Cryogenics is an entire field of physical science. It is the study of matter at temperatures much colder than those that occur naturally on Earth. Cryogenic temperatures are considerably lower than those encountered in ordinary physical processes. There is another field of interest associated with very cold temperature-cryonics. Cryonics is the practice of freezing of people, or just their heads, in liquid nitrogen after death in hopes that one day they can be thawed to the out cured of what killed them. “This could be the most profound revolution in human history. It is the change to live as long as you want. Goodavage, 1990)
Cryonics is not a science. It has little basic in fact. But some people accept Cryonics, because it tells them something they want to believe. Once you have been declared dead, doctors or morticians will work to keep you cool. They inject you with heparin to prevent blood clots, hook you up to a heart-lung machine to keep oxygen and blood moving through your system artificially, and get you to the cryonics center as quickly as possible. The optimum time from death to arrival at the center is less than an hour. Some patients have arrived as late as six hours after death.
At the center, your body is put on a table in the perfusion room. A team of three or four technicians work to drain the blood out of your body and inject a cryoprotective agent to get as much moisture as possible out of the tissues, so the organ don’t crack during freezing. The body is then dried and wrapped in a cotton sheet. It is placed, cocoonlike, into a standard sleeping bag, head first, with the open end by the feet tied off. The body is placed in a large brown box lined with Styrofoam and packed with dry ice. It remains there for seven days to slowly bring the temperature down.
By the time the body is removed, it is about minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Next, the body is moved to another large brown box, the bottom-lined with liquid nitrogen. For another week, its slowly lowered, a little further each day, as more liquid nitrogen at a t4emperature of minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit. The Final step moves you to a cryostat to be stored with other bodies immersed in liquid nitrogen. The storage units are topped off with liquid nitrogen about once a week; excess air and gases are pumped out of the unit by a vacuum, weekly or monthly, to optimize insulation.
The body will remain there for decades or centuries. “The preservation process, few are convinced that the body can ever be reanimated. Most cryobiologists take the view that it is impossible to reanimate someone who has been cryonically frozen. As one scientist comments: believing cryonics could reanimate somebody who has been frozen is like believing you can turn a hamburger back into a cow. ” (Bagnell, 1995) Previous generations predicted man would never fly, reach the moon, cure polio or transplant a human heart. Anything is possible. “Look at Robert Goddard and his rockets, or Galileo.
They were mocked and scorned, but they were eventually proven right. And think of the adventure if I re-animate in another solar system with my loved ones. What a life we’ll have. ” (Goodavage, 1990) Even though that cryonics is not a reality now, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be real. So cryonics is also possible. “It just seemed it was low risk and high reward. If it doesn’t work, it will have the same result as if I was buried or cremated. ” (O’Connor, 1997) Most cryonicists had to keep the frozen body in good condition. The trick is maintaining victims of cancer, AIDS, heart disease, or old age until then.
Maintaining mean preserving the structures of the brain that record the memory and the personality. Only when these are lost are the people truly, permanently, irrevocably dead. That why most cryonicists try to keep the brain in perfectly good condition. So most cryonicists preferred that only the head was to be frozen. That why neurosuspension was more popular among the cryonicists rather than freezing the whole body. But by the time scientists have developed a method of successfully bringing suspenders back from the dead they should also be able to clone a new body from the genetic codes found in the cells of the head.
Alternatively, the head may be transplanted onto a replacement body–which may be either human or robotic. There is a small but dedicated subculture of people in the US who are trying to expend their lifespans until technology has the ability to offer superlongevity or even immortality. Some believe that cryonics freezing is an alternative to death. Cryonics still promises not only to prevent the decay of death, but also a return to life–not just yet, of course, but in a few decades, or centuries, when cryonics has come for age. Commercial cryonics companies have already signed up about a thousand customers.
Across the U. S. about 70 people is in cold storage with four companies. The four main cryonics groups are Alcor, the largest, in California; the American Cryonics Society/Trans Time and Cryospan, both in California; and the Cryonics Institute, founded by movement pioneer Robert Ettinger in Michigan. There weren’t that many people involved in this process because it is very expensive and it is also a pretty new technology. But today there is a few companies try to make the process cheaper so that the average people can afford it too. There are more and more people involved in this process today.
And also the number of patients had also increasing. The spreading of the new technology is now known by people around the world but still they do not dare to try it yet. Cryonics was mostly the stuff of science fiction until Ettinger, a physics professor from Michigan, popularized the idea in his book, “The Prospect of Immortality” in 1964. Three years later came the Bedford freezing and the founding of three cryonics organizations, including Ettinger’s Cryonics Society of Michigan (now the Immoralist Society). His society later opened storage center and had its first freezing in 1977. James H. Bedford, who on Jan. , 1967 became the first cryonically frozen human.
He is a 73-year-old retired psychology professor from Glendale, California, dies of kidney cancer. If it works, if some day doctors can resuscitate Bedford’s body, his name might be remembered like Christopher Columbus or Neil Armstrong. If it fails, if it is simply so much scientific fantasy, Bedford will just be another forgotten dead guy. But soon after this incident, people begin to believe in cryonics. But the question raised when Bedford decided to be the first person to be frozen. There must be something that in cryonics that made him wanted to do it.
May be he thinks that he got nothing to lost any way because he is going to died of cancer sooner or later. Since he got nothing to lose, why not try this new technology which may be able to make him live again. Many people accepted cryonics because they feel that cryonics can helped them to live to see the future. They wanted to live longer to do all the things they didn’t do. They hope that freezing of a just-dead body with the hope that advances in medical science will eventually lead to its resurrection cure, thus achieving terrestrial immortality. “I got more hope than if they put me in the ground and I turn to dust, don’t I? Goodavage, 1990)
We all know that the prices for cryogenic is very expensive. Some people cannot afford to get their whole body to be frozen. But there is a process that will cost less for the average person to afford. If someone cannot afford the full process, a cheaper rate is available for neurosuspension–the preferred term for heads-only preservation; apparently the theory is that when medicine is sufficiently advanced to resuscitate the frozen brain and thus the persona it will also, as an encore, be able to: transplant all the other necessary bits to make a complete human being.
True believers have faith that technology will became so advanced in 50, 100, 200 years, that scientists will be able to awaken or reanimate the frozen bodies and cure them of whatever they died of–old age, cancer, heart disease and/or etc. ” (O’Connor, 1997) There are so many different reasons why do people want to try out cryogenic. “I kind of laughed about the whole concept of cryonics at first, but then I decided, what do I have to lose? Most people think it’s a little crazy. But now that there’re cloning sheep and so forth, this doesn’t seem that far-fetched. O’Connor, 1997)
Each person had his/her view point about cryogenic. “A man who had suffered injuries in a car crush caused by a drunken driver, which had ruined his life as a jazz musician. He hoped that future science could make him whole again. ” (Bagliuo, 1994) All this person wanted is to recovered completely by using future science to heal him. “AIDS victims or patients with cancer who felt bitterly deprived of their fair ration of life and were hoping for more. ” (Bagliuo, 1994) These people as well wanted to use future technology to heal them.
A woman who had sacrificed her creative ambitions in order to raise a family. She hoped that if she gained an extra lease on life, she’d have time for all the things she’d missed. ” (Bagliuo, 1994) This person wanted to live longer so she can do all the things that she wants but had missed.
There were also other people that have different plan for cryogenic. This man has a very different viewpoint from the other. “The hope is to have the years and health to do what is impractical now: Explore the Amazon, know Shakespeare and Robert Burns, learn to play Mozart and Scott Joplin… avel the solar system and the stars, see mankind scattered safely around the galaxy, pass on my loved ones is overwhelming; to lose that chance, heartbreaking. ” (Bagliuo, 1994)
This man wanted to live on because he wanted to learn everything that existed. He knew that he won’t be able tolerant everything because he would die before he can finish learning them. He would also wanted to experience the future. Many people willing to try cryonics because all of them believe that future technology will be so advance that they can revive a person from current body’s tissue. Many cryonicists also believed in this theory.
The Medical community says the damage by freezing is so great that it can’t be done. That is arrogant. They have no basis or expertise for predicting the limits of future capabilities. ” (O’Connor, 1997) What if future technology doesn’t got much better than today technology? But most people don’t think this way. So as for now people are only thinking the better side of science. That why the number of people who believe in cryonics had increased. Cryonics is a matter of probabilities. There are so many variables involved, however, that many cryonicists won’t hazard a guess on the chances of success. Then again, some do.
There are some people who refused to try cryonics because of their religious value and faith. But there are some still willing to try it even if it against their religion. And there who don’t believe in the afterlife. “There is no proof that there is an afterlife. That’s just blind faith, and it’s blind faith for people being suspended. If there is no afterlife and cryonics does work, then that’s the big payoff. ” Many people were actually aware of the value of human experience. To them, it seemed terribly wasteful that a lifetime spent learning skills, acquiring information, and developing an understanding of life should all come to nothing.
They wanted to pass their wisdom on to future generations so that it would not be lost. There were many people were filled with excitement about the future, which they were sure would be a place of infinite possibilities. Trapped in the twentieth century, they felt they had been born too soon. They longed for a chance to experience the universe 50 or hundred years from now. There are people who accepted cryonics because they can’t accept death. “I hold a great value on life but I also very afraid of dying. ” (O’Connor, 1997) They were also afraid of dying. “I have always questioned dying, and I don’t want to die.
This way, I could die and have a chance of coming back. I would just like to prolong my life as long as possible. ” (O’Connor, 1997) Many people who existed way before us wanted to live forever. As in history there are many people who wanted to find way to keep themselves youthful. “Human have always wanted to chat death, and for thousands of years there has been a good living to be made peddling death-defying magic potions and spells. Today, science has taken over from superstition. ” (Bagnell, 1995) Many supporters of the cryonics point out that heart massage and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation also preserve life.
However, these methods prolong life for only relatively short periods, while cryonics could make us immortal. There are many people think this is the reason of cryonics. But of course there are people that don’t believe in it as well. But these people do believe in technology. Since now many cryonicists use modern technology in the theory of cryonics, these people also as well begin to believe in cryonics. Cryonicists have pretty much decided that nantechnology will be the way to go. That is, itsy-bitsy, teent-weeny machines, guided by powerful but really small computers, will and fixing any damage done by freezing and defrosting.
Since nanomachines can manipulate individual atoms, they can build or fix virtually anything, given raw material and the right instructions. For example, they could rebuild a new body around your brain, reading out the required information from your genetic code. So preserving your whole body may be unnecessary. That why most cryonicists preferred to freeze the head only. Some new-wave cryonicists are commercializing their activities in the belief that cryonics, like the biotechnology and computer industries, will achieve technological breakthroughs only when big investors begin to smell profit in it.
If there are no investors in cryonics, then there won’t be any supporter to cryonics. So many cryonicists are hoping for more investors. As for now there are some rich people supported this new idea. Cryonics are only the latest twist in a business that is virtually unregulated because authorities have been reluctant to put an implied stamp of approval on what may prove to be just a silly attempt to cheat death. Cryonics may be just being the ultimate revenge of the nerds. Say what you might about the Alcorians; it’s obvious that they have thought this through.
The Group’s literature presents the arguments for cryonics clearly and methodically, anticipating objections and carefully distinguishing fact from speculation and plausibility from possibility. Alcor’s CRYONICS magazine explores the topics that cryonicists never of discussing: cryobiological research, cloning, genetic manipulation, cures for aging, microbiology, nanotechnology, memory formation and storage, artificial intelligence, the definition of death, the nature of identity and consciousness. They wanted to show the people why they should choose cryonics.
And they want the people to know how cryonics could save their life. There are people fights the government just to be frozen after they die. Because there are some states declared that cryonics is not legal to them. Donaldson failed a complaint seeking an injunction to prevent local and state authorities from interfering with his cryonics suspension, from bringing charges against member of Alcor. But the Superior Court Judge Ronald C. Stevens refused Donaldson’s request. “We will succeed eventually. It won’t be me.
But someday the law will allow someone to be cryonically suspended before they are legally dead. ” (Sullum, 1991) The Donaldson case is the latest episode in history of government harassment and obstruction. With about 500 members nationwide and a not entirely deserved reputon for nuttiness, the cryonics movement is an easy target. But then there are more and more cryonics companies trying to challenge the court. Without the permit from the court, cryonics companies cannot expand. Alcor’s facility is decided to serve only about 80 people.
The zoning controversy may be resolved, however, as a result of a court decision last fall. Superior Court Judge Arelio Munoz ruled that people have the right to dispose of their remains however they wish. He found that the California’s Uniform Anatomical Gift Act applies to cryonics, which therefore constitutes scientific use, a recognized way to dispose of bodies. He instructed the way state Department of health Services to register death certificates and issue body-disposition permits for Alcor members, which it had been refusing to do since May 1987.
The state has appealed the ruling. This will encourage more people to cryonics because the state also accepted cryonics. There are now much insurance that will allowed a person to insure them to the cryonics process. The insurance companies are allowing the person to be frozen after they die. The insurance will pay all the expend of the cryonics process. But the person had to pay more money to the insurance companies for it. Now since the insurance companies are involved in cryonics, there are alot more people are now believed in it.
Despite all the risks, there are still people willing to take the chance to live again-possibly in a totally different world. Many of the problems facing the human race today may have disappeared, and you may find it enlightening to discover how humanity overcame disease, unemployment, economic instability and overpopulation. They might want to live in a perfect world where almost everything is solved. Whatever the reason may be, there are many people willing to try cryonics. Everyone might have a different reason for it but they are willing to try it.
