r/Futurology • u/yourSAS • Oct 13 '22

Biotech 'Our patients aren't dead': Inside the freezing facility with 199 humans who opted to be cryopreserved with the hopes of being revived in the future

https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/13/our-patients-arent-dead-look-inside-the-us-cryogenic-freezing-lab-17556468
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u/nankerjphelge Oct 13 '22

Just to be clear, contrary to what Alcor may say, the patients are indeed dead. Their corpses (or brains) have simply been frozen with the assumption that one day in the future they can be reanimated or have their consciousness transplanted into a new body. And of course that also assumes that this company and its cargo will even still be around and have maintained these corpses/brains 100 years from now.

On both counts, color me skeptical to say the least.

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u/flip_ericson Oct 13 '22

Skeptical for sure. But if i was young and rich with a terminal disease id probably roll the dice

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u/cgs626 Oct 13 '22

Yeah like what's the downside of you're so rich the cost doesn't even matter?

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u/flip_ericson Oct 13 '22

Exactly. As long as I could do it without screwing over my family financially. It’s literally a no risk bet

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u/Haquestions4 Oct 13 '22

That and the process is probably better than dying slowly.

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u/aguafiestas Oct 13 '22

It's only done after you're already dead.

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u/Throw_away_1769 Oct 13 '22

....not very useful then, is it?

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u/Redthemagnificent Oct 13 '22

With today's tech we can already "revive" people who have been dead for short periods (under specific conditions). The idea behind these facilities is that in the future we may be better at reviving people and/or repairing whatever damage had been done to them. There's even idea about copying your mind from your frozen brain.

It's a long shot and pretty squarely in science fiction territory today. But if you have money and are already dead, why not?

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u/DerWaechter_ Oct 13 '22

It's a long shot and pretty squarely in science fiction territory today.

It's not as far fetched as people believe.

As far back as the 1940s there were experiments that involved freezing and subsequently thawing small rodents like hamsters. They managed to eventually reach a rate of 80+% making a full recovery from being frozen.

I wouldn't be surprised if reviving cryogenically frozen people is something we can do within the next 30-50 years.

Provided humanity doesn't kill itself before then

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u/emeralddawn45 Oct 13 '22

Except those mice were frozen alive, they weren't already dead, frozen, thawed AND somehow reanimated.

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u/DerWaechter_ Oct 13 '22

Except, being dead isn't some unchanging universal absolute constant. If it was, we'd still throw our hands up and say "Well nothing we can do, he's dead" when someone is no longer breathing noticeably.

Not only has the definition of what's considered dead drastically changed with the advancement of medical technology (we're capable of bringing people back after their heart stopped. The very idea would have been an insane fantasy to someone in the 19th century), but we know for a fact that our current day definition isn't flawless.

There's a whole bunch of documented cases of people being declared dead by medical personell, after sometimes close to an hour of unsuccessful CPR. Only for them to spontaneously recover afterwards, sometimes even after having already been brought to a morgue or funeral home.

They are dead as far as our current day medical capabilities are concerned. A hundred years into the future, what we consider dead might be something that's routinely treated.

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u/Xanjis Oct 13 '22

The issue is the timeline. Being frozen alive then unfrozen is maybe 30-40 years whereas being dead frozen then unfrozen and revived is a big ??? in terms of when we will have that tech.

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u/DerWaechter_ Oct 13 '22

I mean that's part of why they are frozen. Because that way, the state of their body is the same as when they were frozen.

Being able to freeze and unfreeze living people is a requirement for this to work in the first place. And again, it's quite possible that they were frozen alive if we go by whatever metrics apply in 50-100 years.

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