Cryonics Institute President Ben Best talks about cryonics and how cryonics is related to rejuvenation in this one-hour long interview on “It’s Rainmaking Time!”
Further Reading: Depressed Metabolism Interview with Ben Best

Scientific consensus seems a reasonable concept. If a great number of individual scientists arrive at a similar opinion this is generally a sufficient reason to have confidence in those views. Skeptics about scientific consensus often use examples of scientific views that started out as a minority view to become the majority view later. Although these [...]

The Detroit News features a story about cryonics that is a good illustration of the upward battle that cryonics faces in the media. First and foremost, this story reinforces the idea that cryonics concerns the practice of freezing dead people:
Preparation of the body is a five-day procedure. It begins with keeping the body as cool [...]

Singularity skeptic Mark Plus drew my attention to the following blog post. The author writes that:

Chalmers’ (and other advocates of the possibility of a Singularity) argument starts off with the simple observation that machines have gained computing power at an extraordinary rate over the past several years, a trend that one can extrapolate to a [...]

William Faloon is a Licensed Funeral Director and Embalmer (Florida license number: F042784)
Human beings are largely unaware about the gruesome nature of “death”
Humans also shy away from the mutilation that occurs during hospital surgery.
Hollywood films portray cryonics in a glamorous high-tech manner that makes it appear that one’s body can easily be placed into a [...]

The biggest obstacle to the acceptance of cryonics is medical myopia; the idea that someone who has been pronounced dead by contemporary medical criteria will still be considered dead by future criteria. Advocates of human cryopreservation strongly argue against this. There are few things more discomforting than the idea that medical professionals of the future [...]

On the forum of the Immortality Institute there is an interesting exchange about the feasibility and time line for reversible cryopreservation. Cryobiologist Brian Wowk weighs in with some interesting observations:

I think in the next 20 years more small animal organs, and perhaps some human organs, may be reversibly cryopreserved. The best scenario for cryonics would [...]

One question that is going to be of great interest is how aging baby boomers will confront aging and death. Where previous generations have found peace in religion and silent resignation, there are reasons to believe that this generation will not be so complacent. The baby boom generation, or at least those who have shaped [...]

There is a growing literature that discusses the technical aspects of revival of cryonics patients. The following list of the published literature was compiled by Ralph Merkle and Robert Freitas and published as an appendix of their article on molecular nanotechnology in Cryonics Magazine 2008-4:
Robert C.W. Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality, Doubleday, NY, 1964
Jerome B. [...]

Today is the second anniversary of Depressed Metabolism. As of writing, this website has close to 200 feed subscribers. On an average day the website has 150 unique visitors, which is an encouraging increase in traffic since our last update. This is even more remarkable in light of the fact that new blog entries with [...]