9 ms·

Cryostasis Revival

37 points by abecedarius 3y ago

chasil 3y ago
Have there been any new developments since the rabbit kidney? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryopreservation#Vitrification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryopreservation#Vitrification "Mixtures of cryoprotectants and the use of ice blockers have enabled the 21st Century Medicine company to vitrify a rabbit kidney to −135 °C with their proprietary vitrification mixture. Upon rewarming, the kidney was transplanted successfully into a rabbit, with complete functionality and viability, able to sustain the rabbit indefinitely as the sole functioning kidney." EDIT: I will pull the PDF for the book later today.
- porejide 3y ago
  Here is a timeline of developments in the space over time, created by Mati Roy: https://timelines.issarice.com/wiki/Timeline_of_brain_preservation https://timelines.issarice.com/wiki/Timeline_of_brain_preser...
  - chasil 3y ago
    I'd actually be encouraged to see donated organs cryopreserved, and used for transplant long after their unpreserved expiry. When we are using cryopreserved organs, then preserving the brain becomes more obviously pragmatic. I am guessing that cryopreserved human kidneys do not have uniform cooling, spoiling interior tissue. A rabbit kidney is much smaller, and wouldn't suffer as much from this problem.
    - porejide 3y ago
      This is currently happening with ovarian tissue: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6558345/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6558345/
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      Hmm... maybe it would work better if you actually circulated chilling liquid through it, rather than just sticking it in a freezer. The interior veins and arteries of a kidney look like it would be a reasonably good heat exchanger.
jdc0589 3y ago
> revival from human cryopreservation, using medical nanorobots. lets just hope that every scifi franchise got the eventuality of this tech wrong....
riffic 3y ago
welcome to the world of tomorrow!
- bryanculver 3y ago
  "'I understood that reference' - Captain America" - Michael Scott
api 3y ago
Medical nanorobots still seem incredibly hand-wavey. I'd stop laughing if I saw one good example of this technology such as a tumor being successfully neutralized with nanorobotics. That'd be the obvious place to start since you're just destroying cancerous cells not repairing or constructing anything.
- Animats 3y ago
  Yes. I knew Eric Drexler when he was touting nanotechnology, in the form of atomic-scale programmable robots. There's been very little progress on that in the last twenty years. Microtechnology, mechanical things made with IC fab technology, has made some progress. But that's several orders of magnitude larger than atoms. What's called "nanotechnology" today is mostly surface chemistry.
nottorp 3y ago
I thought it was about a remake or something for this game: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/cryostasis-review https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/cryostasis-review So I clicked :)
krunck 3y ago
Lots of freezer burnt bodies out there. And a few very wealthy people. How do you keep a cryostasis business honest when you - the customer - are dead and there is no profitable reason to keep you from becoming like that loose frozen hamburger at the bottom of my freezer?
- porejide 3y ago
  > freezer burnt Freezer burn occurs when moisture escapes from frozen biospecimens due to slow freezing and temperature fluctuations. It's not an issue during storage in liquid nitrogen, which causes much faster freezing and has a much colder storage temperature level. > And a few very wealthy people Cryonics is not only accessible to the very wealthy. There are options available that are equal or less expensive than an average funeral. > How do you keep a cryostasis business honest when you - the customer - are dead and there is no profitable reason to keep you from becoming like that loose frozen hamburger at the bottom of my freezer 1: The companies are non-profits so profit is irrelevant. 2: You look at their long-term reputation which is important for them to get new clients. This is why Alcor has been around for 50 years without thawing a single one of their patients.
  - tln 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - porejide 3y ago
      I don't work for Alcor, never have, and I have no financial relationship with them. More importantly, what makes you ask that? Are you attempting to imply that my statements are factually incorrect?
    - mass_and_energy 3y ago
      Is there a fallacy or lie in the parent comment you'd like to expand on, or are you just assuming OP is a shill? Because these are basic facts that apply to any cryonics company so I'm confused as to where your accusation is coming from.
TheBlight 3y ago
My biggest concern with this idea is not having control over who wakes you up and how. Who knows who eventually owns/operates Alcor? What if their interests become misaligned wrt customers? As one hypothetical example, imagine Meta buys Alcor. Maybe their lawyers work it out that importing customer consciousness into the metaverse is legal and fulfills the contract. But when this happens the metaverse has safeguards that don't allow you to kill anyone including yourself. And now your consciousness is in the metaverse for an effective eternity. Maybe that sounds nice to you but maybe the thought makes you a bit uncomfortable as it does for me.
- NBJack 3y ago
  This is actually the first act plot for We Are Legion (We Are Bob). Turns out cryo preserved brains are a decent starting point for subservient AI smart enough to perform tasks. A fun read, but a serious possibility.
- porejide 3y ago
  > Who knows who eventually owns/operates Alcor? Anyone who looks them up online can find this information easily. It is required to be public since they are a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Here are their current board of directors: https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-board-of-directors/ https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-board-of-directors/ > What if their interests become misaligned wrt customers? Anything is possible but this seems extremely unlikely given their governing structure and requirements for being on the board of directors. Alcor has been criticized in the past because they fall very far in favor of protecting their existing patients in cryopreservation rather than making accommodations for prospective patients, leading to them turning away prospective patients for a variety of reasons. From: https://www.alcor.org/library/alcors-self-perpetuating-board/ https://www.alcor.org/library/alcors-self-perpetuating-board... > A fundamental rationale for selecting the self perpetuating Board structure was its ability to provide continuity of purpose over a long period of time. Existing Board members select those new Board members who they believe are best able to preserve Alcor’s core values and carry out its mission. All Board members are required by Alcor Bylaws to be Alcor members. While not required by the Bylaws, we also find that Alcor Board members are cryonicists of long standing and are well known within the cryonics community. By tradition, new Board members are usually sought from the ranks of Alcor Advisors, although the Board can and has selected Board Members who have not been Advisors. Board members have a strong incentive to choose carefully because the success of Alcor and the survival of our members — including our Board members — is heavily dependent on the abilities and character of future Boards of Directors. BTW, I'm not a shill for Alcor. I think some aspects of their operations are worthy of criticism. But this is not one of them. If you disagree, feel free to state why, but I would recommend at least learning the basics about them before doing so.
sneak 3y ago
Reminder: sign up for cryopreservation _before_ your terminal diagnosis, while you are still healthy (ie NOW)! It is funded by a life insurance policy, which becomes way more expensive by the time you know you’re going to need preservation soon. Do it now, not later. I waited too long and now there is no affordable life insurance available. :(
rbanffy 3y ago
I find it a big stretch to call it a medical procedure when they don't have a clue as to how to revive the patient. We could call it "desperate measure", "Hail Mary", or something similar that acknowledges the odds of someone undoing the damage at some point in the future are vanishingly low.
- poulpy123 3y ago
  it's mostly a scam currently.
bigfryo 3y ago
[dead]
colonwqbang 3y ago
In the video game "Rimworld", humans explore space using sub-light spacecraft piloted by AI carrying people frozen in cryosleep. A trip to a different star may take thousands of years, and you don't necessarily know where you'll end up. Of course the idea has been explored in many sci-fi stories. (If someone knows which was the first, it would be interesting to know) Such technology always seemed much more reasonable than warp drive or other similar science fiction. I can believe that in a few centuries we have figured out how to revive a person from cryostasis.
- ughitsaaron 3y ago
  In a few centuries (and a couple hundred medical nightmares)
NBJack 3y ago
There are a lot of issues with this whole process. Never mind the thawing part; unless you can guarantee a timeframe, there is always the ongoing maintenance costs, what happens with a seismic event (frozen lattice + kinetic energy), scarcity of key components during an economic recession, and so on. Then there is the past record of, ah, interesting developments. https://bigthink.com/the-future/cryonics-horror-stories/ https://bigthink.com/the-future/cryonics-horror-stories/
- ughitsaaron 3y ago
  I came here to share that article in case nobody had yet. It provides a very healthy reality check in discussions on this topic.
bitwize 3y ago
tl;dr Nanomachines, son!

37 points by abecedarius 3y ago

Have there been any new developments since the rabbit kidney? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryopreservation#Vitrification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryopreservation#Vitrification "Mixtures of cryoprotectants and the use of ice blockers have enabled the 21st Century Medicine company to vitrify a rabbit kidney to −135 °C with their proprietary vitrification mixture. Upon rewarming, the kidney was transplanted successfully into a rabbit, with complete functionality and viability, able to sustain the rabbit indefinitely as the sole functioning kidney." EDIT: I will pull the PDF for the book later today.

porejide 3y ago
Here is a timeline of developments in the space over time, created by Mati Roy: https://timelines.issarice.com/wiki/Timeline_of_brain_preservation https://timelines.issarice.com/wiki/Timeline_of_brain_preser...
- chasil 3y ago
  I'd actually be encouraged to see donated organs cryopreserved, and used for transplant long after their unpreserved expiry. When we are using cryopreserved organs, then preserving the brain becomes more obviously pragmatic. I am guessing that cryopreserved human kidneys do not have uniform cooling, spoiling interior tissue. A rabbit kidney is much smaller, and wouldn't suffer as much from this problem.
  - porejide 3y ago
    This is currently happening with ovarian tissue: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6558345/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6558345/
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    Hmm... maybe it would work better if you actually circulated chilling liquid through it, rather than just sticking it in a freezer. The interior veins and arteries of a kidney look like it would be a reasonably good heat exchanger.

jdc0589 3y ago

> revival from human cryopreservation, using medical nanorobots. lets just hope that every scifi franchise got the eventuality of this tech wrong....

riffic 3y ago

welcome to the world of tomorrow!

bryanculver 3y ago
"'I understood that reference' - Captain America" - Michael Scott

api 3y ago

Medical nanorobots still seem incredibly hand-wavey. I'd stop laughing if I saw one good example of this technology such as a tumor being successfully neutralized with nanorobotics. That'd be the obvious place to start since you're just destroying cancerous cells not repairing or constructing anything.

Animats 3y ago
Yes. I knew Eric Drexler when he was touting nanotechnology, in the form of atomic-scale programmable robots. There's been very little progress on that in the last twenty years. Microtechnology, mechanical things made with IC fab technology, has made some progress. But that's several orders of magnitude larger than atoms. What's called "nanotechnology" today is mostly surface chemistry.

nottorp 3y ago

I thought it was about a remake or something for this game: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/cryostasis-review https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/cryostasis-review So I clicked :)

krunck 3y ago

Lots of freezer burnt bodies out there. And a few very wealthy people. How do you keep a cryostasis business honest when you - the customer - are dead and there is no profitable reason to keep you from becoming like that loose frozen hamburger at the bottom of my freezer?

porejide 3y ago
> freezer burnt Freezer burn occurs when moisture escapes from frozen biospecimens due to slow freezing and temperature fluctuations. It's not an issue during storage in liquid nitrogen, which causes much faster freezing and has a much colder storage temperature level. > And a few very wealthy people Cryonics is not only accessible to the very wealthy. There are options available that are equal or less expensive than an average funeral. > How do you keep a cryostasis business honest when you - the customer - are dead and there is no profitable reason to keep you from becoming like that loose frozen hamburger at the bottom of my freezer 1: The companies are non-profits so profit is irrelevant. 2: You look at their long-term reputation which is important for them to get new clients. This is why Alcor has been around for 50 years without thawing a single one of their patients.
- tln 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - porejide 3y ago
    I don't work for Alcor, never have, and I have no financial relationship with them. More importantly, what makes you ask that? Are you attempting to imply that my statements are factually incorrect?
  - mass_and_energy 3y ago
    Is there a fallacy or lie in the parent comment you'd like to expand on, or are you just assuming OP is a shill? Because these are basic facts that apply to any cryonics company so I'm confused as to where your accusation is coming from.

TheBlight 3y ago

My biggest concern with this idea is not having control over who wakes you up and how. Who knows who eventually owns/operates Alcor? What if their interests become misaligned wrt customers? As one hypothetical example, imagine Meta buys Alcor. Maybe their lawyers work it out that importing customer consciousness into the metaverse is legal and fulfills the contract. But when this happens the metaverse has safeguards that don't allow you to kill anyone including yourself. And now your consciousness is in the metaverse for an effective eternity. Maybe that sounds nice to you but maybe the thought makes you a bit uncomfortable as it does for me.

NBJack 3y ago
This is actually the first act plot for We Are Legion (We Are Bob). Turns out cryo preserved brains are a decent starting point for subservient AI smart enough to perform tasks. A fun read, but a serious possibility.
porejide 3y ago
> Who knows who eventually owns/operates Alcor? Anyone who looks them up online can find this information easily. It is required to be public since they are a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Here are their current board of directors: https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-board-of-directors/ https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-board-of-directors/ > What if their interests become misaligned wrt customers? Anything is possible but this seems extremely unlikely given their governing structure and requirements for being on the board of directors. Alcor has been criticized in the past because they fall very far in favor of protecting their existing patients in cryopreservation rather than making accommodations for prospective patients, leading to them turning away prospective patients for a variety of reasons. From: https://www.alcor.org/library/alcors-self-perpetuating-board/ https://www.alcor.org/library/alcors-self-perpetuating-board... > A fundamental rationale for selecting the self perpetuating Board structure was its ability to provide continuity of purpose over a long period of time. Existing Board members select those new Board members who they believe are best able to preserve Alcor’s core values and carry out its mission. All Board members are required by Alcor Bylaws to be Alcor members. While not required by the Bylaws, we also find that Alcor Board members are cryonicists of long standing and are well known within the cryonics community. By tradition, new Board members are usually sought from the ranks of Alcor Advisors, although the Board can and has selected Board Members who have not been Advisors. Board members have a strong incentive to choose carefully because the success of Alcor and the survival of our members — including our Board members — is heavily dependent on the abilities and character of future Boards of Directors. BTW, I'm not a shill for Alcor. I think some aspects of their operations are worthy of criticism. But this is not one of them. If you disagree, feel free to state why, but I would recommend at least learning the basics about them before doing so.

sneak 3y ago

Reminder: sign up for cryopreservation _before_ your terminal diagnosis, while you are still healthy (ie NOW)! It is funded by a life insurance policy, which becomes way more expensive by the time you know you’re going to need preservation soon. Do it now, not later. I waited too long and now there is no affordable life insurance available. :(

rbanffy 3y ago

I find it a big stretch to call it a medical procedure when they don't have a clue as to how to revive the patient. We could call it "desperate measure", "Hail Mary", or something similar that acknowledges the odds of someone undoing the damage at some point in the future are vanishingly low.

poulpy123 3y ago
it's mostly a scam currently.

bigfryo 3y ago

[dead]

colonwqbang 3y ago

In the video game "Rimworld", humans explore space using sub-light spacecraft piloted by AI carrying people frozen in cryosleep. A trip to a different star may take thousands of years, and you don't necessarily know where you'll end up. Of course the idea has been explored in many sci-fi stories. (If someone knows which was the first, it would be interesting to know) Such technology always seemed much more reasonable than warp drive or other similar science fiction. I can believe that in a few centuries we have figured out how to revive a person from cryostasis.

ughitsaaron 3y ago
In a few centuries (and a couple hundred medical nightmares)

NBJack 3y ago

There are a lot of issues with this whole process. Never mind the thawing part; unless you can guarantee a timeframe, there is always the ongoing maintenance costs, what happens with a seismic event (frozen lattice + kinetic energy), scarcity of key components during an economic recession, and so on. Then there is the past record of, ah, interesting developments. https://bigthink.com/the-future/cryonics-horror-stories/ https://bigthink.com/the-future/cryonics-horror-stories/

ughitsaaron 3y ago
I came here to share that article in case nobody had yet. It provides a very healthy reality check in discussions on this topic.

bitwize 3y ago

tl;dr Nanomachines, son!