Magazine Offers a Prize to Die For

Reuters ^ | Sept 19 2002

[Welsh Rabbit]

I was under the impression that once bodily tissues are frozen, they are destroyed because the expanding water caused by freezing breaks the cell walls. Isn't this why we don't have organ banks for transplants? Maybe a scientist Freeper out there has a better informed opinion on the matter.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

I heard about a company that was able to develop a way of freezing seafood a certain way so that the ice crystalls weren't as big and didn't expand as fast. The seafood tasted much better than normal frozen food when thawed. Maybe they use the same technique?

[LibWhacker]

Cryonics fans think nanorobots of the future will be programmed to swim around inside your body, mend the frozen cell walls, patch-up the effects of aging on your DNA and elsewhere, and repair anything else that ailed you in life.

[AntiGuv]

The real damage occurs when you *thaw* the frozen specimen. Presumably, cryonics 'patients' would be thawed and revived whenever the science advances to the point that this damage becomes reparable. The outstanding question in cryonics does not appear whether the 'patients' can eventually be revived, but rather what mental awareness they'll retain (in particular as regards personality & memory).

Having said all that, if someone truly believes in the potential of cryonics, they should probably go with Alcor rather than the Cryonics Institute. That's the most prestigious group by far where Ted Williams went and author Joe Haldeman plans to go, FWIW.

[The Duke]

Cryonics fans think nanorobots of the future will be programmed to swim around inside your body, mend the frozen cell walls, patch-up the effects of aging on your DNA and elsewhere, and repair anything else that ailed you in life.

And they say *MY* religion is hard to believe!!!

[Axenolith]

TECH SUPPORT!!!

[Wright is right!]

"If the winner is not eager to be preserved, the magazine is offering an alternative prize -- a week in Hawaii and a visit to the Mauna Kea observatory."

At 16,000 feet, it gets pretty cold up THERE too!

Michael

[Welsh Rabbit]

Another thing I wonder about; what sort of guarantee do you have that these cryogenic labs will still be in business in a hundred or two hundred years after you die? What happens to your corpse if the lab goes bust?

[AntiGuv]

That's why you'd want to go with Alcor, IMHO. They have a very solid investment model designed for the long-term with an independent oversight board and staff that are almost all listed members themselves (and many of these have their own family members either in Alcor or listed for future cryogenic preservation).

A number of the fly-by-night cryonics agencies have folded or have shoddy business/investment models that I wouldn't consider very confidence inspiring. When they've folded in the past, the bodies have been disposed of by the state as required by law. The Cryonics Institute is the most 'bargain basement' firm which would make me immediately skeptical (though they go through lengthy explanations of how they can provide equivalent guarantee on their site) and all but two of the staff are 'unpaid volunteers' according to their literature.

It's been some while since I've reviewed Alcor's investment and oversight model, and I'm aware that they've been making some changes of late (to make the oversight even more independent and guaranteed). In any case, they guarantee that they're in it for the long haul and that revival is as important as preservation in their planning. They've also been chosen by the most prominent individuals which I think lends to their credibility.

If you're interested, Alcor makes much of the information available on their Website and one can also order the full text of their Patient Care Trust for $3.00. If you visit their homepage - http://www.alcor.org/index.html - and go to the FAQ's you'll find more complete answers to these questions (at least as they relate to Alcor) about halfway down the list.

[AntiGuv]

To be fair, here's the homepage for the Cryonics Institute (the one involved in this New Scientist prize offer):

http://www.cryonics.org/

And here's a list of links to other cryonics organizations in case you wish to review and compare them:

http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Individual/Cryonics/

Go down to Organisations on this page to find that list - there's also a great deal of further info in the links there.

[Welsh Rabbit]

Thanks for the info.

[sleavelessinseattle]

Wake me up when Islam isn't a word in the cyberdictionary.

[Dog Gone]

Cryonics fans think that people of the future will really want to spend the resources to bring someone back from the dead who is hopelessly out of touch with modern life, and physically in terrible shape.

I'm not sure why they'd want to do that, except as a research project to see if they could.

[AntiGuv]

I'm not in the habit of getting into general discussions about this, but since it's come up here, here's Alcor's answer to the expense (resources) objection. As for the physical health objection, obviously the technology which can bring people back to life would inherently be capable of repairing any physical maladies as well.

Here's a thought: the chances of resuscitation for someone eaten by worms is 0%.....

Q: How will the cost of resuscitation be met? Won’t sophisticated nanotechnology be very costly?

A: While the technical magnitude of the problem of treating suspension patients is enormous by today’s standards, the future costs in terms of human effort and resource expenditure will probably be modest. Nanotechnology will be developed, (and is being developed), to build better computers and waste-free industrial processes. Cell and tissue repair technology will be developed for plant and animal husbandry, and for medical improvements. A day will come when configuring existing programmable cell repair devices for the problems of suspension patients will require only moderate effort. The efforts required to ensure today’s patients reach that day will be greater by far, and they represent the true challenge of cryonics.

Thus, it seems unlikely resuscitation will "cost" much, in currently understood terms. Resuscitation and repair will depend on the development of a mature molecular technology—a technology capable of manipulating living things and building molecular-scale, self-reproducing devices and tools. The key term here is self-reproducing.

Thus, an aged or diseased individual may be rejuvenated by swallowing a few such devices, which then enter body cells to effect repairs. While the "start-up" costs of such a technology will be staggering, the actual "cost-per-patient treated" will be small, and the initial expense will be amortized very quickly.

By way of example, take the issue of how much the typical $3.00 LCD semiconductor wristwatch would have cost in 1965. Even the best mechanical chronometers ever made cannot match a cheap semiconductor watch for precision, lightness, or dependability. No matter how much money a person had in 1965, it would have been impossible to have purchased a cheap "disposable" semiconductor timepiece.

An even more instructive example is that of a present self-reproducing technology. Go down to your local garden shop and look at the seed section. There is probably no plant in the rack that did not take tens of man-years of careful selection of favorable mutations to arrive at something you pay a dollar or two for, take home, drop in the ground, and follow the directions on the package. A lot of nanotechnology is probably going to be transported in the form of "seeds." The future holds the possibility of purchasing a "seed" which requires no more than water, air, and a few other elements, and results in a Home Medical Unit, capable of advanced resuscitation. In all respects, living things are much more complex than anything now made by the hand of man. Such complexity, however, is achievable by man.

So, how much will reviving suspension patients cost? By current criteria, many think it will cost next to nothing. Per capita wealth will be astronomical compared to today, and the technology required to effect reanimation will be derived from self-reproducing systems. Rational population growth coupled with abundant energy will have increased by many orders of magnitude the capital and energy at everyone’s disposal. This has, of course, already happened to some extent; just stop and think for a moment how much energy you have at your disposal, and what life would be like if the engines and machines in your life disappeared. Imagine doing your laundry by hand, walking everywhere or riding on the back of an animal, stoking the furnace by hand, heating your bath over an open fire, (and only once a month or so at that!), and so on.

One last point: the technology required to resuscitate today’s patients will be largely developed and paid for independent of any efforts by Alcorians. Why? Because nanotechnology is incredibly desirable and useful in many, many other areas of human existence. Being able to design machines and devices at the same level of complexity as living things will allow us to build faster, smarter machines. It will allow us to treat aging, cancer, or heart disease, and reverse the early stages of what today is mistakenly labeled as death. It will allow us to re-grow limbs and pack all the information in the world’s libraries into a volume measured in cubic centimeters. These are things people want very badly, and they are things they will pay money to develop. So, the economic incentives for bio-repair technology are already here, and developments are proceeding apace completely apart from the activities and motivations of Alcorians. Revival of suspension patients will be a beneficial side-effect of molecular technologies.

To directly answer the question: We speculate resuscitating people suspended with today’s techniques could cost about the equivalent of a $3.00 LCD wristwatch—or less. The big issue is seeing to it that: a) patients get frozen (vitrified) with techniques which preserve all the biological information necessary to effect revival and recovery; b) they stay frozen (vitrified) long enough to reach a point where revival is both possible and economical; and c) Alcor is still around with the $3.00 in hand to request the service.

This is not to suggest this future scenario is going to come without effort. We do not know many important details of how resuscitation of people will be accomplished, or what many limits will be. A poor job of cryostasis or poor maintenance may result in irretrievable loss of identity information. And, a cryonics organization must survive to get its patients to that point in the future where reanimation is possible and affordable. A minimalist approach is unlikely to get them through the unexpected problems which are bound to turn up.

[shaggy eel]

,,, like 99,9% of the population, I'd find particular value in a process that could take me back, rather than forward.

[LibKill]

I can see it in my mind's eye.

A close relative enters me in this contest. I win, but do not know it.

I am awakened in a future time.

Technician: "Wellcome to the ####st century! You have a whole new life in front of you."

LibKill: "OH NO! NOT ANOTHER ONE!"

"The horror, the horror."

:)

[1FreeAmerican]

Your Hawaiian Factoid for the day- Mauna Kea is 13,796', and Mauna Loa is 13,677'from sea level. However the actual height of this volcano is measured from the bottom of the ocean floor and I think that makes it the tallest mountain on the planet.

[2Trievers]

Someone should have told Ted Williams. &;-)

[2Trievers]

In that case ... you'll be needing one of these Shagster ... &;-)