Cryonics is considered one of the most controversial areas of practice, in which many refuse to recognize science. The technology of keeping a person in a state of deep cooling radically changes the concept of death. According to the expectations of cryonicists, in the future, informational death will be considered final, when, under no circumstances, it will be possible to restore data about the characteristics of the organism with the aim of its partial or complete regeneration.
Resurrect in the future. Is it possible to?
Cryonics is gaining popularity among those who wish to be resurrected in the future. Each of these people pursues their own goals, but there is still one way to achieve them. And this is deep freeze. The pleasure is by no means cheap, but promising. For your money, they will freeze you for at least several decades, until technologies appear that can revive. At the moment, more than 300 people (bodies or brains, depending on which cryofreezing procedure was chosen) are stored in the refrigerators of America and are waiting in the wings.
The correctness of such a bet in the game with death will be confirmed or denied by time. Will such optimists (you cannot name them otherwise) will be brought back to life in a world where technological singularity will prevail over human existence? This can be judged only on the basis of assumptions.
What do scientists say?
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What awaits those who decide to subject themselves (or a part of themselves) to cryofreezing? The opinions are very contradictory. For example, a biologist at the University of Liverpool Joao Pedro de Magalhaes believes that at today's level, such technology acts on the cells of the body in a destructive way. Even if ideal conditions are provided for a person (freezing immediately after death), there is a high probability of uneven cooling or toxic effects on the body of the substances used.
If cryonics is carried out long after death, then the probability of cell damage increases significantly, since the latter begin to die. Brain cells die literally immediately after cardiac arrest due to lack of nutrients and oxygen. That is, for a positive result of freezing, first of all, achievements in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering are needed. Also, cell restoration at the molecular level is possible using nanotechnology. It is difficult to predict how much the technological process will advance in the near future - whether it will be decades, or more than one century will pass. Thus, Joao Pedro de Magalhaes believes that the likelihood of resurrection of cryopreserved people is rather low, rather even impossible.
Breakout or failure?
On the other hand, cryopreservation could be a great breakthrough in the treatment of critical cases. Patients affected by incurable diseases can be frozen and in this state wait for the emergence of technologies with which it will be possible to cure the disease. Thanks to cryonics, it will be possible to save people who need long-term transportation to the emergency room.
In any case, research and the business of preserving patients' bodies carried out in this area are based on the belief that current promising technologies (growing organs, creating their artificial analogues, modeling consciousness) will receive worthy development.
Mark Kline, co-founder of X-Therma Inc, which focuses on advancing stem cell preservation technologies, believes that the biggest challenge with cryofreezing is preventing ice formation and preserving tissue.
The professor believes that from a technical point of view, freezing is quite feasible and can be used at the present time. But you can't do without the help of artificial superintelligence, which helps to repair cell damage caused by cryonics.
Cathal O'Connell, a researcher in ZD-bioprinting, considers freezing to be a critical process for a living organism and stops cells from functioning. Those who went through the freezing procedure, according to the scientist, simply became pieces of ice and will never be resurrected.
Is it worth it?
The development of cryonics requires huge investments, measured in billions of dollars, painstaking work of scientists and, of course, more than a dozen years of scientific research. And therefore, maybe it is better to look around you and realize that the world is beautiful at the present time? The future is for posterity, and they should not be responsible for the resurrection and restoration of frozen bodies.
Author: Julia Izotova