cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/23784896
The interesting thing about this is that these people never stop to think that the future they dream off might never happen. Aside from the fact that their cryo company might just go under, they don’t ever consider that in 200 years they might just wake up under a dystopia.
The suspension part, the cryonics itself, is proven simple science, biomimicry of a natural phenomenon.
It’s the reanimation process of complex neutral tissue that hasn’t been fully worked out yet, but it’s not like there’s been zero progress or research into the process.
I can’t see a reason not to expect we’ll figure it out.
I don’t know about your neighbors, but mine don’t have any life extension or cryonics scientists working with them specifically on developing reanimation processes.
I think places like the cryonics institute specifically are doing pretty well at developing reanimation processes.
Okay, but I don’t think people are skeptical about the possibility of freezing people. The resurrection part and the (un)likelihood of a company lasting the centuries this might take are the parts that are a tougher sell.
Like, I don’t really object in principle to someone basically running a Kickstarter for immortality, but the track record of delivery is pretty dire, no? The number of early cryonics businesses/orgs that went bankrupt (and what happened to their clients) definitely does not inspire confidence.
Not at all dire, to my understanding.
Any arguments I hear against the reanimation process of cryonics sound like critics of computers or the internet
Or like teachers 30 years ago asking facetiously “are you going to carry around a calculator in your pocket your whole life?”
Before a technology is viable, it seems impossible and impractical.
After the technology is proven, everyone knew it was coming and they pretended it made intuitive sense all along.
With a process as simple as this one, which is basically just finding the right solution with which to safely lower the temperature of human tissue and then safely raise the temperature of human tissue, I really don’t see some technological or physiological hurdle that can’t be overcome what scientific perseverance.
We know insects, frogs and fish cryonically rest and reanimate regularly, we know larger animals and even humans can get frozen to “death” and then come back to life later, we just have to figure out exactly how to control the process so as to minimize damage.
Nothing about that is impossible or unreasonable to expect.
As for the companies failing, that’s just standard corporate startup.
Netscape isn’t around anymore, Google is.
Maybe alcor goes by the wayside and ReVi standardizes the process.
I don’t know which company is going to do it, but I’m confident some company or institute is going to succeed.
Going back to my original question whether a company is proven or not, have any of the companies freezing pets brought them back successfully? It doesn’t have to be a German shepherd or anything big like that–something small like a rabbit will do.
Call me a stickler, but I do think it’s important to have completed at least one successful run to call a process “proven.”
You don’t consider the cryonic process of freezing and reanimating insects, amphibians and fish established?
Even though they literally freeze and then come back to life?
No large animals that have been cryonically frozen have been whole-body reanimated as far as I know, they’re focusing on reanimating whole organs and specifically brains first.
A group called 21st century medicine froze and brought back a rabbit brain with " the cell membranes, synapses, and intracellular structures all intact* back in 2016.
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-mammal-s-brain-has-been-cryonically-frozen-and-recovered-for-the-first-time.
If the process is freezing and then reviving a dead human, then no. The (interesting, valuable) research on living fish, rabbit brains, and invertebrates is not that, and quite different from the product companies are asking tens of thousands of dollars for.
I also think it’s important not to conflate suspended-animation-type cryonics that involve freezing and reviving a living creature with what this is originally about, i.e., freezing a dead creature to preserve it for resurrection using unspecified, hypothetical technology. As far as I’m aware, all cryonics companies freeze people upon death, and none are freezing living humans.
Why do you think the process is different?
It’s literally lowering the temperature of different tissues and then raising the temperature of those tissues while keeping the structures intact.
It’s the same process.
Brain death doesn’t immediately occur upon the declaration of medical death, so they have several minutes to lower the temperature into a state of suspended animation, which is the same process that natural organisms regularly participate in.
It all depends on how you understand death.
Humans seem to think death is the same across the board and immutable.
But people’s hearts stop and you can give them an adrenaline shot to bring them back to life.
People stop breathing and you can open up a vent straight into their lungs.
Coma.patients spontaneously reanimate.
After the heart stops and someone has declared dead, you have 3 to 4 minutes of brain structures still being viable.
That isn’t magic, each case is physiological process that is not yet understood as well as it could be.
Like shocking a heart to stop arrhythmia used to be misunderstood as “nothing to be done, the heart is broken”.
Raising the temperature of tissue after lowering The temperature and preserving tissue structure is a technical physiological hurdle that regularly occurs in nature.
Cryonic institutes and organizations want to bring that process to larger mammals and humans.