Depressed Metabolism

This is the first in a series of interviews with individuals in the life extension and cryonics movement. We start off with an interview with Ben Best, president of the Cryonics Institute.
What is your philosophy toward life?
I think that “sense of life” or emotional involvement  in life is the most crucial determinant of orientation [...]

On the Immortality Institute cryonics forum, Alcor Board member and researcher Brian Wowk has posted some insightful comments on the difference between suspended animation and cryonics. Although  impressive technical advances in cryonics to date, such as vitrification, have failed to translate into increased membership growth for cryonics organizations, many cryonics observers believe that demonstration of [...]

Now online is Mike Perry’s article “Historical Steps Toward the Scientific Conquest of Death.” This article was previously published in 2003 in Physical Immortality, a short-lived publication by the Society for Venturism.
The article is adapted from Chapter 2 of Mike Perry’s book, Forever For All: Moral Philosophy, Cryonics, and the Scientific Prospects for Immortality.

This book [...]

Although critical philosophers like Herbert Marcuse (1898 – 1979) are not known for their contributions to economics or analytic philosophy, Marcuse’s essay “The Ideology of Death” (1952) should appeal to those who think that death is not a necessary part of existence, let alone something to celebrate. In this essay, the author discusses the phenomenon [...]

Despite sensational news items about “zombie dogs,” biomedical researchers and clinicians have known for a long time that interruptions in consciousness and blood circulation can be reversed without neurological deficits, provided such events do not produce ischemic injury. There are even species who can enter a state of reversible metabolic arrest such as tardigrades (water [...]

The two most popular technical arguments against human cryopreservation are that cryonics causes irreversible freezing damage and that the delay between pronouncement of legal death and the start of cryonics procedures causes irreversible injury to the brain. Such arguments can be countered by pointing out that freezing damage and prolonged periods of warm ischemia do [...]

Let’s face it: we’re all (still) getting older, and aging leads to death. This is a major reason for cryonics’ existence — to preserve ourselves, usually in an aged, diseased, and/or deteriorated state, until medical science is capable of curing our ailments and prolonging our lives. Because many people (especially young cryonics supporters) tend to [...]

Most life extensionists and transhumanists do not buy into many of the myths about cryonics. But one perspective that is sometimes voiced by futurists is that cryonics is a rational backup plan until aging is cured. This position has some serious shortcomings and potentially lethal implications.
Human cryopreservation is the practice of placing terminally ill patients [...]

How do you teach a child about something that is so far “unproven”?  How do you bring up the subject of cryonics and how it may allow someone to be reanimated in the future?
I am a cryonicist, I’ve been a signed member for years, I’m also a mother, social activist, environmentalist and author.  I teach [...]

In August 1968, Cryonics Reports (a publication from the Cryonics Society of New York) published an editorial that advocates the re-evaluation of the mortician and the funeral profession to make it a part of long term medical care, i.e. to create a life industry.  A part of this editorial is published below:
In 1964, with the [...]

Immortality as a zero probability of information-theoretic death may not be possible or realistic. A more practical (and less controversial) objective of radical life extension would be to minimize the chance of information-theoretic death. In analogy with Aubrey de Grey’s objective to cure human aging by engineering negligible senescence (SENS), the objective of radical life [...]

A recent investigation (PDF) of state statutes and legislation affecting the ability to implement a nation-wide program to standardize medical orders reflecting individual patients’ end-of-life treatment preferences was made publicly available by Oregon Health & Science University.
The POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment) Paradigm Program was developed in Oregon and strives to increase adherence to [...]

In “Philosophical Models of Immortality in Science Fiction,” (in: Immortal Engines: Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy) John Martin Fischer and Ruth Curl construct a taxonomy for immortality. As can be seen in the figure on the left (click for larger image), only some models of immortality meet the criterion of [...]

“People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live…[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”
Albert Einstein

One sign of the lack of faith in the future progress of technology and the poor acceptance [...]

In his 1998 essay “The Failure of the Cryonics Movement” (part 1, part 2), Saul Kent stresses that cryonics has remained so unpopular because nobody thinks it will work. One observable implication of this view is that we would expect to see broader acceptance of cryonics as its technical feasibility increases. Unfortunately, there is [...]

Few, if any, cryonicists today can retrace their personal interest in cryonics to Evan Cooper. Despite the broader recognition of Robert Ettinger’s book, “The Prospect of Immortality,” which was commercially published in 1964, Cooper’s privately published 1962 manuscript, “Immortality: Physically, Scientifically, Now,” is an important parallel effort in what would later become known as cryonics. [...]

The idea that cryonics does not involve the freezing of “dead” people but is form of low temperature care to prevent death is almost as old as the idea of cryonics itself. In May 1968, Cryonics Reports, the publication of the Cryonics Society of New York (CSNY), writes that recognition of cryonics as a [...]

In “Heritage of Horror,” Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi writes that Lovecraft’s short story “Cool Air” “anticipates cryogenic research.” We can forgive Joshi the common mistake of writing “cryogenics” when he means “cryonics,” but how much cryonics is there really in Lovecraft’s “Cool Air?”
“Cool Air” (1926) tells the story of a struggling writer who has secured [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Twenty years ago, Charles B. Olson published an article called “A Possible Cure for Death” in the journal Medical Hypotheses. In it, he favorably compares methods of chemical preservation to cryogenic preservation. Unfortunately, this article provoked no wide discussion or attempts at implementation. As the author notes on his website, other than requests for [...]