A Perspective on Long Term Risk in Cryonics

Cryonics is a form of low-temperature preservation of tissue immediately following death, with the aim of preserving brain structure sufficiently well to allow future revival. Since the necessary technologies for revival can be envisaged in some detail, but remain far in the future, a large focus of the cryonics community is long-term risk and survival of cryopreservation organizations into at least the later decades of this century. A lot of ink has been spilled on this topic over the years, and this article covers some of the high points, such as politics, regulation, the necessity for growth in what is currently a small industry, and so forth: Cryonics service providers offer their customers perpetual care. This care is meant to continue until medical technology has advanced to the point that their reanimation can be performed safely. While the most optimistic estimates are that reanimation may be possible in as little as fifty years, the time frame is normally considered to be hundreds of years. The poor quality of suspensions received by most persons, however, suggests that many will be reanimated only in the distant future, if at all. One of the greatest unknowns is whether these companies will be able to operate continuously over this period. An organizational failure of even a few months would terminate the experiment in medical time travel by causing irreparable damage to those in storage. From an organizational standpoint, this offer of perpetual care is similar t...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs