Talk:Cryonics

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[edit] question!!

can someone have cryonics done on them, if they die of old age? and also, can you be an organ donor, and still have cryonics done on you? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.14.212.60 (talk) 01:59, 7 November 2007 (UTC) Old Age: Absolutely. Many of CI, Alcor's, and the American Cryonics Society's patients have "died" of old age. The tenant belief is that any technology suitable advanced to cure preservation damage should also be able to fix something as trivial as aging.

Organ donation is a little trickier. The time they keep your body alive by artificial means is usually considered to be damaging to your brain. So the general answer to this question is no.. ..ElizabethGreene 16:55, 09 Feb 2008 (CST)

Cryonics was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

^{Reviewed version: June 12, 2007}

The "NPOV" edit by User:216.138.230.28 makes it look like he's an employee of Alcor. This article needs a large dose of skepticism reintroduced to it. It is way too credulous of the claims of this fringe profession. Tempshill 23:29, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Agreed - someone reading this would think the ideas presented have mainstream support - as far as I know they're only put forward by kooks and those employed by the companies in question. The last paragraph is particularly laughable.

User:206.124.156.155 replaced dashes and minuses with hyphens—without prior discussion. The "old browsers" argument is not acceptable when it comes to errors: confusing dashes with hyphens is not better than confusing commas with quotation marks. Marcus Beyer 02:41, 11 May 2004

Tempshill: I am the person you say comes off like an employee of Alcor. My writing certainly doesn't read like that to me, but I can understand that it might to someone already predisposed against cryonics. I certainly won't deny that I find Alcor's approach to be, overall, quite skeptical and rational. I have tried to keep this bias out of my writing, to the extent possible without misrepresenting things. But, of course, one cannot purge one's own writing entirely of bias. But this is the way Wikipedia works... I have made my best faith effort to restore some semblance of NPOV to the article (the way it was before was certainly far less NPOV, making little attempt to be neutral, with numerous blatantly anti-cryonics remarks, and mostly pretty silly, uneducated ones at that). The anti-cryonics crowd is now free to respond with further editing. So far, they have done very little. This may have something to do with the fact that there does not actually seem to be any serious, scientific attempts to formulate a skeptical and rational anti-cryonics position. The "large dose of skepticism" you would like to see reintroduced (on the anti-cyronics side) is, I suspect, not really out there to be had. If there is such an argument out there, I have not seen it... and if you know of one, I'd be very happy to have the reference. As for your labelling cryonics "fringe", and to the person who responded with the "kooks" comment, I recommend you both go to Alcor's web site and take a look at their Board... many of those involved in this are mainstream, respected scientists--some of them quite famous within the scientific community for their accomplishments--and to suggest otherwise is simply misrepresentation. (One Alcor Board member is also on the Editorial Board of Skeptic magazine, if that is the sort of thing that impresses you.) Allan Randall, 14 May 2005

[edit] Apple

Noticed something interesting... letting a frozen apple melt results in a very mushy fruit. It seems that the fibrous structure of the apple is damaged by water expansion in a similar manner as that experienced by a cellular organism. mnemonic 16:10, 2004 Jun 26 (UTC)

Freeze apples, but better vitrify your brain... Marcus Beyer 23:30, 2004 Jun 26 (UTC)

Will keep that in mind, in more ways than one. mnemonic 10:29, 2004 Jun 27 (UTC)

[edit] Examples

Aren't extra embryos frozen during in-vitro fertilization and animal cloning? Why don't they suffer "freezer burn"?

Is it just a rumor that a dog's heart was frozen (vitrified?), thawed and reimplanted and the dog lived? - Omegatron 00:21, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

Embryos are small enough to be infused with cryoprotectants. They are also rebust to cellular damage - cut an (early stage) embryo in half, and one gets identical twins. The cells are sufficiently undifferentiated to replace one another. Still, there's a signigicant rate of cellular death from freeze-thaw (annectotal claim). I don't know abou the dog heart, but striated muscle and vasculature seem too structured to survive (current) freeze-thaw treatments.rmbh 20:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

--I haven't heard the dog story, sorry. Embryos are very small, as is sperm, and seeds, the other things commonly frozen. Seeds naturally resist freezing and extreme cold. Sperm and embryos are soaked in nontoxic antifreezes that drive out water, and then cooled until they become glassy (vitrified). They never form the ice crystals that damage frozen tissue. They are recovered by an inverse process that warms them, and reintroduces water. This process could in theory be performed on any size of biological specimen, but in practice it's too hard to control all the variables. Current state of the art is about able to freeze human kidneys and recover them. Cryonics organizations claim that they can vitrify human heads. They also say that they cool things below the glass transition temperatures, so that things crack (which doesn't sound good).

The rule of thumb in an emergency room is that a cold person isn't dead until they are warm and dead, because so many people have been resuscitated after drowning under ice, and remaining in the water for long periods. Dogs have been cooled to 4C (refrigerator temperatures), left that way for several hours and resuscitated without apparent harm. Arctic fish and hibernating hamsters can be frozen solid, then revived in a microwave oven. I saw this done with a hamster, and the little guy was not a happy camper.

The dog story doesn't sound realistic. Perhaps they moved the heart from one dog to another, frozen or vitrified in the middle. I believe the rest, but the hamster story sounds like an urban legend. Can you back it up? - Omegatron 22:14, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

I may have been thinking of this. "In 1984, Alcor and Cryovita laboratoraties began a pioneering series of experiments to demonstrate that large animals (dogs) could survive up to 4 hours of "total body washout" (TBW) and maintenance at a temperature only 4°C above the freezing point of water." - Omegatron 03:49, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] corpsicle

"and is sometimes called a "corpsicle" (a portmanteau of "corpse" and "popsicle")"

I think it's funny, and should be included, with an example of someone who calls them that. - Omegatron 22:13, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

the word is used in Vernor Vinge sci-fi books, for instance, when they travel in hibernation interstellar distances. - Omegatron 22:59, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

I've added this information, with a short researched history of the term, to the article, as corpsicle redirects here and there was no use of the word in the article at all! -dmmaus 03:05, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Larry Niven & probably Jerry Pournelle use the term, and further derive from it "Copsic", a term of abuse that implicitly compares its victim to a revived human who lacks any legal rights as a person. Some of their stories are premised on the state treating such people as slaves -- IMO doing a fine job of highlighting the absurdity of our contemporaries who see a personally desirable outcome from cryopreservation as likely, in spite of the unpredictability of the selfish incentives affecting future societies. In the category

Shortest Knock-off of "I Want to Scream but I Have No Mouth"

how would you rank a short story built around "I might wake up as a jihadi anti-personnel weapon, controlled through the pain centers of my brain"?
--Jerzy•t 20:00, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I should have checked here before adding the corpsicle info in the mass culture section. I should have suspected that there'd been a previous attempt to add it and discussion. I understand that people who have hopes for cryonics might find the term offensive or at least disrespectful, but the wide use of the term requires at least a reference here, I think. Hopefully people will agree that it is appropriate having it here in the culture section, rather than in the substantive discussion of the subject. I'll add a link to the article corpsicle and a notation that the term is offensive to some. --JohnPomeranz 20:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of the history of "corpsicle" belongs in the corpsicle article, not the cryonics article. It's a purely fictitious term that has never been used in the real world. The encylopedic significance of the term itself is questionable, IMHO. Cryobiologist 07:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the opinion, Cryobiologist. You might convince me (and I'm certainly not going to edit war over it), but I do have a question... Although you may be right that the term isn't widely used outside of fiction, it is widely used in fiction by significant authors (e.g. Pohl, Niven, Pournelle, Vinge, and others) and a Google search on the word gets over 11,000 hits. (A significant number of these Google hits seem to be about a band of that name I'd never heard of, and others are various links to WP, but there are still more substantive links in which cryonic patients are referred to using the term, with or without acknowledgment of its potentially offensive overtones.) In light of that, I'm not sure how a section of this article about "Cryonics in mass culture" can or should fail to acknowledge the term. Should we delete this whole section, and, if not, aren't we obligated to include at least a brief discussion of the word? (I am reminded of the decades-long fight among science fiction fans over whether and how to use the term "sci-fi" to refer to the genre or, more seriously, significant debates in this country about preferred or abhored terms to refer to various racial and ethnic minorities. Words do matter.)

--JohnPomeranz 20:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. An analogy might be helpful. The word kike has appeared in countless works of fiction and in real life as an epithet against Jews. It has more than two million Google hits. Would it be appropriate to discuss the etymology and usage of "kike" in the Jews in Mass Culture section of an article about Judaism or Jews? I think not. Cryobiologist 03:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I was trying to make that point without actually using such an epithet, CB, but perhaps an actual epithet's use was necessary to make the potential emotional impact clear. The question is: Is the term here more like such a hate word or is its usage generally more benign. You say they are analogous, and you (I gather from your handle) are something of an expert in this area. I readily admit that I am not. I do note, that when I google racial or ethnic epithets, most of the hits are to sites promoting patent racism, anti-semitism, etc. When I google the term under discussion here, I do not seem to be similarly directed to groups that despise or mock cryonics. To me, this seems to undercut your analogy. Furthermore, the usages of the word in the SF works don't seem (IMHO) to be loaded with an equivalent amount of hatred. Do the rest of you reading this share CB's sense? I'm looking for a sense of the group here.

--JohnPomeranz 17:22, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Frog

There is a natural example of this. There is a certain species of frog that freezes completely during winter - a hibermation of sorts. The heart ceases to beat and the frog is effectively in a state of suspended animation. I remember hearing that its body produces a form of 'antifreeze' to prevent breakage of cells. When the spring comes, the frog thaws and a chemical is released that causes the heart to restart, the frog returns to life none the worse for wear. Unfortunately I cannot recall the specific frog - anyone else know about this? - Mike

Found an article on google: [1] -Beefnut 01:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fish

Saltwater has a lower freezing point than fresh water, so it can regularly reach below 0 degrees in polar regions. Saltwater fish, however, undergo active phsiological process to keep their salt concentrations below that of the ocean, so that they would freeze in liquid water.

As a result, there are species of icewater fish that use the same mechanisms as the frog example. The biological antifreeze molecules are called AFP's (Anti-Freeze Proteins) and AFGP's (Anti-Freeze Glyco Proteins), with the latter of the two being more efficient.

They are difficult for us to extract/synthesize, but if we genetically engineered humans to produce AFGP's in their own cells, those individuals could theoretically be easily frozen and revived. They'd also never have to worry about frostbite.

'Course, then their body might decide that a cold winter is "time to shut down" and they fall over in the middle of the street, or better yet, while driving :P I'm all for cryogenics, I just think nanobots will be a "safer" answer, albeit a longer one in coming :) -Moocats 21:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Graphic

I removed the huge Alcor ad, which ads nothing encyclopedic. The caption

This "bigfoot" Dewar flask is custom-designed to contain four wholebody patients and six neuropatients immersed in liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees Celsius. The Dewar is an insulated container which consumes no electric power. Liquid nitrogen is added periodically to replace the small amount that evaporates.

may include something useful elsewhere in the article, tho there may be some NPoV (remains?) between "patient" and "corpse", and tho the mechanics presumably described at Dewar flask should not be duplicated here: this is an encyclopedia article, not a magazine one.
--Jerzy•t 19:29, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revert ignorant revisions

Shaggorama made the revision that "(ice crystal formation can cause cells to burst)". This is a fallacy that anyone familiar with cryobiology would recognize. The two main candidates for freezing damage are extracellualar mechanical damage (see Freezing of living cells: mechanisms and implications by Peter Mazur, American Journal of Physiology 247:C125 (1984)) and damage from toxic salts. Freezing does not burst cells -- ice does not form well in cells because most of the nucleators are extracellular. In any case, applying the freezing damage argument against cryonics is a red herring because cryonics organizations currently perfuse with cryoprotectants (anti-freeze compounds) which completely vitrify (eliminate all ice formation) when tissues are well saturated. The other revision by Shaggorama modifies the unresolved argument that future science may or may not be able to repair the damage. This change is not great, but I don't see its merits. --Ben Best 20:05, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Important: Need source?

Under Damage from ice formation and ischemia, the article says,

Current solutions being used for vitrification are stable enough to avoid crystallization even when a vitrified brain is warmed up. This has recently allowed brains to be vitrified, warmed back up, and examined for ice damage using light and electron microscopy. No ice crystal damage was found.

I'd love to see a source for this. Sounds great, but I want to see where that info come from ASAP. --Mercury1 23:58, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Good catch. References have been added.Cryobiologist 23:53, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The stigma of death?

What exactly is the "stigma of death"? These an other original research claims have their days numbered. Perhaps someone from the future will, ironically, look through the history and revive them. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 11:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

No original research was intended. Perhaps the meaning of the sentence is not clear. What if the sentence in question is changed from

The stigma of death is so onerous that it has been said to make cryonics “a failure by definition.”

The characterization of cryonics subjects as dead has been said to make cryonics "a failure by definition."(ref)

? That's an NPOV factual statement about a reference discussing a major issue in the field.Cryobiologist 23:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I deleted the offending sentence entirely, and attempted to further edit the paragraph for clarity. I don't know whether this will be to savidan's liking or not.Cryobiologist 18:39, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Frozen people?

How about a list of (famous?) people currently in cryogenic sleep? --Ifrit 12:13, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Look at Category:Cryonically preserved people. There are not many "famous" people who have been cryopreserved. --Ben Best 13:30, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Immature addition?

It seems someone has added/modified the first 'section' of the article, to "pooing while frozen". I don't know which 8-year-old did that, but I can't seem to find an original version of that section. Riggzy, 22:18, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Looks like it was fixed. (Cardsplayer4life 03:07, 11 June 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Autopsy discussion

One important topic I think is sorely missing from this page is the legal consideration of autopsy with respect to people who wish their corpses to undergo cryonic storage. Autopsies frequently involve long periods of leaving the body, followed by acts such as sectioning the brain, etc,. It would probably be appropriate to either mention the "Society for Venturism" as an intentionally vague "religion" created for states that allow partial religious excemptions to autopsy laws. A link to a list of states laws on autopsy would also be helpful, if appropriate.

[edit] "Neuropreservation is motivated by the mainstream medical view..."

"Neuropreservation is motivated by the mainstream medical view that the brain is the primary repository of memory and personal identity" This would seem to be excessive skepticism to me. I think it's pretty safe to say that the brain is in fact the only repository of "memory and personal identity". This suggests that there are those outside the mainstream (which could include a substantial number of people) who would disagree. Is there any dissent on this issue worthy of consideration? --4of11 04:19, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that your point is well-taken. What do you suggest? "Neuropreservation is motivated by the fact that the brain is the primary repository of memory and personal identity" ? --Ben Best 05:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I made the change suggested by Ben Best. Cryobiologist 00:37, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Suspended"

This seems kind of dumb: "cryopreservation is not really suspended animation and human bodies or heads are not buoyant enough in liquid nitrogen to be suspended"

Does anyone really think that "suspended" means "floating" in this context?

--Robbrown 21:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it means the same as the second definition on dictionary.com for the word: "To cause to stop for a period; interrupt" or the third definition "To render temporarily ineffective", in relation to life, not the physical bodies, but life itself. See Suspended animation for more information. (Cardsplayer4life 06:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC))

The play on words is a joke, obviously. But it makes the point that there has come to be a preference in cryonics for the term "cryopreservation" rather than "suspended" because the multiple meanings of "suspended" that make jokes possible also create confusion. Cryobiologist 00:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Certainly a joke. Although a good one, it should probably be edited.

[edit] Cryonics in mass culture

This section is getting out of hand. It begins by saying, "Procedures similar to cryonics have been featured in innumerable science fiction stories." Indeed, listing them all explicitly would dwarf the rest of the article. One need only look at the article on suspended animation to see the farce that can result from such a listing. (Perhaps someday someone will break off fictional instances of suspended animation into its own list or article.) To save the cryonics article from a similar fate, I've deleted apparent fictional instances of cryonics that are not actually cryonics (cryopreservation for medical purposes) or where cryonics is just a minor plot element. Cryobiologist 21:41, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I know recent contributors mean well, but this article is already beyond the Wikipedia size limit, and like the suspended animation article suffers from the problem that many more people know about fictional instances of the subject than the real subject. Imagine an article about heart transplants where everybody contributed their recollections of TV shows and books that featured heart transplants. If the mass culture section doesn't confine itself primarily to depictions of cryonics close to real cryonics, which is a small number of depictions, the size will quickly become unreasonable. Last year an editor (not me) deleted the entire fiction section of the suspended animation article for this reason. It only started rebuilding recently, and will probably get tossed again when it gets too big. Keeping the focus tight makes for a better article, and less temptation for slash-and burn edits and outright deletions. Cryobiologist 08:04, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Subculture of cryonicists

I deleted the first paragraph under the "subculture of cryonicists" subheading. It was riddled with requests for citation and seems highly indicative of a combination of non-NPOV edits, original research, speculation, and generalization. The other two paragraphs are fine, but I don't think the first added anything encyclopedic to the article. Of course, I'm open to objections and reverts/edits if anyone wants to glean what they can from the paragraph and possibly merge it with the other two. --207.224.56.47 11:52, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Acceptance of cryonics

Has any research or study been done to determine why cryonics is not more widely accepted?Cecelia Hensley 16:34, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Because it hasn't been proved to work? See this link. Cryobiologist 16:39, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Embryo vs. tissue cryopreservation

User:NamfFohyr (oddly signing as "rmbh") yesterday wrote elsewhere on this page:

Embryos are small enough to be infused with cryoprotectants. They are also rebust to cellular damage - cut an (early stage) embryo in half, and one gets identical twins. The cells are sufficiently undifferentiated to replace one another. Still, there's a signigicant rate of cellular death from freeze-thaw (annectotal claim). I don't know about the dog heart, but striated muscle and vasculature seem too structured to survive (current) freeze-thaw treatments.rmbh 20:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

There are a few misconceptions in this comment. The size of an object is irrelevant to how well it can be "infused with cryoprotectants" if it has a vascular system. Cryobiology does not need to rely on passive diffusion of cryoprotectants into organs any more than humans need rely on passive diffusion of glucose through skin to nourish all our cells. Also, numerous organized tissues have . --Ben Best 02:37, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

been successfully frozen, up to and including dog intenstines and sheep ovaries despite cell losses associated with freezing. The ability of frozen intestines to resume peristalsis shows that even muscle can sometimes survive freezing with adequate cryoprotection. Finally, your comment might leave the impression that freeze-thaw treatments comprise the entire arsenal of cryobiology, when in fact vitrification is the most promising type of cryopreservation for complex organs in which survival of all cells is critical. Having said all that, the original context of your comment, the frozen dog heart claim made by South Africans in 1995 and 1996, is generally regarded in cryobiology as a mistaken claim. Cryobiologist 23:36, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the name shift is very odd. How odd that I sign with my initials. I should not need to adress your insinuations that a shift in my signature is suspicious. I think you use such ad hominem tactics because you want to discredit myself, also manifest in your attempt to show the "misconceptions" in my post. I don't mind being wrong sometimes (or being corrected) because I'm a research scientist, not some sort of cryo-activist or cryo-technician. I make no claims about "the entire arsenal of cryobiology" because, as I said, I do not speak for the cryo-pseudoscientists. I have worked with genetically modified mice and know about the preparation and care of embryo stocks. I'm here to limit the hacks' ability to corrupt Wikipedia.

--My comment was made in the context of the FACT that embryos can be frozen and thawed (and remain viable) which would seem to validate the host of speculations "cryobiologists" make. Obviously, one doesn't use perfusions with embryos (which may have no vascularization at all), so the presence of vasculature is irrelevant. Right? Completely irrelevant to the cryopreservation of embryos.

--Then Cryobiologist claims that intestines can undergo peristalsis after cryopreservation. What, the vascularization of intestines is relevant to the fact that muscle contraction can occur in a COMPLETELY DEAD TISSUE? People have been making dead muscle contract for hundreds of years! Cryobiologist, can you show that the thawed intestines are capable of growing new epithelium, selectively uptaking nutrients, or any other indication that they are actually alive? I don't suppose this intestine was in an actual organism, was it? Wanna cite something?

--Basic diffusion relationships all invoke volume; it's (in statistical mechanics) a fundamental extensive quanitity. I know a thing or two regarding the chemical physics of diffusion. You have buzzwords and slanderous innuendo. While I am ignorant to detailed differences between freezing and vitrification (admittedly, an important and legitimate area of research) when I try to clarify that cryopreserving an embryo and a heart are completely different endeavors, you act as if I'm here to debunk your entire field, as I could or would. Do you mean to imply that one can vitrify-thaw a mouse was current techniques (or as a logical elaboration of current physical biochemistry?) That is hardly the case! There is little consensus on the correct physical description of pure water (one that includes the supercooled regime and the hydrophobic effect), let alone what proteins do in saline in a test tube, let alone what they do with DNA in a nucleus or mitochondrion or chloroplast. Wikipedia is not a soapbox for what are, like it or not, marginal scientific ideas. I mean, with Google as your model of peer review (!?), and your jargon consisting of prefixing with "cryo" (as if [known] biological processes occurred at cryonic temperatures) how could I even feel threatened? Signed, tilde tilde tilde tilde rmbh 22:42, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I think we both need to calm down. Understand that my comment about your signature being odd comes on the heels of weeks of sockpuppet attacks on the Ben Best article in which it's been hard to figure out who is whom. Perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to assume your remarks were more general than they were, and you shouldn't be so quick to assume that I'm throwing around jargon. In my last comments, there wasn't a single word containing "cryo" that wasn't an established word in the mainstream field of cryobiology. And where did I ever say that Google was a model for peer review?

Your comments about diffusion being an extensive quantity suggest that I still haven't successfully communicated to you the role of vascular perfusion in cryoprotectant uptake. If an agent (glucose, oxygen, or a cryoprotectant) is being circulated through a vascular system, size of tissue plays no role in the rate of uptake. Only vascularization matters. The reasons whole mice can't be cryopreserved are more complex than size preventing cryoprotection. I will also respectfully say that if you don't know the difference between freezing and vitrification, then you have more reading to do about cryonics before you can dismiss the idea as marginal by any criteria other than popular opinion. The reference to the frozen and transplanted dog intenstine is the third paper in the list of papers on the page http://www.cryoletter.org/ Such results in no way imply that all types of muscle can be successfully cryopreserved with current methods, but they show there is no a priori reason to reject claims of successful complex tissue cryopreservation. Cryobiologist 21:44, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah; it's Best that cites Google. Sorry. I assumed that you ARE Best, (I still think so) but I suppose my comment seemed incoherent to a passer-by. And thanks for the laugh regarding the "established word[s] in the mainstream field of cryobiology." Anyways, you didn't really read my comments, otherwise you wouldn't STILL be talking about perfusion in the context of embryos, or the idea that I need to or want to debunk all of cryonics. I JUST DON'T CARE about what you have to say to me about your field; I'm not (and certainly others shouldn't be) going to get educated by a talk page on Wikipedia. You should accept that cryonics is marginal. I don't say that to "dismiss" it. Cryonics is certainly not mainstream. That's what marginal means - not central. Please lease leave comments on my talk page, if you want to further proselytize, as I like to carve turkeys in a more controlled setting. As well, myself dignifying this dialogue is damaging to the development of the article. You can get in your final word if you like, but I'm done with this thread. Others can re-involve me if they want input regarding how best to deconstruct pseudoscientific claptrap.rmbh 23:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

In citing Google, I was only making reference to popularity. High Google rankings are a noteworthy fact when you are assessing how widely read a piece of literature is on the internet. My claim is that my cryonics FAQ is the most widely read cryonics FAQ on the internet. This is hard to prove conclusively, but it is persuasive that "cryonics FAQ" in Google [2], Yahoo [3] and MSN [4] searches all yield my FAQ as the highest result. And as I mentioned the replacement of Tim Freeman's FAQ is acknowledged in the cryonics community at the CryoNet Homepage where "Ben Best's Cryonics FAQ" replaces "Tim Freeman's Cryonics FAQ" and by Tim Freeman himself [5]

I am NOT claiming that citing popularity on the internet is comparable to citing a peer-reviewed journal article any more than I would claim that the popularity of a novel means that the novel is good literature. But popularity does indicate noteworthiness, justifying coverage in an encyclopedia -- just as there are entries for politicians and rock stars who are not scientists. On the other hand, just because my cryonics FAQ is popular is not proof that the portions covering scientific issues have no scientific merit. No, I am not Cryobiologist, but if you assume we are lying my assertion is probably meaningless. --Ben Best 02:37, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] People who have been preserved

Maybe we could have a list of celebrities that have been preserved.

Already exists. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cryonically_preserved_people although someone needs to add an article about celebrity Dick Clair http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0163199/ Cryobiologist 20:38, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes to the opening paragraph

A key misunderstanding of the concept of cryonics arises from ambiguous or multi purpose use of the word death. A part of the current opening paragraph reads:

"The process is not currently reversible, and by law can only be performed on humans after legal death in anticipation that the early stages of clinical death may be reversible in the future (see information theoretical death)."

Quite good, but the use of the term "legal death" immediately followed by "clinical death" referring to the same entity may cause confusion in the mind of the reader (the “legal death” link also appears to lead to a page still waiting for an article with that title to be written).

It might be better to have the following instead:

"The process is not currently reversible, and by law can only be performed on humans after clinical death in anticipation that at least the early stages of such death (often also the point at which legal death is pronounced) may be reversible in the future (see information theoretical death for key rationale behind this assertion)."

Some benefits of this: A. only one term is used "clinical death" B. it neatly introduces the idea that clinical death may, or may not be conflated with legal death and C. using the term "such death" indicates that there may be more than one type of death (true). It may be preferable that the word death (as in "early stages of such death" be surrounded in single quotes i.e. 'death', but that may be deviating too much from the NPOV criteria

Theo75 19:36, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

The new sentence is barely readable, especially with those long parenthetical comments. To address the concerns you raised, I propose:

The process is not currently reversible. Cryonics can only be performed on humans after clinical death, and a legal determination that further medical care is not appropriate (legal death). The claimed rationale for cryonics is that the process may be reversible in the future if performed soon enough, and that cryopreserved people may not really be dead by standards of future medicine (see information theoretic death).

Cryobiologist 21:12, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, agreed. I'll alter it in line with your proposal.

Theo75 13:12, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Cryobiologist 17:49, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Missing Subject - financial inheritance problems

On thing that seems to be missing from the article is a discussion of the financial status of any future revivee. As far as I am aware, when you die, all your assets are farmed out to your nearest and dearest or, failing that, go to the State. So once you die, you're not only dead, you're dead broke.

Or can you leave money to yourself in the future? If you could, that would imply you could avoid paying inheritance tax since your fortune would never actually be disbursed. It looks like you'd not only beat Death, but Taxes too! --Oscar Bravo 11:13, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The last article in the External Links section at the bottom, "A Cold Calculus Leads Cryonauts To Put Assets on Ice," discusses this issue. 76.169.201.183 17:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Non-Partisan, NPOV Symbol of Cryonics would NOT be an Alcor dewar

I believe that a dewar with ALCOR in bold letters is inappropriate as a neutral symbol of cryonics. It favors the organization ALCOR as representative of cryonics and is thus "partisan". The exact same image can be found on the Alcor Life Extension Foundation page. Using the bias section of the NPOV page (Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Bias) I would conclude that the dewar image violates NPOV in both favoring the "class" of Alcor cryonicists as well as in serving as advertising for Alcor in contrast to other cryonics organizations. I would remove the image, except that as President of the Cryonics Institute I have an obvious bias myself. Therefore, I request that a fair-minded Wikipedian -- cryonicist or not -- remove the image. I don't know what a NPOV image of cryonics might be, but I believe that no image is better than an image that favors one organization and is a form of advertising. --Ben Best 03:31, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dog

I remember recently hearing of a case where a dog was perserved then brought back within an extended period of time frame to prove that cryostasis as a science has come a long way. Why is there no reference to this? A brief search of the net shows many instances where various animals, including mammals, have been preserved, thawed and successfully survived? 211.30.75.123 00:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Those instances were all at temperatures at or above 0 degrees Celsius, the freezing point of water. There have been no revivals of large animals from ultra-cold temperatures required for long-term preservation. All evidence supporting cryonics is still indirect and based on preservation of enough brain information to permit hypothetical repair and resuscitation in the distant future. 76.169.201.183 03:21, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA : On hold

GA review (see here for criteria)

It is reasonably well written.

a (prose): b (MoS):
It is factually accurate and verifiable.

a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
It is broad in its coverage.

a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.

a (fair representation): b (all significant views):
It is stable.
It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

a (tagged and captioned): b lack of images (does not in itself exclude GA): c (non-free images have fair use rationales):
Overall:

a Pass/Fail:

This article is on the verge of failure but with a reasonable amount of input could meet GA requirements. Try to address the following points for improvement:

Lede: Should comply with MOS.
Ethics: Citation needed
History: Section is uneccessarily long, and still in places reads as if it has been written ALCOR.
Culture: This section contains more detail than the article demands. Be more selective in what is mentioned.
Images: Surely something suitable must be available to break the flow of the text.

Verisimilus T 20:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I've attempted to address all points, except for images, which will require a bit more time. Cryobiologist 06:47, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA: Not successful

A substantial amount of material that should be cited, is not. Beginning right in the first paragraph (US legal requirements) to the end of the lede (sizes of non-profits and the number of cryopreserved at each) to the "Premises of Cryonics" (reversibility of cellular cooling) and on throughout the article. The general writing style could also benefit from revision, making this long and complex topic easier to read and understand. Earlier concerns about NPOV persist. And I have doubts about the licensing of the image in this article; for it to be released by Alcor under Creative Commons may require confirmation of that release with OTRS. I'm certain this article can meet the standards of GA someday, but it has been trapped at GAC too long ... and that day is still not today. Serpent's Choice 21:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

As I also started a review, here are my issues: Please read the manual of style as 1) section headers Are Not Like This, but Like this (at least one was like that). 2) Citations go after the punctuation, not before and in the case of the sub-section "Revival" they do not have a comma both before and after. Basically this article needs a good copy edit to weed out those mnor details. Please note that my detailed review was only through the first section, after that I went to put it on hold and discovered it was already on hold. Aboutmovies 21:39, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My refusal of membership with the cryonics institute

I wonder if it would be possible to talk about my membership refusal with the cryonics institute, I am the only man in the world, to have been refused twice a cryonics membership. --Despres 10:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. Try somewhere else, as you cannot really prove this. Auroranorth 07:35, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Section Proposal

Cloning tissue regeneration —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.82.162.153 (talk) 12:41, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] please add 3 traps of cryonics on the page as the actual financial situation in cryonics

3 cryonics traps envisioned by Charles Platt:

Trap #1. "Our organization needs help. If you do your thing instead of helping us, you will weaken us. If we collapse, you will have nothing. Therefore, you should NOT COMPETE WITH US." (This seems to be what Jordan is thinking.) I call this "The Whining Monopoly Scenario" since the organization seeks to preserve a monopoly of its market segment by whining about its delicate condition.

Trap #2. "Our organization cares for cryonics patients who must be protected at all costs. If you criticize our organization or reveal embarrassing facts, you will empower hostile legislators or others who will try to shut us down. Therefore, you should say NOTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT US." I call this "The Perpetual Hostage Scenario," since the cryonics patients are serving exactly the same role as hostages.

Trap #3. "You'll be dead before you have time to build a new organization to save yourself." I guess the only answer there would be to establish your organization as a cult and surround yourself with young acolytes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.122.195.133 (talk) 04:16, 9 March 2008 (UTC)