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Medicine

Cryonics Company Charges a Monthly Subscription Fee (Plus Your Life Insurance Payout) (deccanherald.com) 192

"To date, about 500 people have been put in cryogenic stasis after legal death," writes a Bloomberg Opinion technology columnist, "with the majority of them in the U.S.

"But a few thousand more, including Emil Kendziorra, are on waiting lists, wearing bracelets or necklaces with instructions for emergency responders. " Kendziorra, 36, runs Berlin-based Tomorrow Biostasis GmbH, one of the first cryonics businesses in Europe to join a market dominated by American firms organizations like The Alcor Life Extension Foundation and The Cryonics Institute. The former cancer doctor has several hundred people on his firm's waiting list. They skew to their late 30s, male and tend to work in technology. Patients can choose to have their entire body preserved and held upside down in a four-person dewars, a thermos-like aluminum vat filled with liquid nitrogen, or just preserve their brain, which is cheaper.

Kendziorra says cryopreservation overall has become less expensive over the past few decades on an inflation-adjusted basis, a claim that he bases on historic prices published by his peers, who he says are making a collective effort to bring down costs. That could be critical to shifting cryonics from a fringe pursuit to something a little more mainstream, especially since it is no longer just for billionaires like PayPal Inc. co-founder Peter Thiel (who has reportedly signed up with Alcor). Kendziorra, for instance, has made cryonics just another monthly subscription by capitalizing on insurance, he told me during a Twitter Spaces discussion on cryonics last month. His customers pay a 25-euro ($26.54) monthly fee to Tomorrow Biostasis, and they also make the company the beneficiary of a minimum 100,000-euro life insurance payout upon their legal death. Kendziorra says that covers the full cost of cryonics including the biggest outlay: maintenance over the next century or so.

All told, most of his customers are paying about 50 euros a month for both the company's subscription fee and the life insurance policy for the option of a long sleep at death. Of course, most companies don't survive for more than a century, so Tomorrow Biostasis also partners with a non-profit group in Switzerland to carry out the storage of customers on its behalf.... The domain itself is largely funded by wealthy individuals including CEOs of tech companies, angel investors and scientists, Kendziorra says, adding that for them to invest in his own firm, their primary motivation shouldn't be "monetary" but rather to help further the field.

The mechanics all sound sensible, but that still leaves the question of whether cryonics will work, medically speaking. Doctors and scientists have used words like quackery, pseudoscience and outright fraud to describe the field. Clive Cohen, a neuroscientist from Kings College London, has called it a "hopeless aspiration that reveals an appalling ignorance of biology." The Association of Cryobiology has compared it to turning a hamburger back into a cow.

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Cryonics Company Charges a Monthly Subscription Fee (Plus Your Life Insurance Payout)

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  • Selfishness (Score:4, Insightful)

    by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @07:17PM (#63190608)

    To pretend immortality is the most selfish of all things, doesn't surprise this seems to appeal to billionaires.

    Try to use the little time you have to make the planet a little bit better. And if you want to purchase a lif insurance, leave your family as beneficiary, not some pseudoscience quacks with big freezers.

    • To pretend immortality is the most selfish of all things, doesn't surprise this seems to appeal to billionaires.

      One new, possibly surprising fact is that this selfishness is now accessible to the middle class, TFS reports it costs a lifelong subscription of 50 euros per month.

      • Pyramid scheme (Score:4, Informative)

        by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @09:27PM (#63190802) Journal

        It would seem, when the client dies, that they no longer receive payment from him, but will bear the expense of storing him in perpetuity. Each new client then has to pay for the storage of all previous clients, plus themselves. It seems a bit of a pyramid scheme that only works with an ever-increasing number of clients.

        • Re:Pyramid scheme (Score:5, Informative)

          by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Monday January 09, 2023 @12:40AM (#63191066)

          I can't speak to this company, but Alcor and the Cryonics Institute here in the US both place the bulk of patient funding into trust accounts. These are designed such that if they stop receiving new patients the trusts pay for the continuing care of the existing patients.

          Legally these organizations are classified as cemeteries and bear legal requirements for long-term funding plans.

        • It would seem, when the client dies, that they no longer receive payment from him, but will bear the expense of storing him in perpetuity. Each new client then has to pay for the storage of all previous clients, plus themselves. It seems a bit of a pyramid scheme that only works with an ever-increasing number of clients.

          If you put 50 bucks a month into a savings scheme for a few years the interest it earns will pay for a lot of liquid nitrogen.

          If it's all well insulated then running costs will be very low.

          • Yeah that seems fine. But resuscitation is a gamble the departed would have better crack at the odds if it meant a payout to the company upon revival. Otherwise just unplug the freezer and say whoops. Sucks for us in a decade or so, and repurpose the interest bearing account as CEO pay. A long established bank should provide an escrow service. The reverse risk is this company really tried to accomplish these goals but runs out of funding with so much tied up in escrow.

            Everyone complaining of selfishness i
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • The thing is - when you die, you won't need the money anyway. OK, sure, you could arrange to get a pyramid built for you, but you won't get to enjoy it anyway (since , you know, dead). On the other hand, if the cryogenics raise the likelihood of waking up in the future from 0.00000% to 0.00001% it may be worth it. Unlike some risky medical procedures etc, cryogenics won't make it worse.

          • Entertaining read.

            But yeah, my question is: "What will the motivation be for future humans to add another mouth to feed to their ranks?"

            If the future is a utopia, then it's reasonable to think that money won't be a motivating factor... and besides, the money is already spent. People will find a way to divert and spend from any large pool of money in service of the living anyway.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 )
      So let's say it is selfish. So what? It is selfish to want to live to 50, or to 60 or to 100. It is selfish to have nice things. But somehow, when cryonics is brought up, people say that doing so is terribly selfish because they aren't using that money to help make the world a better place. It is an incredible double standard.
      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        So let's say it is selfish. So what? It is selfish to want to live to 50, or to 60 or to 100. It is selfish to have nice things. But somehow, when cryonics is brought up, people say that doing so is terribly selfish because they aren't using that money to help make the world a better place. It is an incredible double standard.

        Except that money was usually gotten by making the world a worse place in the first place. Underpaying workers, screwing over the environment to save a buck, etc. So everyone in the wo

        • Paying workers what the market will bear isn't any worse than charging customers what the market will bear. Independent contractors and trades belong on that list, given what they charge me I'm pretty sure some HVACs and electricians are going to be able to comfortable pay for this cryonic service.

    • It'd be ironic if there actually was life after death and they'd be delaying moving on due to these selfish reasons. Best kind of karma?

      • Following your logic (for the loose definition of logic), they'd be living the life after death, since they are clinically dead. The state of their body is irrelevant. When the body gets revived they come back to live this life again. So best of both worlds!

      • There are no guarantees that if life after death exists it would not suck. Various religions describe hell or its equivalent, but even heaven would not be the same for everyone - heaven for me may be hell for you and vice versa.

    • I respectfully disagree. If I die tomorrow my spouse, children, and several charities will receive roughly sixty times what my Cryonic suspension costs. I've given a lifetime of work to support others; It's not unreasonable to spend a sliver of the resources I've accumulated on an infinitesimal chance to see something of the future.

      I'd compare it to a terminal patient paying to be part of a clinical trial. That, like Cryonics, has a significant chance of not working. If it does work, we live a little lo

  • It's utter quackery (Score:4, Informative)

    by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @07:17PM (#63190610)
    It doesn't really matter what you pay or to whom or whether they'll still be around in 50 years or not since it's complete quackery. When you freeze and thaw a person like this you end up with irreversible tissue damage, so it's not any kind of resuscitation hope it's just an expensive way to entomb someone.
    • by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @09:03PM (#63190782) Homepage
      Cryonics has been aware of the problems created by freezing for the last half a century. That's why cryopreservation doesn't involve freezing, but vitrification where your body is pumped through with anti-freeze compounds while being slowly reduced in temperature. And no one is going to be simply heated back up until we're very sure the process will work. We have centuries to get this right, practicing on small creatures and the like.
      • A potentially viable avenue of research could be leveraging mrna vaccine tech.

        Tardigrades produce chaperone proteins that help preserve vital cell structures during natural freezing, allowing them to chryopreserve themselves. Isolating the full transcription and synthesis paths needed to produce those, while silencing the immune system and replicating those synthesis paths artificially and temporarily with mrna, could make a human be able to survive.

        The medium they are 'frozen' in would still need to be vit

      • Cryonics has been aware of the problems created by freezing for the last half a century.

        And they have a saying about it: "Being cryonically preserved is the SECOND worst thing that can happen to you."

        If a person cryonically preserved by current procedures has only a single-digit or fractional percentage chance of reanimation, that still beats embalming, cremation, or composting, which have zero.

        • by sinij ( 911942 )

          If a person cryonically preserved by current procedures has only a single-digit or fractional percentage chance of reanimation

          Let assume that there is a 100% chance of reanimation and whatever killed you in the first place is fully reversible in the future. Why would they want to reanimate you and what would they want from you in return? They already have all your money - legally you are dead and have no control over whatever assets you may currently posses. Your expertise will inevitably be outdated and irrelevant.

          Sci-Fi explore this topic at depth, the likely reanimation would be to perform jobs that contemporary humans don't

          • Quality of life has improved over time, the Roman Senator may like the advancements like being able to travel far away very fast and he could still go into politics or do something else.

            Unless people in the future are made completely immortal, the option of suicide would still be possible if you do not like the future. And that's what this provides - options (well, if it works, anyway).

            • by sinij ( 911942 )
              Even if it works you are still transition from a person to a resource once you are dead and cremated (note: order is important). Unless we change laws, and I see no reason for this to happen as there is no voting constituents wanting such change, the moment you are dead you cease your personhood. It is not clear if transition back to consciousness, especially if it involves heavy modification or cybernetics, would reverse un-personhood that happened at death. As such, it is a lot more likely that revival in
          • Couple options. for instance post scarcity benevolence to other conscious creatures. Or on the other hand, extreme space scarcity might make it profitable to negotiate with your trust for attempted resurrection to reclaim your storage space. Though if that's the case, you probably don't want to be.

      • by suss ( 158993 )

        Don't even think of using Warwick Davis for your sick experiments, he's a national treasure!

    • >> All told, most of his customers are paying about 50 euros a month for both the company's subscription fee

      So when you're dead, how are you supposed to pay the fee ?
      You don't pay because you're dead, so they dispose off your body ?

      • Pay the fee while you are alive, they get $100k life insurance payment when you die, that would cover for a long time.

  • by mistergrumpy ( 7379416 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @07:21PM (#63190624)
    In a Tuff Shed [wikipedia.org]. I think he's only defrosted a few times.
  • Not stasis. I got no problem with this, but be honest what it is. Not som encased-in-carbonite voodoo. These people will have their bodies frozen after death. Which preserves some bio structures but destroys a whole bunch of important stuff as well. Could technology redirect them in the future? I would give it a one-on-a-thousand chance, but only if someone in the future has a good reason to. They can spend their money however they want.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      I would give this a far, far, far less chance of success than one in a thousand. In fact, I would go much further. I claim that cryostasis is straight-up impossible.

      It's impossible for the same reason that perpetual motion is impossible - you can't drive the losses in a system down to zero, no matter what you do. Entropy will always win in the end, and those frozen bodies - supposing that they are even intact after the freezing process, which they manifestly are not - will never be re-animated.

      Look what h [alcor.org]

      • Re:Misnomer (Score:4, Interesting)

        by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @08:58PM (#63190772)
        Three steps:

        1. Use Drexler-level nanotechnology to deconstruct the frozen brain and map the whole thing at nearly the atomic level.

        2. Use advanced computing to reconstruct the atomic positions without all the freezing damage.

        3. Reconstruct the intact physical body, atom-by-atom, using the same level tech as step 1.

        The result would probably be pretty damn close to resurrection. If our species is wildly successful, I’d say maybe in a thousand years. Of course, at that point, the only reason to reconstruct someone from this era would be for historical purposes or for entertainment. Peter Thiel has visions of being revived at some future date where he’ll be worshipped as the god-king that he so richly deserves. The reality would be a second life as a monkey in a zoo.
        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          Given how far beyond the realms of any reasonably foreseeable future that technology outline is, I'm pretty comfortable with "impossible".

          I also believe that anyone choosing to be frozen in the event of their death has a vastly over-inflated sense of their own importance. Or even, of any human individual's possible importance. It seems extremely doubtful that such a technology even could exist. In a brain cell ruptured by many dagger-like ice crystals, what do you think the chances are of there being suffic

          • Self-importance may play a role with some of these people, but fear of death seems like the prime motivator to me. Fear of death coupled with the naive outlook that technological progress is a given, social progress is a given (waking up to world worth living in).

            Instead of putting their faith in God and paying tithe every week, they're putting their faith in man's progress and paying some cryo company every week.

            It won't do them any good, but it's easier than going on a VALIS-like philosophic quest for ans

        • The question then comes up: is that good for the surrounding people to have such a copy of a person? Because the copied person's self isn't going to be there to benefit. See the movie The Prestige to get a feel for the dilemma. It sort of makes it pointless for those who want to live on..
      • by kurkosdr ( 2378710 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @10:17PM (#63190856)
        And what most people don't understand is that cryonics doesn't have to have physical reanimation as its goal. All cryonics cares about is preserving your DNA and the neural information in your brain (and maybe your three-dimensional shape at the time of death, in case it's needed). Whether that information is used to create a new you at the molecular level or used to create an exact simulation of you in a computer system simply doesn't concern cryonics.

        After all, we didn't solve the audiovisual archival problem by beating entropy and creating film and tape that doesn't degrade, we solved it by simulating the process in a computer using lossless compression. Now go and tell a computer engineer in the 1960s that decompressing 4K images at a rate of 24 frames per second will be possible one day. You'd certainly be screamed at and told that something like that would take so many vacuum tubes that they'd have cover the entire earth. Never gonna happen son.
        • About that neural information: is there any science behind the idea that the neural connections in the brain are preserved when frozen? Also there is brain damage to consider when you die and stop supplying oxygen to the brain. What is the slab-to-vat time?
          • Alcor claims to use a multi-stage vitrification method that preserves neural connections in the brain and that they complete the process before the information is damaged due to lack of oxygen. They also transfer part of your money (after the vitrification expenses are taken out) to a separate investment fund managed by Morgan Stanley to keep you chilled indefinitely. Objectively speaking, it's a better bet than having your brain rot in a wooden box guaranteed, and 25 euros a month isn't that much. If I was
      • Until they can re-animate something like a pig it is all utter scammery. These frozen corpses are up against not only the freezing issues, but also the reasons they died in the first place as well as all the time elapsed before they made it into the freezer. Maybe at least show us a shot or pill that cures frost bitten limbs? Should be very easy by comparison.

        We have revived HEALTHY folks only after at most about an hour of drowning in freezing water. Properly warm folks it is measured in just a few min

        • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          And even if you could revive the body and repair the physical damage it has sustained due to freezing and whatever caused death... Would this preserve any of your memories? Or would your memory effectively be wiped, like powering off RAM chips.

  • As anybody in the software biz knows, software never, ever works correctly in its first draft. That's why we have QA, to test whether the software does what it purports to do. Getting it to that point is usually an iterative process.

    A process as complex as cryogenically freezing and thawing / resuscitating afterwards, will require a lot of QA before it can be said to "work." Good luck with that!

    • Thawing/resuscitating is not an option, since we don't have the technology to freeze anything much thicker than a microscope slide without ice crystals rupturing the cells.

      Scanning/rebuilding is the only possible option - and we don't even have any early experimental prototypes of technology that might one day be capable of that.

      All of which is to say the technology is working as intended perfectly - separating wealthy suckers from their money.

  • These people are swindlers and they know it. Given that, who's to say they aren't just creating a freezer demo room to show off to visitors, and then dumping the rest of the bodies in a hole somewhere? Who would ever know?

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Nobody. No one is ever going to be interested in "reviving" these bodies anyways and given _who_ has their bodies in there even less so. That is if it is possible at all. So far nobody has successfully frozen and re-thawed a sentient being and checked it is still the same person in there, or a person at all.

      • > So far nobody has successfully frozen and re-thawed a sentient being

        Best to stop there. If we could do that, the rest would be easy.

        No reason to suspect it might be another person or non-person that woke up - it's all the same hardware and software, nothing has changed. If you're going to question continuity of selfhood, then it's just about as likely that you're not the same person that went to sleep in your bed last night. (In fact, I can guarantee that you are not - change is the only constant in

    • Who would ever know?

      My guess is the family is expected to come and visit their departed ones on All Souls' Day or any other relevant occasion. The company needs individual dewars with a nameplate, just like a cemetery has tombs.

      However, if they forget the liquid nitrogen one day and the corpse decays further, then nobody will find out until company gets out of business. or maybe they have a protocol where they open the dewar once a year to check the conservation. It's ok to open it for few seconds, thermal inertia is enough to

      • That's a lot of maybes, and they assume an service provider that is 100% scrupulous and ethical. Given that this is a huge swindle in the first place, the chances of that are incredibly small.

        In 100 years, nobody alive will even remember the frozen corpse in the drawer, much less go visit it.

        • That's a lot of maybes

          You started this game ("who isn't to tell...", "who would ever know") The only difference is you assume they act in bad faith. I don't see why we should assume that. They operate on deceased bodies, they have to be registered as a funerary service. It's a regulated business and they have to obey a code of ethics.

          Some people and some families are very specific in what happens after their deaths: cremations with ashes dispersion, keeping the ashes at home, placing the ashes in a columbarium; burial in full gr

          • The only difference is you assume they act in bad faith. I don't see why we should assume that. They operate on deceased bodies, they have to be registered as a funerary service.

            They are indeed acting in bad faith. They are legally a funerary service (a business that disposes of dead bodies) while selling hope that the bodies aren't really dead, that they can be resuscitated one day. No one would pay for their services as simply a fancy form of interment. These companies take people's money based on false hope, that they know is false hope.

            The difference between these cryogenics companies, and the ancient Greeks and Romans, is that the ancients actually believed in an afterlife. Th

        • An other argument is: why would they be a fraud? They are sitting on a gold mine. They could pillage the gold, or they could exploit it all properly and be rich legally.

          People will pay them wilfully for "hope", giving a monthly fee and the amount of their life insurance. They just have to check the liquid nitrogen levels once a week. They probably have a nitrogen liquefactor (a Stirling engine) acquired with the money from the first customers (who paid 100k each). They just have enough monthly income for th

        • In 100 years, nobody alive will even remember the frozen corpse in the drawer, much less go visit it.

          Which is precisely what TFS is about and how they have been super clever. They are transferring this responsibility onto a non-profit funded by wealthy CEOs. If they collect enough millions right now, they have money to operate the non-profit cryo-preservation for 100 years. I don't know their contract, but maybe they put a cap of preservation duration anyway, and companies don't make contracts for longer than 100 years anyway (longest I have heard of is 125 years of guarantee for on a large bridge). Even p

          • Donald Trump also founded a nonprofit, as a separate entity, to which he donated millions. The point is, a nonprofit is only as trustworthy as those who founded it. If these companies are selling false hope, why would this so-called nonprofit be any more interested in being scrupulous, than the original company?

  • by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @08:04PM (#63190694) Homepage
    They could use their money to leave a useful legacy but no, they're egotistical rich cunts.
    • Yes they are egotistical, but consider the upside.

      If you are Libertarian then they get to do what they want with their money.

      If you are Capitalist then you can profit by building the cryogenic facilities and operating then. And if it fails, they are dead and can't sue you.

      If you are Socialist all that ill-gotten wealth is out of control of the evil rich and can be repatriated into the economy with a carbon tax for the refrigeration equipment, plus the income taxes on the many extra employees that will be ne

    • by sinij ( 911942 )
      Yes, but the alternative is someone else deciding how anyone can spend their money. In other words extreme form of authoritarianism.
  • Well, the means to separating the stupid from their money are endless. This is just one of the more bizarre schemes.

  • by oumuamua ( 6173784 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @08:27PM (#63190736)
    You don't have to be brought back to physical life, you could scan the brain's neural connections and be brought back to life as an electronic mind in a computer simulation. This was the plot of Neal Stephenson's "Fall"
    where there are problems in the afterlife.
    • You don't have to be brought back to physical life, you could scan the brain's neural connections and be brought back to life as an electronic mind in a computer simulation.

      That's wonderful, isn't it?

    • ... or you download the mind into a self-replicating space probe as in Dennis Taylor's Bobiverse series, starting with "We are Legion". It's a fun little sci-fi jaunt if you're into that.

      As a person signed up for Cryonics I know there is only an infinitesimal chance that it will work, and if it does there is a nonzero chance I'll be in something other than a meat body and indebted to whoever paid to bring me back. It's a risk I choose to take.

    • Or Black Mirror San Junipero. You live in some big corp's server farm. Not sure if that's heaven or hell on earth.

  • I would think that if a life insurance policy was paid off and the person wasnâ(TM)t permanently dead, the insurance company might be due back the death benefit maybe even with interest.
  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday January 08, 2023 @09:08PM (#63190786)

    "but that still leaves the question of whether cryonics will work, medically speaking."

    Well, an even bigger question is - even if this is somehow not 100% quackery... why would anyone believe that people living in the future would have any interest at all in resuscitating them?

    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      For the same reason people living now have interest in digging up ancient tombs and burial sites, purely historical curiosity.

  • "Listen, dude. You either pay up or we'll start thawing your dad's manparts, one ball at the time. You've got 30 minutes."

    • "You mean the guy that would rather waste his money on a pipe dream of living forever than have me inherit it, so I had to live off ramen and kibble for 20 years to pay off my student loan rather than starting into life with an inheritance that would have allowed me to not be miserable most of my life? As long as you don't threaten to unfreeze him and he's alive again, what exactly is the threat?"

  • I remember hearing about this scheme more than 50 years ago. Somebody once gave me the literature for some company that was doing it. I read their contract, such as it was, and the disclaimers were legion. They were guaranteeing absolutely nothing.

    My favorite part (I'll never forget) was where they explained that in case the refrigeration systems failed, they store the corpses head down so that part thaws last.

  • Ignoring the technical issues (which almost certainly make it impossible), why do people think a future society wants them? (there was a Larry Niven story to this effect). Sure, historians might want to talk to a couple of people but in general? How much do we want a bunch of people from the mid 1800s walking around? They would be almost completely unable to be useful in modern society without a huge amount of training. Further back and it gets worse.

    Whatever the contract says, even if the company so
  • or something like it.

  • by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Monday January 09, 2023 @12:15AM (#63191030)

    I've been a member of the Cryonics Institute in Michigan since my early 20s. They have an option to pay a one-time membership fee or pay, iirc, $35 per quarter. I use the latter. The cost for suspension is $35k and I have some money set aside to cover my perimortem care and transport as well. I'm paying for those costs with term life insurance. Even now in my 40s the cost is a pittance.

    I'm happy to answer any questions on this topic.

    • by sinij ( 911942 )
      Assuming it is possible to revive cryogenically preserved human remains. Would it be even legal to do so?
    • My questions are fairly simple:

      1) Since thawing you out again will cost money, who do you think would pay for that?
      2) You would have been declared dead, with all your belongings handed to your heir. I don't know about your country, but in mine, that includes your body (since you're no longer a person, legally, that stuff that was once "you" needed a new owner, and while they can't do exactly everything they like with it, what used to be "you" is now legally theirs). Why do you think they wouldn't throw you

  • Tyrell: What-- What seems to be the problem?
    Roy: Death.
    Tyrell: Death. Well, I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction, you--
    Roy : I want more life, f***er.
    Tyrell: The facts of life....
    ....
    But this, all of this is academic.

    I want more life! [youtu.be]

  • Tyrell: What-- What seems to be the problem?
    Roy: Death.
    Tyrell: Death. Well, I'm afraid that's a little out of my jurisdiction, you--
    Roy: I want more life, f***er
    Tyrell: The facts of life...

    I want more life [youtu.be]

  • So far this approach to eternity is as good as pharaohs in ancient Egypt. I may be proven wrong in 4k years or so. Or right.

  • by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Monday January 09, 2023 @02:21AM (#63191154)

    In ancient Egypt they had a booming immortality program in which anyone with a bit of money could have they body medically preserved and "guarantee" their continued existence. The wealthy and powerful could even have large sophisticated preservation facilities constructed to not only protect their mortal remains but also their possessions.

    Unfortunately, it turns out other humans move on from caring quite quickly, help themselves to your possessions, maybe even grind up your remains as medicine or paint pigment, and in the best case put your body on display for their children to come and gawk at (for a nominal fee).

    Anyway, I'm sure these transhumanists will wind up as princes of future society and not simply the creators of a very expensive garbage dump when their descendants all accept the "5% off your next trip to mars!" coupon that they get from the holding company if they sign the paperwork to stop powering the cryochamber.

  • These people are paying for the privilege of being corpse popsicles until the power or money runs out, whichever happens first. They're dead. Nobody is ever going to even attempt to revive them. Not in 5 years, not in 100 years, not ever.
    • And let's for a moment imagine that it will in some future be possible to revive them.

      First question: Why? Who'd pay for the procedure of having them thawed out? Why would I want to recover an ancient relative who was selfish enough to squander all his money on this instead of handing it to my parent/grandparent/me? Why would I want that selfish bastard to live again?

      And second, they're "legal dead". In other words, they are no longer alive, they have no property. They have NOTHING. And they don't really so

  • "The mechanics all sound sensible, "

    No, they really don't. It's incredible, unbelievable bullshit designed to vaguely truck the gullible and stupid.

    But hey, apparently that's how humans think reality works now: if you want something bad enough and insist it's real, a bunch of other goofy fuckers will join you and within that bubble it all seems reasonable. Add in a sprinkling of con artists smelling a chance to make some easy $ and you have an eco system.

  • You thought you'd inherit my money? I'll take it with me!

  • Christ, Wake-up and realize it's dudes. All dudes.
  • I am slightly amused by the numerous posters claiming "this can never work" and "it's all a scam", as if scientific progress comes with any measure of certainty. Well, maybe...

    What is certain is that many smaller mammals have been frozen solid then defrosted [iflscience.com] with little apparent harm. Admittedly, there were problems 'scaling' the process up to larger animals, due to power and heat dissipation requirements, and problems associated with cellular damage due to the freezing process, exacerbated by difficulties

    • There is the anecdotal evidence of some geriatric scientist saying they froze them solid, the actual papers published at the time said "hypothermic" and "0-1 degree" (ie. suspended animation, not freezing and thawing).

      Frozen solid is what he said, it's also almost certainly entirely fucking bullshit.

  • ... Doctors and scientists have used words like quackery, pseudoscience and outright fraud to describe the field. ...

    Personally, I would have described it more simply as science fiction. [readthistwice.com] (Of course, as usual things don't go quite according to plan...)

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