Cryonie

The cryonie or cryogenisation (often confused wrongly with the Cryogénie), is a process of Cryoconservation (conservation at very low temperature) the human ones or animals which the subsistence cannot be médicalement assured any more, in the hope of being able the ressusciter later on. In the actual position of medical know-how, the process is not reversible. With the the United States, it can be practiced only on the human ones for which a death certificate was signed, and if the stage of brain death is not yet too advanced. The cryonie is always perceived nowadays with Scepticisme by the majority of the scientists and doctors. However, among the militants, are good number of researchers who hope for large projections in medicine, in particular in the nanotechnologies, which could allow the regeneration of fabrics and the bodies at the molecular level, to even reverse the effects of ageing or the diseases.

The basic argument in favor of the cryonie is that the memory, the Personnalité and the identity are stored in the chemical structure of the brain. But although this assumption is commonly accepted in medicine, and that one knows that the cerebral activity can remain one moment with the stop and begin again then, the idea to be able to preserve a brain with the current methods in a sufficiently satisfactory way to allow his resurrection remains badly accepted. The partisans of the cryonie however put forward the studies which would leave think that the strong concentrations as cryoconservateurs circulating in the brain before its cooling can prevent its damage and would make preserve the fine structure of the cells which would be the supposed seat of the memory and the identity.

For the opponents, the current practice of the cryonie should not be able to be justified, taking into account the current limitations of technology: at present, one arrives at cryoconserver in a reversible way only the cell S, the fabric S, the Blood-vessels and of small bodies of animals. Certain frogs can survive indeed a few months the state of congelation to a few degrees Celsius below zero, but it is not true any more if they are cryoconservées. This argument, the partisans answer that the demonstration of the reversibility does not have to be brought today: if it is already possible to preserve the contained informations in the brain, one will have theoretically prevented his death while waiting for that the restoration is possible later on.

The cryonized patient most famous is probably the player of baseball Ted Williams. The urban legend which circulates saying that Walt Disney would be cryonisé is false, this one having been incinerated and its ashes buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery. Robert Heinlein, which was enthusiastic concept, was also incinerated and its ashes dispersed in the Pacific Ocean. Timothy Leary, a partisan of long time of the cryonie, took steps to be made cryoniser, but changed opinion little before its death.

Encountered problems

Damage and ischaemia

The cryonie was traditionally drawn aside by the Cryobiologie, of which it is a subbranch. The reason most often given is that the freezing process creates crystals of ice which, according to certain scientists, would damage the cellular cells and structures at the point to make any repair later impossible. However, the cryonists supported a long time that the range of this damage had been largely exaggerated by their adversaries and suppose that by injecting the body with chemical cryoconservateurs (traditionally of the Glycérol), it should be possible to inhibit the germination and the growth of the crystals of ice.

According to the cryonists, the argument of the damage due to the crystal formation of ice became invalid when with the beginning of the 21e century, the cryobiologists Greg Fahy and Brian Wowk, of Twenty-First Century Medicine, important improvements in the technology of cryoconservation developed, by working out new cryoconservateurs and their mixtures, improving the feasibility of the Vitrification, thus leading to the quasi-disappearance of the crystal formation of ice in the brain. Vitrification makes it possible to protect fabrics, those being preserved better in a vitreous state than in the ice since the molecules do not seek any more to be rearranged by changing state, but remain as in a fluid which one would have solidified, forming a kind of “liquid solid” while the temperature falls below the Température of vitreous transition ( Tg ). Alcor Life Extension Foundation tried since then to find applications practical to these cryoconservateurs and sought to develop a new faster method to vitrify an human brain in its totality (neurovitrification). Cryonics Institute uses a solution vitrifying elaborate by Dr. Yuri Pichugin, an internal researcher, and developed a system cooling computer-assisted which makes it possible to make sure that the rate of cooling is high with the top of Tg and weak below, in order to reduce the creation of cracks which could occur because of the Contraintes thermal.

Solutions used currently for vitrification are sufficiently stable to avoid crystallization, even when a vitrified brain is heated, which made it possible to make studies on the damage of the vitrified brains, then brought back to normal temperature using observations to the optical microscope and the MEB which revealed the absence of damage due to the crystals of ice. However, if the irrigation of the brain had suddenly been compromised, the preserving products would not be able any more to reach all the zones, which would lead to the formation of ice during cooling or the warming. The partisans of cryogenics think that the damage caused at the time it cooling could perhaps be reparable before heating the brain, and that the damage produced at the time it warming could probably be attenuated by the addition of cryoconservateurs at the time of the solid state, or by improving the processes of defrosting. But best currently available vitrification still does not allow resurrection, even by avoiding crystallization, because of the toxicity of the cryoconservateurs used. There still, the cryonists misent on the future technology which will be able to cross this obstacle. If, for example, the products had suddenly degenerated the Protéine S, perhaps could they be repaired or replaced.

Certain detractors have advanced the argument that, if a patient had been declared died, its bodies also owed the being, which was to prevent the cryoconservateurs from reaching the majority of the cells. However, the cryonists reject this thesis, advancing which there empirically showed that as long as the operation of cryoconservation started immediately after the report of death, the bodies individual, and perhaps even all the body of the patient, remained still biologically alive, and that vitrification, in particular that of the brain, was feasible right now. It is what allows the bodies, like the heart, to be transplanted whereas their donor already died during the taking away.

The cryonic operations cannot be undertaken before legal death was not declared, this one being in general based on the cardiac arrest (or more seldom on a flat encéphalogramme). But with the cardiac arrest, the blood flood stops and the ischemic damage occurs: deprived of contribution out of oxygen and nutrients, the cells, the fabrics and the bodies start to worsen. If the heart starts again after a too long time of inactivity, reintroduced oxygen can cause even more damage because of the oxydative constraints, known under the name of Lésions of reperfusion. The cryonists try to minimize the lesions of reperfusion and ischemic by cooling the body and while placing it under cardiorespiratory support as of the advertisement of death. Products Anticoagulant S, like the Heparin, and of the Antioxydant S can also be injected. The company Suspended Animation, Inc is a company of Florida specialized in research and the development of processes minimizing the ischemic lesions at the time of a rescue cryonic.

Resurrection

It is almost universally accepted by the scientists that the reversibility of the cryoconservation is not possible short-term. Those which believe in resurrection by cryonie look at mainly side of the Bioingénierie, molecular Nanotechnologies or Nanomédecine. Resurrection requires the compensation for the damages which had with the lack of oxygen, with the toxicity of the cryoconservateurs, the thermal stresses, and the crystals of ice formed in the fabrics which will not have been able to be vitrified successfully. In many cases, that will imply important regenerations of fabrics. The current scenarios to reach that point generally consider the use of organizations or microscopic machines which could restore the cellular structures, as well as chemistry, the whole with the molecular scales, if possible front to even heat the body. The transfer of spirit was also suggested like approach, if the technology which would be capable of scanner the memory of a preserved brain would be born.

The idea was often advanced that resurrection would be a case of last in, first out: while the methods of conservation will improve until one discovers a means of reversing the operation, it will be necessary to develop techniques to bring back to the life those which were preserved by more primitive means. Perhaps it will take centuries to find a means of reversing the current process combining neurovitrification and cooling. Perhaps even as it will be impossible.

It was emitted the idea that if technologies for the analysis and molecular repair had suddenly been developed, it would be then theoretically possible to regenerate any damaged part of the body. Survival would depend then on the conservation of information in the brain, which must be able to be sufficiently well preserved to make it possible to restore the identity of the patient, which would make Amnésie the ultimate border between the life and death.

Social obstacles

When well even the cryonie would be scientifically certain, it is also obstacles of social order. Most obvious is the belief that the cryonie is impossible, and that which cryonized died. Although it is necessary to redefine the legal definition of death so that the cryonie can be used, it remains to overcome the feeling of futility in front of such methods: by habit and law, the bodies of dead people are objects and neither rights nor possessions have. This cultural obstacle that is the depersonnification of death is fought by the defenders of the cryonie by using more flattering terms, like “patient” and support the idea that it is immoral to regard the people cryonized as dead, although it is their physical status and legal current.

To this obstacle the question is added of knowing if the company to come will may find it beneficial to be occupied or with ressusciter “deaths”. With this, the cryonists point out that a subset of the company deals already with the cryonized patients, and this, since decades. This would imply that to suppose that resurrection is one day possible, this same subset would carry out it on the already cryonized people. It is also often advanced the idea that a future company which would be sufficiently advanced to reverse the process would probably have sights of the life and death different from today. The partisans of the cryonie thus reject generally the concept of “ressusciter deaths” and rather preach the cryonie like an experimental medical procedure. It was also constant that the future company could have interest with ressusciter patients cryonized with fine histories or intellectual, though in any event the moral obligation to take care to the patients should apply whatever the concerned intellectual value.

Neuroconservation

The Neuroconservation is the cryoconservation of the brain, generally head included/understood, by separating surgically as a preliminary this one from the remainder of the body. Sometimes called “neuro”, it is one of the two choices suggested to the patients, the other implying the conservation of the whole body.

The neuroconservation is based on the theory which the brain would be the principal receptacle of the memory and the identity. Moreover, it is also justified by the idea that if the technology of the future were able to repair the damage of the cryonie and to reverse the process, it would be also probably able to regenerate the remainder of the body around a simple brain. It was also suggested that resurrection would probably imply to get rid of the remainder of the body, too damaged by the process, because it would be probably simpler to generate new rather than to repair the damage of them. Moreover, these considerations are aligned on the reduction in the carrying costs, an increased facility of transport and storage, as well as an increased quality of the conservation of only one body instead of all the body.

The advantages and disadvantages of the neuroconservation are always highly discussed within the partisans of the cryonie. Those which are opposed to it support the assumption that the body is in itself a chronicle of the life of the patient, who also included the training of motricity. Although few cryonists believe that a neuro brought back to the life can always be the same person, there were debates around the question of knowing up to which point a patient could feel a difference in a body regenerated compared to l'" original". It is partly for these reasons, like in a preoccupation with an brand image, that the Cryonics Institute keeps only whole bodies. So certain defenders of the neuroconservation include/understand these considerations, they also think that the reduction in the costs allied to a better conservation of the brain was to only justify the conservation of this one. Approximately the three-quarters of the patients of Alcor are neuros.

Although the media often exploit the idea that the cloning would allow the growth of new bodies, the experts in cryonie tend to exclude this technology, considered as too primitive and probably obsolete a long time before it is possible to reverse the cryonisation. In the same way, although the neurosurgeon Robert J. White proved that transplantations of body were possible for primates, this one is isolated with the profit of the regeneration of the fabrics, which is perceived like the most elegant method of future medicine as a solution with the neuroconservation, like for other pathologies.

Financial questions

The cost of the cryonie strongly varies, energy of $28 000 for the conservation of a whole body at Cryonics Institute, until $80 000 for a neuroconservation and $150 000 for the cryoconservation of all the body at Alcor or American Cryonics Society. However, these prices do not reflect the true costs: thus, that of Cryonics Institute do not include the costs related with the “ standby ” (a team lends to intervene and which sits at the bedside of the patient right before his death), with transport and the funeral.

Although it seems that the cryonie is a lucrative branch, the costs to which these companies must face were studied and are being comparable with those of important surgical transplantations. And the most important cost milked, in particular in the case of whole bodies, with the sum which one must invest so that the interests can cover the expenses of conservation.

The most current method to regulate the note is the Assurance-vie. The defenders of the cryonie say readily that this one is particularly cheap for the young people, thus making the cryonie “accessible to the greatest number” of the inhabitants from the industrialized countries which would be truly interested.

Ethics and religion

The cryonie is based on the belief which death is a process which can be reversed in there fascinating in the minutes, even hours following brain death. If death cannot be regarded as an instantaneous event occurring as of the cardiac arrest, that raises the philosophical question of what can be death. In 2005, took place a debate on ethics in the medical newspaper Critical Care , which published that… “little, if not none the patients whose death is pronounced by doctors of today really died by taking into account rigorous scientific criteria. ” Thomas Donaldson advanced the argument that the “death” based on the cardiac arrest and the failure of the reanimation was only one pure social construction justifying the stop of the care to dying. From this point of view, legal death and its consequences would be nothing more than one form of Euthanasie by which one gives up patients. The philosopher max More suggested a distinction between death associated with the circumstances and the intention, in opposition to death as an irreversible phenomenon. The bioethist James Hughes wrote that one would grant more and more rights to the patients cryonized as one would approach the goal, while noticing that there were cases where legal death was called in question by the discovery of missing people supposed dead.

The ethical and theological opinions tend to be centered around the question of knowing if the cryonie were to be perceived like a funerary rite or a medicine. The first case, the religious beliefs on death and the life after death enter in consideration. Resurrection is generally regarded there as impossible because of the loss of the heart, in addition to, in the majority of the religions, God alone the capacity of ressusciter has deaths. Moreover, one so expensive funerary rite can be seen like a wasting of resources. But the cryonie is perceived like a medicine; legal death being only one mechanism starting it, it would be possible to regard it as a length Coma with the dubious Pronostic. The use of resources to maintain the human ones in life is then justified. The partisans of the cryonie object that the theological rejection to make live again by cryonie owing to the fact that this one would be a funerary rite is only sophism: because, if it were the case, that would imply that resurrection by cryonie is necessarily impossible, which is impossible to show, while to show that it is possible to bring back them to the life will validate the point of view which the cyonized patients can be cured and thus did not die.

Alcor made publish a vigorous Christian defense of the cryonie, including extracts of a sermon of the reverend Lutheran Kay Glaesner. The Christian apologist John Warwick Montgomery also took the defense of the cryonie. In 1969, a priest of the Roman Catholic church devoted the cryonic capsule of Ass DeBlasio, one of the first cryonized patients. In 2002, a Moslem Imam declared during an interview which if one could regard the cryonie as medicine, this one would be compatible with the Islam.

See too

Zh-yue: 人體冷凍技術

Random links: