Freezing Time, Cheating Death
When I think about cryonics, I can’t help but feel like I’ve stumbled into the plot of a sci-fi blockbuster. The idea of preserving our bodies and brains at sub-zero temperatures, just waiting for the day when advanced technology can revive us – it’s the stuff of Hollywood dreams. But as it turns out, this futuristic fantasy is actually a reality that some people are betting their lives on.
According to the BBC, cryonics is an industry that’s been around since the 1970s, with small storage facilities in the US and Russia housing the frozen remains of just over 5,000 people globally. These “cryonauts” have placed their faith, and their life savings, in the idea that one day they’ll be revived and cured of whatever ailment led to their untimely demise.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – this all sounds like the plot of a bad sci-fi novel. But the reality is, there are people out there who are deadly serious about this. Take Dennis Kowalski, the president of the Cryonics Institute in Michigan. He’s a paramedic by trade, but he’s found his true calling in the world of cryonics, performing the intricate procedures required to preserve bodies and brains in liquid nitrogen. As he puts it, “You also need someone with a funeral director’s licence because you are still legally handling dead bodies, experience running a perfusion pump, and basic surgical skills.”
The Unanswered Questions of Cryonics
Of course, the real question on everyone’s mind is: does this actually work? Can we really freeze people and then bring them back to life, decades or even centuries later? Well, the short answer is… maybe. According to experts, the technology to revive a cryogenically frozen human being simply doesn’t exist yet. The process of vitrification (that’s the fancy term for turning the body into glass-like state) is still fraught with challenges, and no one has been able to successfully reanimate a frozen human brain.
As Dr. Clive Coen, a professor of neuroscience at King’s College London, bluntly put it, “Cryonics is doomed to failure.” He argues that the application of antifreeze during the preservation process fails to reach all parts of the brain, and the idea of defrosting each part of the body simultaneously is just not feasible. In his view, the cryonicists are “naive in comparing their wishful thinking with the successes achieved in storing loosely packed cells – such as sperm – at low temperatures.”
But even the most ardent supporters of cryonics, like Dr. Anders Sandberg from the University of Oxford, admit that the chances of revival are slim – he puts the success rate at a mere 3%. So why are people still willing to drop six-figure sums on the off-chance that they might get a second shot at life?
A Gamble on the Future
Well, for starters, the alternative isn’t exactly appealing. As Dr. Emil Kendziorra, the CEO of a German cryonics company, so eloquently puts it, “The alternative he laments is death.” And when faced with that stark reality, the prospect of being frozen and revived in the future, however remote the chances, starts to look a lot more appealing.
Plus, as LiveScience points out, the cryonics industry is banking on the rapid advancements in fields like 3D printing, cloning, and artificial intelligence to one day provide the solutions needed to make revival a reality. After all, who would have thought that we’d be able to perform heart transplants or clone entire animals just a few decades ago?
So while the skeptics may scoff at the idea of cryonics, the true believers are willing to take a gamble on the future. And let’s be honest, if you had the chance to cheat death, wouldn’t you at least be tempted to try?
Of course, this all begs the question – what happens if cryonics does work? What will we do with all these frozen brains and bodies once the technology catches up? Will we 3D print new bodies for them? Transplant their brains into cloned vessels? Or maybe just upload their minds into some sort of artificial intelligence?
The Ethical Quandaries of Cryonics
As fascinating as the technical aspects of cryonics are, I can’t help but wonder about the ethical implications. After all, this is a field that deals with the most fundamental aspects of human existence – life, death, and the nature of consciousness.
Just imagine – you wake up in a world hundreds of years in the future, with your body and mind completely transformed. Would you still feel like “you”? And what about the impact on society as a whole? If we can effectively cheat death, how would that change the way we live our lives? Would it lead to an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, with only the wealthy able to afford the chance at immortality?
These are the kinds of questions that keep me up at night. Because while the idea of cryonics may seem like the stuff of science fiction, the reality is that it’s a technology that could fundamentally reshape our understanding of what it means to be human. And that’s a future that I, for one, am not sure I’m ready to embrace.
But who knows – maybe in a few decades, we’ll all be lining up to have our brains frozen, just waiting for the day when we can be reborn into a new and improved version of ourselves. After all, as they say, the future is a strange and unpredictable place. And when it comes to cryonics, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what it has in store.
