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Cryonics on UK TV


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#31 advancedatheist

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Posted 30 July 2006 - 02:46 PM

Some press coverage about this show in the UK:

The ice men cometh

http://living.scotsm...m?id=1092302006

The Britons dying to get into the human deep freeze

http://www.dailymail...ource=&ito=1490

My condolences to Michael Riskin, BTW.

#32 Matt

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Posted 30 July 2006 - 03:25 PM

See this comment from - Steve Webster, Amsterdam, Netherlands

"Cryogenics has not been proven to work and even if it did, who'd want to be reborn in 100 years time anyway? Especially with 60 year old bits inside us!"


It's so annoying seeing these sort of comments all the time! - It's like the human race are just totally ..... (I cant say it!) im too nice lol.


First of all, we have to try these things to see if they work! as with any proceedure, invetion or whatever. People all through the 21st century said "that would never work" but lots of things soon became a reality. The second is the fact that if you have the tools to revive someone, then surely the technology will exist to re-engineer the body so you are much younger than at the time of your death!

people like this will always come up with something stupid, always try to find negatives and never explore the positive things.

#33 Matt

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Posted 30 July 2006 - 03:33 PM

I've just emailed Matt, who lives in Wales, to ask if he could possibly record the program for us.


Yes I'll record it on DVDR, transfer to computer and get it on google or something by tuesday.

#34 Matt

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Posted 31 July 2006 - 07:02 PM

Reminder... program is on in 1 hour :)

#35 AdamDavis

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Posted 31 July 2006 - 07:24 PM

I know! I'm really excited :)

#36 quadclops

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Posted 31 July 2006 - 07:26 PM

Thanks Matt! :)

#37 AdamDavis

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Posted 31 July 2006 - 09:04 PM

I enjoyed that very much! If only it was slightly longer.

#38 Matt

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Posted 31 July 2006 - 09:12 PM

A fair look into cryonics I thought, although some of the researchers used the words "impossible" for things like nanobots because of the laws of physics, and re animation of the patients will never happen. But like the guy said at the end, critics come out with these words like impossible or it will never happen and time and time again, they are proved wrong and science fiction becomes science fact.

#39 london710

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Posted 31 July 2006 - 09:34 PM

just watched it. would have liked to see more time spend on future reanimation theories, but overall i enjoyed it. also would have liked to see more of aubrey de grey than the 5 seconds allocated :)

kas

#40 Live Forever

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Posted 31 July 2006 - 09:43 PM

I am looking forward to being able to see it more now after the praise. (anyone know when it will air on National Geographic in the US?)

#41 AdamDavis

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Posted 01 August 2006 - 07:45 PM

I don't Nate, sorry. I'm sure it'll say somewhere. I really want to talk about the show in more depth but I don't want to spoil it (I know it's a documentary...but hey!) for you in the US still waiting [tung].

#42 quadclops

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Posted 02 August 2006 - 04:43 PM

Here's a review of the show from The Scotsman.
http://living.scotsm...m?id=1111822006

A Bird's Eye view of resurrection
LOUISA PEARSON

Death in the Deep Freeze, Five
Cutting Edge: Wedding Days, Channel 4

OOPS, I did it again. I committed myself to an hour of gut-wrenchingly explicit medical procedures despite having the constitution of a gnat. This week's mistake was perhaps justified, in that Death in the Deep Freeze looked as if it was going to be a theoretical debate. You don't need to be a science fiction fan to have heard of cryonics, the branch of "science" which deep-freezes people in the hope that, someday, scientists will work out a way to bring them back to life. It raises so many ethical questions that I was fully prepared to enter a philosophical minefield.

Little did I know, but "for the first time ever" cameras were going to be allowed to film exactly what happens from the moment a fully paid-up cryonics believer dies, until they end up in their time capsule. To make matters worse, we had spent the first half of the programme getting to know Anita, a nice American lady who declared "I wanna live forever", without for a moment looking like she was going to break into a dance routine from Fame. Anita was dying, but in the hope that she and husband Michael could be reunited at some point in the future, they had both signed up to be cryogenically preserved - frozen.

It seemed like a long shot but heck, it's her life insurance police and if the lady wants the deep freeze instead of a coffin, then why not? I was waiting for a discussion of what the world might be like in the future - a green and peaceful land (not likely) or a post-apocalypse war-torn, genetically modified desert. Would the frozen people have their memories intact when they came out of the freezer chest? Would life really be that much fun when all of your friends had died a few centuries earlier? What if modern humans have had their genes meddled with so that they all look like Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt. Wouldn't that make you a hideous Frankenstein to be ogled?

These thoughts were silenced when we joined Anita's body shortly after death at the Alcor facility, a shady place which really did seem to come from a sci-fi thriller. Readers, there were tubes sucking pink stuff out of Anita's body in a truly alarming manner. Then came the words "we need to see the brain". As the drill started its work, I reached for a cushion, 100 per cent sure that I didn't need to see her brain. The one small mercy was that Anita had gone for full-body preservation, rather than the half-price severed head option.

Putting the surgery to one side, this was a fascinating programme. We were taken to labs where serious cryonics research is taking place and teams are managing to freeze single organs then reanimate them with a view to helping the organ donor process. My favourite character was Dr Arthur Rowe, a professor of forensic medicine, who declared that those paying $80,000 to be frozen were being conned. Cryonics, he said was like taking a hamburger and trying to turn it back into a cow. But, still, you couldn't dismiss Anita and Michael as completely barking. What's not to say that in a couple of hundred years time the technology won't be available to bring them back to life? As long as Alcor doesn't go bankrupt, they could have the last laugh.

Soothing relief from all this talk of death came in the form of Cutting Edge: Wedding Days. The documentary had a neat and nifty premise - take the wedding photos page from a local newspaper in August 1980 and see how married life has treated the couples. And so we took a trip through the wedding album and beyond via 20 couples. Arranged thematically, from the proposal to the divorce, with kids, rows and money troubles in between, it was essentially an hour of soundbites which created an engaging picture of marriage in modern Britain. Of the 20 couples, only twelve had gone on to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. Happily ever after? The odds aren't great, but it's a better bet than the deep freeze.


This review is soooo typical of the uninformed and cynical bias that reigns supreme in media reports on cryonics, and that's cryonics, Louisa, not cryogenics! Can't anyone get these two right?

It raises so many ethical questions that I was fully prepared to enter a philosophical minefield.


What are these big ethical questions I keep hearing about?! People make thier own choices about how to spend their own money, and what they want done with their own bodies when they deanimate. Where's the ethical dilemma? How is it anyone else's business to question what we are choosing to do with our own bodies? How does this affect anyone else!

To make matters worse, we had spent the first half of the programme getting to know Anita, a nice American lady who declared "I wanna live forever", without for a moment looking like she was going to break into a dance routine from Fame.


Soooo, I'm guessing just wanting to survive is somehow a crazy person's desire? [huh]

. . . the Alcor facility, a shady place which really did seem to come from a sci-fi thriller. Readers, there were tubes sucking pink stuff out of Anita's body in a truly alarming manner.


Nice! Was it blue-lit with lots of crackling electrical equipment in the background? Was there a leering hunchback assisting the mad scientists? Jeez! [!:)]
Besides, how is this more creepily-gruesome than what you'd see at the embalming room of a funeral parlor?

We were taken to labs where serious cryonics research is taking place and teams are managing to freeze single organs then reanimate them with a view to helping the organ donor process.


Sooooo, saving single organs is more serious work than saving the entire person? Ri-i-i-ght! [wis]

. . . a fully paid-up cryonics believer . . .


Believer? Y'know if this program had been about this woman's belief in an afterlife through Jesus Christ, and her televised burial with full Catholic or Protestant funeral rituals, I bet there would have been a lot less mocking going on! Even though religion has not yet proven to be able to bring anyone back anymore than the media likes to point out that cryonics has!

People continually like to point out how unlikely cryonics is to work, based on their smattering of science knowledge, but then they are willing to put blind faith in a completely scientifically unproven magic system to deliver them from the grave. It shouldn't, but it just eats at me! [ang]

#43 quadclops

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Posted 02 August 2006 - 07:31 PM

Kewl beans! Thanks again Matt! :)

#44 Athanasios

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Posted 02 August 2006 - 08:40 PM

it works

#45 Live Forever

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Posted 02 August 2006 - 08:42 PM

Will it be accepted though  [mellow]  maybe I should have got permission to upload this first ?

Could anyone tell me if this video is working http://www.matthewla...ryonics_doc.avi

its a few minute sample vid.

Works for me. Looking forward to seeing the whole thing. :)

#46 quadclops

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Posted 02 August 2006 - 08:46 PM

Hmmm, I only seem to be able to get the audio, no picture. [mellow]

#47 Matt

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Posted 02 August 2006 - 09:00 PM

Make sure you have the codec and/or player (its free)

http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/

#48 Live Forever

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Posted 02 August 2006 - 09:05 PM

Hmmm, I only seem to be able to get the audio, no picture.  [mellow]

You probably don't have the right codec. I would recommend either VLC Media Player or the K-Lite Codec Pack (Full) to be able to play most video formats and codecs. If you have further questions about video stuff, PM me and I can try to help you out.


Edit: ok, Matt answered the question. I was going to assume it was either Divx or Xvid, since those are the two most popular compression formats.

Edited by Live Forever, 02 August 2006 - 09:17 PM.


#49 Matt

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Posted 02 August 2006 - 09:08 PM

K-lite has every popular codec, probably my fave codec pack.

#50 quadclops

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Posted 02 August 2006 - 09:28 PM

Kewl! It works now, thanks guys! I can't wait to see the rest of it! [thumb]

#51 Live Forever

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Posted 03 August 2006 - 02:37 AM

Thanks, Matt! I dled it and will watch it in a little bit. You da' man. [thumb]

#52 advancedatheist

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Posted 03 August 2006 - 03:12 AM

Regarding the cryonics critic Arthur Rowe, Mike Darwin gives some background on Rowe's weak scientifc career in the September, 1989 issue of Cryonics magazine (you'll have to scroll down a few pages):

http://www.alcor.org...ryonics8909.txt

Judging from his appearance in the video, apparently Rowe doesn't have a problem with putting flayed plastinated human bodies on display, only with vitrifying recently functional humans to try to save their lives.

Edited by advancedatheist, 03 August 2006 - 03:49 AM.


#53 Live Forever

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Posted 03 August 2006 - 04:30 AM

I just got done watching it. Pretty good overall, but the critics presented didn't seem to overall know what they were talking about. Luckily it was only about 20% or so "dissenters".

Also, when they were drilling into the head during the procedure, it made me a little bit squeamish.

#54 advancedatheist

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Posted 04 August 2006 - 04:15 AM

Google Video has it online now:

http://video.google....0436&q=cryonics

#55 Matt

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Posted 04 August 2006 - 09:48 AM

for some reason the sound seems like it's a tiny bit out of sync???

.

Edited by Matt, 04 August 2006 - 10:00 AM.


#56 Live Forever

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Posted 04 August 2006 - 03:20 PM

for some reason the sound seems like it's a tiny bit out of sync???

Seems ok to me.

#57 Matt

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Posted 04 August 2006 - 08:38 PM

I may have had some processes going on in the backround at the time when I viewed the video earlier...

#58 Live Forever

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Posted 04 August 2006 - 08:43 PM

Thanks for getting that up, Matt. I bet a lot of people who would never have considered cryonics will stumble upon it on Google and watch it.

#59 JediMasterLucia

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Posted 07 September 2006 - 07:14 PM

I have seen the program on Google [thumb]
It was fascinating




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