You are very unlikely to die younger, and if you do, whatever kills you will probably destroy much of your brain before you can be cryopreserved.
Source? Sure, the leading cause of death below about 35 seems to be car accidents (and traumatic injuries in general), but looking at http://www.theegglestongroup.com/writing/deathstats/deathstats_2007_all_by_age.php, that’s still only about 41% violent accidents, furthermore, from thesesources it looks like only about 1⁄3 of deaths by traumatic injury are due to traumatic brain injury, so—bumping that up to 1⁄2, since an injury can involve TBI without that being the “cause of death”—we have about a 20.5% chance of brain trauma given death by injury. Add 27% for homocide (~13%) and suicide (~14%), after which I assume you’re unlikely to cryonically preserved soon enough, and you’ve got about a 50% chance of cryonics being applicable if you do die.
Surely some people would find that sufficient reason to sign up, unless I’ve missed something? (This pseudo-survey of figures was hacked together quickly very late at night when I wondered about the statistics of it.)
“In the western world, the most common cause of death after trauma is severe brain injury.”
Moreover, other than direct traumatic injury, the brain can be also damaged by ischemia: 4-6 minutes of cardiac arrest are typically enough to cause irreversible brain injury, and more than one hour will pretty much destroy the brain tissue.
According to that article:
“In modern day civilian trauma centres, thoracic injury directly accounts for 20-25% of deaths due to trauma; thoracic injury or its complications are a contributing factor in a further 25% of trauma deaths [24].”
“Aortic injuries cause or contribute to 15% of MVA fatalities[25]. Most patients with blunt aortic injury die before they reach hospital, and the vast majority will have major coexisting thoracic and extrathoracic injuries[26].”
I’m not a doctor, but if I understand correctly, this means that most victims of fatal accidents, even those without traumatic brain injury, will reach the hospital already in cardiac arrest or with some condition that will progress to cardiac arrest within few hours.
I suppose that in order to arrange prompt cryopreservation you need at least 1 − 2 days of warning.
So, according to your stats, I would say that in the age group you consider, about 70% of deaths wouldn’t allow prompt cryopreservation. Factor in the fact that you are unlikely to die in that age group anyway, and you cryonics at that age is probably not worth the cost, even assuming that it works as advertised.
Of course, this ultimately depends on how much you value your life versus your money: I suppose that manypeople have a knee-jerk reaction and say that they value their life an essentially infinite amount of money, but their actual preferences revealed by their spending behavior will probably be different.
Source? Sure, the leading cause of death below about 35 seems to be car accidents (and traumatic injuries in general), but looking at http://www.theegglestongroup.com/writing/deathstats/deathstats_2007_all_by_age.php, that’s still only about 41% violent accidents, furthermore, from these sources it looks like only about 1⁄3 of deaths by traumatic injury are due to traumatic brain injury, so—bumping that up to 1⁄2, since an injury can involve TBI without that being the “cause of death”—we have about a 20.5% chance of brain trauma given death by injury. Add 27% for homocide (~13%) and suicide (~14%), after which I assume you’re unlikely to cryonically preserved soon enough, and you’ve got about a 50% chance of cryonics being applicable if you do die.
Surely some people would find that sufficient reason to sign up, unless I’ve missed something? (This pseudo-survey of figures was hacked together quickly very late at night when I wondered about the statistics of it.)
Patterns-Of-Injury-MVAS:
“In the western world, the most common cause of death after trauma is severe brain injury.”
Moreover, other than direct traumatic injury, the brain can be also damaged by ischemia: 4-6 minutes of cardiac arrest are typically enough to cause irreversible brain injury, and more than one hour will pretty much destroy the brain tissue.
According to that article:
“In modern day civilian trauma centres, thoracic injury directly accounts for 20-25% of deaths due to trauma; thoracic injury or its complications are a contributing factor in a further 25% of trauma deaths [24].”
“Aortic injuries cause or contribute to 15% of MVA fatalities[25]. Most patients with blunt aortic injury die before they reach hospital, and the vast majority will have major coexisting thoracic and extrathoracic injuries[26].”
I’m not a doctor, but if I understand correctly, this means that most victims of fatal accidents, even those without traumatic brain injury, will reach the hospital already in cardiac arrest or with some condition that will progress to cardiac arrest within few hours. I suppose that in order to arrange prompt cryopreservation you need at least 1 − 2 days of warning.
So, according to your stats, I would say that in the age group you consider, about 70% of deaths wouldn’t allow prompt cryopreservation. Factor in the fact that you are unlikely to die in that age group anyway, and you cryonics at that age is probably not worth the cost, even assuming that it works as advertised.
Of course, this ultimately depends on how much you value your life versus your money: I suppose that manypeople have a knee-jerk reaction and say that they value their life an essentially infinite amount of money, but their actual preferences revealed by their spending behavior will probably be different.