What I see missing (unless I’m missing something) is funding for major cryonics research. Basically, unfreezing things. Yes, there is funding for the foundations, but it seems to be going to maintenance of ongoing operations.
There’s not a huge win in getting unfreezing to work yet, as general medical progress has been pretty slow. If we had perfect unfreezing technology today, how many currently frozen people would want to be thawed? My guess is roughly zero.
The impression I get is that unfreezing things successfully requires a general tech level massively higher than available now, and that can’t really be leapfrogged. I also suspect there are higher marginal returns (for people currently alive) in improving the freezing infrastructure (decreasing the amount of decay that happens before patients are frozen, and decreasing the number of freezings that are botched in other ways).
Some species of animals are able to freeze/unfreeze. I think getting these mechanisms to work in (at least smaller) mammals would be a very good way to determine which freezing tech is important. It seems this thing should be approached from both ends.
ETA: this approach would make it an empirical project rather than intelligent guesswork. It’s also great PR—if people see that progress is being made towards human revival they’ll be more likely to take the leap.
I was under the impression that cryonic suspension operated differently / had different uses than deanimation. With deanimation, you just stop metabolism- with cryonics, you stop chemistry. It may be there are current cryonics patients who just needed to be put in an induced coma- but I get the sense that’s not the case.
Sadly, the wood frog that may be the most interesting model of this has never even been sequenced.
The frog’s freeze response is a complex set of responses, that include producing antifreeze (a sugar), protection from the toxicity of said antifreeze, protection from water loss, protection from oxygen deficiency, heartbeat regulation, and I forget what all else.
What I see missing (unless I’m missing something) is funding for major cryonics research. Basically, unfreezing things. Yes, there is funding for the foundations, but it seems to be going to maintenance of ongoing operations.
There’s not a huge win in getting unfreezing to work yet, as general medical progress has been pretty slow. If we had perfect unfreezing technology today, how many currently frozen people would want to be thawed? My guess is roughly zero.
My question is, how many more people would want to be frozen, if they knew the can in fact be thawed.
The impression I get is that unfreezing things successfully requires a general tech level massively higher than available now, and that can’t really be leapfrogged. I also suspect there are higher marginal returns (for people currently alive) in improving the freezing infrastructure (decreasing the amount of decay that happens before patients are frozen, and decreasing the number of freezings that are botched in other ways).
Some species of animals are able to freeze/unfreeze. I think getting these mechanisms to work in (at least smaller) mammals would be a very good way to determine which freezing tech is important. It seems this thing should be approached from both ends.
ETA: this approach would make it an empirical project rather than intelligent guesswork. It’s also great PR—if people see that progress is being made towards human revival they’ll be more likely to take the leap.
I was under the impression that cryonic suspension operated differently / had different uses than deanimation. With deanimation, you just stop metabolism- with cryonics, you stop chemistry. It may be there are current cryonics patients who just needed to be put in an induced coma- but I get the sense that’s not the case.
Both kinds of suspension are found in nature. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070220-frog-antifreeze.html
Intriguing! That looks like it might be useful- do you know if current cryoprotectants behave similarly?
Sadly, the wood frog that may be the most interesting model of this has never even been sequenced.
The frog’s freeze response is a complex set of responses, that include producing antifreeze (a sugar), protection from the toxicity of said antifreeze, protection from water loss, protection from oxygen deficiency, heartbeat regulation, and I forget what all else.