Bush: Petroleum independence by year 4920

How old will Cheney be by then do you suppose and how many replacement parts will he have been through?

Bear


I have it on good authority that Cheney has already arranged for his body to be frozen so he can thaw out at any time he is needed in the future.


BBB

Cryonics: Cheating death or just freezing it?
by Meredith Carpenter

"Fear not death, for the sooner we die the longer we shall be immortal."
-Benjamin Franklin

On September 23rd, 1991, archaeologists in the ?-tztal Alps uncovered the preserved corpse of a man who died in approximately 3300 BC. His body was frozen at a glacial temperature of about -20°C (at some 10,400 feet above sea level), the perfect conditions for preservation of human tissue. He is the world's oldest and best-preserved mummy, and much research has been done to determine the circumstances surrounding his life and death. The "ice man" was so well preserved because the microorganisms that cause decay cannot survive at constant low temperatures. Humans are exploiting this phenomenon of arrested decay, which occurs often in nature, in a procedure called "cryonic preservation."

The process

Often referred to as "cryogenics," a general term for the study of low-temperature phenomena, "cryonics" is a more accurate term which means "the practice of freezing a diseased human in hopes of restoring life at some future time when a cure for the disease has been developed." The process of cryonic preservation begins at death. Once cryonic technicians arrive on the scene, they immediately begin to perform CPR on the corpse in order to continue its blood flow. The body is then placed on a heart-lung machine to maintain circulation and the blood is cooled to 15°C. At this time, the technicians administer drugs such as calcium channel blockers (including nimopidine, which is used on patients with brain injuries), which serve to block the movement of calcium ions into heart cells and blood vessels, thereby increasing the supply of oxygen-rich blood to the heart and other parts of the body. Free radical inhibitors, which prevent the damaging effects of free radicals, and blood thinners are also administered. Once the patient has reached -10°C, the blood is replaced with a saline solution to help prevent shrinking or swelling of body tissues and to aid in organ preservation. Finally, the body is cooled by first placing it in a bath of silicone oil, which aids in rapid cooling and remains in liquid state to nearly -100°C, and eventually into a large insulated container filled with liquid nitrogen. The final temperature of the body after this process is -196°C (-320°F).

The principle

By cooling the body to extremely low temperatures, cryonic technicians can indefinitely preserve a body without the worry of decay or major destruction of body tissues. The freezing of living cells, however, is problematic. Ice crystals form around cells during the freezing process, causing them to separate. The technicians prevent the formation of these crystals by pumping glycerol-based antifreeze throughout the body. Even if this preventative measure succeeds, the antifreeze is toxic to cells and thawing can inflict further damage on fragile tissues. The work is intricate and exacting, as different kinds of cells require different thawing procedures, even within individual organs. Sometimes only a patient's head is frozen (neurosuspension), even though brain degradation begins to occur immediately after death. The current attitude of cryonicists is that reanimation from cryonic suspension will be achieved only after the development of nanotechnology, which would hypothetically use miniscule machines to repair cells at the molecular level. These machines would repair damage caused by the freezing process and cure the disease that was the cause of death. In the case of neurosuspension, therapeutic cloning would be utilized to create a body for the suspended brain. So far, nanotechnology remains in the realm of science fiction, though cryonics advocates (including the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the world's principal provider of cryonic suspension facilities) point to the infant discipline as one of the main arguments for continuing the practice of cryonic suspension. Another justification is that cryonic preservation can do no harm--even if it does not work, you will be dead anyway. Alcor even claims that nanotechnology could be developed within the next 20 to 100 years. However, most cryobiologists (scientists who study the effects of low temperatures on living organisms) are skeptical, as are many scientists in general. Dr. Arthur Rowe of the New York University School of Medicine says, "Believing cryonics could reanimate somebody who has been frozen is like believing you can turn a hamburger back into a cow."

The history

Benjamin Franklin was probably one of the first to dream of preserving dead bodies for future repair. In 1773, after observing how the heat of the sun reanimated flies preserved in a bottle of wine sent to London from the United States, he wrote, "I wish it were possible from this instance to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they may be recalled to life, however distant." In his book The Prospect of Immortality (1964), Robert Ettinger was the first to popularize the concept of cryonic suspension, saying that we could freeze our bodies now and "sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us." In 1967, the first person was cryonically frozen. His name was Dr. John Bedford, and his body is now held in Alcor's headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. As of June 2002, there were 49 patients in cryonic suspension in Alcor's facilities, none of whom is Walt Disney or his head, despite popular belief. Cryonic preservation has always been extremely expensive. As of February 2003, Alcor charged $120,000 for whole-body suspension and $50,000 for neurosuspension. It costs $150 to apply for membership and $398 per year in membership dues. Lifetime membership costs $20,000. Even the cheaper (and less well-known) companies charge upwards of $28,000 for whole-body suspension. Still, Alcor does not guarantee indefinite preservation, though it has established an "irrevocable" Patient Care Trust funded by membership payments that provides continued care and that theoretically cannot be cancelled until all patients are reanimated.

Ethical implications

The prospect of cryonic preservation raises many questions about the nature of death and the ethics of the use of this technology. What would be the implications if "reanimated" people were suddenly to rejoin the general population? How would their presence affect overpopulation? How would it affect religious ideas of immorality? Dr. Kenneth Iserson, the director of the Arizona Bioethics Program, writes about cryonics in his book Death To Dust: What Happens To Dead Bodies? In an email interview for Hybrid Vigor, he puts cryonics into perspective: "Doing the math, even if a large number of people were frozen and then 'reanimated,' this would be only a blip in the population. These people might get a 'second chance' at life, but would not be immortal. I suspect that depression--over the new lifestyles, lack of relatives and friends, and absence of a real place in the society--would doom many to suicide.… The questions would be: When is a person really dead? Is a marriage dissolved when a person is frozen? How about insurance payments? Would this person retain seniority at his/her job?"

Alcor's official web site is quick to point out that legal death and real death are not the same thing: "Legal death merely means that a qualified medical authority has decided that restoring (or attempting to restore) blood circulation is no longer appropriate. Real death then occurs as cells irreversibly deteriorate in the minutes and hours that follow.… We believe that cryonics patients are NOT dead, but in a coma that will eventually be reversible." Since these patients are effectively in a "coma," upon awakening they would most likely experience only the short-term memory loss associated with loss of electrical activity in the brain (long-term memory results from structural changes within the brain). Of course, even if cryonics were someday to become a reality, death would still be possible if, for example, the brain were injured to such an extent that nanorepair would be unable to restore the full memories and identity of the patient.

Still, such a drastic attempt to avoid death might spur some to claim that the cryonicists are "playing God" by attempting to make people immortal; the proponents of the technology, however, would most likely respond that cryonic preservation is no different than prolonging life using medications, life support, vaccines and the like. There is also the issue of assisted death: what if a terminally ill patient wants to be frozen before his or her disease progresses further? This argument by a cancer patient reached a California Appellate Court before its dismissal. Finally, the recent legal dispute within Ted Williams' family over whether the baseball legend's body should remain cryonically frozen or be cremated illustrates the myriad of legal and ethical issues associated with this procedure. Obviously, when considering cryonic suspension, we cannot simply ask, "Could it work?"--we must also ask, "What could happen if it works?"