Cryonics is the practice of preserving life by pausing the dying process using subfreezing temperatures with the intent of restoring good health with medical technology in the future.
“At the point where the current legal and medical system gives up on a patient, they aren’t really dead.”
“The concept of cryonics is optimistic…many leading experts on nanotechnology anticipate that it will make it possible to reanimate cryonics patients.”
“I hope you’ll do it [cryonics] the same way I’d hope you’d take a shot with an experimental drug if you were sick and it were the one chance you had. Because it’s worth a try.”
The quality of a cryopreservation depends on how soon the procedure can begin. Preferably, a cryonics standby team is waiting near a dying person up to a week in advance, so they may begin almost immediately after cardiac arrest.
The cryopreservation process should begin as soon as a dying person experiences cardiac arrest and can be declared legally dead. While the patient is legally dead at this point, they are still early in the dying process, with cells and organs still viable.
Blood circulation and breathing are artificially restored temporarily, to protect the brain, and so protective medications can be administered intravenously. The patient is then cooled in an ice water bath, and their blood is replaced with an organ preservation solution.
The cooled patient is carefully transported to the facility’s operating room. Many cryonicists choose to retire and/or enter hospice near Alcor for shorter transport time and better procedural outcome.
Cryoprotectants are perfused into the bloodstream to reduce and even prevent freezing. Uncontrolled freezing would cause damage to the blood vessels, brain, and other organs. Perfusion prepares the patient for cryopreservation.
The patient is cooled down to -196° C, which cryopreserves the patient in a solid state. The patient is now protected from deterioration for theoretically thousands of years, and the dying process has been effectively stopped.
The patient is stored in a vacuum-insulated metal dewar at subfreezing temperatures using liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is topped up regularly, and the dewars require no electricity. The patient will remain in long-term care until revival becomes possible.
No cryonics organization can currently revive a cryopreserved patient, but we have confidence revival may be possible. Nanotechnology and other future medical technologies are expected to have very broad capabilities.
“Cryonics is an experiment. So far the control group isn’t doing very well. ”
Speed
It may not be possible for a cryonics team to be standing by at the moment the heart stops, because cardiac arrest may be unanticipated, and/or may also require investigation by the local coroner or medical examiner.
Brain Structure
Studies exist showing retention of brain cell structures after long periods of clinical death. Only future physicians using more advanced medical technology will be able to determine whether a person injured in this way is really still recoverable.
Limited Feedback
Outcomes of medical procedures usually provide prompt feedback for the people involved. Clear feedback of this type does not exist in cryonics. The final outcome of cryonics procedures will not be known definitively until far in the future.
Limited Support
The lack of formal medical or legal recognition of the cryonics means that cryonics patients are considered legally dead, and often requires the cooperation of funeral industry professionals and facilities in addition to medical professionals.
“I expect that more people have died while cryocrastinating than have actually been cryopreserved. If you’ve already decided this is a good idea, but you “haven’t gotten around to it”, sign up for cryonics NOW.”
Has anyone ever been revived?
Except for embryos, no human has ever been revived from temperatures far below freezing. Cryonics patients are cared for in the expectation that future technology, especially molecular nanotechnology, will be available to reverse damage associated with the cryonics process.
How soon after legal death must cryonics begin?
Cryonics procedures should ideally begin within the first one or two minutes after the heart stops, and preferably within 15 minutes. Longer delays place a greater burden on future technology to reverse injury and restore the brain to a healthy state, and make it more uncertain that the correct original state can be determined. Exactly when such restoration is no longer feasible is a matter of some debate and could be many hours. The greatest impact of delay is that it degrades the circulatory system, reducing the ability to circulate chemicals that reduce freezing injury. For further information, see the FAQ question “Doesn’t the brain die after 4 to 6 minutes without oxygen?,” the article “Cardiopulmonary Support in Cryonics,” and the “Cases without Cardiopulmonary Support” section of Alcor Procedures.
The most effective way of reducing delays and getting the highest quality cryopreservation is to relocate to cooperative hospice care near Alcor (see the FAQ question “What can I do to optimize my chances of being cryopreserved under good conditions?”).
Can I be cryopreserved before I legally die?
No. Current law does not allow freedom of choice in this matter. Under current law cryopreserved humans are legally dead. Actively making a person legally dead is a crime regardless of what that person’s wishes may be. Alcor must wait for an independent authority to declare that illness or injury has caused the heart to stop, that further medical care is not appropriate, and that therefore legal death has been pronounced. Only after that determination is made can the cryopreservation procedures legally begin.
What about aging and disease?
There is no point in prolonging life if the result will be illness and debilitation. People are now living longer, healthier lives than their grandparents, and their children will live longer still. Eventually, aging itself will be a treatable, reversible condition as medicine attains full control of the human body at the molecular level. By the time it becomes possible to revive cryonics patients, especially today’s cryonics patients, biological aging as we know it today will not exist. In the 19th century, 30% of people living in Paris died of “consumption.” Today very few people in the industrialized world even knows what “consumption” is.
“I wish it were possible…to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, the being immersed in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few friends, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country. But since, in all probability, we live in an age too early, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection…”