4 replies to this topic

[xlifex]

Regulating the Biggest Chill

Consumer protection for decapitated heads

http://www.reason.co.../rb022504.shtml

Ronald Bailey

Arizona's state legislature is about to consider one of the silliest pieces
of "consumer protection" legislation ever devised. Earlier this month,
Arizona state legislator Bob Stump (R-Peoria) coolly introduced a bill aimed
at regulating the activities of the nation's largest cryonics facility, the
Alcor Life Extension Foundation, under the authority of the Arizona Board of
Funeral Directors and Embalmers.

Alcor is currently cryopreserving about 60 patients at its Scottsdale,
Arizona, facility. Another 700 people have made arrangements to be deep
frozen when the Grim Reaper comes for them. Cryonicists believe that by
freezing brains they are preserving neurological information for future
retrieval, when advanced technologies for reviving corpses have been
developed.

Is this proposed legislation a reaction to complaints from cryonics
consumers? Not likely, since consumers currently enjoying cryonics services
are usually severed heads sitting in liquid nitrogen Dewar vessels frozen
at -321 degrees Fahrenheit. Stump argues that his bill is designed to
protect the interests of the families of the cryopreserved.

"We have no way of reassuring families and the public that their loved one's
remains are being treated with the utmost care and dignity," claimed Stump
in the Arizona Republic. (Stump's bill has garnered 50 co-sponsors so far.)
Of course, none of the surviving loved ones of the cryopreserved have
complained either, though Stump's bill appears to be fallout from the
unlovely family fight over freezing baseball legend Ted Williams' head and
body at the Alcor facility in 2002. Last summer, Sports Illustrated
published a lurid article about Williams' cryopreservation, declaring that
his head has been "drilled with holes" and "accidentally cracked as many as
10 times."

In an open letter opposing the legislation, cryonics researcher and
biophysicist Brian Wowk explains that the Foundation's standard
"neuropreservation" techniques involve drilling two small holes in the skull
in order to monitor the freezing process. In addition, Wowk reports that so
far the process of freezing large organs causes some unavoidable internal
fracturing. In this case, as with all other cryopreserved patients, it's
Williams' brain that sustained fractures, not his head. If future advanced
technologies can eventually revive frozen brains and bodies, stitching
together fractured tissue will be the least of the problems solved. However
ghoulish the cryonic procedure might sound to the squeamish, what could be
more caring and dignified than trying to arrange to bring your dead loved
ones back to life someday?

One could argue that cryonics operations defraud people by definition. After
all, nobody has ever reanimated a human body that was frozen in liquid
nitrogen. Having attended an Alcor conference, and met many people who plan
to use Alcor's services, it is clear to me that they have been thinking
about whether or not the cryonics option is worth it for a long time. The
conference I attended went deeply into the gory details about how bodies are
cryonically preserved. In a sense, cryonicists are engaging in a kind of
21st century Pascal's Wager.

French philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that people should "bet" on
believing in God because all they would be risking is the loss of a few
finite pleasures in the here and now in exchange for infinite bliss in
heaven. Similarly cryonicists are foregoing the pleasures they may have had
with the money they spend on cryonics in the hope of enjoying an extended
lifespan in the future. Cryonicists may be deluded dreamers who are making a
bad bet, but they are not harming or defrauding anyone.

In the end, it does seem singularly inappropriate to put people in the death
business in charge of regulating a group that believes it's in the life
business. "There's no difference between cryonics and cremation," asserted
an unsympathetic Rudy Thomas, director of the Arizona Board of Funeral
Directors and Embalmers, in the Arizona Capitol Times. He added, "You're
gone forever." Thomas' real goal is more nakedly revealed in a quote that
appeared in The New York Times on Oct 14, 2003: "These companies need to be
regulated or deregulated out of business." Far from protection for frozen
heads, this looks like just another attempt to use government to restrict
competition-because, in a devoutly-to-be-wished world where cryonics dreams
come true, the undertakers, and their regulators, will be out of business.
And good riddance.

Ronald Bailey, Reason's science correspondent, is the editor of Global
Warming and Other Eco Myths (Prima Publishing) and Earth Report 2000:
Revisiting the True State of the Planet(McGraw-Hill). His new book,
Liberation Biology: An Ethical and Scientific Defense of the Biotech
Revolution will be published by Prometheus later this year.

[advancedatheist]

French philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that people should "bet" on
believing in God because all they would be risking is the loss of a few
finite pleasures in the here and now in exchange for infinite bliss in
heaven.

I thought gambling is supposed to be "sinful." How can commiting a sin get you into "heaven"?

Similarly cryonicists are foregoing the pleasures they may have had
with the money they spend on cryonics in the hope of enjoying an extended
lifespan in the future. Cryonicists may be deluded dreamers who are making a
bad bet, but they are not harming or defrauding anyone.

I've never understood the argument that it's somehow tragic not to enjoy the life we have now if we know we're doomed. The hedonic total gets set back to zero at death regardless of what we've accumulated. It therefore makes no practical difference to me to endure hardships in my only shot at attaining radical life extension. That's why I've been looking for ways to work full-time as an Immortalist, considering that our society's prevailing models about living out a "pleasurable" remainder of one's life make no sense to me.

[jbmichaels]

There a few simple hole in the logic of being frozen. One is that cracks in organs will make it impossible to revive someone without major blood loss. Secondly, crystals formed will pierce all the blood cells, and lastly who can promise a given length of time these people will be frozen, given it costs x dollars per year to keep them so, and eventually it would be impracticle to do so. Also, who want them revived after 100 or so years when they would be a complete burden to society. What makes them think that the government would want them back.

Probably most cryo companies will go defunct and their people will melt when the plug is pulled. Perhaps is comforting to know you have a head start on the worm by so many decades, but the very act of freezing and drilling holes in the body may so badly damage it that it will not be able to be revived.

How are people going to make a living or survived when they are brought back.

it is so obvious.

yet the desperate will do anything I guess

jbm

[Bruce Klein]

Thanks jbmichaels,

You raise important questions concerning the feasibility of cryonics. Have you considered Alcor's FAQ reply?

The practice of cryonics is justified by three facts:

a) Cells and organisms need not operate continuously to remain alive. Many living things, including human embryos, can be successfully cryopreserved and revived. Adult humans can survive cardiac arrest and cessation of brain activity during hypothermia for up to an hour without lasting harm. Other large animals have survived three hours of cardiac arrest near 0°C (+32°F ) (Cryobiology 23, 483-494 (1986)). There is no basic reason why such states of "suspended animation" could not be extended indefinitely at even lower temperatures (although the technical obstacles are enormous).


b) Existing cryopreservation techniques, while not yet reversible, can preserve the fine structure of the brain with remarkable fidelity. This is especially true for cryopreservation by vitrification. The observations of point (a) make clear that survival of structure, not function, determines survival of the organism.


c) It is now possible to foresee specific future technologies (molecular nanotechnology and nanomedicine) that will one day be able to diagnose and treat injuries right down to the molecular level. Such technology could repair and/or regenerate every cell and tissue in the body if necessary. For such a technology, any patient retaining basic brain structure (the physical basis of their mind) will be viable and recoverable.



Q: What about fracturing?

A: Alcor currently uses liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196°C to store cryopatients. Liquid nitrogen is stable, reliable, and relatively inexpensive. The disadvantage of liquid nitrogen is that it is much colder than the glass transition temperature. Large cryopreserved objects tend to fracture if cooled far below their glass transition temperature. This occurs whether objects are preserved by freezing or by vitrification. Acoustic measurements and physical examination of rewarmed tissue suggest that apporoximately a dozen fractures may be typical as liquid nitrogen temperature is approached. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon university and Organ Recovery System, Inc., recently received a $1.3 million dollar grant from the federal government to study this problem.

It is important to understand that fractures are not open cracks. Cryopreserved organs, even if fractured, remain integrated objects prior to rewarming. An intact, but cracked, glass winshield is a good analogy. Chemical bonds are broken across the fracture, but nothing moves more than a few microns (millionths of a meter).

While fracturing sounds like a serious problem, it probably isn't from the standpoint of future medicine because little information loss likely results from it. The biggest problem with fracturing is that the rest of the cryopreservation process is getting so good that fracturing is moving to the forefront as the next problem to remove on the way to reversible suspended animation. Therefore Alcor is now testing a new patient care system that will operate at warmer temperatures to avoid fracturing. The fracturing problem is discussed further in the article Cryopreservation and Fracturing.

[Bruce Klein]

Interestingly, I found where Alcor's name came from researching on the site:

Q: Why did you choose the name Alcor?

A: In September of 1970, Linda and Fred Chamberlain, the founders of Alcor, were asked to come up with a name for a rescue team for the now defunct Cryonics Society of California (CSC). They believed that people would someday travel to the stars, so they searched through star catalogs and astronomy books, hoping to find a star that could serve as a cryonics acronym. Alcor, 80 Ursae Majoris, was precisely what they had been looking for. It is a dim 5th magnitude star near the bright star Mizar. It roughly fit the acronym Allopathic Cryogenic Rescue. (Allopathy, as opposed to Homeopathy, is a medical perspective wherein any treatment which improves the prognosis is valid.) Alcor [the star] has been used for centuries as a test for good eyesight. If you can see Alcor, you have excellent focus and vision.