NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC channel: had a great show last nite on CRYONICS?

Question

what are your thoughts on this controversial procedure?---it looked like it might work, but I dont think your coming back unless as a subsitute snowman

Answer 1

The problems seem to be that when you are unfrozen you start to decay (as had happened with the ice man).

Also, blood does not stay good that long, so one would need a fresh supply of blood upon awakening. Also, not sure if it would need to be removed before you were frozen. In the perfect test situation a person would have to be frozen before they actually died. The hope being of course that uncurable now would be readily curable in the future. While I can see cures for cancers on the horizon I'm not sure death is curable.

Michael John Weaver, M.S.

Answer 2

The problem with Cryonics is that when you freeze a body the liquid in the body forms into ice crystals that damage the cells membrane, however there are breakthrough's in Cryonics every day, i read a medical paper on a procedure that involves injecting the brain with a freezing cold solution to numb the brain enough so that the brain could be transplanted into another body and this procedure wouldn't be possible without Cryonics research.

Answer 3

It is worth pointing out that a fairly wide range of simple tissue types have been successfully cryopreserved and then rewarmed, including very early human embryos, sperm, skin, bone, red and white blood cells, bone marrow, and others. Glycerol (anti-freeze, see molecular structure at left) has historically been used to greatly reduce freezing damage. New cryoprotectants in combination with ice blockers are now able to eliminate ice formation in a process called vitrification.However the clinical trials are in progress....