Feasability of Cryonics

[Nephtys]

Cryonic suspension and revival... the idea that someone perhaps with an incurable disease or on the verge of death could be frozen and then revived and healed at at a later time. Be it neurosuspension of full-body, what is likely posisble and what is not? What are your opinions of the concept?

[Il Saggiatore]

Cryonic suspension and revival... the idea that someone perhaps with an incurable disease or on the verge of death could be frozen and then revived and healed at at a later time. Be it neurosuspension of full-body, what is likely posisble and what is not? What are your opinions of the concept?

The problem is to prevent the cells from bursting when the water freezes and becomes ice.
Simply dumping the body into liquid nitrogen is not enough, because you cannot cool the inner part quickly enough to prevent ice from forming crystals (the heat conductivity of the tissues is not high enough).
You could put anti-freeze into the blood, but I don't think there is a healthy way to get the desired results.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Lower animals can do it, so we should be able to as well. The ice lysis of cells problem is overcome by special proteins that target ice crystals that get too large and stop them growing anymore. If we can perfect that process, we can do cryogenics.

[dragon]

How many different types of suspension are there. You here about statis chambers in sci-fi, grav tanks in event horizon might just be deep sleep. Plus there are several differnet mentioned in books.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There are also Zero Tau pods from the Night's Dawn Trilogy, but they stop time from entering the field area and aren't really cryogenics.

[Shroom Man 777]

We could just slow down the metabolism, keep the body refrigerated, and do that zombie shit those guys in South America do. It'd work, I think. Suspended animation doesn't have to deal with turning a human body into an icicle.

[Guardsman Bass]

Most of the people who are cryonically frozen are dead before that happens- and there is still no good idea how to unfreeze someone.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Cryonic suspension and revival... the idea that someone perhaps with an incurable disease or on the verge of death could be frozen and then revived and healed at at a later time. Be it neurosuspension of full-body, what is likely posisble and what is not? What are your opinions of the concept?

This shows me that reading the OP before replying is a valuable skill. In this case, it is technically possible, as soon as we can imitate Nature to a degree that we don't have human-pops. This assumes you freeze them before they die. After they die, you're likely wasting a perfectly good cryogenics tube on a corpse.

There are ethical issues with freezing someone, only to revive them centuries and centuries later. Would they be able to be productive citizens of the future society, for one? It would be like taking Leonardo Da Vinci and dumping him into modern New York. He might've been quite the genius in his day, but now, his knowlege is over half a millenium out of date. The potential burden on society would likely outweigh the gain of reviving a cryogenically suspended person.

Better to use the technique in an environment where it won't matter how far behind the times you've become . . . aboard a starship heading out to colonize, say Tau Ceti. In this case, it won't matter what happens back on dear mother Earth. It won't matter what happens to society back home because they won't be on Tau Ceti when you get there and wake up (this ignores the possibility Earth will dispatch a faster expedition sometime after yours left, and the second expedition beats you to Tau Ceti, in which case, you've got a problem.)

[Admiral Valdemar]

The people give their consent, so I don't see why it's an ethical issue.

Anyway, it reminds me of the Fierce Creatures movie. A gunshot to the head is not curable no matter what time you're in.

[Shroom Man 777]

Most of the people who are cryonically frozen are dead before that happens- and there is still no good idea how to unfreeze someone.

Even if you could, the crystalization process fucks up with their cells, doesn't it? I believe someone in this thread mentions it.

[Firefox]

"Oh, Mr. Burns, we'll thaw you out the second they discover the cure for seventeen stab wounds in the back. How're we doing, boys?" "Well, we're up to fifteen!"

[Nephtys]

They are working on various compounds that would prevent the freezing process, since frogs have shown that cells with a high concentration of glucose are not harmed by freezing, and glycerol is a possiblity for human cryonics. But of course applying it to a whole body evenly is quite a problem still.. so yeah, one big part is working with the crystalization issue still.

[Vanas]

We should pin all our hopes on Quantum. Again.

In the meantime however, I don't have any personal moral and ethical issues with the whole cryogenics thing. Could make for an amusing practical joke for one.

I think the main problem after we've got the whole freezing thing sorted would be keeping the brain alright. I mean, it's never good if you revive someone, and his personality and memories have (metaphorically) leaked out of his ears.
Hmm. Perhaps it'd be easier to chuck these people on relatavistic ship things on stupidly long journeys. Get them winging by the Earth's neighbourhood ever century or so, it'll be fiiiiine.

[Castor Troy]

Cryonics is a pretty much flawed idea. You have the problem with the body's water expanding because they form ice crystals. However, you could suspend a person in a vat of liquid, with nanomachines repairing the body from age, wear and tear.

If you get really advanced, temporal stasis would be perfect.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Cryonics is a pretty much flawed idea. You have the problem with the body's water expanding because they form ice crystals. However, you could suspend a person in a vat of liquid, with nanomachines repairing the body from age, wear and tear.

If you get really advanced, temporal stasis would be perfect.

Cryonics works in other animals, there's nothing saying it can't work for humans. The problem of expanding ice crystals when exposed to crygenic fluid can be rectified with the use of proteomics. Of course, the nanomachine idea is folly, there's no way you can have those things nurse every cell in the body effectively and temporal stasis is a fantasy, so freezing it is.

[Castor Troy]

Cryonics is a pretty much flawed idea. You have the problem with the body's water expanding because they form ice crystals. However, you could suspend a person in a vat of liquid, with nanomachines repairing the body from age, wear and tear.

If you get really advanced, temporal stasis would be perfect.

Cryonics works in other animals, there's nothing saying it can't work for humans. The problem of expanding ice crystals when exposed to crygenic fluid can be rectified with the use of proteomics. Of course, the nanomachine idea is folly, there's no way you can have those things nurse every cell in the body effectively and temporal stasis is a fantasy, so freezing it is.

You wouldn't mind explaining proteomics, in a nutshell? Because I've never heard of such a method before.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You wouldn't mind explaining proteomics, in a nutshell? Because I've never heard of such a method before.

Proteomics is the field dealing with protein engineering.

[TrailerParkJawa]

All techical issues aside who would fucking care about people from the past that are already dead as far as anyone is concerned? Who is going to pay for it? How would such individuals be reintegrated into society? I mean if they found a frozen person who has been on ice for 70 years would you care about them? I wouldn't.

[Admiral Valdemar]

All techical issues aside who would fucking care about people from the past that are already dead as far as anyone is concerned? Who is going to pay for it? How would such individuals be reintegrated into society? I mean if they found a frozen person who has been on ice for 70 years would you care about them? I wouldn't.

One would think the money paying into the bank account keeping them on ice would be a good enough incentive.

[Lagmonster]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but cryonics is a waste of time. It makes far more sense to let people go and keep searching for the cures and treatments that cryonics-proponents think we'll find than to fill rooms with people desperately looking for another ten, twenty, maybe thirty years of life somewhere down the road when everything they know is gone. Can you imagine the kind of emotional fun involved in being awakened, cured, and released with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody you know still alive?

[Shroom Man 777]

They are working on various compounds that would prevent the freezing process, since frogs have shown that cells with a high concentration of glucose are not harmed by freezing, and glycerol is a possiblity for human cryonics. But of course applying it to a whole body evenly is quite a problem still.. so yeah, one big part is working with the crystalization issue still.

But aren't there already people who got their corpses frozen? I think I saw that on TV.

So...what happens to them...?

[Imperial Overlord]

They are working on various compounds that would prevent the freezing process, since frogs have shown that cells with a high concentration of glucose are not harmed by freezing, and glycerol is a possiblity for human cryonics. But of course applying it to a whole body evenly is quite a problem still.. so yeah, one big part is working with the crystalization issue still.

But aren't there already people who got their corpses frozen? I think I saw that on TV.

So...what happens to them...?

They are hoping that we'll find a way to undo whatever killed them and fix the damage that the freezing and thawing process will do to their corpsicle.

[Enola Straight]

Infuse the cryonaut with natural antifreeze from the blood of arctic/antarctic marine species?

[TrailerParkJawa]

All techical issues aside who would fucking care about people from the past that are already dead as far as anyone is concerned? Who is going to pay for it? How would such individuals be reintegrated into society? I mean if they found a frozen person who has been on ice for 70 years would you care about them? I wouldn't.

One would think the money paying into the bank account keeping them on ice would be a good enough incentive.

Where is this money coming from after the people paying for it have died themselves? What happens to the human-pops once the company goes bankrupt because its poorly run?

I'm sure there are plenty of people who will pay for this, but after a few decades I believe most of the income for any paticular frozen individual will dry up.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Where is this money coming from after the people paying for it have died themselves? What happens to the human-pops once the company goes bankrupt because its poorly run?

I'm sure there are plenty of people who will pay for this, but after a few decades I believe most of the income for any paticular frozen individual will dry up.

That depends in the agreement. The money could be half now, half on thawing, even if inflation makes the sum somewhat inaccurate next to what it was supposed to be, it could be estimated somewhat. Besides, there's the technical aspect of this for R&D. You don't just throw them out with the rubbish.