Freezing Cold Time Machines: The Controversy and Science Behind Cryonics

by Nicholas Rosa

Death is the greatest unknown. For something that is faced by every human being in existence and is so intrinsically connected to the human condition, we don’t know very much about it. In fact, the pursuit of preventing or delaying this great and inescapable mystery has pushed us to the very limits of our scientific knowledge and understanding of medicine. Considered idealists by some, mad scientists by others, and pioneers by the rest, cryonics researchers lead a uniquely radical push to extend human life for as long as possible.

Cryonics – often confused with cryogenics, a field dedicated to the study of objects at very low temperatures – is a field dedicated to the preservation of one’s body through freezing, with the intention of being brought back to life through future medical achievements. What separates cryonics from other medical pursuits is that is not a solution to a medical problem. Cryonics is merely a way of keeping a person’s body around long enough until future medical efforts find a way to resurrect the individual.

On paper, cryonics seems plausible. Hibernation and low temperatures have been shown to slow down metabolism, and it is common knowledge that the colder it gets, the less atomic movement is observed. Cryonics benefits from the highly advanced freezing technology brought about by cryogenic research efforts. Despite these achievements, freezing a human body without extensive damage is still a significant problem. Cryonics is still in its early developmental stages – almost to the point of pseudoscience in the eyes of many skeptics – and is currently faced with the many physical limitations the human body presents, such as freezing damage and injuries related to blood-flow loss (ischemia).

However, the freezing and reanimation of living organisms is not unheard of. Research on living cells conducted by Dutch physicist Peter Mazur has shown that cells can be preserved for centuries when cryogenic practices are applied. Even in this research, which only focuses on individual cells, freezing damage was observed – primarily due to the shrinkage of cell channels in this case. The major players leading the efforts to prevent freezing damage are those concerned with organ cryopreservation. In fact, recent efforts at the University of Minnesota have resulted in a relatively new and effective way of cryopreserving blood vessels and animal hearts. Using specially crafted nanoparticles, the research team was able to heat tissue at a microscopic level to more than 130 degrees Celsius without inducing any damage. The goal of such research is to one day have long term organ and tissue banks. This would allow for much easier access to organ transplants.

Despite these small but notable achievements, science is far from applying these tactics to something so infinitely complex as entire human bodies. Some cryonic scientists, however, argue that this should not be considered an issue. Ralph Merkle, a scientist brought to cryonics due to his career in molecular-level nanotechnology, argues that the only vital part of the human body worth worrying about is the brain. Merkle is known for coining the term “information-theoretic death,” which he describes as a state where a person can no longer be recovered or preserved, as their memories and personality have been either destroyed or so far abstracted to the point of being a completely different individual. In Merkle’s mind, as long as the personality and memory of a person is intact, it doesn’t matter what is used to preserve that person. A full body transplant, cyborg implants or even artificial reality interfaces could come into play. This definition in and of itself highlights the cryonic field’s obsession with the grey area of declaring someone dead.

The biggest criticism that the field faces is that, even if cryonics proves successful, it will only be a middleman to a solution that may never come to light. To fight these claims, one argument cryonic researchers present is that of flawed burials prior to modern medicine. As this was before modern understanding of death, comas and the vegetative state, many people who can now be saved by contemporary medical understandings and practices were stuck facing what can now be considered an untimely death. Cryonic researchers argue that perhaps what we consider to be death can still be overturned by medical intervention in the future. After all, people previously declared legally dead have made full recoveries. This, however, has not been enough to sway the skeptics. Those opposed to cryonics argue that, even if one can be brought back to life in the future, it would not be worth it. Many believe that being brought back to life so far in the future would be horrible, as everyone a person has ever loved will have already died and technology and culture may be too advanced to understand (or perhaps one’s occupation could be useless in the new society).

It is possible that as long as memories and personality are not affected by freezing damage and blood loss, all other damage is inconsequential to the viability of cryonics. However, even if it proves successful, there will be much debate over whether it is even worth implementing in the first place. One can only wonder what will change in our society by the time cryonics could be a commonplace intervention in the medical field. Perhaps our cryogenically-preserved counterparts will have a medical controversies of their own, complete with mad scientists.