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Q What is 'cryonics'?
A Cryonics is the practice of cooling people immediately after death to the point where molecular physical decay completely stops, in the expectation that scientific and medical procedures currently being developed will be able to revive them and restore them to good health later. A patient held in such a state is said to be in 'cryonic suspension'.
Q Can cryonics be performed on living people?
A Legally, not as yet. Obviously, it would be better to cool a patient before illness causes so much physical damage that it results in death. But it's not presently allowed by law, even for someone in great suffering or with a terminal illness. We hope that one day it will be, under carefully controlled conditions, once revival from cryonic suspension can be demonstrated.
Q How do you know revival is even possible?
A Our web site at http://cryonics.org contains an immense amount of scientific and medical evidence that leads to that conclusion. (You may be on that site now, or you may be reading a printed handout.) So much, that a quick summary is impossible. But, in essence: revival seems likely because: (1) Many biological specimens have been frozen, stored at very low temperatures, and revived; these include whole insects, most types of human tissue including brain tissue, human embryos which have later grown into healthy children, and a few small mammalian organs. (2) A large and growing number of respected scientists, particularly in the field of nanotechnology, have looked at cryonics and developed specific ideas as to just why reviving a person safely from cryonic suspension is possible, in spite of the damage from old age, disease, accident, postmortem warm ischemia, and the freezing process itself.
Q But isn't freezing a deceased person pointless? Once you're dead, you're dead. And even if you could revive them, they'd just have the same fatal disease they had before.
A If by 'dead' you mean 'clinically dead', without heartbeat or breathing, then 'raising the dead' is done every day, thousands of times every year, in hospitals all over the world. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR quite commonly restores life to people who were once considered (wrongly) to be absolutely and irretrievably dead in less technologically sophisticated times. If we can restore life to people who have been dead for several minutes, and even hours in some drowning cases, why should we assume that doing the same after years is impossible, if we can prevent further deterioration during that time? 'Absolute' death may only be said to occur when the brain is completely destroyed - and brain preservation is precisely what cryonic suspension hopes to achieve. As for having a fatal disease -- as medical science progresses, fatal diseases become formerly fatal diseases. Polio or bubonic plague were fatal once; they - and hundreds of other diseases -- are not fatal now. No reputable medical doctor will claim that any disease is eternally incurable, and many qualified people think that cures for currently fatal diseases - including old age - may arrive in the future .
Q Do you really think it will become possible to cure every disease, even reverse the effects of aging, and repair all freezing damage as well --?
A Eventually, yes, although there is certainly disagreement on this subject. Although it isn't necessary to wait till 'every' disease imaginable is cured, all at one stroke. All you really need to do to make cryonics itself work is simply to cure or prevent freezing damage (although additional advances will, of course, be necessary to revive patients). We don't expect an instant cure of every possible disease overnight; but scientific knowledge doubles every two years; technological breakthroughs are occurring almost daily; rapid progress is clearly taking place in every medical field, and cryonics is no exception. We are guardedly optimistic - because we have good reasons to be.
Q But aren't you really talking about raising the dead!
A No. Cryonics is a matter of rational procedures, not religious miracle. Cryonics can't restore life to people whose brains have been long been physically destroyed - a Lincoln, or a Julius Caesar, or those cremated. Cryonics simply - but reasonably -- claims that if you freeze a person rapidly enough so that the decay of essential brain structures does not occur, then that person's brain structure is preserved sufficiently to make it at least possible that that person's brain can be repaired and the person restored to life and health.
Q Can you guarantee success?
A No one can guarantee success, because no one can guarantee the future. It is difficult to predict details of new scientific advances--but even more difficult credibly to predict lack of advances.
Q If it's not a sure thing, why should I even consider it?
A What's your alternative? Certain death. Isn't a chance at life better than sure obliteration - not just your own, but your family's and your friends'? Just because it's 'possible' a cryonics patient may not make it to future, doesn't mean the odds are against you: if anything they're for you. The oldest patient currently still being held in cryonic suspension is a Dr James Bedford, who was suspended in 1967, almost 33 years ago. He's survived the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, 60's race riots, the 70's recession, Watergate, and the collapse of the Soviet Union - which is more than a lot of his contemporaries can say. If he can make it 33 years, you can too. Of course we can't guarantee that the cryonics effort will succeed. But we can and do guarantee this: that at CI we'll give our very best efforts to see our member patients are restored to life and good health. Because the life of every director and officer and member of CI depends on those efforts too.