Looking back over The Speculist, I was surprised to find that we haven’t written much about cryonics (Phil has mentioned it in passing). The whole subject has been on ice, so to speak. What’s there to say? You freeze people (not really), and wait around for nanotech or whatever to come to the rescue. No Alcor clients have been successfully revived (yet), so it’s considered the last hope of terminally ill rich people.
This is the view, at least, of the general public.
Actually there is plenty to say about cryonics. But cryonics will never gain mainstream medical acceptance until it can be developed into a provable treatment – perhaps as a short-term therapy for serious emergencies.
US scientists have succeeded in reviving dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.
Pittsburgh’s Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject’s veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.
The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.
But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.
Zombie dogs? Not really. These revived dogs have no brain damage. They don’t seem to be craving brains either.
“It’s so unfair and so bizarre,” [said Dr. Patrick Kochanek, the director of the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research]. “Somebody must have thought the title ‘zombie dog’ would be a catchy phrase. Obviously they were right, but obviously that is the farthest thing from what we are doing, which is trying to save lives.”
The process involves replacing the blood with a saline solution that’s just a few degrees above freezing. This quickly chills the body to 7 degrees Celsius (44 degrees F). The cold temperature postpones tissue deterioration, but it is also important that the dogs aren’t frozen. Freezing (unlike vitrification) damages tissues.
The dogs are brought back by returning blood to their bodies, administering 100% oxygen, and restarting their hearts with electrical defibrillation.
Because this involves temperatures above 0 Celsius, this might be considered something less than full cryonics. But whatever it’s called, this therapy could give doctors sufficient time to save many people. EMT’s or battlefield medics could stabilize people that would be considered dead and gone today.
As this therapy becomes a standard medical procedure, doctors might reconsider the entire field of cryonics. If tissues can be perfectly preserved without freezing, why shouldn’t we try to save terminally ill patients with cryonics?
I told Phil recently that uploading my mind to a computer is my least favorite path to immortality. Being cryo-preserved before it’s proved to work is my next least favorite. It’s the sort of thing that’s done only when all other options are gone. But for those who are at that point, why not?