Is Cryonics/Cryogenics WooWoo?

[UnrepentantSinner]

I read today about Ted Williams' body (or more precisely his head) is having a lot of trouble in cold storage. It got me to thinking about cyrogenics and how big a waste of time and money it is. I place it in the same category as Q-ray bracelets and homeopathy.

First science is going to need to conquer death. Then it needs to conquer/repair whatever disease or age related factor killed the individual. Finally, in the case of older popsicles like Ted Williams, it's going to need to give quality of live or reverse the aging process for an 80 year old man. How far are we from doing any of these things? Do people really think pissing away $3000-$30,000 a year in maintenance (plus the who knows how many thousands for the initial storage) is really offering their loved ones hope of "coming back to life?"

 

[BTox]

Yes I read that Ted's noggin is developing many cracks.. oops! I agree this method of cryogenics is complete woowoo, however, the metallic method used in Star Wars is perfectly legit!

 

[Tez]

I dont place it in the same category as Q-Ray etc. More along the lines of the lottery - incredibly small odds, but you never know, and if you dont try your odds are for certain 0.

It is very hard for us humans to envisage technological advances. We know the phrase "exponential growth", however our minds are somewhat polynomial. Our technological prowess is growing exponentially; its first, and second and... derivatives are growing exponentially too...

Which is not to say I'd necessarily have it done. Guess I'll have to think about it...

 

[Ziggurat]

The thing that I never really understood is what makes people think that they'll ever be unfrozen? If you're a cryogenics storage company for dead bodies, you're under contractual obligation to not let the bodies thaw out. But I can't actually see any contractual obligation (and certainly no enforcement mechanism) in place to make sure they actually bother to unfreeze you and bring you back to life. Why bother doing an uncertain procedure that might get rid of a constant and assured source of income? Why not just keep the bodies on ice forever, as long as their estate trust can keep paying? Just say that it's too risky to unfreeze them, medical technology isn't good enough yet, blah blah blah. Even given the theoretical ability to unfreeze someone several hundred years from now and bring them back to life (I wouldn't bet on it), why would anyone in the future ever actually bother? In my mind, even if you have faith in future technology, you shouldn't have faith in people in the future whom you'll never meet and who have no accountability to you. If you have the kind of wealth needed to do this, give it to a charity or start one of your own - that'll give you better imortality than a liquid nitrogen tank.

 

[Jon_in_london]

Complete crap!
Absolute woo woo bollocks!

Try this: Freeze a lettuce leaf. Defrost. Soggy isnt it? Same thing happens to all your tissues- ice forms, crystals form and expand rupturing cells and causing massive tissue damage.

Sheeeeeeeeeesh!!!!!!!!!!! never heard of frost bite?

 

[The Don]

I think that the Cryogenic companies should offer some kind of warranty along the lines of :

"If we fail to revive you then you can have your money back *"





*requests for refunds must be made in person by the cryogenically frozen individual or their great grandparents. Your statutory rights are not affected.

 

[Diamond]

I think that future archeologists will be grateful for deep frozen specimens of 21st century people. They may try to re-animate them by growing their DNA, just like we're doing with mammoths and the Tasmanian Tiger.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

I think that future archeologists will be grateful for deep frozen specimens of 21st century people. They may try to re-animate them by growing their DNA, just like we're doing with mammoths and the Tasmanian Tiger.

A side benefit I hadn't thought of!

 

[American]

Alcor sells their corpse-freezing service with "woo-woo" science. That's marketing.

Their actual practice has some good basis to it. If I recall, they inject some enzyme before they freeze you - it's the same enzyme found in some frogs, which allows them to freeze solid in the winter and wake up unharmed in the spring.

People aren't frogs, but we are both vertebrates.... I don't think one enzyme will make the difference really. Maybe it will help, who knows.

I actually think it will work someday if they get the method right. I just wouldn't want to be the first dude they test it out on when they start waking people up.

 

[American]

Try this: Freeze a lettuce leaf. Defrost. Soggy isnt it? Same thing happens to all your tissues- ice forms, crystals form and expand rupturing cells and causing massive tissue damage.

Refrigerating people would do less damage than freezing them.

However huge the damage done, they're counting on centuries' advance in technology to wake you up. I don't think even 50 years will do it, but if things keep going as they have been, I don't see why they couldn't do it in 2 or 3 hundred years. Or 1000 years... however long it takes.

 

[Correa Neto]

Cryogenics = way to get money from people

Cells get a lot of damage in the freezing process. And if its a matter of keeping the DNA, there are more cost-efective ways, preserving just a small sample, not an entire head or a body.

BTW, if they manage to "reanimate" the heads, it will be just like in futurama...

 

[Larspeart]

no enzyme is going to prevent 100 years worth of crystalization, cell damage, ruptures, etc. Ted's head has been in the freezer, what, 2 weeks? And it is already full of cracks and fissures.

Alcor is BRILLIANT in playing on the Great Human Fear of death, and finding a way to make a TON of money off of it.

I PROMISE you not one body in their freezers will be brought back.

What if they go bankrupt? Power and generator failures? Earthquake damage? A lot can happen in 100 years, let alone 500 or 1000.

Pure nonsense!

 

[ZeeGerman]

no enzyme is going to prevent 100 years worth of crystalization, cell damage, ruptures, etc.

Even if they had the right enzyme, how are they injecting it into every cell of a dead body/head?

All I can say is: Will they wonder if they just stay dead

Zee

 

[American]

It all hinges on vastly improved technology, which I say is sure bet. The tissue and cells are greatly damaged by freezing, but there may be a physical way to effect repairs someday (less by chemistry, more by physics and computer-controlled manipulations).

Listen to you hundreds of years ago, and we'd never have flown or gone to the moon!

 

[Jon_in_london]

You are talking about damage to every single cell in the body (virtually).

Before thawing, you would have to repair this damage on a cell by cell basis [/i]in the solid state[/i] AND prevent any further damage occuring upon the thaw.

Sure maybe in 1000 years or so but as said above.. the place will probably go well out of business before then.

 

[Azathoth]

I wouldn't quite call it 'woo woo'.

But signing up for it would be like signing up for a flight in Leonardo's airplane. Science, materials and propulsion needed centuries before powered flight became possible.
Many hurdles will have to be jumped before freezing/thawing/curing human beings will become possible. Some of those hurdles may turn out to be unhurdlable.

On the plus side, it certainly won't do any harm to you. Apart from financial, I suppose.

 

[Crossbow]

I read today about Ted Williams' body (or more precisely his head) is having a lot of trouble in cold storage. It got me to thinking about cyrogenics and how big a waste of time and money it is. I place it in the same category as Q-ray bracelets and homeopathy.

... Do people really think pissing away $3000-$30,000 a year in maintenance (plus the who knows how many thousands for the initial storage) is really offering their loved ones hope of "coming back to life?"

It just goes to show you that some people have more money than brains.

The low-cost approach to the cryogenic process involves freezing someone's head with liquid nitrogen after they die. Whereas the high cost approach involves freezing someone's whole body with liquid nitrogen after they die.

No one has been able to reanimate even so much as a mouse after such a procedure, let alone a human.

Ugh! I do wish these people would do something more productive with their money like leave it to cancer research, or the Red Cross, or any number of worthy causes.

 

[zakur]

A side benefit I hadn't thought of!

Here's another benefit - Organs! From a Larry Niven short story titled "The Defenseless Dead:"

Summary: A Gil the ARM story. The First Freezer Bill was passed: Corpsicles, (people frozen in the late twentieth and early twenty first century) and lacking funds and investments to support themselves in any future society were being revived and dumped straight into the organ banks. With a second Freezer bill pending this time to dispose of those remaining Corpiscles those with money) the Corpsicle heirs are generating much press-attention.

 

[RSLancastr]

Here's another benefit - Organs! From a Larry Niven short story titled "The Defenseless Dead:"

I think this was also referenced in his Jigsaw Man short story, as well as others within the Know Space series.

 

[American]

Whatever I'm dreaming of, it would have to work at the molecular level or below (atomic, sub-atomic...). There are folks right here in this forum whose passion and life's work is just that. I'm sure they're only using small samples and not living systems.. moving to an organism with trillions of cells would be quite a leap.

Once they have such a way to precisely detect damage (ie, the state of every molecule in a cell) and repair it, then they'd scale it up to cell-parts, then whole cells, then worms, then mice, then some other animal, and finally Ted Williams.



another thing- that people may call it a brilliant scam is a sign that it's more likely to succeed. The huge economic force of wanting to live forever is only a positive thing to drive that goal forward. "brilliant" is right.