and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be revived in the future. It should be read by anyone interested in posting death irritating. Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part1 Cryonics Frequently Asked Question List Section 1: Introduction and Index Last Modified Sun Jan 29 15:04:36 1995 Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman. See the end of Section 1 for restrictions on redistribution. Cryonic suspension is an experimental procedure whereby patients who can no longer be kept alive with today's medical abilities are preserved at low temperatures for treatment in the future. Send comments about this list to Tim Freeman (tsf@netcom.com). The words "I" and "me" in these answers refer to opinions of Tim Freeman, which may or may not be shared by others. There is much information available as cryomsg's. You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject line "CRYOMSG n", where "n" is a message number. You can get a current version of this entire FAQ list by fetching cryomsg "0018". You can get a current version of section "n" of this FAQ list by fetching cryomsg "0018.n". Also, all cryomsg's referenced in this FAQ (and a few others) are available by anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.cmu.edu, directory "/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/tsf/Public-Mail/cryonics/archive". You will need to give the entire directory path at once to FTP, rather than the commands "cd /afs" "cd cs.cmu.edu" and so forth, because the directories at the beginning of the path are protected from anonymous FTP access. There is more about this in the answer to question 8-2. Many FAQs, including this one, are available via anonymous FTP from is presented as a netnews post, the filename for it on rtfm appears in the Archive-name line at the top of the post. The parts of this FAQ are archived as "cryonics-faq/part*.Z". Readers with access to NCSA Mosaic or other World Wide Web browsers will be able to read the hypertext version of this FAQ. The initial URL to start with is "http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs/user/tsf/Public- Mail/cryonics/html/overview .html". In this list, the acronym "CRFT" stands for "Cryonics: Reaching for Tomorrow", which is available from Alcor. The address of Alcor is part of the answer to Question 6-4. Much more is said about Alcor than any other cryonics organization in this list. There are several reasons for this. First, Alcor is the largest, and it gets the most attention. Second, I am an Alcor member, and most of the reference material I have on hand was written by Alcor. I invite people more familiar with other organizations to contribute answers to these questions. This FAQ list needs a new maintainer. Cryomsg 1242 describes what the new maintainer would need to do to take over the job. If you are interested, send me mail. This FAQ list would also benefit from a detailed comparison of the various cryonics organizations. My thoughts about what could go into this are in cryomsg 1241. If you want to volunteer to write this answer, send me mail. This FAQ list has these sections: 1. Introduction and Index 2. Science/Technology -- Is cryonics feasible? 3. Philosophy/Religion -- Is cryonics good? 4. Controversy surrounding Cryonics -- Dora Kent, Cryobiologists, Donaldson 5. Neurosuspension -- Whether to take your body with you. 6. Suspension Arrangements -- The organizations that exist. 7. Cost of Cryonics -- Why does cryonics cost so much? 8. Communications -- How to find out more. 9. Glossary & Acknowledgements -- Important and unimportant jargon. The following questions are covered. Questions marked with a "*" are not yet answered. 2. Science/Technology 2-1. Has anyone been successfully revived from cryonic suspension? 2-2. What advances need to be made before people frozen now have a chance of being revived? 2-3. Is there any government or university supported research on cryonics specifically? 2-4. What is the procedure for freezing people? 2-5. How can one get a more detailed account of a suspension? 2-6. Is there damage from oxygen deprivation during a suspension? 2-7. Do memories require an ongoing metabolism to support them, like RAM in a computer? 2-8. If these frozen people are revived, will it be easy to cure them of whatever disease made them clinically die? 2-9. If I'm frozen and then successfully revived, will my body be old? 2-10. Why is freezing in liquid nitrogen better than other kinds of preservation, such as drying or embalming? 2-11. What is vitrification? 2-12. How is the baboon? Did it live? Any brain damage? 2-13. Who has successfully kept dogs cold for hours? Did they survive? Any brain damage? 2-14. Who froze the roundworms? What happened? 2-15. What were the circumstances under which cat brains produced normal-looking brain waves after being frozen? 2-16. Would it be possible to use some improvement on modern CAT or MRI scanners to infer enough about the structure of a brain to reconstruct the memories and personality? 2-17. Does background radiation cause significant damage to suspendees? 3. Philosophy/Religion 3-1. Are the frozen people dead? 3-2. Is cryonics suicide? 3-3. What about overpopulation? 3-4. When are two people the same person? 3-5. What if they repair the freezing damage (and install a new body, in the case of neurosuspension), and the resulting being acts and talks as though it were me, but it isn't really me? 3-6. What would happen if people didn't age after reaching adulthood? 3-7. Would it be better to be suspended now or later? 3-8. Why would anyone be revived? 3-9. Is there a conflict between cryonics and religious beliefs? 3-10. Is attempting to extend life consistent with Christianity? 4. Controversy surrounding Cryonics 4-1. Why do cryobiologists have such a low opinion of cryonics? How did this start, and how does it continue? 4-2. Who made the statement about reviving a frozen person being similar to reconstructing the cow from hamburger? 4-3. What was the Dora Kent case? 4-4. What about that fellow in the news with the brain tumor? 5. Neurosuspension 5-1. What are the pros and cons of neurosuspension (only freezing the head)? 5-2. How many people have chosen neurosuspension over whole-body suspension? (This question has only a partial answer.) 6. Suspension Arrangements 6-1. How many people are frozen right now? 6-2. How is suspension paid for? 6-3. How will reanimation be paid for? 6-4. What suspension organizations are available? 6-5. How can I get financial statements for the various organizations to evaluate their stability? 6-6. How hard will these people work to freeze me? 6-7. What obligations do the suspension organizations have to the people they have suspended? Will they pay for revival and rehabilitation? 6-8. How long has this been going on? 6-9. How much of the resources of the cryonics organizations are reserved for reviving patients? 6-10. How can uncooperative relatives derail suspensions? 6-11. How should I deal with relatives who will not cooperate with my suspension arrangements? 6-12. What if my spouse does not approve of my suspension arrangements? 6-13. What practical things can I do to increase my chances of being suspended well? 6-14. How can I pay for my own revival and rehabilitation, and keep some of my financial assets after revival? 6-15. Is Walt Disney frozen? 7. Cost of Cryonics 7-1. Why does cryonics cost so much? 7-2. Is anyone getting rich from cryonics? What are the salaries at these organizations like? 7-3. *How do cryonics organizations invest their money to last for the long term? 8. Communications 8-1. How can I get more information? 8-2. What is a cryomsg? How do I fetch one? Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman You may freely distribute unmodified copies of this entire FAQ list, provided that you do not work for any cryonics organization or suspension services provider. You may also distribute modified copies of this FAQ list, provided that you also do the following: 1) Include instructions saying how to get a current copy of the full FAQ list. 2) If you use text from this FAQ that is attributed as a direct quote from another source, get permission from the author of the other source before you use their text. cmu.edu tsf References: and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be revived in the future. It should be read by anyone interested in posting death irritating. Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part2 Cryonics Frequently Asked Question List Section 2: Science/Technology Last Modified Sun Jan 29 15:05:32 1995 (You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject line "CRYOMSG n", where "n" is a mesage number. There is more about this in the answer to question 8-2. The index to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1". ) Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman. See the end of Section 1 for restrictions on redistribution. 2-1. Has anyone been successfully revived from cryonic suspension? No. Fortunately, successful cryonics is a two-step process: (1) put the patient in suspension and (2) revive the patient from suspension. For cryonic suspension to be worthwhile, we only need to master step (1) right now and have reasonable expectation that we might master step (2) later. 2-2. What advances need to be made before people frozen now have a chance of being revived? A number of advances in basic areas of research such as medicine, microbiology, engineering, and information sciences are required before any serious attempt can be made to revive patients suspended with current technology. Nanotechnology, the design and fabrication of molecular scale machines, is an emerging technology that will probably be both necessary and sufficient for revival. 2-3. Is there any government or university supported research on cryonics specifically? There was suspended animation research sponsored by NASA as late as 1979 at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. 2-4. What is the procedure for freezing people? Read an account of a cryonic suspension. Briefly, circulation is restored by CPR, and the blood is replaced by other substances that prevent blood clots and bacteria growth and decrease freezing damage. As this happens the body is cooled as quickly as possible to slightly above 0 degrees C. After the blood has been replaced the body is cooled more slowly to liquid nitrogen temperatures. 2-5. How can one get a more detailed account of a suspension? Cryomsgs 601 and 602 are The Transport of Patient A-1312 (28K bytes) and cryomsgs 696, 697, and 698 are The Neurosuspension of Patient A-1260. (35K bytes). These messages give a first-hand description of the initial stages of two suspensions. 2-6. Is there damage from oxygen deprivation during a suspension? Not if the suspension happens under good circumstances. One of the big goals of the suspension procedure is to get the heart and lung resuscitation (HLR) machine onto the patient as soon as possible, to prevent this damage. The barbiturates they give reduce brain metabolism, as does cooling. In a well done suspension, the damage from oxygen deprivation should be minor. In a more perfect world, the suspension procedure would be able to start before legal death, which should reduce the damage from ischemia even more because there wouldn't be any time when the heart is stopped and the body is warm. 2-7. Do memories require an ongoing metabolism to support them, like RAM in a computer? No. Here's a relevant quote, supplied by Brian Wowk: We know that secondary memory does not depend on continued activity of the nervous system, because the brain can be *totally inactivated* (emphasis added) by cooling, by general anesthesia, by hypoxia, by ischemia, or by any method and yet secondary memories that have been previously stored are still retained when the brain becomes active once again. Textbook of Medical Physiology, Arthur C. Guyton, W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, 1986 Thomas Donaldson says that brain waves of supercooled small animals have been measured, and there are none, even though the animals still have their memories after they are rewarmed. He cites AU Smith, ed. BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF FREEZING AND SUPERCOOLING, London, 1961; article by Aubrey Smith herself, "Revival of mammals from body temperatures below zero", pp. 304-368. 2-8. If these frozen people are revived, will it be easy to cure them of whatever disease made them clinically die? Repairing the freezing damage looks much harder than curing any existing disease, so if revival is possible then curing the disease ought to be trivial. This doesn't include diseases that lose information in the brain, such as Alzheimer's, mental retardation, or brain tumors; in these cases, even if the disease were cured and the person revived, the problem of replacing the lost information looks hard. 2-9. If I'm frozen and then successfully revived, will my body be old? No. Old age is a disease that ought to be easier to cure than the freezing damage. 2-10. Why is freezing in liquid nitrogen better than other kinds of preservation, such as drying or embalming? Straightforward chemical arguments lead to the conclusion that significant amounts of decomposition do not occur at liquid nitrogen temperatures. (See Hugh Hixon's article "How Cold Is Cold Enough?" from *Cryonics* magazine, January, 1985, or fetch cryomsg 0015.) This isn't true for either dried or embalmed tissue kept at room temperature. Also, Alcor and Trans Time have done experiments with dogs that demonstrate that part of the suspension process does not cause damage. Dogs have been anesthetized, perfused with a blood substitute, and cooled to slightly above 0 C for several hours. After rewarming and replacing the original blood, the dogs revived with no obvious brain damage. Experiments like this cannot be done with drying or embalming. Another option that may become possible in the future is vitrification. 2-11. What is vitrification? (Next paragraph copied from CRYOMSG 6 posted by Kevin Brown) The cover article of the Aug. 29, 1987 issue of Science News describes vitrification, which achieves cooling to a glassy state without the water crystallizing into ice. The advantage of this is that the cells do not suffer the mechanical damage from the crystallization. The main disadvantage is that the concentration of cryoprotectants required to achieve this is toxic. It is also, currently, a technically difficult and expensive process requiring computer control of cooling rates, perfusion, etc. The March, 1988 issue of Cryonics magazine ("The Future of Medicine", Part 2 of 2) suggests that vitrification may not be needed for ordinary organ banking, since other, cheaper methods may be good enough. For tissues and cells, though, it has a lot of promise for the commercial market. Thus, commercial research into vitrification may stop short of what is needed for making it viable for preservation of large organs or whole bodies required by cryonics. 2-12. How is the baboon? Did it live? Any brain damage? According to Art Quaife as of 14 Jul 92, the baboon is well and has no signs of brain damage. This is part of what CRYOMSG 865 posted by Art Quaife has to say about the baboon: Berkeley, California, May 29 1992. BioTime Inc. has, for the first time, successfully revived a baboon following a procedure in which the animal's deep body temperature was lowered to near-freezing and its blood was replaced with BioTime's patent-pending blood- substitute solution. The animal was anesthetized, immersed in ice and cooled to below 2 degrees Celsius, using the BioTime solution with cardiopulmonary bypass procedures. After being bloodless and below 10 degrees Centigrade for 55 minutes, the animal was rewarmed and revived. The baboon is presently under study by BioTime scientists to determine any long-term physical effects. The company intends to conduct further experiments on primates, using its blood-substitute solutions. 2-13. Who has successfully kept dogs cold for hours? Did they survive? Any brain damage? Several people have achieved that. The first cryonics organization to do so was Alcor, in the mid 1980's. For example, the Jan. 1986 issue of Cryonics magazine describes, in the article "Dixie's Rebirthday", a German Shepherd dog named Dixie who "experienced the privilege (and the peril) of having all her blood washed out and replaced with a synthetic solution and then being cooled to 4 C. For four hours she was held at this temperature: stiff, cold, with eyes flattened out, brain waves stopped, and heart stilled. Then, she was reperfused with blood, warmed up and restored to life and health." She made a total recovery. Several variations, with different perfusates and slightly different temperatures and/or times were also performed by Alcor. Later, ACS performed a similar experiment on a beagle named Miles and recently (1992) BioTime successfully cooled and revived a baboon. In comparison, hypothermic cardiac surgery was pioneered on humans decades ago, although the temperatures used were not nearly as low as in the dog experiments above. More recently, the October 1988 issue of The Immortalist described successful surgery on a brain aneurysm in which the patient was cooled to 15 C for almost an hour. During that time the patient's blood remained drained from the body, there was no respiration, the heart did not beat, and the brain barely functioned. 2-14. Who froze the roundworms? What happened? (This text is quoted with slight modifications from CRYOMSG 790 posted by Charles Platt) Gerry Arthus, Alcor New York's Coordinator, has announced preliminary results of an experiment which was designed to investigate whether memories will survive cryonic suspension. For his experiment, Gerry used Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode (tiny worm) that's one of the simplest living creatures. It has a complete nervous system, however, and can be "trained" in a rudimentary way. Worms that are raised in a warm environment will "remember" it and will prefer it if they are given the choice. Conversely, worms that were raised in a cooler area will tend to prefer that environment. Gerry placed a small number of worms in a cryoprotective solution and froze them to -80 degrees Celsius for two hours. After he revived the worms, the ones that survived the experience still "remembered" their former environmental preferences. So far as we know, this is the world's first experiment designed to verify that memory is chemically encoded and will survive the freezing process. The sample that Gerry used is too small to prove anything conclusively. Soon, however, Gerry hopes to repeat the experiment with a larger sample. He also intends to devise tests to eliminate the possibility that the worms changed physiologically to adapt themselves to warmer or cooler environments. 2-15. What were the circumstances under which cat brains produced normal-looking brain waves after being frozen? This was reported by I. Suda and A.C. Kito in Nature, 212, 268-270 (1966). The cat brains were perfused with 15% glycerol and cooled to -20 C for five days and, upon rewarming and perfusion with fresh blood, showed normal brain function (as measured by EEG). Since this experiment was done so long ago, and technology has improved considerably since then, there is some interest in redoing these experiments to see how well we can do now. The April 1992 Cryonics, volume 13 number 4 page 4, talks more about this and gives more references. Appendix B of CRFT talks about the plausibility of repair in general. 2-16. Would it be possible to use some improvement on modern CAT or MRI scanners to infer enough about the structure of a brain to reconstruct the memories and personality? This was discussed on the cryonics mailing list some time back. The conclusion was that using radiation to infer the structure of the neurons in a brain in a reasonable amount of time would require enough radiation to vaporize that brain. Then the discussion moved on to nuclear-bomb x-ray holography devices in outer space that record the results on film that has to be moving by at an astronomical speed so it doesn't get caught in the blast. Cremation and immortality, all in one convenient package. I find nanotechnology-based approaches more believable, albeit less spectacular. To read about this yourself, fetch articles from the cryonet archive with the words "brain scan" in the subject. There are 18 as of July 30, 1992. See the "What is a cryomsg?" question, number 8-2. 2-17. Does background radiation cause significant damage to suspendees? No. Ralph Merkle addresses this in in the cryonet archive, message 558. He estimates that background radiation should not be an issue for at least 50,000 years of storage. See question 8-2 for instructions on how to fetch this. du References: and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be revived in the future. It should be read by anyone interested in posting death irritating. Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part3 Cryonics Frequently Asked Question List Section 3: Philosophy/Religion Last Modified Sun Jan 29 15:11:06 1995 (You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject line "CRYOMSG n", where "n" is a mesage number. There is more about this in the answer to question 8-2. The index to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1". ) Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman. See the end of Section 1 for restrictions on redistribution. 3-1. Are the frozen people dead? Using the definitions in the glossary, they are legally and clinically dead but they may or may not have reached information-theoretic death, depending on how memory is stored in the brain and how much this is affected by freezing damage. A person who has been cremated is dead in all senses of the word. People who have been buried and allowed to decompose are also dead. People can only legally be frozen after they are legally dead. 3-2. Is cryonics suicide? No. People only get suspended if they are legally dead. Suspending them sooner can lead to charges of homicide. (The Dora Kent case was about a suspension performed immediately after clinical death, which the local coroner suspected may have been done before legal death.) Suicides, murders, fatal accidents, etc. almost always result in autopsy from the local coroner or medical examiner. The resulting brain sectioning and extended room-temperature ischemia (inadequate blood flow) may easily cause true death. 3-3. What about overpopulation? At present, an insignificant fraction of the population is participating in cryonics. Thus, by any measure, cryonics with the popularity it has now will never contribute significantly to overpopulation. Assuming an exponentially increasing population, immortality only changes the population by a constant factor. Thus it doesn't change the nature of the crisis, only the details. Also, before we overpopulate the earth, we will have ready access to outer space, which will, of course, give us much more room for expansion than just our home planet. Also, as countries become wealthier, they tend to have fewer children. The cause of this is unclear; perhaps it is because children are much more likely to survive in wealthy countries, and thus the parents do not need to try as many times to have children that survive to adulthood. Any civilization sufficiently advanced to revive people in cryonic suspension will be sufficiently wealthy and advanced that people will not need or desire as many children as people do in the third world today. If cryonics and other paths to life extension were prevented to keep population under control, then that would be killing one person so another person can have children. CRYOMSG's 398, 582, 583, and 585 through 589 have more on this topic. 3-4. When are two people the same person? Cryonics and, especially, the technologies required to reanimate people from cryonic suspension, open new questions about who we are. People interested in cryonics often disagree about questions of identity that arise in various conceivable circumstances. One way to resolve this is to treat it as a matter of definition. We can define two people to be the same if they remember the same childhood, and if the process by which they came to remember the same childhood also copied most of their other memories and other skills. Of course, there are other possible definitions. Another approach is to use the person-as-software metaphor. Deciding whether two people are the same is a similar problem to deciding whether two pieces of software are the same. The applicability of this simplier problem to the problem of comparing people is debatable, but the exercise is a good one especially in light of current debates on software copyrights. Or one can defer to medicine. The identity questions raised by cryonics are identical to those faced in medicine today when considering partial amnesia, stroke survival, brain diseases, etc. Another alternative is to suppose there is some as-yet-explained physiological feature which acts as the seat of consciousness. In this case, two people are the same person if they share this particular piece of flesh. Preserving this feature becomes important, and replacing it during revival is not an option. Last but not least, some people believe in souls. With this notion, two people are the same person if they have the same soul. Since the laws that souls obey have not been empirically explored, this model doesn't make clear predictions about the consequences of cryonics. 3-5. What if they repair the freezing damage (and install a new body, in the case of neurosuspension), and the resulting being acts and talks as though it were me, but it isn't really me? The answer to this obviously depends on which notion of person-equality you subscribe to. If we use the definitional approach, then someone who behaves identically to you is you. Dealing with the other approaches is left as an exercise for the reader. 3-6. What would happen if people didn't age after reaching adulthood? Ecology: We might be better stewards of this planet if we knew that we would have to live with the results of our actions. Human relations: We will have to learn to treat each other better if we are going to live in the same world together for a very long time. The situation I envision is that people will die of something other than biological accidents like old age. They will die from making mistakes, which seems to me to be a more interesting way to die. We'll get stories like this: Joe died because he didn't bother buying enough redundancy in the life support system of his space ship. Bill died because a machine was developed that could do his job better than him, and before he could retrain for a different job he ran out of money and couldn't afford his anti-aging regimen any more. Jill died because she wanted to. Jane died because she believed in a religion that forbids life extension. I prefer endings like that over having nearly everyone die of symptoms of the same disease (that is, aging) regardless of whether they want to continue, and regardless of how well they were living their life. 3-7. Would it be better to be suspended now or later? In general, one should live as long as possible and be suspended as late as possible. An exception to this is if one has some disease that threatens to destroy the information in the brain, thus decreasing the quality of the suspension. The later one is suspended, the better the suspension will be because of generally advancing technology. This increases the chances that one will come back at all, as well as increasing the chances that one will come back in a world that one can deal with. Of course, one never knows when an accident or disease could happen that leaves one with the choice to be suspended now or not to be suspended at all. So don't postpone your cryonics arrangements if you are going to do them. 3-8. Why would anyone be revived? CRFT gives a detailed answer on pages 46 - 47. This has been discussed extensively on the cryonics mailing list. To get a copy of the discussion, fetch CRYOMSG 0001 and then fetch all messages with "Motivation" in the subject. There are 22 messages as of July 28, 1992. To summarize one of the motivations for revival: Cryonics patients will be revived in the future for the same reason they are frozen today: a cryonics organization will be caring for them. The success of cryonics is not predicated upon the good will of society in general, but rather on the good will and continuity of cryonics organizations. As long as a corps of dedicated individuals continues to care for patients in suspension, those same individuals will be able to revive patients when the technology becomes available to do so. Their motives will be the same as those that drive people involved in cryonics today: the knowledge that their own lives may someday depend on the integrity of their cryonics organization. 3-9. Is there a conflict between cryonics and religious beliefs? If revival is possible, cryonic suspension is in no greater conflict with religion than is any other life-saving medical technology. If a religion does not object to resuscitating someone who has experienced clinical death from a heart attack, it should not object to reviving suspension patients. On the other hand, if revival turns out to be impossible, then the question becomes whether the suspension is consistent with whatever instructions the religion gives for dealing with funerals. Perhaps the most honest approach is to look at the instructions a religion gives for dealing with a missing person who is not known to be either dead or alive. Any model of how "souls" (whatever they may be) interact with freezing must predict that people with normal behavior can be raised from frozen embryos, since this is actually true. 3-10. Is attempting to extend life consistent with Christianity? This answer quoted from the Q&A list in CRFT: All religions teach that life in this world has a purpose and a value. The Christian denominations in particular teach that improving the condition and length of human life in this world are of great importance. Indeed, all of the miraculous acts of Jesus which serve as the vindication of his divinity were aimed at improving the temporal human condition: feeding the hungry masses, healing the sick, and raising the dead. In Matthew 10:8, Jesus commanded his disciples to go forth and do as he had done. In most versions of Christianity, someone who refused medical care for a treatable injury or illness would not be considered either very rational or very conscientious in their religious duties. The point is that life has a purpose here and now and there is nothing wrong with acting to extend and enhance that life if it is lived morally and well. References: and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be revived in the future. It should be read by anyone interested in posting death irritating. Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part4 Cryonics Frequently Asked Question List Section 4: Controversy surrounding Cryonics Last Modified Sun Jan 29 15:12:31 1995 (You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject line "CRYOMSG n", where "n" is a mesage number. There is more about this in the answer to question 8-2. The index to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1". ) Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman. See the end of Section 1 for restrictions on redistribution. 4-1. Why do cryobiologists have such a low opinion of cryonics? How did this start, and how does it continue? Cryobiologists are scientists who study the effects of cold on living systems such as insects, embryos, and organs. Those few who specialize in the cryobiology of organs and larger animals do possess knowledge relevant to the preservation phase of cryonics, although they are seldom familiar with the future repair technologies cryonics depends on. Unfortunately this is a recipe for misunderstanding. Knowing full well all the damage inflicted by today's freezing techniques, and being ignorant of the prospects for repairing it, most cryobiologists believe cryonics cannot work. They view it as an illegitimate pursuit that attracts unwarranted media attention, and that tarnishes the image of their own profession. The resulting hostility toward cryonics is often so great that even cryobiologists sympathetic to cryonics cannot openly state their views without fear of ostracism. 4-2. Who made the statement about reviving a frozen person being similar to reconstructing the cow from hamburger? The cryobiologist Arthur Rowe is responsible for promoting this misrepresentation. Specifically, he says: "Believing cryonics could reanimate somebody who has been frozen is like believing you can turn hamburger back into a cow." The analogy is not valid. Some vertebrates can survive freezing, but no vertebrates can survive grinding. Here is what CRFT said on page A-40: "This is absurd. Cryonics patients are frozen long before most of their cells die or become structurally disorganized. The freezing techniques used in cryonic suspension are based upon hundreds of published studies in which scientists have shown that almost all mammalian cells, including brain cells, can survive freezing and thawing!" As an interesting aside, according to Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu), sponges can reassemble themselves after being diced up into small pieces. I don't know if they could survive grinding, and I don't know if each piece occupies the same location after dicing as before. 4-3. What was the Dora Kent case? Dora Kent is the mother of Saul Kent, a longtime supporter of cryonics and leader of the Life Extension Foundation. On December 11, 1987, she was suspended (head-only) by Alcor. Although Dora was clinically dead at that time, she was not legally dead due to an administrative oversight. The coroner autopsied the non-suspended portion of Dora's remains. At first the conclusion was that Dora died of pneumonia. Later the coroner retracted this, and on January 7, 1988 the coroner's deputies took all of Alcor's patient care records and attempted to take Dora's head for autopsy. Mike Darwin said that the head was not at Alcor's headquarters and he did not know where it was. Mike Darwin and five other Alcor members were arrested, but when they arrived at the jail the police realized that they had no charges to use against them. On January 12 and 13, the Coroner's deputies, UCLA police, and a SWAT team again entered Alcor's headquarters and removed all computing equipment in sight, all magnetic media including an answering machine tape, and prescription medications used for suspensions. Many items were taken that were not on the warrant. Years of legal wrangling ensued. The final outcome was that the coroner lost the next election, Alcor's equipment was returned but damaged, and all charges against Alcor or Alcor members were eventually defeated or dropped. None of Alcor's patients were thawed. Fortunately, no suspensions needed to be done while the police had custody of Alcor's equipment. References: Cryonics 10(12), December 1989, and 9(1), January 1988. 4-4. What about that fellow in the news with the brain tumor? His name is Thomas Donaldson. His tumor is not growing at present, but when and if it begins growing again, it is likely to seriously damage his brain before it kills him. He went to court to petition for the right to be suspended before legal death. The case has been appealed several times. He lost the most recent appeal, as of July 16, 1992. The decisions of the judges are available from Alcor. References: and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be revived in the future. It should be read by anyone interested in posting death irritating. Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part5 Cryonics Frequently Asked Question List Section 5: Neurosuspension Last Modified Sun Jan 29 15:13:09 1995 (You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject line "CRYOMSG n", where "n" is a mesage number. There is more about this in the answer to question 8-2. The index to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1". ) Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman. See the end of Section 1 for restrictions on redistribution. 5-1. What are the pros and cons of neurosuspension (only freezing the head)? (The next two paragraphs are taken from CRYOMSG 6 posted by Kevin Brown.) An undisputed advantage of the neuro option (over whole body) is cost, both for suspension and for maintenance (liquid nitrogen required to remain frozen). Another advantage is the quality of perfusion with cryoprotectants attained during suspension. Each organ has its own optimal perfusion protocol and when the suspension can concentrate on the head only, the quality of perfusion of the brain does not have to be compromised to attain better perfusion of other parts of the body. Another important advantage of the neuro option is mobility. Whole body suspendees are stored in large, bulky containers that are hard to transport whereas the neuro suspendees are stored in a concrete vault on wheels that can be quickly hauled away in case of fire or other emergency. (Also, if necessary, they can be removed from the large vault and transported in smaller units that fit into a van.) An obvious disadvantage of the neuro option is bad PR; it sounds gruesome. Also, one would think that revival (as a whole, functioning, healthy human being) when only your head was preserved would be more difficult than if your entire body was preserved. However, the whole body situation may not be that much better. Mike Darwin of Alcor noticed several years ago, when examining two suspended people being transferred from another organization to Alcor, that every organ of their bodies suffers cracking from thermal stress during freezing. In particular, the spinal cords suffered several fractures. Thus, the whole bodies were not quite as "whole" as most people assumed. Another reason that a whole body may not offer much more than the head alone is that the technology required to revive people from (whole or neuro) cryonic suspension should also be able to clone bodies, which is much simpler than fixing damaged cells. One possible objection to this approach of recloning a body to attach to the head was voiced by Paul Segal of ACS (in the April 1988 issue of The Immortalist). He suggested that adult cells in the head may be missing some of the DNA needed to reclone the remainder of the body. Even if this objection is valid, it is easy to circumvent by storing samples of all the major organs with the preserved head (which is standard practice at Alcor). If the technology for suspension improves enough to make it possible to store a body without much damage, that might tilt the ideal tradeoff away from neurosuspension if the stored body is easily repairable. See the booklet "Neuropreservation: Advantages and Disadvantages" published by Alcor for a more thorough discussion. 5-2. How many people have chosen neurosuspension over whole-body suspension? (This question has only a partial answer.) The different organizations market neurosuspension differently, so the answer depends on which organization you have in mind. >>>Question sent to alcor@cup.portal.com on Wed Jul 29 1992<<< As of June 20, 1992, Alcor had 271 suspension members and 22 members in suspension. I don't yet have information about how many of the suspension members have chosen neuropreservation. ACS has six whole bodies, two heads, and two brains in cryonic suspension. They can do neurosuspensions, but they do not promote the option. Art Quaife estimates that less than 20% of the living members of ACS have chosen neuropreservation. The Cryonics Institute does not do neurosuspensions. References: and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be revived in the future. It should be read by anyone interested in posting death irritating. Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part6 Cryonics Frequently Asked Question List Section 6: Suspension Arrangements Last Modified Sun Jan 29 15:13:42 1995 (You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject line "CRYOMSG n", where "n" is a mesage number. There is more about this in the answer to question 8-2. The index to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1". ) Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman. See the end of Section 1 for restrictions on redistribution. 6-1. How many people are frozen right now? The July 1992 issue of Cryonics magazine, published by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, includes a status report of all the approximately 60 people who have been cryonically suspended. Over 40 of these are still in suspension today; the remainder have been thawed and buried because their cryonics organization failed financially. According to Mike Perry's July 1992 Cryonics magazine summary of all known cryonic suspension patients, nobody suspended since 1978 has been thawed out, with one possible exception of a private suspension done in 1982 for which he has no further information. 6-2. How is suspension paid for? The person who makes the cryonics arrangements pays for suspension, usually with life insurance. Some life insurance companies refuse to accept a cryonics organization as the beneficiary. Check with your insurance agent, or check with a cryonics organization for a list of cooperative companies. 6-3. How will reanimation be paid for? The cryonics organization, relatives, or some charity will pay for reanimation if it happens. There is also the Reanimation Foundation, which is an attempt to allow people to fund their own revival. See also the answer to question 6-11. 6-4. What suspension organizations are available? For a complete list of cryonics suspension organizations and other cryonics-related organizations and publications, fetch cryomsg 0004. This text from cryomsg 0004 describes the largest cryonic suspension organizations: Alcor is not only a membership and caretaking organization but also does the cryonic suspensions, using Alcor employees, contract surgeons, and volunteers. Alcor Life Extension Foundation 7895 East Acoma Dr., Suite 110 Scottsdale, AZ 85260 (602) 922-9013 & (800) 367-2228 FAX (602) 922-9027 Email: info@alcor.org Cryonics magazine, monthly, $25./yr. USA, $35./yr. Canada & Mexico, $40./yr. overseas ($10./yr. USA gift subscription for new subscriber) The American Cryonics Society is the membership organization and the suspensions and caretaking are done by Trans Time. American Cryonics Society (ACS) P.O. Box 761 Cupertino, CA 95015 (408) 734-4111 FAX (408) 973-1046, 24 hr FAX (408) 255-5433 Email: cryonics@netcom.com Supporting membership, including American Cryonics and American Cryonics News $35./yr. USA, $40. Canada & Mexico, $71. overseas (Note: The Immortalist (below) includes American Cryonics News.) CryoCare is a new organization (actually a group of organizations) incorporated in late 1993 and opening for business in 1994. The people creating it have been top cryonics supporters and researchers for many years. CryoCare Foundation 10627 Youngworth Road Culver City, CA 90230 (800) 867-2273 (800-TOP-CARE) Email: cryonews@phantom.com for both general information about CryoCare and also back issues of CryoCare Report The Cryonics Institute does its own suspension and caretaking of patients. Cryonics Institute (CI) 24443 Roanoke Oak Park, MI 48237 (313) 547-2316 & (313) 548-9549 The Immortalist Society, which has the same address and phone number, publishes The Immortalist, monthly, $25./yr. USA, $30./yr. Canada and Mexico, $40./yr. overseas. Airmail $52. Europe, $62. Asia or Australia. A gift subscription ($15./yr. USA, $25. outside USA) includes a free book (The Prospect of Immortality or Man Into Superman). The International Cryonics Foundation has arrangements with Trans Time to do the cryonics suspensions and caretaking of patients. International Cryonics Foundation 1430 N. El Dorado Stockton, CA 95202 (209) 463-0429 (800) 524-4456 Trans Time does suspensions and caretaking for both ACS and ICF and also has taken on suspension customers directly who didn't go through either non-profit organization. Trans Time, Inc. 10208 Pearmain St. Oakland, CA 94603 510-639-1955 Email: quaife@math.berkeley.edu 6-5. How can I get financial statements for the various organizations to evaluate their stability? At this point the best option is to send them paper mail or call them and ask. I would like to eventually get current financial statements from all of them on-line. 6-6. How hard will these people work to freeze me? The Dora Kent case described above is an example. See question 4-3. 6-7. What obligations do the suspension organizations have to the people they have suspended? Will they pay for revival and rehabilitation? Alcor's Consent for Cryonic Suspension states "there are no guarantees that any attempt will ever be made to return me to healthy life". The Cryonic Suspension Agreement states "Alcor shall use such methods as its good faith judgement determines will be most likely to result in preservation and revival of the patient." Reference: Alcor's book "Signing Up Made Simple", 1987, pages 45 and 55. 6-8. How long has this been going on? Robert Ettinger proposed the idea in The Prospect of Immortality which was published in 1964. According to the July 1992 issue of Cryonics magazine, the first person suspended was Dr. James Bedford. He was frozen on 12 Jan. 1967 at the age of 73 by the Cryonics Society of California and is now with Alcor. Bedford has never thawed during that time. When he was moved to another dewar in 1991 (?) the original ice cubes were still intact and several other signs indicated that he had never thawed out. 6-9. How much of the resources of the cryonics organizations are reserved for reviving patients? Alcor's approach to this is discussed in detail in CRFT page A-36. They compute the costs of liquid nitrogen, dewar maintenance, rent, etc., per year. The amount of the trust fund for each patient is twice the amount necessary to pay for this indefinitely assuming a 2% return on investment after inflation. The doubling mentioned in the previous sentence is to provide a margin for error and funds for revival. Assuming that the costs of storage do not change, and a 2% return on investment, and the most efficient storage for a neurosuspension patient, the value of the fund in 1991 dollars y years after suspension is $3300 + ($3300 * (1.02 ^ y)) The corresponding figures for the least efficient storage for a whole-body patient are $84357 + ($84357 * (1.02 ^ y)) Alcor's minimum fee for suspension and storage does not depend on how they are going to do the storage, so it isn't clear to me how the numbers derived in CRFT page A-36 should compare to Alcor's suspension minimums. 6-10. How can uncooperative relatives derail suspensions? Someone confronted with the death of a close relative is likely to do everything possible to postpone or prevent it, even after there is clearly no hope of the potential suspendee ever regaining consciousness. This leads naturally to continuing hospital life support in marginal circumstances, which can lead to months of brain ischemia before the suspension happens. Also, cancers tend to metastasize, and given enough time and enough life support, they are likely to metastasize to the brain and consume much of it. By the time suspension happens, there may not be much to suspend. It is important for your relatives to understand what is going to happen. In particular, if you have arranged for neurosuspension, you don't want your relatives to do something surprising when they figure out that the people from your cryonics organization are at some point going to surgically remove your head. 6-11. How should I deal with relatives who will not cooperate with my suspension arrangements? Use a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care to prevent uncooperative relatives from derailing any cryonics arrangements you make. The idea is to make sure that the person making decisions about your health cooperate with your desire to be suspended. At one time, Alcor published a list of people willing to accept the power of attorney; I do not know whether they still do this. Steve Bridge, president of Alcor, has fairly much experience dealing with relatives of suspendees. He describes some of this in CRYOMSG 2203.1. 6-12. What if my spouse does not approve of my suspension arrangements? The legal maneuvers described in Question 6-11 apply here as well. Assuming you would rather persuade your spouse instead of simply putting up a good legal defense, it may help to let your spouse meet other people interested in cryonics. Steve Bridge talked about this in CRYOMSG 369. 6-13. What practical things can I do to increase my chances of being suspended well? Since no existing cryonics organization has the resources to establish relationships with coroners, morticians, and physicians near each of their members, some of this work becomes responsibility of the members. Also, there are useful, simple things that can be done locally before the suspension team arives. Cryomsg 0026 has much to say about this. 6-14. How can I pay for my own revival and rehabilitation, and keep some of my financial assets after revival? The Reanimation Foundation is set up to enable you to "take it with you" and provide financial support for your reanimation, reeducation, and reentry. It is based in Liechtenstein, which does not have a Rule Against Perpetuities, and thus allows financial assets to be owned by a person long after the person is declared legally dead. Reanimation Foundation c/o Saul Kent 16280 Whispering Spur Riverside, CA 92504 (800) 841-LIFE 6-15. Is Walt Disney frozen? No. There was a time when all of the cryonics organizations would tell you this. Since then Alcor (possibly among others) has realized that if they admit when an individual is not frozen, then it is possible to infer by elimination who is frozen, which they have in many cases agreed to keep secret. Thus Alcor will no longer say anything informative about whether Disney was frozen. Nevertheless, Disney is not frozen. References: and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be revived in the future. It should be read by anyone interested in posting death irritating. Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part7 Cryonics Frequently Asked Question List Section 7: Cost of Cryonics Last Modified Sun Jan 29 15:14:00 1995 (You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject line "CRYOMSG n", where "n" is a mesage number. There is more about this in the answer to question 8-2. The index to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1". ) Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman. See the end of Section 1 for restrictions on redistribution. 7-1. Why does cryonics cost so much? Alcor has available a 15-page $3.00 reprint on "The Cost of Cryonics". Also, Appendix C of CRFT has the same title. Here is a summary from Page A-36 (which I rounded to the nearest 50 dollars): Whole Body Neuro Remote Transport $14,050. $14,050. Cryoprotective Perfusion $13,400. $11,500. Laboratory Evaluations $ 950. $ 950. Temperature Descent $ 8,350. $ 1,750. Record Keeping $ 450. $ 400. ------------------------ -------- -------- Total $37,200. $28,650. Annual Liquid Nitrogen $ 850. $ 50. "Bigfoot" Dewar Storage Costs $ 1,700. $ 150. Older-Style Dewars The funds remaining after the suspension costs must be sufficient to pay the annual liquid nitrogen costs from interest alone (which is conservatively estimated as 2% in inflation-adjusted dollars). The current fees ($42,000. for neuro and $140,000. for whole-body) approximate that well. Bear in mind that the above costs do not include extensive and/or remote standby, which can be quite expensive, so everyone should arrange funding in excess of the minimums. Other organizations have lower fees. There have been debates about how much money is really needed. (Citation?) 7-2. Is anyone getting rich from cryonics? What are the salaries at these organizations like? In December 1990, Cryonics magazine reported that the Board of Directors of Alcor voted a 25% pay cut for all of the staff, so they could keep their budget balanced. Many of the Directors are also on the staff. The salaries after the cut ranged from $22,500 annually for highest paid full-time employee (the President) to $14,400 for the lowest-paid full-time employee. None of the Alcor staff are getting rich from their salaries. 7-3. *How do cryonics organizations invest their money to last for the long term? >>> Question sent to Alcor on Fri Jul 24 17:34:44 1992 <<< References: and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be revived in the future. It should be read by anyone interested in posting death irritating. Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part8 Cryonics Frequently Asked Question List Section 8: Communications Last Modified Sun Jan 29 15:34:54 1995 (You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject line "CRYOMSG n", where "n" is a mesage number. There is more about this in the answer to question 8-2. The index to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1". ) Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman. See the end of Section 1 for restrictions on redistribution. 8-1. How can I get more information? Steve Bridge's "Introduction to Cryonics" gives a quick, three-page overview of cryonics. This overview is cryomsg 972. For a more detailed introduction, including a discussion of the scientific evidence that freezing injury may be repairable, read the booklet "Cryonics: Reaching for Tomorrow", which is available from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation (Question 6-4 has the address). It includes an extensive Question and Answer section. The books "Engines of Creation" and "Unbounding the Future", by K. Eric Drexler, et al. describe nanotechnology (also called molecular nanotechnology or molecular engineering). This is the kind of technology needed to revive anyone preserved with today's methods of cryonic suspension. The largest three suspension organizations each have newsletters. For contact information about on them, see the answer to Question 6-4. 8-2. What is a cryomsg? How do I fetch one? There has been a cryonics mailing list since July 1988. To get current information about the mailing list, send email to majordomo@cryonet.org with the message body "info cryonet". To subscribe to the mailing list, send email to majordomo@cryonet.org with the message body "subscribe cryonet". Most Cryomsg's are archived messages from this mailing list. To get a cryomsg, send mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject "CRYOMSG nnn nnn" where the nnn's are the numbers of the cryomsg's you want. (Some cryomsg's are at an old site. For these cryomsg's, the response to the mail to kqb@cryonet.org will be instructions for fetching the cryomsg from the old site, instead of the cryomsg you want.) Also, all cryomsg's referenced in this FAQ (and a few others) are available by anonymous FTP from pop.cs.cmu.edu, directory "/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/tsf/Public-Mail/cryonics/archive". You will need to give the entire directory path at once to FTP, rather than the commands "cd /afs" "cd cs.cmu.edu" and so forth, because the directories at the beginning of the path are protected from anonymous FTP access. Cryomsgs numbers 100, 200, ..., 900 have one line summaries of the preceding 100 cryomsg's. Message number 0000 has a top level index, and message number 0001 has the subjects of all of the messages. Message 0004 has a list of cryonics suspension organizations and also cryonics-related organizations and publications. Message 0005 is entitled "Suggested reference messages for new subscribers". References: and their answers about cryonics, the practice of carefully preserving very recently clinically and legally dead people in hopes that they can be revived in the future. It should be read by anyone interested in posting death irritating. Archive-name: cryonics-faq/part9 Cryonics Frequently Asked Question List Section 9: Glossary Last Modified Sun Jan 29 15:16:25 1995 (You can fetch cryomsg "n" by sending mail to kqb@cryonet.org with the subject line "CRYOMSG n", where "n" is a mesage number. There is more about this in the answer to question 8-2. The index to this FAQ list is cryomsg "0018.1". ) Copyright 1993 by Tim Freeman. See the end of Section 1 for restrictions on redistribution. The next three sections have definitions of cryonics vocabulary. The list is divided (at the discretion of the editor) into words to use, words not to use, and words to use in jest. Words to Use CRFT has a glossary on pp. 57 - 58. biostasis - Synonym for "suspension". cardiac arrest - Cessation of heartbeat. clinical death - A person is clinically dead if they are in cardiac arrest and their pupils do not contract when light is shined into them. cryobiology - Biology at low temperatures. This includes organ preservation. cryogenics - Science in general at low temperatures. cryonics - The practice of freezing people at the end of their natural lifespan, hoping for eventual reanimation. information-theoretic death - A person has reached information-theoretic death if a healthy state of that person could not possibly be deduced from the current state. The exact timing of information-theoretic death depends on presently unknown details of how the brain works. The current best estimates put it several hours after clinical death. ischemia - Damage to tissues due to oxygen deprivation. legal death - A person is legally dead if a doctor has signed a death certificate with his or her name on it. This tends to happen when the doctor believes that modern technology will not be able to restore them to health. The criteria for legal death change with time. neurosuspension - The practice of only freezing a person's head or brain. revival - The process of restoring a clinically dead person to health. suspension - The process of preserving a person for eventual revival, usually by freezing in liquid nitrogen. This happens after legal death but hopefully before information-theoretic death. Words Not to Use corpsicle - Pejorative synonym for "suspended person". cryonicist - An ambiguous term. 1. One who studies or who tries to improve the process of freezing people for later revival. Use "cryonics researcher" instead. 2. One who is interested in cryonics. Use "cryonics fan" instead, or perhaps "person interested in cryonics". death - A vague term. Use "legal death", "clinical death", or "information-theoretic death" instead. deanimation - An ugly-sounding synonym for "clinical death". reanimation - An ugly-sounding synonym for "revival". Words To Use In Jest flexionally disabled - frozen stiff metabolically disadvantaged - clinically dead (Next five are from Alcor Indiana Newsletter #5 by Steve Bridge, cryomsgs 1148 and 1149.) chronologically gifted - old experientially enhanced - old achieved an overall metabolic deficiency - died, possibly frozen thermally challenged - frozen assumed room temperature - died, not frozen (Attributed to Rush Limbaugh) Credits The following people contributed to this document. Some of them used. They are listed in alphabetical order by last name. Steve Bridge <72320.1642@CompuServe.COM> Kevin Brown Thomas Donaldson Tim Freeman Daniel Green Steven B. Harris <71450.1773@CompuServe.COM> Bryan Michael Kearney Simon Levy Lola McCrary Perry E. Metzger Micheal B. O'Neal Art Quaife Richard Schroeppel Garret Smyth Ralph Whelan <71532.2442@CompuServe.COM> Brian Wowk and one person on the cryonet mailing list who chose to remain anonymous.