Cryonics: Cheating death or just freezing it?
by Meredith Carpenter
The process | The principle | The history | Ethical implications
"Fear
not death, for the sooner we die the longer we shall be immortal."
-Benjamin Franklin
On
September 23rd, 1991, archaeologists in the Ötztal Alps uncovered
the preserved
corpse of a man who died in approximately 3300 BC. His body was
frozen at a glacial temperature of about -20°C (at some 10,400
feet above sea level), the perfect conditions for preservation
of human tissue. He is the world's oldest and best-preserved mummy,
and much research has been done to determine the circumstances
surrounding his life and death. The "ice man" was so
well preserved because the microorganisms that cause decay cannot
survive at constant low temperatures. Humans are exploiting this
phenomenon of arrested decay, which occurs often in nature, in
a procedure called "cryonic preservation."
The
process
Often referred to as "cryogenics," a general term for
the study of low-temperature
phenomena, "cryonics" is a more accurate term which
means "the practice of freezing a diseased human in hopes
of restoring life at some future time when a cure for the disease
has been developed." The process of cryonic preservation
begins at death. Once cryonic technicians arrive on the scene,
they immediately begin to perform CPR on the corpse in order to
continue its blood flow. The body is then placed on a heart-lung
machine to maintain circulation and the blood is cooled to 15°C.
At this time, the technicians administer drugs such as calcium
channel blockers (including nimopidine, which is used on patients
with brain injuries), which serve to block the movement of calcium
ions into heart cells and blood vessels, thereby increasing the
supply of oxygen-rich blood to the heart and other parts of the
body. Free radical inhibitors, which prevent the damaging effects
of free radicals, and blood thinners are also administered. Once
the patient has reached -10°C, the blood is replaced with
a saline solution to help prevent shrinking or swelling of body
tissues and to aid in organ preservation. Finally,
the body is cooled by first placing it in a bath of silicone oil,
which aids in rapid cooling and remains in liquid state to nearly
-100°C, and eventually 
into
a large insulated container filled with liquid nitrogen. The final
temperature of the body after this process is -196°C (-320°F).
By cooling the body to extremely low temperatures, cryonic technicians can indefinitely preserve a body without the worry of decay or major destruction of body tissues. The freezing of living cells, however, is problematic. Ice crystals form around cells during the freezing process, causing them to separate. The technicians prevent the formation of these crystals by pumping glycerol-based antifreeze throughout the body. Even if this preventative measure succeeds, the antifreeze is toxic to cells and thawing can inflict further damage on fragile tissues. The work is intricate and exacting, as different kinds of cells require different thawing procedures, even within individual organs. Sometimes only a patient's head is frozen (neurosuspension), even though brain degradation begins to occur immediately after death. The current attitude of cryonicists is that reanimation from cryonic suspension will be achieved only after the development of nanotechnology, which would hypothetically use miniscule machines to repair cells at the molecular level. These machines would repair damage caused by the freezing process and cure the disease that was the cause of death. In the case of neurosuspension, therapeutic cloning would be utilized to create a body for the suspended brain. So far, nanotechnology remains in the realm of science fiction, though cryonics advocates (including the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the world's principal provider of cryonic suspension facilities) point to the infant discipline as one of the main arguments for continuing the practice of cryonic suspension. Another justification is that cryonic preservation can do no harm--even if it does not work, you will be dead anyway. Alcor even claims that nanotechnology could be developed within the next 20 to 100 years. However, most cryobiologists (scientists who study the effects of low temperatures on living organisms) are skeptical, as are many scientists in general. Dr. Arthur Rowe of the New York University School of Medicine says, "Believing cryonics could reanimate somebody who has been frozen is like believing you can turn a hamburger back into a cow."
Benjamin
Franklin was probably one of the first to dream of preserving
dead bodies for future repair. In 1773, after observing how the
heat of the sun reanimated flies preserved in a bottle of wine
sent to London from the United States, he wrote, "I wish
it were possible from this instance to invent a method of embalming
drowned persons, in such a manner that they may be recalled to
life, however distant." In his book The Prospect of Immortality
(1964), Robert Ettinger was the first to popularize the concept
of cryonic suspension, saying that we could freeze our bodies
now and "sooner or later our friends of the future should
be equal to the task of reviving and curing us." In 1967,
the first person was cryonically frozen. His name was Dr. John
Bedford, and his body is now held in Alcor's headquarters in Scottsdale,
Arizona. As of June 2002, there were 49 patients in cryonic suspension
in Alcor's facilities, none of whom is Walt Disney or his head,
despite popular belief. Cryonic preservation has always been extremely
expensive. As of February 2003, Alcor charged $120,000 for whole-body
suspension and $50,000 for neurosuspension. It costs $150 to apply
for membership and $398 per year in membership dues. Lifetime
membership costs $20,000. Even the cheaper (and less well-known)
companies charge upwards of $28,000 for whole-body suspension.
Still,
Alcor does not guarantee indefinite preservation, though it has
established an "irrevocable" Patient Care Trust funded
by membership payments that provides continued care and that theoretically
cannot be cancelled until all patients are reanimated.
The prospect of cryonic preservation raises many questions about the nature of death and the ethics of the use of this technology. What would be the implications if "reanimated" people were suddenly to rejoin the general population? How would their presence affect overpopulation? How would it affect religious ideas of immorality? Dr. Kenneth Iserson, the director of the Arizona Bioethics Program, writes about cryonics in his book Death To Dust: What Happens To Dead Bodies? In an email interview for Hybrid Vigor, he puts cryonics into perspective: "Doing the math, even if a large number of people were frozen and then 'reanimated,' this would be only a blip in the population. These people might get a 'second chance' at life, but would not be immortal. I suspect that depression--over the new lifestyles, lack of relatives and friends, and absence of a real place in the society--would doom many to suicide.… The questions would be: When is a person really dead? Is a marriage dissolved when a person is frozen? How about insurance payments? Would this person retain seniority at his/her job?"
Alcor's official web site is quick to point out that legal death and real death are not the same thing: "Legal death merely means that a qualified medical authority has decided that restoring (or attempting to restore) blood circulation is no longer appropriate. Real death then occurs as cells irreversibly deteriorate in the minutes and hours that follow.… We believe that cryonics patients are NOT dead, but in a coma that will eventually be reversible." Since these patients are effectively in a "coma," upon awakening they would most likely experience only the short-term memory loss associated with loss of electrical activity in the brain (long-term memory results from structural changes within the brain). Of course, even if cryonics were someday to become a reality, death would still be possible if, for example, the brain were injured to such an extent that nanorepair would be unable to restore the full memories and identity of the patient.
Still, such a drastic attempt to avoid death might spur some
to claim that the cryonicists are "playing God" by attempting
to make people immortal; the proponents of the technology, however,
would most likely respond that cryonic preservation is no different
than prolonging life using medications, life support, vaccines
and the like. There is also the issue of assisted death: what
if a terminally ill patient wants to be frozen before his or her
disease progresses further? This argument by a cancer patient
reached a California Appellate Court before its dismissal. Finally,
the recent legal dispute within Ted Williams' family over whether
the baseball legend's body should remain cryonically frozen or
be cremated illustrates the myriad of legal and ethical issues
associated with this procedure. Obviously, when considering cryonic
suspension, we cannot simply ask, "Could it work?"--we
must also ask, "What could happen if it works?"
References
1. Platzer, W. "The Iceman - 'Man from the Hauslabjoch'." Universität Innsbruck. 12 November 2002 http://info.uibk.ac.at/c/c5/c552/Forschung/Iceman/iceman-en.html
2. "Cryonics." Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary. 10th ed. 2001.
3. Iserson, K.V. Death To Dust: What Happens To
Dead Bodies? 2nd ed. Tucson: Galen Press, 2001.
4. Iserson, K.V. "RE: Cryonics article."
E-mail to the author. 11 November 2002.
5. "Frequently Asked Questions." Alcor Life
Extension Foundation. 12 November 2002 http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/index.htm
6. Olsen, C.B. "A Possible Cure for Death."
Medical Hypotheses 26 (1988): 77-84.
7. "Cryogenics." Ethical Issues in Medical
Technology. Santa Clara University. 12 November 2002 http://medialab.scu.edu/btsfall/bts10/Cryogenics1.html
8. Pommer, R.W. "Donaldson v. Van de Kamp: cryonics,
assisted suicide, and the challenges of medical science." J
Contemp Health Law Policy 9 (1993): 589-603.
9. "Court motion seeks to keep fight over Ted
Williams' remains in family." 17 July 2002. CNN.com. 14 November
2002 http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/07/17/ williams.remains/index.html
