Cryonics is Still in Search of Better Approaches to End of Life Management

Cryonics is the industry and collection of technologies associated with low-temperature preservation of an individual upon death, necessarily carried out as soon as possible so as to prevent tissue damage in the brain. It is connected to research and development in forms of organ preservation associated with transplant medicine. A good cryopreservation of at least the brain ensures the best chance of future restoration with all the data of the mind intact, encoded in the fine structure of neurons and synapses: a preserved individual has all the time in the world to wait, after all. The odds of success are unknown, but infinitely better than is the case for all of the alternative options for those too old or too ill to wait for the advent of future rejuvenation therapies. In an ideal world a good preservation would occur because it was scheduled ahead of time: a team and resources must be assembled and on the site, and this is hard and expensive to do at very short notice when there are so few qualified individuals and such a large territory to cover. This is why cryonics is strongly connected to legal issues surrounding self-determination in end of life choices, since in most countries people are forbidden to choose the time and manner of their own death, and doctors are forbidden to assist in enabling that death to be an easy one when the patient is in pain and dying, beyond the capacities of present medical technology. In that ideal world, the cryonics industry would also ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs