# Cryonics, as currently extant, is snake-oil. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 1, 2006, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949 "2006-08-01T23:16:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/21 "2006-08-02T13:10:05Z")
[QUOTE=FRDE] Cryogenics is a bit of a con, but the fallback position that one could be cloned, is very viable. Heart transplant patients have reported taking on characteristics of donors, like liking ice cream or classical music, but I find it hard to believe that our memories and ‘personality’ are replicated in every cell. Cryogenics is IMO no better than being a DNA donor for cloning. … which might be enough for some people [/QUOTE] which means that it is a massive waste of resources, since you only need to freeze a few cells in a test tube (actually, just one, but might as well keep a decent sample to work with) to allow for the possibility of cloning. One aspect that I’ve wondered about that I haven’t seen much mention of. The earth’s population is growing. At some point either there is going to have to be population controls or there will be some catastrophe (e.g. WW3) as a result of massive overpopulation. In the former case I wonder if the defrosting would be allowed since each person being defrosted is another mouth to feed. In the latter case it seems unlikely that the high tech resources would remain to do the defrosting. ---
**Author:** ![Cluricaun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bb73d2/32.png) [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/22 "2006-08-02T13:11:22Z")
And what happens to the first couple of people they try to reanimate as frozen Frankensteins? Sure, maybe some new process down the line seems to work on rabbits and dogs and other testable animals, but what happens when you bring back the first person and they’re some horribly retarded shambling zombie, ala Pet Semetary? Do you allow them to live in such a state until they expire again? That seems almost even more criminal, since they’ll no doubt be touted as a “success” in the cryogenic process. Does that “person” then also have the right to die? It would become a bit of a sticky wicket ethics wise I think. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/23 "2006-08-02T13:21:33Z")
[QUOTE=Canadjun] One aspect that I’ve wondered about that I haven’t seen much mention of. The earth’s population is growing. At some point either there is going to have to be population controls or there will be some catastrophe (e.g. WW3) as a result of massive overpopulation. In the former case I wonder if the defrosting would be allowed since each person being defrosted is another mouth to feed. In the latter case it seems unlikely that the high tech resources would remain to do the defrosting. [/QUOTE] That’s not really an issue – population growth is leveling off, and if anything excessive popuation **decrease** is likely to be a problem before we reach the point of making serious attempts to revive cryopreserved bodies. ---
**Author:** ![badchad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b77776/32.png) [@badchad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/badchad)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/24 "2006-08-02T13:37:50Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] Religion doesn’t necessarily involve creating cells out of nothing at all. I don’t often get to write this, so I’ll repeat **Menocchio** ’s claim: advantage God. [/QUOTE] I wasn’t referring to creating of cells out of nothing at all (a good number of religious people do believe this, but that wasn’t my argument), but the creation of a conscious afterlife out of nothing at all. In the latter case the cells have long since decomposed, yet followers of religion still think there will be some sort of conscious afterlife. In cryonics they are at hoping to return life to cells that are at least somewhat preserved, while the religious afterlife implies life goes on after every cell is not only dead but often fully decomposed. I’ll stick with advantage man, though I don’t think cryonics has a much better chance of working, as currently done, than Mangetout does. When we bring in the fact that science undeniably proposes that man does exist, but has yet to demonstrate god to be anything more than a figment of mans imagination I really don’t see how god can come out with any advantages. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/25 "2006-08-02T14:31:04Z")
I can see donating your body for cryogenic science, but anyone who thinks today’s techniques bring the possibility of them coming back to life needs to back away from the crack pipe. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/26 "2006-08-02T14:37:47Z")
[QUOTE=badchad] When we bring in the fact that science undeniably proposes that man does exist, but has yet to demonstrate god to be anything more than a figment of mans imagination I really don’t see how god can come out with any advantages. [/QUOTE] The only reason to believe God doesn’t exist is absence of evidence (which is, of course, reason enough), but we have more reason than that to believe cryonics doesn’t work. I’m going to have to go with God on this one. As for the afterlife, that is based on the idea that something nonphysical exists. Same deal there - absence of evidence. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/27 "2006-08-02T14:51:18Z")
I know the cryonics thing won’t work…but is there hope of immortality via memory download? Suppose everything in your barin could be downloaded into a few thousand zip drives-would your personality survive? then, the engineers of the future could load you into a robot-and voila-you live again! ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/28 "2006-08-02T17:13:20Z")
Cryonic corpses will be a useful source of food after the rapture 😉 ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/29 "2006-08-02T18:55:18Z")
I don’t know how much degradation takes place in 24 or 48 hours, but it doesn’t seem totally unreasonable that future technological advances will allow for the mapping of neurons to the extent that minds can be either replicated or virtualized in hardware. If that’s the case, then doesn’t freezing the brain offer your best case for recovery? Yeah, it still might be a billion to one or worse, but can you offer a _better_ chance? After all, Pascal’s wager doesn’t really come into play here. If you’re wrong, the worst case is the same as if you never tried at all: you’re still dead. Sure, it’s a waste of resources, but so is a whole bunch of stuff that the ultra rich spend money on. As for the problems of the cryogenics company deciding that you’re not worth keeping around after a while, you can assign a law firm as executor/trustee, and they will see to your interests in as close to perpetuity as our society has managed to come up with. There is always the _absenteee landlord_ problem: given enough time without the “owner” around, the locals will probably just change the law to grant themselves ownership of his assets, and in this case it’s probably made easier by the fact that the “owner” is legally deceased. But, hey, you take what you can get. ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/30 "2006-08-02T20:09:00Z")
[QUOTE=badchad] I wasn’t referring to creating of cells out of nothing at all (a good number of religious people do believe this, but that wasn’t my argument), but the creation of a conscious afterlife out of nothing at all. In the latter case the cells have long since decomposed, yet followers of religion still think there will be some sort of conscious afterlife. [/QUOTE] Your soul (or equivalent) isn’t contained in your cells, or even in your mind. It’s not your conciousness as we experience it day to day. It’s supposedly something more profound and transcendental than all of that. It’s based on a set of axioms totally outside of science. It isn’t supported by scientific inquiry, but it isn’t based on scientific thought in the first place. Cryonics is. It’s based on the basic observation that cellular structure is preserved by freezing. But we also have evidence that the process could not work. There is no way that the brain’s crucial neuronal connections could survive this process. It cannot be restarted, or even scanned and recreated. It’s destroyed at the subcellular levels that make up our memories. The difference is that one presupposes entities and mechanism undetectable by physical examination and unchanged by physical properties. The other is just technology. We cannot disprove the existance of God or the soul. We can say when a technology is based on scientifically unsound principles. Another thing that always struck me about cryonics is that it always seemed awfully naieve to assume that the corpsicles will be kept around until scientists get around to inventing magic. Sure, they have a contract, but the company may go completely belly up in the depression of 2032, and the cadavers incinerated. They may be destroyed by an errant bomb during the Scientology Crusades of 2105. Or buried during the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano in 2256. Or torn apart by an angry mob of fundamentalist Buddhists in 2367. Or simply cut apart by curious anthropologists in 2400. It’d be a damn long time, even by the most liberal estimates, until we could reanimate these things, and plenty could happen before then. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/31 "2006-08-02T20:44:41Z")
I’m a little more curious about induced hypothermia cases, in which a patient is cooled to about 33[sup]o[/sup] C to let surgeons perform delicate vascular surgery. Patients have been kept chilled without lasting ill-effect for hours - could this eventually go to days, or months? Or years? Unlike cryonics, which is essentially freezing a corpse in hopes of one day reanimating it, how long could a chilled but still technically alive patient be suspended? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/32 "2006-08-02T21:14:45Z")
[QUOTE=badchad] The religious parallels here are uncanny. If preachers aren’t aware of what they are doing, why should the cryonics folks. [/QUOTE] I don’t particularly wish to veer off on yet another _Isn’t Religion Stupid_ hijack, but I disagree with you; preachers are promoting a supernatural entity which, if you believe in it, is by definition somewhat _unknowable_ - so there is at the very least an excuse for them to be doing what they are doing in innocent earnest. Cryonics, on the other hand, is making false claims about tangible objects and processes; they are claiming to preserve a body in a state they claim is hopefully fit for revival, when in fact they are just rather carefully destroying it. They’re _right there in the room while this happens_, so they can’t very well claim blissful ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/33 "2006-08-02T21:21:04Z")
[QUOTE=iamthewalrus(:3=] I don’t know how much degradation takes place in 24 or 48 hours, but it doesn’t seem totally unreasonable that future technological advances will allow for the mapping of neurons to the extent that minds can be either replicated or virtualized in hardware. If that’s the case, then doesn’t freezing the brain offer your best case for recovery? [/quote] I don’t believe that even this has any merit; I’m pretty sure that it isn’t just the layout of the neurons, but their active/interactive, electrochemical states that give rise to, or at the very least, contribute to, your consciousness; if that’s all shut down, mapping it and replicating it elsewhere isn’t goping to work either. Besides, as I said, the preservation process as shown in _best case_ on this documentary, is at present very destructive. > [@](#): > > Yeah, it still might be a billion to one or worse, but can you offer a _better_ chance? After all, Pascal’s wager doesn’t really come into play here. If you’re wrong, the worst case is the same as if you never tried at all: you’re still dead. Sure, it’s a waste of resources, but so is a whole bunch of stuff that the ultra rich spend money on. No, I don’t believe it represents _any chance at all_ - it’s not _better than nothing_ - it’s _the same as nothing_. Tutankhamun has the same chance of being revived as do Alcor’s clients. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/34 "2006-08-02T21:27:18Z")
[QUOTE=lokij] Well, I’ve heard it said that cryonic preservation is the second worst thing that could ever happen to you. If it’s a choice between dying and rotting in some box in the ground and an infintesimally small chance that there will be some actual ‘magic’ technology via nanotech ect. then I’ll side with the infintesimally small chance every time. This is assuming of course that the money required for preservation wouldn’t be better served by taking care of your loved ones… in other words a use for a relatively small excess of your estate. Just my opinion. [/QUOTE] I suspect the person you heard this from was _the snake-oil vendor_, or his claims echoed through one of his followers/clients. The _better than nothing_ claim is part of the sales patter, but nothing more than that. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/35 "2006-08-02T21:31:45Z")
[QUOTE=FRDE] Already sperm and ova are frozen - and defrosted for use. [/QUOTE] Include with that human embryos. The common practice of invitro fertilization is to retrieve eggs from the female and fertilize them with sperm from the male to create a dozen or so embryos. A couple of “fresh” embryos are placed back into the female to see if they will attach and grow. The reamining embryos are frozen. If the female doesn’t become “pregnant” they can un-freeze more embryos to try again. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/36 "2006-08-02T21:38:33Z")
Embryos are not the same as adult humans (much less, adult humans that died of serious illnesses 48 hours ago). It isn’t just a simple case of ‘scaling up’ or developing what we currently do with embryos until we perfect it for whole bodies. The reason embryos can be frozen without destroying them is that they have little or no circulatory or nervous systems, in fact, they have little in the way of _organised systems_ at all - so there isn’t really all that much to be disrupted. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/37 "2006-08-02T21:59:14Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] Embryos are not the same as adult humans (much less, adult humans that died of serious illnesses 48 hours ago). It isn’t just a simple case of ‘scaling up’ or developing what we currently do with embryos until we perfect it for whole bodies. The reason embryos can be frozen without destroying them is that they have little or no circulatory or nervous systems, in fact, they have little in the way of _organised systems_ at all - so there isn’t really all that much to be disrupted. [/QUOTE] I wonder if that would be an effective argument for people who claim destroying embryos is destroying human life? You could argue that a “human life” can not be frozen and brought back to life. An embryo can so it’s not really a “life” yet. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/38 "2006-08-02T22:18:41Z")
[QUOTE=Hampshire] I wonder if that would be an effective argument for people who claim destroying embryos is destroying human life? [/QUOTE] I doubt it; for the most part, their position is based on a religious concept that an embryo receives a soul at the point of conception. A much better argument, IMO, is the one that asks them to decide which they would choose to rescue from a burning building; a six-month-old baby, or a canister containing 1000 frozen human embryos (let’s say the blaze caused a roof beam to fall and break one of their arms, so they can’t pick up both). ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/39 "2006-08-02T23:32:58Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] I don’t believe that even this has any merit; I’m pretty sure that it isn’t just the layout of the neurons, but their active/interactive, electrochemical states that give rise to, or at the very least, contribute to, your consciousness; if that’s all shut down, mapping it and replicating it elsewhere isn’t goping to work either. Besides, as I said, the preservation process as shown in _best case_ on this documentary, is at present very destructive. No, I don’t believe it represents _any chance at all_ - it’s not _better than nothing_ - it’s _the same as nothing_. Tutankhamun has the same chance of being revived as do Alcor’s clients. [/QUOTE] I will admit that I don’t know any more about neurology than what I learned in high school biology class, but what I _do_ remember (and this has been supported by my knowledge of cellular automata and neural networks in AI), is that a significant portion of the power of the brain is structural. The building blocks themselves may be modelable simply, as long as the overall structure is preserved. If you have evidence otherwise, I’d be curious to see it. And, it may well be that we simply don’t have the technology to preserve that structure (or whatever other information is required) well enough that _any_ future technology could decipher it. However, it seems to me that long term freezing is the best way we have of preserving biological tissue. Yep, it’s probably not going to work. But I don’t think you can _prove_ it’s not going to work. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949/40 "2006-08-02T23:56:59Z")
[QUOTE=iamthewalrus(:3=] But I don’t think you can _prove_ it’s not going to work. [/QUOTE] Of course not; you can’t prove that kind of negative. But that’s not really the point; even (as I said in the opening post) generously allowing them the slim chances of success; _that’s not the way they’re selling it_. Actual Snake Oil probably has a better-than-zero chance of curing your ills, but that doesn’t mean the salesman’s patter is justified when he promises that it cannot fail. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cryonics-as-currently-extant-is-snake-oil/366949.md?page=3)