I don’t know how the cost is figured by the company.… But consider the following scenario: a child is signed up for 10 years, then dies, and then needs to be suspended for 150 years. Assuming no inflation, how much would that cost?
Whatever amount the parent needs to come up with, we can divide that by 45, the number of years a parent can expect to be working.
The cost is different from the fee. You pay a flat fee to be put into a dewar after various unappetizing things are done to your body and brain to minimize damage.
The upkeep costs of the dewars are paid by the cryonics organization out of investment funds they have set up for the express purpose of being sustainable over the very long term. (A very good reason to lower your expectations of cryonics a notch would be to learn that some reputable cryonics company was hard hit by the subprime crisis or had given their money to Madoff to invest.)
Suggested reading: The First Immortal by Halperin.
As far as I understand it, nothing is expected to be payed after the child dies. In fact, the organizations seem quite emphatically against accepting promise of “future payments”. Every cost is upfront.
(The idea is that if they’d accepted “future payments”, and the parent stopped paying at some point, they’d have to unfreeze the kid, which they’d dislike; it probably wouldn’t do wonders on reputation, either.)
There’s some sad history behind that attitude, I regret to say. There was a high-profile story some years ago about the now-gone Cryonics Society of California, at which several cryonics patients were allowed to thaw—to a major degree because of financial problems.
(Yes, I listen to This American Life occasionally.)
What is the actual cost per year?
I don’t know how the cost is figured by the company.… But consider the following scenario: a child is signed up for 10 years, then dies, and then needs to be suspended for 150 years. Assuming no inflation, how much would that cost?
Whatever amount the parent needs to come up with, we can divide that by 45, the number of years a parent can expect to be working.
The cost is different from the fee. You pay a flat fee to be put into a dewar after various unappetizing things are done to your body and brain to minimize damage.
The upkeep costs of the dewars are paid by the cryonics organization out of investment funds they have set up for the express purpose of being sustainable over the very long term. (A very good reason to lower your expectations of cryonics a notch would be to learn that some reputable cryonics company was hard hit by the subprime crisis or had given their money to Madoff to invest.)
Suggested reading: The First Immortal by Halperin.
As far as I understand it, nothing is expected to be payed after the child dies. In fact, the organizations seem quite emphatically against accepting promise of “future payments”. Every cost is upfront.
(The idea is that if they’d accepted “future payments”, and the parent stopped paying at some point, they’d have to unfreeze the kid, which they’d dislike; it probably wouldn’t do wonders on reputation, either.)
Well, that sounds like a good thing.
There’s some sad history behind that attitude, I regret to say. There was a high-profile story some years ago about the now-gone Cryonics Society of California, at which several cryonics patients were allowed to thaw—to a major degree because of financial problems.
(Yes, I listen to This American Life occasionally.)