How YOU Can Cheat Death
So you want to know how to cheat death but don’t know if your ready to be frozen alive? The promise of cryonics is to preserve humans who can no longer be sustained by current medicine. The goal of this speculative science is to resuscitate people at some point in the future and restore them to health. The US has laws prohibiting cryonics to be performed on a patient until clinical death.
The idea of clinical death has been updated several times throughout modern history. Today it is defined as cessation of blood circulation and breathing. The term is updated every time a new method of resuscitation is discovered. So far CPR, defibrillation, and epinephrine injections are able to reverse this medical condition that precedes death. For all intensive purposes, even in the US, when your undergoing cryonics your doing it at a moment before you are actually dead.
Throughout human civilization we have been fascinated with the idea of longevity and immortality. From the ancient pharaohs in Egypt to the myth of immortal vampires, it seems as if we are always looking for another way to “rage against the dying of the light.”
The theory that cryonics could work is hinged on a few basic principles. Life needs to be able to be suspended and then reanimated with its basic structure in tact. A small creature called water bears do exactly this, yet have a fundamentally different structure to our own. We do know that it is a remote possibility because people have survived extreme cold with their hearts stopped for up to an hour.
Freezing temperatures cause cracks in cellular biology, so vitrification is used to allow tissues to be cooled with little or no ice damage. Even though this process has been improved over the years, there is still a minute measure of damage that needs to be fixed before we can bring someone back.
Fixing microscopic damage is the holy grail of not only cryonics but of medical science. You may have heard of it as nanotechnology or nanomedicine. Eventually computers will become so small that they will be able to course through your veins, repairing the smallest defects and problems at a cellular level. That means no cancer, no disease and eventually a way to drastically slow down the aging process.
You might be thinking that this all sounds great in theory and that maybe your kids will have access to it on day. The shocking conclusion is that it is availible today and Alcor, the largest cryonics company worldwide, will sign you up for $150,000. The best part is you don’t even have to pay for it out of your pocket, that’s what life insurance is for.
When I heard about the prospect to open my eyes even one more time after legal death I signed up on the spot. That was over three years ago. Some people tell me that I might as well play the lottery because the odds are so far against me. Yet I believe in the advancement of science and the wonders of innovation. If I had to sign those papers again today and they stated an outrageous chance like .1% to come back to full health I would happily scribble my name in ink once more.
[Alcor FAQ] [The Cryonics Society] [Society for Cryobiology]
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Wild Bill said
am August 16 2007 @ 12:18 pm
I’m with you on this one Jerad, I told my wife and kids, “As long as you can tape a pencil to my forehead so I can bang away on a keyboard I want to live!” I see absolutely no risk in being frozen after death for the chance to live again someday.
Jerad Kaliher said
am August 20 2007 @ 9:40 pm
@Bill, just like I said I would much rather go kicking and screaming. Some people surprisingly have ethical and moral issues with this procedure. The one that was highlighted in all the courts was the Ted Williams trial.
Personally I see it as a mute point. But then again that might be because I believe in this world as the last chance to make any sort of a difference.
BigMike said
am August 21 2007 @ 11:05 pm
Sorry to burst everyones bubble but the two of you have over looked several ginormous blunders in yall’s “theory of the thaw”. 1. you have been declared legally dead, try getting a drivers licence now that there is a death certificate on file. 2. Tax evasion, the IRS is going to want to know why you have not been paying taxes these last 250 years. 3. lack of marketable skills, if you brought back a cave man right now (which is in fact what you are going to be to future humans) he can not flip burgers or drive a car. I will not have any marketable skills as right now I am an X-ray tech and in the future there will be tricorders and the doctors operate them themselves (I seen it on StarTrek). Haven’t yall seen Futurama, look at how worthless Fry is!
Jerad Kaliher said
am August 22 2007 @ 6:46 pm
@BikeMike: Those are all interesting points. According to law you would in fact be legally dead, meaning that the IRS would have no claim to your income or lack-there-of unless the tax law was radically modified.
I think that as far as marketable skills go your right. If I do have a chance of coming out of the deep freeze in 250 years I may have very little to offer society. Unless I am able to learn quickly I’ll be left in the dust.
That is why so much controversy surrounds the ethics of these types of procedures. But just like I said before I’m more than happy to still give it a whirl. It’s a little bleak to think that you couldn’t adapt to another age. I guess I’m just more of an optimist in that regard.
Oren said
am August 22 2007 @ 10:45 pm
And after you’ll wake up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleeper_Awakes
Jerad Kaliher said
am August 22 2007 @ 11:05 pm
@Oren, that was one of the books that really stirred a lot of questions in me. But why should be presuppose that the future will be something alien and haunting to us?
As someone who is constantly looking into the future I guess I would be in awe at all that happened and would become a bit of a historian for a while before looking forward again.
Patricia - Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker said
am August 23 2007 @ 9:57 pm
It takes more than a little bit of imagination for me to image waking up in a future so different than when I left the present. Big Mike has some good points. Buck Rogers did pretty good for himself waking up 500 years in the future. Isn’t science fiction great. What was just science fiction to Jules Vern is science today. So anything is possible if we only imagine. Life really is grand.
Jerad Kaliher said
am August 23 2007 @ 10:23 pm
@Patricia, I couldn’t agree more. It’s quotes like these that make me want to believe in the idea of scientific possibility:
“There is no hope for the fanciful idea of reaching the Moon because of insurmountable barriers to escaping the Earth’s gravity.”
— Dr. Forest Ray Moulton, University of Chicago astronomer, 1932.
links for 2007-08-30 | Samurai Soapbox said
am August 30 2007 @ 9:22 am
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