Depressed Metabolism

One of the most neglected aspects of cryonics is that its procedures, and the research to support them, can have important practical applications in mainstream fields such as organ preservation and emergency medicine. Contrary to popular opinion, cryonics does not just involve an optimistic extrapolation of existing science but can set the standard for these [...]

The website TopTenz recently published a list of the Top 10 Most Famous Preserved Body Parts. The list includes Galileo’s finger and Albert Einstein’s brain. As has been discussed on this blog before, the preservation of human brains (no matter how frivolous the intention) raises a number of important questions about the nature of death [...]

The major limiting obstacle to reversible cryopreservation of complex organs is cryoprotectant toxicity. Elimination of ice formation through vitrification requires high concentrations of cryoprotective agents. These high concentrations of cryoprotectants can be toxic to tissues. Over the years, major advances by the cryobiology research company 21st Centrury Medicine have been made to reduce the toxicity [...]

Today’s post on 21st Century Medicine’s vitrification agent M22 completes the series on vitrification agents in cryonics. To date, three different vitrification agents have been used for cryopreservation of humans: B2C (at Alcor from 2001-2005), VM-1 (at the Cryonics Institute since 2005) and M22  (at Alcor since 2005).
Perhaps the most encouraging development in cryonics is [...]

M22 represents the culmination of decades of work in applied cryobiology by researchers Gregory Fahy , Brian Wowk, and others to develop a vitrification agent that can recover complex organs (such as the kidney) from cryogenic temperatures without ice formation and minimal toxicity. In 2005, M22 was licensed by the patent holder 21st Century Medicine [...]

In 2001 the Alcor Life Extension Foundation licensed its first vitrification agent from the cryobiology research company 21st Century Medicine (21CM) to be used for its neuropatients. The composition of this agent, called B2C, has now been made public on Alcor’s website. The published composition is:
Dimethyl sulfoxide 24.765% w/v
Formamide 17.836%
Ethylene glycol [...]

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 [...]

The current generation of vitrification agents in cryonics permit elimination of ice formation using realistic cooling rates. But attempts to vitrify the brain require high concentrations of cryoprotective agents to inhibit ice formation. Such high concentrations of cryoprotectants can produce injury to tissues that is distinct from damage caused by ice formation.
Vitrification of complex tissues [...]

Because the current generation of vitrification agents permit cryopreservation of the brain without ice formation, the current objective of cryonics research is maintenance of viability of the brain during cryopreservation. The most popular viability assay that has been used in cryonics and cryonics-associated cryobiology research is the potassium/sodium ratio (K+/Na+ ratio). Because the ability [...]

A major public misperception is that cryonics involves the freezing of dead people. The objective of cryonics is not to preserve dead people with the hope of future revival but to place critically ill patients in a state of biostasis until a time when more advanced medical technologies might be available to treat and cure [...]

A technical cryonics article to be published in the conference proceedings of a customarily peer-reviewed scientific journal, entitled “Scientific Justification of Cryonics Practice (pdf),” by Ben Best, President of the Cryonics Institute, will appear in the next issue (Volume 11, Issue 2) of Rejuvenation Research. (A previous article by Ralph Merkle, “The Technical Feasibility of [...]