If you were about to die, and were given the option of freezing yourself to be resuscitated at an unknown future time, would you do it?
Cryonics: (from Greek κρύος 'kryos-' meaning 'cold') is the low-temperature preservation of animals and humans who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. According to Wikipedia, this process has been around since the 1950s, and involves freezing the body, typically with liquid nitrogen, in the confidence that technology will reach a point at which the body can be resuscitated and the life extended indefinitely.
Isn't this what Han Solo underwent in the Empire Strikes Back? Isn't this the stuff of Star Wars fantasies?
Well...
One of the themes of this blog is emergent technology, whether bio or nano or info or genetic. And a sub theme is that modern science and technology are moving closer to making what was once considered mere science fiction a reality. In fact, there are some scientists who claim that science, when at its best, is tantamount to magic.
Think this is merely the stuff of science fiction? Get this report from the BBC: in October 2015, a two-year old Tai girl became the youngest human to be cryogenically frozen. The procedure was completed just moments after her death in an effort to preserve her brain as much as possible in hopes that one day in the future she'll be brought to life.
Immortality Quest is a competition that brings the worlds top scientists together to vie for a $100,000 prize. The challenge? Here it is, according to Discovery News:
[Starting with an effective animal model] rigorously demonstrate a surgical technique that can completely — and inexpensively — preserve a whole human brain for more than 100 years in a way that keeps neuronal processes and synaptic connections intact. Plus, you must use current electron microscopic imaging techniques.
Sounds like a piece of cake, right?
According to the article, two groups have submitted their solutions, one of which--a company out of California called 21st Century Medicine--involves cryogenically preserving the brain through a fixative agent and soaking it in a chemical solution that prevents ice formation. They claim to have succeeded at such a procedure with mice.
Another solution is a more infotech approach: uploading the human brain to a server and preserving one's memories that way. Some claim that such technology is at least a century away; however, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil unflaggingly holds that such technology will emerge over the next 10 years.
What are the ramifications of such a procedure? Would you enter a cryogenic process in the hopes of one day being resuscitated? The question always is, what would you be resuscitated to: like Rip Van Winkle, you'd be waking up to a world you'd barely recognize. Ray Kurzweil in fact shares this concern--at least in a 2002 interview with Wired Magazine:
It is a scary prospect. My biggest concern is the loss of control — the possibility that the reanimation would be done prematurely. So you'd wake up but you'd really be in an impaired state, like locked-in syndrome. There's a profound loss of control. I mean I have enough trouble looking after my interests when I'm alive and kicking. To look after your interests when you're not only frozen in a vat of liquid nitrogen, but don't even have legal status as a person….
That's a big concern: being resuscitated too early, and being stuck in some limbo state or, worse yet, dead.
Can technology pull such resuscitations off? There's a part of me that believes it can; a part of me that believes science, when taken to its highest state of art, can mimic magic--whether it's wise or beneficial is a different conversation.
So, are you ready to have your brain stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen?
No comments:
Post a Comment