Ship of Fools: Cryogenics, body and soul

Thread: Cryogenics, body and soul Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

Someone on a radio programme about cryogenics today asserted that if a frozen body were later brought back to life, it would be nothing but a zombie with no soul or personality, that part of the person having moved on once the person had died.

What are your thoughts? I can't see how the body could ever be revived - perhaps cloned, yes - but if it were, would it be the same person?

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Because God would get confused and forget to reinsert the soul?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

It seems to me that a frozen body is a dead body, whatever else one might wishfully think. Any other view appears, on a cursory glance, to be pseudoscience

quote:
Cryonics is regarded with skepticism within the mainstream scientific community and is not part of normal medical practice. It is not known if it will ever be possible to revive a cryopreserved human being. Cryonics depends on beliefs that death is a process rather than an event, clinical death is a prognosis of death rather than a diagnosis of death, and that the cryonics patient has not experienced information-theoretic death. Such views are at the speculative edge of medicine.

Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :

This has probably arisen from the decision by an English judge to permit a woman to freeze the body of her daughter with a view to some future resurrection when science permits it. This was against the wishes of the girl's father, said to be estranged.

Apart from what on the face of it is pretty unusual law, the science seems totally up the spout. From the accounts I've read, that's not an area into which the judge ventured.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Because God would get confused and forget to reinsert the soul?

Or maybe the soul wouldn't want to be reinserted after experiencing the joys of Heaven. [Angel]

Unless, of course, the soul is elsewhere.
[Devil]

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Yes, the idea behind cryogenics is not "One day, we might find a cure for the disease you have", but rather "One day, we might find a way to bring dead people back to life. So pay us a ton of cash to keep your body frozen in case that ever happens".

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

The biggest problem, IMO, is that even if future technology allows the revivification of frozen humans, ISTM the current freezing technology is unlikely to prepare a corpse that is so resuscitatable.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The biggest problem, IMO, is that even if future technology allows the revivification of frozen humans, ISTM the current freezing technology is unlikely to prepare a corpse that is so resuscitatable.

But like the lottery, you can't win if you don't play, right? [Biased]

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

Even if it were possible to bring people back to life after many years, who would pay for it? How many people would have their great-grandfather resuscitated rather than educate their children?

Moo

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

What an utter load of bollocks. Up there with AI and chip ships and economic nuclear fusion.

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

The logical way of paying it is have the person-to-be-frozen pay for it in advance, setting up an account.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

In the must-watch Swedish sci-fi series Äkta människor (Real Humans) the lead family's father Lennart Sollberg dies and is brought back as a "hubot", a wholly lifelike android, having been conned into signing a contract for a synthetic copy of himself to be made while he was dying in hospital, in much the same way as people are sold funeral insurance.

(found a brief clip of the hubot Lennart doing hip-hop for his grand-daughter, here).

[x-post with nicolemr, great minds etc.]

[ 18. November 2016, 21:19: Message edited by: Eutychus ]

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nicolemr:
The logical way of paying it is have the person-to-be-frozen pay for it in advance, setting up an account.

But you'd have to know when this might happen, and how inflation might affect your currency, and what the costs would be. Then when you were thawed out and your illness cured, you'd have to find a place to live, etc.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

Baseball player Ted Williams is frozen (in two pieces) here in Arizona. There are many complications.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
What an utter load of bollocks. Up there with AI

Well, considering what passes for NI*....

*Natural Intelligence

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :

According to BBC news, the judge in question based his decision on the fact that the mother was the responsible parent, as the father had been out of contact for years. He, (the judge) was not concerned with the validity of the science, if any. It was simply a question of who had the legal right to endorse the girl's decision.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Yes, that was the legal issue. It was a tragic case and honouring the young girl's wishes, regardless of how unsoundly based they might have been, also feels like an act of respect.

Posted by Goldfish Stew (# 5512) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Someone on a radio programme about cryogenics today asserted that if a frozen body were later brought back to life, it would be nothing but a zombie with no soul or personality, that part of the person having moved on once the person had died.

What are your thoughts? I can't see how the body could ever be revived - perhaps cloned, yes - but if it were, would it be the same person?

It all pushes the notion of a "soul" as something distinctive and separate from the body/mind.

I know people who were frozen as embryos for some time before gestation/birth. I'm not sure how to tell if they have a soul or not, except maybe to get them to dance to James Brown.

Before anyone else points it out, the difference in scale and complexity is massive (and even more so in the case of someone who dies, then gets frozen, as then you are looking for a cure to death, not just the disease that killed them.) That's not so much the point, as questioning the concept of soul (which obviously slides into DH territory if we start debating the point of "ensoulation".)

In my view, what we call "soul" is simply the memory/thought patterns and no separate entity. If you could freeze someone and successfully defrost them, provided the physical structures associated with memory/learned behaviour weren't scrambled the personality and soul in theory would be back again.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

A sober, wise decision. The pseudoscience being utterly irrelevant.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

And, of course, the poor wee girl and her mum and dad all get to walk the green, green grass of home.

[ 18. November 2016, 23:49: Message edited by: Martin60 ]

Posted by Humble Servant (# 18391) on :

Assuming it ever did become possible, I can see a number of complications. The body would have to survive the long time. Assuming it was a few hundred years hence, would there be detailed enough records of who they were, what their wishes were? The fee is a one-off payment, which seems quite low considering the possible length of storage (GBP27,000 was quoted). What if the money runs out? What if the company goes bust? What if there are no living relatives and they have a cost-cutting drive? Who is going to know?

Then, once resurrected, what becomes of the person? They would be a refugee from another age. They would face a hostile population, unless attitudes to refugees have changed massively by then. We can't even handle refugees from another land.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Actually Cyrogenics is more like suspended animation. They have to stop the brain cells from dying from lack of oxygen. So, if you want to argue for a "soul" it has to do with keeping the brain cells suspended--keeping the soul trapped.

However, I think this is the wrong question. Most of the Biblical writers never made the distinction between body and soul. This is a Greek thought advanced by Plato.

The Biblical writers had the concept of the total being. It became alive when it took its first breath of air and in ceases to live when it takes its last breath of air. Early Christianity would just say a person is asleep but will be revived on the last day

Revelations, though, seems to hint that those who have died in Christ are currently around the heavenly throne.

As time has gone on and the length between the resurrection of Christ and the last day has lengthened the Greek concept of body and soul got inserted into our common belief system, even through, for the most part it is not Biblical.

Posted by Goldfish Stew (# 5512) on :

Reflecting more, I think the truly unhealthy thing here is possibly the lack of acceptance. Grief-wise the risk is the family are stuck in denial or bargaining. Which I would likely be too if it were my daughter. But in a real sense, if her mother believes there's a chance here, how is she able to adapt and carry on? I'm concerned that this may not be the most healthy state of affairs for them, depending on what they believe the outcome and time frame may be.

Made worse (and I appreciate the position this places me in) by the public analysis of this decision.

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

I couldn't agree more.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Interesting subject to speculate on, but until somebody does get resuscitated, we'll never find out. I don't think that's ever going to happen.

I also wonder whether, if the company running the place goes bust, or just switches off some of the tanks, there is anyone who can do anything about it. The person in the tank can't sue them.

[ 19. November 2016, 09:05: Message edited by: Enoch ]

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I also wonder whether, if the company running the place goes bust, or just switches off some of the tanks, there is anyone who can do anything about it. The person in the tank can't sue them.

quote:
Cryonics Society of California soon ran into trouble. Led by a former TV repairman named Robert Nelson with no scientific background, the organisation didn’t have enough money to maintain the cryopreservation of its existing patients. It began stuffing multiple bodies into the same cryonic capsules and used the funds from new patients to maintain the struggling operation. Two capsules failed, causing the nine bodies inside to decompose. Nelson was sued by some family members and, in 1981, was ordered to pay them $800,000.

Source

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

Even if it worked 100% it's a crazy idea.

Imagine all the 'waker uppers' coming round and needing homes/food/company/help to adjust etc.

Death matters, it is part of life, it is built in to the way our planet works. Accepting death as inevitable for us all is part of becoming a mature adult.

Cryogenic companies are leeches, preying on people's natural fears and anxieties.

Folk will be getting their pets frozen next [Roll Eyes]

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

Human cells such as blood cells, epithelial tissue cell cultures and embryos can be successfully frozen and then thawed in a viable state.

The trick to doing this is stopping ice crystals from forming in the cells. If ice crystals form they destroy the cell structure and the cells burst and die. It's therefore necessary to use various solutions that get inside the cells that stop ice crystals forming. These solutions are toxic. So the trick is to dump them into these solutions and then freeze them at the right rate. In thawing them the trick is to get the cryo-protecting solutions out pretty fast and this can be done with salt solutions, which then are themselves toxic and need to be washed off pretty fast afterwards.

This wizardry is possible because one is dealing with single cells in suspension which therefore equilibrrate quickly with their surrounding fluid.

Dealing with a whole lump of human being comprising 10s of trillions of cells stuck together, one can't get the cells to equilibrate.

So the bodies preserved at present will have ice crystals through all the cells, destroying 99% of the structure of the body and destined to turn to mush on thawing. In terms of hoping for a technological leap forward to solve that, one might as well make a human being from scratch as try to reverse that process.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Folk will be getting their pets frozen next

From my same source quoted above:

quote:
Like Croft, McCarthy is also a computer programmer and a libertarian. His cat Pip is already suspended at Alcor. “My wife called me at work and said, ‘Pip is dead! Pip is dead!’ And I said, Grab the ice!’” He rushed home from work and drove the 380 miles from Los Angeles to Scottsdale overnight with a friend. The cost for Pip’s cryonic preservation? $4,500

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

quote:
So the bodies preserved at present will have ice crystals through all the cells, destroying 99% of the structure of the body and destined to turn to mush on thawing.

So for me, that quote and a mental picture of a defrosted cucumber (I know, I should have known better) wins the thread.

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Goldfish Stew:
It all pushes the notion of a "soul" as something distinctive and separate from the body/mind.

I know people who were frozen as embryos for some time before gestation/birth. I'm not sure how to tell if they have a soul or not, except maybe to get them to dance to James Brown.

Before anyone else points it out, the difference in scale and complexity is massive (and even more so in the case of someone who dies, then gets frozen, as then you are looking for a cure to death, not just the disease that killed them.) That's not so much the point, as questioning the concept of soul (which obviously slides into DH territory if we start debating the point of "ensoulation".)

In my view, what we call "soul" is simply the memory/thought patterns and no separate entity. If you could freeze someone and successfully defrost them, provided the physical structures associated with memory/learned behaviour weren't scrambled the personality and soul in theory would be back again.

If there is no separation between the soul - or spirit - or essence of 'me' - and the physical body and brain which houses it while we are alive, then we will surely all perish along with our bodies.

The Christian narrative gives us hope that we will move on, however, whether straight away or at the 'second coming' - but as we will be outside of time once dead the time won't drag [Paranoid]

A living zombie, or a soul trapped in a frozen body, is the stuff of horror movies.

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

BTW, for a fictional portrait of a society that is entirely built on cryogenics, and the ramifications of that, I recommend to you the absolutely wonderful Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nicolemr:
BTW, for a fictional portrait of a society that is entirely built on cryogenics, and the ramifications of that, I recommend to you the absolutely wonderful Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Bought and on my Kindle [Angel]

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

The father has since come round to accepting his daughter's wishes.

Posted by guinness girl (# 4391) on :

I recently read a fascinating post on Wait But Why here which investigated cryonics and it's claims, and went pretty in-depth into the how and the why. I think it's essential reading. I don't agree with his conclusions but the subject matter is tackled in a pretty even-handed way.

That said, I think cryonics only makes any sense if you are an atheist or have a faith which doesn't include the concept of life after death. If I was an atheist, I could absolutely see that even a tiny chance of resurrection is better than no chance at all. As it is, my faith in Jesus and belief in eternal life renders the very concept of cryonics a pointless and expensive nonsense.

Posted by Teekeey Misha (# 18604) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
What an utter load of bollocks. Up there with AI and chip ships...

[Reminiscence]I used to visit a very good chip shop just off the A1.[/Reminiscence]

Posted by Teekeey Misha (# 18604) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:

quote:
So the bodies preserved at present will have ice crystals through all the cells, destroying 99% of the structure of the body and destined to turn to mush on thawing.
So for me, that quote and a mental picture of a defrosted cucumber (I know, I should have known better) wins the thread.

See, THIS is one of those occasions when the ship needs "rating" buttons!

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by guinness girl:
That said, I think cryonics only makes any sense if you are an atheist or have a faith which doesn't include the concept of life after death.

I got the impression that it was more of this life the girl wanted. She was only 14 or 15. If she ever could be revivified, she would have the opportunity to get that life but would still presumably also get the life after (second) death. And since that's eternal, putting it off for a few years would really make a difference.

If I was an atheist, I could absolutely see that even a tiny chance of resurrection is better than no chance at all.

I am and I don't.

PS I liked the comment of someone who said there is virtually no chance of being brought back to life from cryogenic 'suspension' but a far greater chance than offered by cremation or burial ...

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

Boogie: Enjoy!

A lot, or at least some, of the objections people have voiced to cryonics (apparently the correct term, not cryogenics, which is something different.) on this thread are answered in the article Guinness Girl linked to. I skimmed it quickly and found myself much enlightened.

Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :

Let's go back to the original post. Perhaps the technical details of cryonics are not the issue. Suppose someone dies and the body is preserved in some fashion for a period of time and then the body is by some means revived. Will this be the same person?

I don't know. I would expect such an experience to have some effect. If enough time has passed, the person will be lost or adrift. I don't envision a living person without a soul; that would sound like a bad horror movie.

As I don't think the technical problems can be solved anytime soon, this is not a practical question but it is interesting to consider. I think there have been people who were in comas for long periods of time and who then came back. I suppose that's as close as we are likely to find to the situation under discussion.

Posted by Goldfish Stew (# 5512) on :

I've found the short (12 minute) documentary I watched a couple of years ago about the Cryonics Institute.

It doesn't really attempt to resolve the ethics side, but I found it a fascinating glimpse into the lives and beliefs of one of the businesses doing this.

We Will Live Again

Warning: It does include some footage of the deceased (closeups of skin etc.)

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

I don't find it impossible to believe that if cryonics were ever possible, the resuscitated person would be resuscitated with their soul and spirit, called back from wherever they were in the meantime.

What I find much more difficult to believe are,
a. that this will ever be possible, and
b. that if it is ever possible (which I doubt), those frozen at this early stage in the development of the technology would ever turn out to have been frozen sufficiently well to be anything more than defrosted cucumbers.

Even if I were not a Christian, I don't think I'd want to risk finding myself resuscitated as a defrosted cucumber by people who had long forgotten who I ever was and couldn't care anyway.

That would be particularly so if I'd died of some fairly painful or wasting disease that might well be no more curable then than it is now.

[ 19. November 2016, 22:26: Message edited by: Enoch ]

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

The link provided by guiness girl was interesting and answered a lot of questions (even if I'm not convinced by all the answers).

I feel great sympathy for the young girl who wanted to have a longer life where she could fall in love, have children, have a life-changing relationships, do the things she imagined doing and most of her friends probably will do. Since I feel most of the things I've listed are worthwhile I hope one day she gets them.

But, if I were convinced it was possible, I still wouldn't do it. In my late sixties I've done a lot of those things and have been lucky enough to have had a generally satisfying life. I'm trying to resist the temptation of becoming a grumpy old man but I'm certainly more and more out of step with the way the world is going. What would it be like in 200 or 2000 years? Would calm enlightenment values with 'educated passions' prevail? How well would I fit into a brave new world? After all, how easy would it be for an old person from iron age Britain to start living a satisfying life if brought to 2016?

I don't feel that staying alive is the only value. Various causes we support will get any savings we have left over after the goodbye party has been paid for. Then you can do whatever you want with our bodies.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

quote:
Originally posted by guinness girl:
I recently read a fascinating post on Wait But Why here which investigated cryonics and it's claims, and went pretty in-depth into the how and the why. I think it's essential reading. I don't agree with his conclusions but the subject matter is tackled in a pretty even-handed way.

That said, I think cryonics only makes any sense if you are an atheist or have a faith which doesn't include the concept of life after death. If I was an atheist, I could absolutely see that even a tiny chance of resurrection is better than no chance at all. As it is, my faith in Jesus and belief in eternal life renders the very concept of cryonics a pointless and expensive nonsense.

Essential why? Given that it will never, ever happen. The best we will achieve is suspended animation of a living human until the underlying medical condition is treatable by some fantasy gene - stem cell therapy. Or a head transplant as long as the head per se isn't dying faster than usual. They will both happen by the end of the century I can imagine, if someone has a billion dollars to spare.

Great science fiction. None of which is essential. Apart from as distraction; I can't bare to read The Hydrogen Sonata as it's Ian M. Banks last. Grey Matters is my dark side's favourite avenger.

Posted by guinness girl (# 4391) on :

Martin, to clarify - I don't think the topic itself is essential at all. What I meant was, if you are at all interested in discussing the subject, I think that article is essential reading as it covers the main questions and objections in some depth.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

You are far too gracious gg. We are completely cynical about absurd pseudoscientific claims round here, especially by scientists trying to drum up capital for rip off snake oil perpetual motion schemes like Iter.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

And I can't bear to read bare to read.

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
Let's go back to the original post. Perhaps the technical details of cryonics are not the issue. Suppose someone dies and the body is preserved in some fashion for a period of time and then the body is by some means revived. Will this be the same person?

I don't know. I would expect such an experience to have some effect. If enough time has passed, the person will be lost or adrift. I don't envision a living person without a soul; that would sound like a bad horror movie.

As I don't think the technical problems can be solved anytime soon, this is not a practical question but it is interesting to consider. I think there have been people who were in comas for long periods of time and who then came back. I suppose that's as close as we are likely to find to the situation under discussion.

AFAIK once revived from a coma, the same old self comes through. As it does when someone is brought back having died for a few minutes. But there is a point of no return - not only for the body, as many have indicated, but surely for the spirit too.

Of course, none of us can know for sure how it all works until we're there ourselves, but I wonder how cruel it would be to bring someone back once they had moved on.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
...I wonder how cruel it would be to bring someone back once they had moved on.

Someone once said that he felt very sorry for Lazarus, who had to die twice.

Moo

Posted by Patdys (# 9397) on :

Tangentially....

I was working in an Emergency Department in a different country to yours and mine* and a person came in whose partner had separated from them that day. They had developed chest pain.

In the department, the person had a cardiac arrest. I was standing at the head with the oxygen and we defibrillated the patient. They opened their eyes, looked up at me and said...

You should have let me go.

That was the day I learned you could die from a broken heart.

*Irrespective of where you live.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
AFAIK once revived from a coma, the same old self comes through. As it does when someone is brought back having died for a few minutes. But there is a point of no return - not only for the body, as many have indicated, but surely for the spirit too.

I guess it would depend on whether the spirit actually left the body or not during the freezing process. Which would in turn depend on the nature of the process itself - would it be more like a coma, or a death-and-revival?

How long would a coma have to be for the spirit to get bored and wander off to the afterlife? Is that even a valid question?

I find myself thinking of the stasis booths in Red Dwarf - a technology that stops time for anyone/anything inside and thus effectively freezes them until the booth is opened. But for the person inside it's as if the door shuts then immediately reopens - there's no chance for them (or their spirit) to have "been" anywhere else in the interim, because there hasn't been an interim for them. Maybe cryonic freezing would be the same?

quote:
Of course, none of us can know for sure how it all works until we're there ourselves, but I wonder how cruel it would be to bring someone back once they had moved on.

As someone else said, that does rather depend on where they had "moved on" to.

In Dungeons and Dragons (nerd alert!) there is a spell that enables you to resurrect a dead person - but it only works if the person's soul agrees to return from whichever plane of the afterlife they ended up on. Maybe something similar could apply to cryonics if the soul does in fact spend the frozen time away from its body.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

What's a spirit?

Posted by Humble Servant (# 18391) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
AFAIK once revived from a coma, the same old self comes through. As it does when someone is brought back having died for a few minutes. But there is a point of no return - not only for the body, as many have indicated, but surely for the spirit too.

It would seem we as a society have a pretty romantic view of a "coma". I'm not denying that there are cases where a patient has been unconscious for a lengthy period and then wakes up and can be rehabilitated to full health. But my experience has been that there is likely to be some significant brain damage involved in the process, and the degree to which the person will ever be the same as prior to the event that caused the coma, is likely be severely limited. An that's without any freezing and thawing.

Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :

It depends a lot on the cause of the coma. People given sedative drugs to induce a coma during an intensive care stay (or briefly during an operation) are generally fine.

People who have a brain abscess or a head injury as the cause of coma are, as you say, at high risk of personality and cognition altering injuries.

What does that say about a soul? What about someone who has Alzheimer's and loses the ability to relate to their friends?

Somehow they must be the same person, but the relationships are all different. Their sense of morality may change, or even their ability to have a sense of morality at all may be lost.

I can't think that there is any mileage in pursuing the medieval notion of when the soul might leave the body here. Maybe it just gradually becomes less well attached and more eternal. Or do we hope for a less abstract and more bodily resurrection?

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