Interestingly (and somewhat to the author’s surprise) there are no published technical articles on cryonics that claim it won’t work.
Also interestingly, there appear to be no published technical articles that claim that it will.
Last week, I searched for articles on how mammalian cryopreservation is done. I found nothing. Not a single journal article on any of the techniques Alcor uses. There are many articles on cryopreserving sperm, and embryos; there are studies on attempting to preserve other types of tissue samples. But I could not find a single article on methods to attempt to cryopreserve adult mammals. Not even in the journal Cryobiology, which is entirely about cryopreservation.
Go to the current issue of Cryobiology and look at the article titles to see what actually is being done in the field. Also notice that the author names are almost all Asian and (non-English/French/German) European. Cryonics for humans is most popular in nations that don’t publish on cryonics. (Don’t know if it’s popular in the Nordic countries.)
Aha. I hadn’t been aware of that conflict between cryonics and cryobiologist. I plan to go and read the Alcor page in full, then the letter in full, but right now one thing comes to mind: whatever document justifies the cryobiologists’ decision to outright ban cryonics should lay out the most credible extant arguments against cryonics. They wouldn’t take such a serious decision on a whim.
Very interesting. I like to synthesize and summarize, so this is my synopsis.
I read that they have one mild moral objection, that they were willing to stand behind over several drafts, and one scientific objection, that they were not willing to reiterate.
1st objection: you shouldn’t sell a technological service that hasn’t been scientifically demonstrated (presumably, even if the buyer is aware that they’re only buying a potential technology)
It is interesting that they would like to call this fraud even though they can’t quite:
“the implication of ultimate reanimation borders more on fraud than either faith or science.”
(This reminds me of the argument I lost as to whether people would be justified in thinking that cryonics was a scam for some weak interpretation of ‘scam’ .)
2nd objection: that however people are cryo-preserved now, it is unlikely to be un-doable
in light of current scientific understanding of freezing injury in cells and tissues, even in the presence of cryo-preservatives, it is the Board’s scientific judgment that the prospects for re-animation of a frozen human, particularly a legally dead human, are infinitesimally low.
I don’t agree with the first objection: if informed people want to pay for the chance of reanimation, I think that’s their decision.
The second objection would be strong, if it were true that cryo-preservation causes irreversible damage (information loss), but that appears currently undecided.
The second objection would be strong, if it were true that cryo-preservation causes irreversible damage (information loss), but that appears currently undecided.
All the arguments I’ve found so far that are in favour of that position are either very vague on details, or fatally flawed on details. Most cryonics critics don’t appear to understand the issue of information theoretic death clearly enough to articulate a position on it.
The only thing that gives much comfort is that was written in 1991 so there’s theoretically enough time for some of the obstructionist cohort to have retired or run out of steam on the subject. Perhaps the upside of a pessimistic view on scientific progress could be kicking in by now?
I tried to verify the actual current state of the Society for Cryobiology’s bylaws to see if they even contain the provisions banning cryonicists or their research any longer. With 20 years for them to have realized that such censorship is at the very least in poor taste, maybe things have settled down? When I tried looking for an online version of the document with the it didn’t appear to be something they have on display.
Does anyone else have stronger google-fu than I? It would be neat to track down the document so we could see for ourselves :-)
I think most cryobiologists are going about it the wrong way, trying to get incrementally better at cryopreserving tissue. The work I’m aware of that seems most promising (I say, having almost no familiarity with the field) is Ken Storey’s work with wood frogs. They can freeze and thaw naturally.
I looked into it because I hoped I might be able to move some genes from a wood frog into a mouse, freeze it, thaw it later, and win the Methuselah Mouse prize. But it turns out that the frog has an anti-dessicant response to protect tissue from lack of water, an anti-ischemia response to protect tissue from lack of oxygen, a glucose response to produce glucose as a cryoprotectant, an anti-glucose response to protect cells from the huge amounts of glucose, and a bunch of other mysterious responses. It involves hundreds of genes. It’s going to take a large program to import entire gene pathways from one organism to another.
The wood frog mechanism is very different from the proposal of cryonics proper, which is vitrification (not freezing, at least under ideal conditions) and subsequent repair or uploading. Cryonics involves much lower temperatures than a wood frog could possibly survive at under natural conditions. Unsurprisingly, Ken Storey is a major cryonics skeptic.
On the other hand, the use of ice-blocking polymers in vitrification is analogous to antifreeze proteins used in biology. This reduces the concentration of penetrating cryoprotectants needed to achieve vitrification at the glass transition temperature, which in turn reduces toxicity.
My thought as to how gene therapy could be useful is that if you could have ice-blocking proteins or cryoprotectant sugars present inside of the cells to begin with, lower concentrations still could be used, implying less time at high temperature where toxicity can occur. Removal of cryoprotectants during thawing is a major problem which this would also help with.
Optimistically, this would lead to a revivable brain and/or cryogenic banking of other individual organs. I think whole body will be a lot harder than brain only, perhaps dramatically so. It may be better to work on robotic and biological life support technologies to permit the brain to survive on its own if we want to see a person or mammal actually making the trip both ways within our lifetimes.
Haha. Creative thinking, but I’m not sure if that would count as life extension by the rules of the M-Prize.
It would have been stupendously trivial if all one had to do is to copy-paste some genes into a mouse egg, or do some gene-therapy, in order to become freeze-resistant. Aubrey’s beard would go white in an instant.
I’m having the same problem. All the studies I’ve looked at have only studied the plausibility of cryonics. None have actually attempted to freeze and thaw a mammal (or any other warm blooded animal). All the examples of “natural” cryonic preservation deal with cold blooded animals (usually frogs or fish).
Can anyone point me to studies showing that cryogenic freezing and thawing in warm blooded creatures is possible? I’d hate to throw down a bunch of money on a cryonics policy, only to end up dead anyway, because the freezing process permanently damaged my tissues.
The abstract I linked to does mention LN2. Though I’m not sure how much difference various sub-freezing temperatures make, if our concern is how well the current protocols of cryonics can protect the brain against freezing damage.
I Googled for articles concerning nematodes because they’re the standard “simplest organism with a nervous system”, and this was among the first hits, filtering to exclude all publications by cryonicists.
What would be the next “higher” organism someone might have tried that on, that also has a nervous system?
Also interestingly, there appear to be no published technical articles that claim that it will.
Last week, I searched for articles on how mammalian cryopreservation is done. I found nothing. Not a single journal article on any of the techniques Alcor uses. There are many articles on cryopreserving sperm, and embryos; there are studies on attempting to preserve other types of tissue samples. But I could not find a single article on methods to attempt to cryopreserve adult mammals. Not even in the journal Cryobiology, which is entirely about cryopreservation.
Go to the current issue of Cryobiology and look at the article titles to see what actually is being done in the field. Also notice that the author names are almost all Asian and (non-English/French/German) European. Cryonics for humans is most popular in nations that don’t publish on cryonics. (Don’t know if it’s popular in the Nordic countries.)
That’s forbidden by the Society for Cryobiology by-laws.
Why?
See Alcor’s side of the story (also linked in the article).
Aha. I hadn’t been aware of that conflict between cryonics and cryobiologist. I plan to go and read the Alcor page in full, then the letter in full, but right now one thing comes to mind: whatever document justifies the cryobiologists’ decision to outright ban cryonics should lay out the most credible extant arguments against cryonics. They wouldn’t take such a serious decision on a whim.
[EDIT: the below is wrong.]
As far as I can tell, there is no such document. This I consider very striking evidence on the credibility of anticryonics.
Of course the by-law is 28 years old, so even if there were such a document it would need updating.
I’m wrong: I found the document and some earlier drafts.
Very interesting. I like to synthesize and summarize, so this is my synopsis.
I read that they have one mild moral objection, that they were willing to stand behind over several drafts, and one scientific objection, that they were not willing to reiterate.
1st objection: you shouldn’t sell a technological service that hasn’t been scientifically demonstrated (presumably, even if the buyer is aware that they’re only buying a potential technology)
It is interesting that they would like to call this fraud even though they can’t quite:
(This reminds me of the argument I lost as to whether people would be justified in thinking that cryonics was a scam for some weak interpretation of ‘scam’ .)
2nd objection: that however people are cryo-preserved now, it is unlikely to be un-doable
I don’t agree with the first objection: if informed people want to pay for the chance of reanimation, I think that’s their decision.
The second objection would be strong, if it were true that cryo-preservation causes irreversible damage (information loss), but that appears currently undecided.
All the arguments I’ve found so far that are in favour of that position are either very vague on details, or fatally flawed on details. Most cryonics critics don’t appear to understand the issue of information theoretic death clearly enough to articulate a position on it.
Thanks. The revision history is particularly interesting.
Thanks for the link, and eeew.
That’s one of the most depressing things I’ve read in a while >.<
Pretty much agree.
The only thing that gives much comfort is that was written in 1991 so there’s theoretically enough time for some of the obstructionist cohort to have retired or run out of steam on the subject. Perhaps the upside of a pessimistic view on scientific progress could be kicking in by now?
I tried to verify the actual current state of the Society for Cryobiology’s bylaws to see if they even contain the provisions banning cryonicists or their research any longer. With 20 years for them to have realized that such censorship is at the very least in poor taste, maybe things have settled down? When I tried looking for an online version of the document with the it didn’t appear to be something they have on display.
Does anyone else have stronger google-fu than I? It would be neat to track down the document so we could see for ourselves :-)
Wow, I’m actually having a very hard time finding any information on relations between the two more current than the ’91 article
Nice link—I added Alcor’s side of the story to the question “Is cryonics worthwhile?”:
http://www.takeonit.com/question/318.aspx
Thanks to everyone’s suggestions, there’s now 5 sub-debates for cryonics:
Is information-theoretic death the most real interpretation of death?
Is cryonic restoration technically feasible in the future?
Is living forever or having a greatly extended lifespan desirable?
Is there life after death?
Does cryonic preservation with today’s best technology cause information-theoretic death?
Wow, that really stirs up the rebel in me.
I’m curious now to look more into the state of the art in cryopreservation. How close are we to successfully cryopreserving an organ?
I think most cryobiologists are going about it the wrong way, trying to get incrementally better at cryopreserving tissue. The work I’m aware of that seems most promising (I say, having almost no familiarity with the field) is Ken Storey’s work with wood frogs. They can freeze and thaw naturally.
I looked into it because I hoped I might be able to move some genes from a wood frog into a mouse, freeze it, thaw it later, and win the Methuselah Mouse prize. But it turns out that the frog has an anti-dessicant response to protect tissue from lack of water, an anti-ischemia response to protect tissue from lack of oxygen, a glucose response to produce glucose as a cryoprotectant, an anti-glucose response to protect cells from the huge amounts of glucose, and a bunch of other mysterious responses. It involves hundreds of genes. It’s going to take a large program to import entire gene pathways from one organism to another.
The wood frog mechanism is very different from the proposal of cryonics proper, which is vitrification (not freezing, at least under ideal conditions) and subsequent repair or uploading. Cryonics involves much lower temperatures than a wood frog could possibly survive at under natural conditions. Unsurprisingly, Ken Storey is a major cryonics skeptic.
On the other hand, the use of ice-blocking polymers in vitrification is analogous to antifreeze proteins used in biology. This reduces the concentration of penetrating cryoprotectants needed to achieve vitrification at the glass transition temperature, which in turn reduces toxicity.
My thought as to how gene therapy could be useful is that if you could have ice-blocking proteins or cryoprotectant sugars present inside of the cells to begin with, lower concentrations still could be used, implying less time at high temperature where toxicity can occur. Removal of cryoprotectants during thawing is a major problem which this would also help with.
Optimistically, this would lead to a revivable brain and/or cryogenic banking of other individual organs. I think whole body will be a lot harder than brain only, perhaps dramatically so. It may be better to work on robotic and biological life support technologies to permit the brain to survive on its own if we want to see a person or mammal actually making the trip both ways within our lifetimes.
Haha. Creative thinking, but I’m not sure if that would count as life extension by the rules of the M-Prize.
It would have been stupendously trivial if all one had to do is to copy-paste some genes into a mouse egg, or do some gene-therapy, in order to become freeze-resistant. Aubrey’s beard would go white in an instant.
Done, though not at LN2 temperatures:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15094092
http://www.cryostasis.com/perspectivesandadvances.pdf
Awesome. Thanks for the links.
I’m having the same problem. All the studies I’ve looked at have only studied the plausibility of cryonics. None have actually attempted to freeze and thaw a mammal (or any other warm blooded animal). All the examples of “natural” cryonic preservation deal with cold blooded animals (usually frogs or fish).
Can anyone point me to studies showing that cryogenic freezing and thawing in warm blooded creatures is possible? I’d hate to throw down a bunch of money on a cryonics policy, only to end up dead anyway, because the freezing process permanently damaged my tissues.
Not an entire mammal, but Greg Fahy has cryopreserved a kidney, brought it back and shown a rabbit able to live using it as its sole kidney.
Perhaps just as importantly for this whole discussion, nematodes have been shown to survive cryopreservation, with “memories” intact.
Very interesting! Again, not LN2 temperatures though.
EDIT: I’m wrong—thanks for the correction!
The abstract I linked to does mention LN2. Though I’m not sure how much difference various sub-freezing temperatures make, if our concern is how well the current protocols of cryonics can protect the brain against freezing damage.
I Googled for articles concerning nematodes because they’re the standard “simplest organism with a nervous system”, and this was among the first hits, filtering to exclude all publications by cryonicists.
What would be the next “higher” organism someone might have tried that on, that also has a nervous system?