
“I lead a cryonics team and freeze people's brains for a living” - Mclhuman
http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/city/what_do_you_do/213599-cryonics-interview
======
beloch
Ideally, the process of cryonically preserving someone's brain would be like
an extreme form of the stasis we hope to be able to put people in for long
space voyages. You might be legally dead by today's standards, but just asleep
in practice.

This is where things get incredibly weird for cryonics. Any competent
practitioner is going to amass a large number of people who are legally dead
today, but may be viewed as "just sleeping" in the future. Where is the
boundary between these two states? At what point do these frozen brains
transition from specimens with no rights to human beings?

Say that, in the not too distant future, the technology is invented to
resurrect the frozen. At this point, the cryonics company will have something
clearly different from medical specimens in their tanks. However, what if the
resurrection tech is prohibitively expensive? Even at cryogenic temperatures
there is atomic movement and, necessarily, slow and subtle degradation. Some
frozen "sleepers" might not survive long enough for resurrection to become
affordable enough for them, assuming the assets they set aside for
resurrection weren't wiped out by bad investments. Do these doomed sleepers
have any rights? Will the cryonics company be obligated to revive them at a
loss? What if the company goes bankrupt? Could people be brought back as
indentured "heads in jars" and expected to work off their debt? Will brains
frozen today even have any skills or knowledge the future will want?

Cryonics raises a lot of questions for the present and, potentially, even more
problems for the future to solve.

~~~
Mahn
Perhaps I'm too cynical, but if I had to guess I'd say cryonics companies
don't give a damn about future ethical and/or legal implications as long as
it's a profitable business as it stands today. I very much doubt they have
plan on what to do with the brains or bodies they preserve, though I'd love to
be proven otherwise.

~~~
mhartl
On the contrary, such concerns are of paramount importance to cryonics
organizations. A good place to start is the Alcor Patient Care Trust [1]:

 _At Alcor, patient storage costs are paid from the Patient Care Trust. This
conservative funding arrangement is designed to cover the cost of patient
storage solely from the income from the Trust, thereby assuring that such
funding will continue indefinitely into the future. The irrevocable Patient
Care Trust is included under Alcor 's tax-exempt status, but nevertheless is a
separate legal entity that provides liability protection for these assets.
This arrangement is one of the reasons our members have confidence in Alcor.

It doesn't do any good to use the most advanced techniques to get our members
into cryopreservation unless we can keep them there, as well as build capital
to eventually fund revival and reintegration. Ongoing care for
cryopreservation patients is the number one element of our purpose in being
cryonicists, and financial protection for the patients is a critical component
of this. There is no use in starting this possibly centuries-long project, if
we don't do centuries-long financial planning. Providing this kind of
protection through a conservative, long-term view of storage costs is one of
the main reasons why cryopreservation costs so much._

[1]:
[http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html](http://www.alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html)

~~~
coldtea
> _On the contrary, such concerns are of paramount importance to cryonics
> organizations._

Legally. Not ethically. Most business owners in this "industry" could not care
less.

~~~
deciplex
Do you have some reason for believing this, or are you just being cynical?
(Not that I have any particular problem with cynicism, rather I'm honestly
curious.) I know of some serious breaches of ethics early in the history of
cryonics, however I know of nothing that would besmirch Alcor in particular at
least. If there is something I'd like to know about it.

~~~
coldtea
I feel like I have legitimate reasons, from everything I know about humanity
and history, to start from a cynical standpoint, especially regarding certain
areas.

E.g. mails that announce me that I won some lottery. Random people offering to
sell me cheap "authentic" Rolex on the street. Attempts to bring down some
government to bring "democracy" to a country. Cryonics.

------
_ihaque

      If somebody’s been pronounced dead and then you start CPR, you don’t want the
      embarrassing situation where they start to wake up again. For older people that
      are really far gone it’s not a concern, but sometimes life can start
      to come back a bit so general anesthetic takes care of that.
    

That someone is coming back to life is considered "embarrassing", and ought to
be stopped with a general anesthetic? That doesn't sound like someone I'd want
in the emergency room by my bed...

~~~
lassoman
That's exactly what I though! Holly cow......maybe I should take my name off
the organ donors list. Have heard of people 'coming back to life' after being
incorrectly pronounced dead (even young ones) and from memory there has been a
few cases where people were buried alive, waking up in the coffin only to find
out that they will come out of it alive again. If that is the common practice
I think that medical practitioners should start questioning their suitability
for this job!

~~~
zachrose
This just reminded me of a short story called "Guilt" by Judy Budnitz. This
American Life has a transcript of a reading, scroll down to "Act Four."

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/256/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-
archives/episode/256/transcript)

------
pan69
What I don't really get from the article is, why? The article seems to be a
technical explanation of the procedure to freeze someone's brain. but it
doesn't really explain why you'd do that in the first place (probably being
revived in the future) and what the actual possibilities of this are.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Insurance. You're betting technology will come far enough to build you a
replacement body. You have nothing to lose because your other option is
irreversible death.

~~~
Sivart13
Nothing to lose except the money you're spending on an icebox that you
could've spent bettering the world you're leaving.

~~~
zyxley
That presumes that one couldn't see the funding of cryonics organizations as
itself a social good, aside from whatever small chance of self-preservation it
comes with.

------
zachrose
I'm curious about the finances and the practical aspects of resuscitation. Do
you stipulate when you want to be resuscitated and for how much money? Do some
people volunteer to be early resuscitation subjects? Is there a discount for
that?

------
jdnier
That interview reads like it's written by a character out of Gregory Benford's
1993 novel, Chiller -- only here we are in 2015; it's just like Benford wrote
about then.

------
zerooneinfinity
Could I freeze my brain now and come back in thirty years?

~~~
droithomme
No, the procedure has never been demonstrated to work. There is no empirical
evidence. These companies can not give a single instance of them resuscitating
a human after undergoing these procedures. Not one. You are paying to have
yourself frozen and stored, and that's it. The entire process is based on a
combination of cynical opportunists, PR agents and deluded religious faithful
who believe in "the procedure" without a shred of scientific proof, and
gullible desperate rubes ignorant of empirical science.

~~~
Jach
If your bar for evidence is that a human revival process has been shown to
work, I don't think you'll see that for quite some time. But to say there's no
evidence it can work is pretty out there... 10 years ago they vitrified a
rabbit kidney, then warmed it up, and successfully transplanted it.

A kidney's a lot less complicated than the brain, and that was 10 years ago.
The research has been pretty underfunded. If you'd actually like the field to
progress and uncover evidence for or against the prospect of those who have
been suspended up until now ever even having the slimmest chance of revival
greater than that of cremation, maybe you should encourage legislation that
lets them test on volunteering criminals heading for lethal injection or other
end-of-life volunteers who don't want to be preserved but are happy to
contribute to Science or large animals. Don't get squeamish over experiments
like this:
[http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/bringingdixieback.html](http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/bringingdixieback.html)

~~~
droithomme
Fair enough. I will offer $10 million for a demonstration that this technology
works and has a scientific basis, with the proof being the successful
resuscitation and revivification into a whole functioning human from any human
brain that is in cryogenic storage at this company. I'll even give you a
generous whole year to demonstrate it, since you have stated the only problem
is insufficient support and funding, well here it is, your big chance. And of
course should the year pass and there is still no evidence, just like each of
the last 40 years this has been claimed to be a viable technology without a
shred of evidence, then you will pay $10 million, to be used for anti-cult
deprogramming efforts. Looking forward to acceptance of this offer, followed
by either your verifiable evidence or your payment.

~~~
Jach
Get back to me when you've read:
[http://chronopause.com/chronopause.com/index.php/2011/02/23/...](http://chronopause.com/chronopause.com/index.php/2011/02/23/does-
personal-identity-survive-cryopreservation/index.html)

------
coldtea
Cryonics. A tax on people who are bad on biology.

~~~
zyxley
It's not like there's much else to spend the money on, what with being dead
and all.

~~~
coldtea
No, just the usual things, ending world hunger, helping your city, sponsoring
a university, cancer research, your children, etc.

And even if you're that selfish, you could always throw some great parties
with models and champagne, or pay to have your enemies killed...

------
droithomme
Would love to see some articles on statistics regarding the number of people
who have been revived after this procedure.

Is it still at 0%, with no scientific basis at all other than the evidence-
free religious devotion of the faithful devotees, constantly posting claims
without a shred of solid evidence?

~~~
zyxley
> the number of people who have been revived after this procedure

This is going to be zero by default even with perfect preservation, given that
the whole point is to freeze people because current medical technology can't
keep them reliably alive for whatever reason.

There's no reason to even think about trying to revive people (rather than
simply preserving them as thoroughly as possible) until geriatrics, cancer
medicine, or whatever have advanced considerably.

