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Cryonics

Cryonics, would you do it?

  • Yeah! Freeze me

    Votes: 3 17.6%
  • Just my head please

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No way, just let me die

    Votes: 8 47.1%
  • oh I dunno

    Votes: 6 35.3%

  • Total voters
    17

carole

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 1, 2001
Messages
2,296
Supposing, when they defrost Walt Disney and his companions down at the Cryogenics Rest Home, they manage to bring them to life, what would be the result? Would we have the original deceased, miraculously brought back to life, or would it just be a zombie?

I personally believe in a human soul, some sort of essence of a person's being and personality; presumably this soul departs the body on the point of death, so I think any defrosted body would be just that, a body, the original personality would be somewhere else and not likely to return to its former 'container'. What does anyone else think?

Carole
 
I think Uncle Walt will be recorded as having the longest Out of Body Experience ever. He'll probably recount the tunnel and the light, and then something he "can't quite remember"
 
I do not believe that any of the people who have paid to be frozen after death will or can be reanimated. For the simple reason that they were already dead when they were frozen. Has anybody ever bought a frozen chicken back to life?
 
I think that that real trick is in the defrosting, however if you think of the human brain as a organic computer the human soul as the operating system and the mind as the application runingon that all, but with no "hard drive" if it gets shutdown(ie dies) then it looses all the data, if you manage to switch it back on there is probably not anything left to run.
Wm.
 
The thing is, medical understanding of death is far from complete. (Just think of the many cases of reanimated people, assumed dead, reported in FT and other places over the years.)

In fact, because organs rapidly "go bad" after the heart stops beating, the medical and legal definitions of death have been altered to refer to "brain death". It is legal to remove someone's organs while their heart is still beating (with prior permission) even though under normal circumstances (i.e. if they were not about to die anyway) that would effectively kill them.

It is a considerable irony that the equipment used to temporarily sustain vital functions of "brain dead" patients is referred to as "life support" equipment. Even though a brain dead patient is supposedly legally dead.
 
Bagins - in a previous FT there was a reported case of a little boy being rescued from subzero temperatures and surviving. He actually thawed out and survived - without of course having his blood replaced with cryogenic replacement fluids - which is impossible according to current theories! Medics suggested that perhaps the freezing occurred extremely rapidly and this was why his body wasn't irreversibly damaged.
 
Almost every culture in the history of the world has funerial rites. I beleive that there is a reason for this beyond simply saying goodbye. What if it takes a while for the spirit to fully leave the body. I know a few people who believe that they have sensed the presence of the deceased for several days after death.

If this is the case then it my be possible to tie the spirit to the body by the act of freezing it. Perhaps the spirit leaves the body as the body decays.

What do you guys think?

Cujo
 
Doesn't sound an entirely attractive prospect - being locked inside a freezer for the rest of Eternity. Rather take my chances out in the ether, I think.
 
What would happen if you got reincarnated?

Would your soul get ripped out of its current host body and put back in your old one?
If so, would it have memories of your old/current life?


Also, what happens to your belongings? Are all the Disney shareholders suddenly going to find that Uncle Walt owns the company again and not them?
 
Uncle Walt in Iceland

Are all the Disney shareholders suddenly going to find that Uncle Walt owns the company again and not them?

No - because he didn't own it when he popped his clogs. There's something on snopes about this but appears to be down ATM so no URL I'm afraid.:(
 
Cujo said:
What if it takes a while for the spirit to fully leave the body. I know a few people who believe that they have sensed the presence of the deceased for several days after death.

If this is the case then it my be possible to tie the spirit to the body by the act of freezing it. Perhaps the spirit leaves the body as the body decays.

What do you guys think?

Cujo

No, I don't feel comfortable with that idea. If you see the dead body of a person you've known, you can see that all that made them the person you knew and loved (the soul, call it what you will) has gone, what's left is like a waxwork, and empty shell. No, once a person has definitely died (ie everything has stopped functioning), I would have though there would be no point for the soul to stay in the body. What the situation is with 'brain-dead' people, who are being kept alive artificially, I couldn't be sure, but then I'm far from an expert.

Carole
 
Greenrd the boy may of been frozen then defrosted but was he dead before it. I don't think so. I think the whole key to cyogenics is to freeze a person just before death. This brings up the whole ethics thing.

One time I wouldn't of minded being frozen. But I don't want to be brought back as the shell of who I am. Now if they could freze you just before you die then they could go right ahead. The time I would spend frozen would just be like my body is taking a long sleep. I keep my soul and when I come out of the freezer (pun intended) I would be me.
 
Cryogenics.

The French courts have ruled that a couple who were frozen after their death must be buried, personally I think that was the correct decision, what do you think, the story is here
 
I don't know, P.

Countless books and movies have taught us that tampering in God's domain is always a good thing.

:cool:
 
Amazing, they won't even let you decide what you can do with your own dead body.

This ruling is wrong. You should be allowed to do whatever you want with the body.
 
I dont object to the idea on any religious or moralistic grounds and it would be too expensive for most people to contemplate, what though, if it became much less expensive, would we need body banks all over the World?
 
Well, they will only be there a limited time. Their money will run out at one point. If you get frozen you will only get frozen for a few decades, because after that the company probably goes bankrupt and closes down.

Besides, if it goes cheap everybody will be doing it. We will run out of space and the prices will go up again. And as I said, it will only be temporary.
 
Maybe the cheap and easy way is to get buried in the Antartic? You comply with French Law and get frozened at the same time. How you get permission to be buried there and how expensive it costs is another story.
 
I think the temperatures are too high there. I think I will go check that transhumanist website, maybe they have more about this.
 
I'm with Xanatic on this one. Bloody french government. What harm was it having a couple of frozen crumblies in a chateau. :mad:
 
oh la la, c'est un conspiracy. Les Anglais est fou.

(Sorry about crap French, done German instead at school and was crap at that too)
 
Just read in the Metro today that Nederland in Colorado, US has offered to look after the bodies.
 
Even if at some future time cures are found for the causes of the death of those who have been frozen, isn't it a fact that the freezing process will have caused damage to the brain that could not be repaired?
 
It's bad enough being old once, let alone twice.

I recomend a faith in a traditional afterlife - if it's true, fine (as long as you've been good!) and if not, well, you'll never know!

You know it makes sense!
 
They rely on that besides finding a cure for something, they will also in the future be able to do something about the effect freezing has on your cells. Try putting a cucumber in the freezer, then you'll find out what I mean.

Personally I'd just go for having the head frozen, if they are able to bring you back, giving you a body should be quite easy. But the question remains, if they one day get the technology to bring you back, would they want to? There's some sci fi story, where they bring back the corpcicles as they call them, and let them do the dirty work. And if you don't like it no problem, they'll just freeze you again.

It's like they say, being frozen is the second worst thing that can happen to you.
 
I don't think it's same as your cucumber/freezer scenario Xanatic. I believe they freeze the bodies much more rapidly to prevent large ice crystals forming which would rupture the cell walls. Sooner them than me though.
 
Does anyone remember the name of the Dennis Potter TV play about retrieving memories from a frozen head? Frances de la Tour was in it as the chief scientist (in the future).
 
The problem is not the freezing, it's the defrosting.

The head can be frozen quickly because it doesn't matter how far below your target temperature you go.

Defrosting slowly would build up the ice crystals you avoided going down. Defrosting fast means you shoot way past your taget temperature of 37ºC if you are attempting a mass about the size of a human brain. Remember if you have a fever of 45ºC don't worry your temperature wil soon fall - permanently.
 
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