Tag: Life Extension

The history of scientific immortalism

Now online is Mike Perry’s article “Historical Steps Toward the Scientific Conquest of Death.” This article was previously published in 2003 in Physical Immortality, a short-lived publication by the Society for Venturism.

The article is adapted from Chapter 2 of Mike Perry’s book, Forever For All: Moral Philosophy, Cryonics, and the Scientific Prospects for Immortality.

This book considers the problems of death and the hereafter and how these ages-old problems ought to be addressed in light of our continuing progress. A materialistic viewpoint of reality is assumed, denying the likelihood of supernatural or other superhuman assistance. Death, however, is not seen as inevitable or even irreversible; it is maintained that the problem can and should be addressed scientifically in all of its aspects. The book thus follows recent, immortalist thinking that places hopes in future advances in our understanding and technology. A functionalist, reductionist argument is developed for the possibility of resurrecting the dead through the eventual creation of replicas and related constructs. Meanwhile, it is urged, medical advances leading to the conquest of biological death should be pursued, along with cryonics: freezing the newly deceased for possible, eventual reanimation. A common ground thus is sought between two hitherto largely independent strands of scientific immortalism, the one based on hopes in a remote but hyperadvanced future, the other on the nearer-term prospects of presently advancing technology. The resulting philosophy, encompassing both past and future, is directed toward the long-term interests of each sentient being, and it thereby acquires a moral dimension. The immortalization of humans and other life-forms is seen as a great moral project and labor of love that will unite us in a common cause and provide a meaningful destiny.

Gary Taubes and bias in nutrition science

In a recent blog post, Overcoming Bias reports that Gary Taubes, who has written much to further the idea that refined carbohydrates are a stronger contributing factor to overweight and “diseases of civilization” than dietary fat and cholesterol, has compiled his thoughts on the subject in a major 600-page work called Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Why is Taubes so interested in bias?  For several decades, it has been the conventional wisdom that dietary fat (and especially saturated fat) contributes to obesity, heart disease, and cancer.  Judging from Taubes’ exhaustive research — indeed, I’d be surprised if any other book examined bias within a particular scientific field in such detail — the conventional wisdom was based on unreliable and slender evidence that, once established and institutionalized in government funding, set a pattern of confirmation bias by which further research was judged (or ignored).

Curing aging does not make cryonics redundant

Most life extensionists and transhumanists do not buy into many of the myths about cryonics. But one perspective that is sometimes voiced by futurists is that cryonics is a rational backup plan until aging is cured. This position has some serious shortcomings and potentially lethal implications.

Human cryopreservation is the practice of placing terminally ill patients who have exhausted contemporary medical treatments into long term cryogenic care, allowing them to benefit from future medical treatments. Although aging-associated diseases are an important cause of death, they are not the only cause of death. Even when biological aging becomes optional, a person will still be vulnerable to accidents and violence.

The mindset that cryonics will become redundant as soon as aging is conquered is especially dangerous when it leads (young) people to forgo or postpone making cryonics arrangements because they expect to benefit from  rejuvenation technologies and dietary supplementation during their lifetime. This may not only reflect wishful thinking regarding the rate of progress in overcoming aging, but it will also leave them vulnerable to other causes of death.

As long as humans (or post-humans) are vulnerable to injury that cannot be treated with contemporary medical technologies, human cryopreservation will remain important as a form of critical care. In other words, as long as there can be situations that warrant metabolic arrest to avoid information-theoretic death, there is a need for cryonics or similar technologies to induce metabolic arrest, like molecular warm biostasis.

There are a lot of people who believe in the technical feasibility of cryonics and intend to make cryonics arrangements….when necessary. As cryonics observers know, this is an extremely risky attitude because when people need cryonics the most, they often are unable to communicate their wishes, may meet resistance from relatives who benefit from their not making cryonics arrangements, or lack financial resources because life insurance is no longer an option to fund cryonics.

The best time to make cryonics arrangements is when it seems least likely that you need them soon. This is also evidenced by the fact that young healthy people can get excellent rates on life insurance.

Why is cryonics so unpopular?

In his 1998 essay “The Failure of the Cryonics Movement” (part 1, part 2), Saul Kent stresses that cryonics has remained so unpopular because nobody thinks it will work. One observable implication of this view is that we would expect to see broader acceptance of cryonics as its technical feasibility increases. Unfortunately, there is not much evidence that this is the case. During its existence a number of research and technical breakthroughs have been achieved in areas such as normothermic and hypothermic resuscitation, cryopreservation, and long term care, that should strengthen the case that cryonics will work. In particular, the change from conventional cryopreservation to vitrification should have appealed to critics who questioned whether the neurological basis of identity can survive freezing. But the transition to vitrification did not have any noticeable effects on membership growth at Alcor, or later at the Cryonics Institute. In 2007, researchers at 21st Century Medicine announced that they were able to observe long-term potentiation (LTP) in vitrified brain slices, further supporting the claim that current cryonics procedures should be able to preserve the physical basis of memory.

The view that acceptance of cryonics is being held back by the perception that it is not technically feasible is hard to reconcile with the observation that increased technical progress in cryonics does not translate into rapid membership growth. It is also hard to reconcile with the fact that millions of people hold on to views that cannot be falsified with any scientific method whatsoever. Perhaps there is a scientific tipping point beyond which people will sign up in droves for cryonics. For example, some cryonics activists argue that demonstration of reversible vitrification of a small animal will have such an effect. This may or may not be the case, but it still leaves the puzzle unresolved as to why cryonics organizations were not swamped with membership requests after publishing electron micrographs that demonstrated excellent ultrastructural preservation of brain tissue after vitrification.

There are many myths about cryonics, but in light of the fact that the costs of researching these issues pales in comparison with the expected rewards of finding a treatment to a terminal illness (some cryonics advocates even propose that cryonics will enable humans to become immortal), it is hard to understand why these myths persist and the total number of cryonics members and patients is currently less than 2000.

Although it can be argued that existing cryonics organizations do not do a very good job of explaining the technical feasibility of cryonics, this seems to be unlikely. If making cryonics arrangements is so appealing there would be no shortage of other people repacking the message and relaying it to others. It is also well known that there are a considerable number of people who find the technical feasibility of cryonics persuasive, have the financial resources, and even support it as a form of medical care, but have not made cryonics arrangements for themselves or their families. It is clear that something else is holding such people back from making cryonics arrangements.

Another explanation that has been offered is that people do not want to reflect on their own mortality. There seems to be some truth to this as far as casual observations of raising the issue of death is concerned. When people are young they generally do not think about death in personal terms in such a way as to induce them to make cryonics arrangements, and when they are old they may no longer be in a state to do so, or lack the financial resources. But we know that people do routinely reflect on their own mortality and make arrangements for their family in the form of life insurance and executing a living will.

One solution to the “death” issue is to present cryonics as a form of long term critical care medicine. Instead of presenting cryonics as the science of freezing “dead” people in the hope of future revival, cryonics can be presented as a branch of medicine that employs metabolic arrest to allow critically ill patients to reach a time when effective treatment is available to treat their disease. Presenting cryonics as a form of critical care medicine does not only stress the fact that human cryopreservation is a logical extension of conventional medicine, it should also minimize religious objections concerning “raising the dead,” “immortality,” and “playing God.” Just like mainstream religion has embraced modern medicine, so it can embrace cryonics as a novel but logical extension of it.

We know that terminally ill people are often willing to go to great lengths, and accept considerable uncertainty of outcome (even risks), to find a cure for their disease or to extend their life. In this sense, the lack of complete certainty of resuscitation of cryonics patients should not present a formidable obstacle to the acceptance of human cryopreservation. Perhaps the more fundamental difference between conventional medicine and cryonics is the duration of care. Although mainstream medicine already utilizes the benefits of cold temperatures to safely induce circulatory arrest in patients who need to undergo complex heart or brain surgery, these periods of unconscious depressed metabolism routinely take minutes, not hundreds of years. In this sense, contemporary cryonics is intrinsically linked to a far and unknown future.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle for people in making cryonics arrangements is that they realize that cryonics implies the potential loss of everything that gives meaning to their existing lives. They may be resuscitated in an unknown world without their family, friends, home, personal belongings, and savings. Sterling Blake mentions the writer Ray Bradbury who expressed interest in any chance to see the future. But “thinking about cryonics made him realize that he would be torn away from everything he loved. What would the future be worth without his wife, his children, his friends?” (Sterling Blake, “A Roll of the Ice: Cryonics as a Gamble” in Immortal Engines: Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy). And we know what happened with Arthur C. Clark, who strongly believed in the technical feasibility of cryonics.

Of course, this is more likely in a world where cryonics is not very popular, but it reveals a serious problem within the fabric of cryonics marketing. An important condition for most people to accept cryonics is that they will be restored to good health with everything they know and care for. But such a scenario is most likely to occur if a substantial number of people already have made cryonics arrangements and created an infrastructure to minimize loss and alienation.

There is no magic bullet to “selling” cryonics, but presenting cryonics as a form of medicine, encouraging community building, facilitating legal instruments to retain financial assets during long term care, and assisting families in making cryonics decisions may lessen the psychological barrier to choose cryonics. One sense in which the technical feasibility of cryonics and its acceptance are related is that advances in the science of cryopreservation and development of advanced cell repair technologies will reduce the time between start of long term care and resuscitation. If the duration of care presents a formidable obstacle to signing up for cryonics, supporting progress in the science of cryonics may lead to broader acceptance of the idea after all.