More than likely, if you were to rewarm some of the tissues from a cryonics patient frozen today, some of the original cells would still be alive and viable.
EDIT: I should clarify, the kidney was cooled with liquid nitrogen vapor and the lowest temperature it was exposed to was still fifty degrees above that of Liquid Nitrogen. This is important because LN2 temperature is far below the vitrification point of M22, and cooling even a little below T_g causes fracturing.
Yes, but it doesn’t fracture everywhere. Hence, if you rewarmed a tissue that was cryogenically frozen, some cells would probably still be viable. Hence, my hypothesis that if you took samples from a current patient where things were done right, some of the cells would still be alive.
There are fractures like that in existing patients. Note that my hypothesis is that some of the cells would still be viable. I did not say any neurons were viable. I’m merely saying that cryonics is provably better than dehydration or plastination because of this viability factor.
Despite this, IF patients frozen using current techniques can ever be revived, the techniques used will more than likely require a destructive scan of their brains, followed by loading into some kind of hardware or software emulator.
Trying to think of what this might subjectively be like is hard to view rationally. I don’t know if a good emulation or replica is the same person or not : you can make solid arguments either way.
Extremely advanced, better versions of cyronics might eventually reach the point of actually preserving the brain in a manner where reheating brings it back to life and a transplant is possible. However, a destructive scan and upload might still remain the safer choice.
Regardless of how the revivals were actually done in practice, if reproducible and public demonstrations of viability were every performed, I would expect that cryonics would gain widespread prevalence, mainstream acceptance, and become a standard medical procedure.
Cite please?
Physical and biological aspects of renal vitrification.
Cryopreservation of organs by vitrification: perspectives and recent advances (PDF).
EDIT: I should clarify, the kidney was cooled with liquid nitrogen vapor and the lowest temperature it was exposed to was still fifty degrees above that of Liquid Nitrogen. This is important because LN2 temperature is far below the vitrification point of M22, and cooling even a little below T_g causes fracturing.
Yes, but it doesn’t fracture everywhere. Hence, if you rewarmed a tissue that was cryogenically frozen, some cells would probably still be viable. Hence, my hypothesis that if you took samples from a current patient where things were done right, some of the cells would still be alive.
A related article : http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n6/full/ncomms1890.html?WT.mc_id=FBK_NCOMMS
What about a fracture that severs the brain in several pieces?
There are fractures like that in existing patients. Note that my hypothesis is that some of the cells would still be viable. I did not say any neurons were viable. I’m merely saying that cryonics is provably better than dehydration or plastination because of this viability factor.
Despite this, IF patients frozen using current techniques can ever be revived, the techniques used will more than likely require a destructive scan of their brains, followed by loading into some kind of hardware or software emulator.
Trying to think of what this might subjectively be like is hard to view rationally. I don’t know if a good emulation or replica is the same person or not : you can make solid arguments either way.
Extremely advanced, better versions of cyronics might eventually reach the point of actually preserving the brain in a manner where reheating brings it back to life and a transplant is possible. However, a destructive scan and upload might still remain the safer choice.
Regardless of how the revivals were actually done in practice, if reproducible and public demonstrations of viability were every performed, I would expect that cryonics would gain widespread prevalence, mainstream acceptance, and become a standard medical procedure.