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Bitcoin’s Earliest Adopter Is Cryonically Freezing His Body to See the Future

55 points by akrymski 12y ago

kvee 12y ago
I'm an Alcor member, and I don't really get how it's not a bigger operation yet. This place has people like Hal Finney and Ray Kurzweil as members and is the preeminent option in the field, but it feels like a tiny mom and pop shop. Seems to me like it should be funded with billions, and eventually I'd like to help make it much bigger. It's a pretty long, annoying process to become a member, but I'd recommend it if you'd prefer not to die. I have a $300K policy that covers the $200K suspension and a $100K fund when I wake up. I'd recommend insurance even if you can afford to pay the $200K out of pocket because there's less legal risk that the funds might be tied up in litigation. I got my policy through the only Alcor member insurance agent, Rudi Hoffman, and if you're interested in cryonics, he's probably the best introduction you can get. His number is (386) 788-3773.
- annnnd 12y ago
  Every DBA knows that there is no point in doing backup if you can't do the restore. Have they revived anyone yet? Even more to the point, why would they revive you? You already paid them.
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    > Even more to the point, why would they revive you? You already paid them. Agree, there's not much incentive. Plus let's say you wake up as an old man 100 years from now, who is going to take care of your daily needs ? Your immediate family will be long gone, your descendants probably won't care about you, and your skills from 100 years ago will be irrelevant. What a life!
    - superasn 12y ago
      And what if your brain can still feel stuff and you're in a state of extreme discomfort for the next 100 years and since you're frozen you can't make it stop.
      - ekianjo 12y ago
        That would be very creepy indeed. But I guess at frozen temperatures, your brain activity would be nothing like at 20C, so I'm not sure how large is that risk - people who have been found frozen in avalanches usually (if I remember correctly) did not report they an horrible experience of being frozen when they came back to life.
        pedrosorio 12y ago
        I am not saying it is the case, but awareness does not imply memorization (which, if you think about it, is terrifying). See, for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683150/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683150/
      - blueskin_ 12y ago
        The brain has no electrical activity, so physically impossible (alternatively, if it's possible in a cryonics patient, it would happen in a normal corpse too, in which case people should stop burning/burying them).
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      If you go for neuropreservation, you get a new body (although it possibly means revival later than whole body patient preserved at the same time). As most Alcor patients will die while very old as dying young is generally due to accident or disease (Alcor do have some younger patients, who mostly had terminal illnesses, cancer, or conditions such as AIDS, but also one suicide and one murder victim), it makes sense. It's a common idea to go for whole body while still young, then switch to neuropreservation as you get old where your body would be useless/detrimental if preserved. This also negates the problem of inflation meaning you suddenly aren't insured for enough money for a whole-body preservation too.
  - kubiiii 12y ago
    Plus what companies from 50 years ago are still around?
    - onedev 12y ago
      No matter what happens, we can rest assured that IBM will be around.
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      It's not because companies disappear that assets do. Buildings, machineries, lands, are passed on to new owners. Now I'm not sure in which category of assets "frozen dead body" falls into, though.
      - teddyh 12y ago
        A frozen body is a liability to owners – there is every incentive for them to lose it or otherwise facilitate its loss. There is also no drawback, as there is no one who would notice or complain if they do.
        ekianjo 12y ago
        Not sure... if you have a famous frozen person and the technology to unfreeze people ever comes to be, you could make money on "reviving a legend", kickstarter style, to recover the costs involved during the years.
        teddyh 12y ago
        Fine – that frozen body is an asset. But any random frozen body is not.
        blueskin_ 12y ago
        Not only are they in a contract, but Alcor is only going to be staffed by people committed to advancing the cause of cryonics. They don't have some shady fly by night low bidder maintaining their patients.
  - apsec112 12y ago
    Demanding a particular form of proof, and one which might be impossible to get even if we knew for sure that cryonics perfectly preserved the brain, is a logical fallacy. It's the same type of argument creationists make when they demand biologists give them video footage of monkeys evolving into humans. See eg. http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_not_that/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_....
    - annnnd 12y ago
      I never did that - they just need to prove that reviving (which is the end goal I suppose) is possible. I really don't care how they prove it, I just suggested a pretty good way (IMHO). Also, did anyone read Pet Cemetary? Yeah, it would be nice to be revived, but in what condition?
      - blueskin_ 12y ago
        http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/ tl;dr: A rabbit kidney was vitrified, then revived and successfully implanted into another rabbit which remained healthy.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Because they are a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing the state of life extension via cryonics as their entire goal. They aren't some shady for-profit scheme.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Every DBA knows that in its most basic form, a database is just a big text file. It's the same with a human's memory/personality. Just bits in a brain.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      > It's the same with a human's memory/personality. Just bits in a brain. We barely know how memory works. It is fantastically simplistic to suggest that personality is "just bits in a brain".
    - krisdol 12y ago
      If you don't know how to decompress data, you can't know that your compression is preserving all of the original information. If you backup a system but can't restore from it, you can't know that your backup has enough information to restore from. Same goes for this junk.
- nikcub 12y ago
  > and I don't really get how it's not a bigger operation yet. Overpriced insurance policy based on pseudoscience implemented by a shady industry. What is not to like.
  - kvee 12y ago
    Not sure what you mean. It's not pseudoscience or shady. Still, that's the problem! It's probably physically possible, but we're not making much scientific progress towards making it happen. When I mention cryonics people tend to respond very negatively without engaging rationally. More so than with most anything else. It's sad that it's something you can't say even here on hn. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      > It's probably physically possible Says who ? Just like it may be physically possible to create immortal humans, but it's extremely unlikely we find a way to make it happen anytime soon, and in the meantime your frozen body will be left to rot over time faster than science progresses in that field.
  - baddox 12y ago
    I'm not sure how you can call it "pseudoscience," unless they're making false guarantees about current technology, or if it can be proven that current freezing doesn't prevent information-theoretical death.
    - lutusp 12y ago
      > I'm not sure how you can call it "pseudoscience," unless they're making false guarantees about current technology ... The term "pseudoscience" can be applied to a true result as well as a false one. The term refers, not to the result, but to how it was acquired. An astrologer may predict that you will have a nice day. If you then have a nice day, does that make astrology science?
      - 12y ago
- gcb4 12y ago
  you forgot some 12 "if"s on your comment.
- easytiger 12y ago
  Because there are better things to waste your money on?
- teddyh 12y ago
  “Now, I can think of three really good reasons why you shouldn’t do something like that, George.” 1. The process to revive a person after freezing does not exist. Current speculations about how it would work are so mired and poisoned by wishful thinking that it is essentially impossible to know whether it will ever exist. 2. Even if the process will some day exist, it will be too late for you if you were not frozen correctly. It’s like writing a zip/compress program and speculating that someone in the future might one day invent unzip/uncompress – if unzip or uncompress eventually does appear, it is extremely likely to show bugs in the implementation and/or specification of the original zip or compress program, making all data previously thought to be “compressed” instead utterly corrupt and worthless. 3. The incentives are all wrong for the actual truth to surface. The incentive for a company in this business is to imply that the science is (or will soon be) much farther along than it currently is, and a customer has the incentive to believe this, since the alternative is death. To paraphrase: It is difficult to get someone to understand something, when their life depends upon them not understanding it.
  - kvee 12y ago
    Alcor is a non-profit, and they're not implying anything other than the truth, which is that you're unlikely to get unfrozen, but it'd be cool if somehow you could be and maybe one day someone will figure it out. And this is exactly why more research should be done to figure it out. Human creativity when provided the right incentives and not over-regulated is a pretty powerful thing. Future generations may look back on us as unbelievably primitive and may have trouble believing that we suffered physical death and thought it an inescapable and acceptable part of life.
    - teddyh 12y ago
      > […] maybe one day someone will figure it out. So it’s like Pascal’s wager, except it is a real wager which costs money. > […] more research should be done […] Absolutely, but it is very hard to guard against wishful thinking, which absolutely everybody has an incentive to succumb to. > Future generations may […] have trouble believing that we suffered physical death […] …and there it is.
- jgrahamc 12y ago
  but I'd recommend it if you'd prefer not to die. This appears to assume that your physical body will be enough for you to come back to 'life'.
  - chroma 12y ago
    What else do you think will be necessary?
    - LyndsySimon 12y ago
      A soul, if one exists. Also, I understand that there is a school of thought that "you" are not only the physical body, but the ongoing electrical impulses in your mind. Reviving a brain that without its functional state might be akin to turning on a PC with no operating system installed.
      - ASneakyFox 12y ago
        Or a better anology. Your brain is (possibly) like ram and once you turn it off the data is whiped. So you'd need some thing like a hard drive to store the data on until the brain is powered up again and can be reloaded.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  It's expensive to preserve people near-indefinitely, and they invest their money with that in mind. There are no billions because it doesn't cost that much (~$75,000 for neuropreservation and ~200,000 for whole body). As it is, I think they do very well with their resources - remember that cryonics is still such a small field, and Alcor are the largest company by a significant margin. Not an Alcor member yet, but will be when I can afford it.
- tluyben2 12y ago
  Let's assume they find a way to start waking you up, they will need to experiment for many years getting this process right. The first 100(0?) might wake up and remain in perpetual hell (no sensory input for instance or having some parts of the brain operational and others not) during that experimental time which might take years or might even never end. Exploration of dying & waking up was nicely penned down by dying writer Dennis Potter in http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115230/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115230/ and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115140/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115140/ .
  - Lost_BiomedE 12y ago
    It is assumed that it will be a last in first out type of process.
    - tluyben2 12y ago
      Is it? Anything to read up on that? I would have myself frozen if this was my only worry though; I think the problem of having these vats survive even 100 years is unlikely, let alone more if that would be needed. It feels somehow that people are too optimistic about the whole process. Maybe when I have a lot of money to spare and the doctor brings bad news I will do it. I think I have to move to the US for it though?
      - blueskin_ 12y ago
        Patients can be transferred between dewars if necessary. They are also very well designed, of a sturdy steel construction specifically built to last. they are regularly topped up with liquid nitrogen weekly, but can 3 months if not topped up[1]. You don't have to move to the US, there are organisations around the world who will perform the perfusion and handle shipping in an insulated box of dry ice to Alcor, but you should definitely budget extra. Many also rely on their members to help each other out a bit; you don't need medical training but might be trained by them and help in other ways with other patients; they also often offer a higher priced membership without this provision. An example: http://www.cryonics-uk.com/ http://www.cryonics-uk.com/ As for the cost of the preservation itself, the vast majority of people pay via life insurance rather than directly. [1]http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html#bigfoot http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html#bigfoot
- ASneakyFox 12y ago
  How do those numbers make sense? 300k to maintain a body indefinitely? Then pay for the operation to revive the body? I just don't see it. Not to mention there's nothing you can do to make sure that someone 1000 years from now will see the contract through in good faith.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Long term investment. When your timescale is longer than a human life, suddenly that becomes a lot easier to generate money. Remember that the longest term 'normal' investment funds (outside of banks and individual special cases like Nintendo's $10bn in the bank that is estimated to allow it to survive as a loss maker for 38 years) are probably pensions, which are generally a 50-70 year timeframe.
- simias 12y ago
  Besides the technical discussion in this thread I'd like to question this procedure from an other perspective: Suppose that in, say, 1000 years humanity develops a technology that actually can heal and resurrect people who have been "suspended" that way. What is their incentive to actually do it? I mean, it's hard to make hypotheses about the state of humanity so far into the future, but if we base ourselves on current humanity growth it's unlikely that we'll be in a population deficit any time soon. Especially if we develop technology that allows us to cure death... So basically, imagine if we had a fridge somewhere with a bunch of people from 1000 AD that we could bring back to life if we wished to. It would probably be very interesting to do it for a bunch of them, the most potentially interesting and influential people of the time. But would we bother bringing, say, 100 000 people back? Those people wouldn't be able to function really well in our society and even the best educated of them would have vastly outdated knowledge about practically anything.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Alcor will undertake the process themselves, and large parts of their operating budget are earmarked for this. Then there's the fact that if humanity survives long enough, it's more likely to resemble the Federation from Star Trek than corporate America where healthcare is only available to the rich.
    - LyndsySimon 12y ago
      > Then there's the fact that if humanity survives long enough, it's more likely to resemble the Federation from Star Trek than corporate America where healthcare is only available to the rich. Citation, please.
    - krisdol 12y ago
      nothing about the future is fact.
  - ozgung 12y ago
    We already have that 'fridge' in the form of Pyramids of Giza or other ancient tombs. They even have their 'insurance' and incentives as the treasures and golden coins they are buried with. After thousands of years we are still unable to resurrect them and arguably we wouldn't even if we could.
- MartinMcGirk 12y ago
  >It's a pretty long, annoying process to become a member, but I'd recommend it if you'd prefer not to die. The thing that always disappoints me whenever I read about cryogenic freezing is that people seem to have to already be dead before anyone is allowed to freeze them. From the article: >Just after his legal death was declared Thursday at 9 a.m., Finney’s body was flown to a facility... As of Thursday night, Finney’s blood and other fluids were being removed from his body and slowly replaced with a collection of chemicals... Over the next few days, the temperature of his body will be slowly lowered to -320 degrees Fahrenheit. I always thought that the great selling point of cryo was that if you have some incurable-by-today's-science condition and you are shortly about to die, then you could be frozen instead, and then unfrozen and promptly cured many years later once someone has figured out a reliable treatment. Isn't waiting until you are already clinically dead before having yourself frozen missing the point?
  - nshepperd 12y ago
    You're not actually dead when you're legally dead, in that everything that makes you you is still there in your brain, and it could in theory be restored to working order. Which is the general plan. It's still a shame we have to wait though, because being vitrified while still legally alive would majorly reduce the chances of brain damage due to lack of oxygen (ischemia).
    - DanBC 12y ago
      > You're not actually dead when you're legally dead, in that everything that makes you you is still there in your brain, and it could in theory be restored to working order. That's an extraordinary claim. Do you have any reliable cites for that?
      - lutusp 12y ago
        There are cases where people who were apparently dead for minutes to hours, were then successfully revived. All the cases involved very low temperatures that presumably prevented brain damage. http://www.livescience.com/5060-science-refrigerated-baby-miracle-revival.html http://www.livescience.com/5060-science-refrigerated-baby-mi... Quote: "'There have been a number of well-documented case histories of adults and children who drowned in very cold water, even trapped under ice for hours, and were successfully revived many hours later,' Alistair Jan Gunn, a professor of physiology and pediatrics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, told LiveScience. 'Of course, this is used routinely in modern cardiac bypass.'"
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Whatever the eventual chance of being revived, you have to have some respect for those who just refuse to give up.
- pyrocat 12y ago
  Fear of death + rich == respect?
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    No. Most folk fear death. If the reason that folk got froze was just because they were rich people who feared death, then a lot more of the rich would be doing it. I think many folk who do this are showing a level of extreme bloody mindedness combined with a completely ridiculous gambling streak, that I do sort of respect. I mean, even if it does work, or even worse, half works, you have no fucking clue what madness awaits. The chances of ending up in some Cold Lazarus lab experiment seem to be not completely discountable, seeing that is nearly what you are paying for.
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      Nonzero but still infinitesimal, especially considering Alcor's mission includes reviving its patients itself, and if humanity has the technology to do so, it could easily clone people so wouldn't need to bring back cryonics patients for malicious purposes
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    s/rich/life insurance/ Many Alcor patients are middle class rather than rich.
chroma 12y ago
I thought the comments on some articles were bad, but apparently cryonics takes the crown. It's sad that our community can't discuss this topic without a flamewar. Instead of going back-and-forth in comments, I think it would be much more productive to link to some FAQs or well-written articles from both sides. The current level of discussion is unworthy of us.
- alexjeffrey 12y ago
  > The current level of discussion is unworthy of us. I'm not usually one to be a buzzkill, but I should point out that Hacker News is largely filled with startup coders and small business owners, not trained academics - you can't set your standards too high for rational debate, especially considering the level of religious wars coders start over trivialities like text editor choice, operating system or programming languages (check out any thread that mentions PHP for a great example of group-think flaming).
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  While my own view is self-evident, where it comes to to the anti- side, I have found a fairly even mix of uninformed, interested/well balanced critical, and uninformed/critical for the sake of it comments. It's less civil than most here, yes, but not exactly youtube-level.
kbart 12y ago
Even if one day it will be possible to revive these bodies from the scientific perspective, a huge legal problems would be involved. I mean, they are officially dead. Risk is even bigger if cryogenics became popular - combined with ever increasing population I doubt future politicians will be enthusiastic about the idea of dead people coming back to life.
- kvee 12y ago
  Good problem to have. "In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows." -Superfreakonomics
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  There have been legal precedents in people declared dead in absentia for centuries (e.g. people who were lost at sea, or ran away, who later reappeared). An extension to a doctor declaring someone dead when they are not would be a clear logical step. If humanity survives long enough for revival to be possible, it will have already solved overpopulation problems, as otherwise it would have become extinct in the not-too-distant future.
liotier 12y ago
To hell with seeing the future - build the future today !
- thejosh 12y ago
  All innovators freeze themselves to see a better future, and who is left to build that future? :)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
fideloper 12y ago
Kaaahhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnn!
- Freyskeyd 12y ago
  wat?
- Blueowner 12y ago
  Agree.
- skippednote 12y ago
  back from larakaaaaaaaaaan?
spacefight 12y ago
And once they go bankcrupt, all (or nothing, essentially) is lost.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Not going to happen. They invest for the long term, because when the goal of your company is generations off, you can afford to pick safe yet rewarding investments.
  - spacefight 12y ago
    "Not going to happen" is a bold statement. We haven't even solved the problem of how to burry nuclear waste save (see Germany and their trials at Asse) yet - how are we supposed to safely store human bodies and keep coorporations alive for decades if not centuries?
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      Because there really aren't any companies hundreds to 1500 years old, right? Oh, wait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies
      - spacefight 12y ago
        Of course there are centuries old companies out there - but they didn't have the technical burden of storing along conserved bodies in a near perfect condition with them... Apple, meet Orange.
        blueskin_ 12y ago
        It isn't that hard. Maintaining a building, as well as receiving a weekly delivery of liquid nitrogen and topping up a few dozen giant dewars and monitoring their temperatures. They don't even need weekly deliveries, as they are good for three months without refilling if necessary. http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html#bigfoot http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html#bigfoot Of course, they perform research too, but the core of their existence is the preservation of their patients.
alexjeffrey 12y ago
the thing I find most depressing about cryonics is that the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs for one rich person to desperately attempt to cling to life, in spite of the odds that cryonics is not reversible, would actually save hundreds, if not thousands of lives, today. Maybe instead of having your body frozen in the off chance that you can wake up 100 years old and with no friends, family, or prospects, you should give that money to a charity who will use it to save real lives that are being ended for ridiculous reasons like having no access to clean water or being attacked by malaria-carrying mosquitoes that can be deterred with a $5 net.
- chroma 12y ago
  Your argument applies equally well to experimental cancer treatments. And of course, it applies much much more to luxury goods like fancy cars, fancy houses, swimming pools, vacations, business-class plane tickets, cable TV, etc. The only way to avoid this criticsm is to live like a monk and donate all surplus income to the most effective charity.
  - alexjeffrey 12y ago
    your criticism is correct of the argument that you're countering, but that's not the argument I was making - see my reply to blueskin_ for a clarification/rebuttal. [edit] just so you know, I upvoted your comment to counter a downvote from someone else. You make a strong case, regardless of the fact that it didn't address my original point.
    - kelnos 12y ago
      I think the parent has a fair argument, and I don't think blueskin_ was really off either. Do you know -- actually know -- the current state of the science behind cryonics? If so, good on you, but if not (more likely), how do you know exactly what the probability of being revived later is? People (even not-so-rich people) spend upwards of tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars just to prolong their own life a couple months. How is the cost of that expense more justifiable than even a small probability of being revived in the future and becoming healthy and possibly immortal? In the end, it's a judgment call as to what you do with your money. Unfortunately, fear of mortality and death is a very strong motivator for a lot of people, so we don't necessarily spend money related to death in a particularly optimal way. It's the height of arrogance to suggest that your way is better, or, even if it is objectively better, to impose your views on someone else's use of their money.
afafsd 12y ago
Cryogenics is a bit like Pascal's Wager. A gamble with a low probability of success multiplied by a supposedly-infinite payoff ought to be worth buying into at any price, whether it's paying money to freeze your brain or just worshipping whatever religion is promising to reward your faith with eternal paradise. It suffers from the same problem too. Just as the god of Christianity is in competition with the god of Random-Other-Religion, both of these are in competition with cryogenics. Maybe freezing your head will stop you going to heaven, so now you've got a low-probability infinite cost to set against your low-probability infinite prize.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Specious analogy - with cryonics, there aren't 500 other competing methods of escaping death where picking the wrong one would permanently ruin your chances.
- scott777 12y ago
  I don't follow your logic. If cryonics works then you will be awoken from death as certainly as people who are currently awoken from death via CPR and defibrillators. The people awoken under those circumstances still eventually die and either go to heaven he'll or nowhere but in the meantime they are great full to be alive because of modern medicine. ..why would cryonics be any different? And what criteria do you use to show that the chances are so slim ?
- scott777 12y ago
  It's like saying why opt for CPR when you could simply die and go for heaven if you choose the correct religion. OR as you put it you can't know which God to choose so to heck with religion and CPR as well. That makes no sense and is a misinterpreted version of a pascal's wager.
apsec112 12y ago
For those interested in the science behind cryonics, or who are skeptical that freezing preserves useful brain structure, I recommend reading Alcor's FAQ, which addresses most of the questions commenters new to cryonics have raised: http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/index.html http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/index.html
- teddyh 12y ago
  For a view slightly less likely to be biased, see the Cryonics FAQ: http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/CryoFAQ.html http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/CryoFAQ.html
Yardlink 12y ago
He waited a day or two to be frozen after he died. Doesn't that mean his brain will have already suffered massive damage from oxygen deprivation and be unrecoverable? I thought you would have to freeze yourself before your brain begins to destroy itself. However, that may mean doing it before you die, which could be illegal (assisted suicide) in the US.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  >Just after his legal death was declared Thursday at 9 a.m., Finney’s body was flown to a facility of the cryonics firm known as the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. Sounds like a fairly standard preservation; definitely not days in between. As it is, even if a field perfusion is not performed, cardiopulmonary support plus gradual cooling still massively reduce any chance of brain damage. A standby is when they wait at your deathbed with a doctor, then get to work as soon as you are pronounced dead, including using a machine to perform cardiopulmonary support to circulate oxygen to the brain while cooling. They then start perfusion (replacement of blood with cryoprotectant), normally in the field. Cryonics as assisted suicide would be preferable as an option, but a standby is significantly better than nothing. As it is, several US states have legalised assisted suicide, so it could potentially become an option in those states, but I guess nobody wants the mess of the legal battle to set a precedent. If there was a Swiss cryonics company, it would probably be available as assisted suicide today. See also my other comment on assisted suicide: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8241828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8241828

55 points by akrymski 12y ago

kvee 12y ago

I'm an Alcor member, and I don't really get how it's not a bigger operation yet. This place has people like Hal Finney and Ray Kurzweil as members and is the preeminent option in the field, but it feels like a tiny mom and pop shop. Seems to me like it should be funded with billions, and eventually I'd like to help make it much bigger. It's a pretty long, annoying process to become a member, but I'd recommend it if you'd prefer not to die. I have a $300K policy that covers the $200K suspension and a $100K fund when I wake up. I'd recommend insurance even if you can afford to pay the $200K out of pocket because there's less legal risk that the funds might be tied up in litigation. I got my policy through the only Alcor member insurance agent, Rudi Hoffman, and if you're interested in cryonics, he's probably the best introduction you can get. His number is (386) 788-3773.

annnnd 12y ago
Every DBA knows that there is no point in doing backup if you can't do the restore. Have they revived anyone yet? Even more to the point, why would they revive you? You already paid them.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > Even more to the point, why would they revive you? You already paid them. Agree, there's not much incentive. Plus let's say you wake up as an old man 100 years from now, who is going to take care of your daily needs ? Your immediate family will be long gone, your descendants probably won't care about you, and your skills from 100 years ago will be irrelevant. What a life!
  - superasn 12y ago
    And what if your brain can still feel stuff and you're in a state of extreme discomfort for the next 100 years and since you're frozen you can't make it stop.
    - ekianjo 12y ago
      That would be very creepy indeed. But I guess at frozen temperatures, your brain activity would be nothing like at 20C, so I'm not sure how large is that risk - people who have been found frozen in avalanches usually (if I remember correctly) did not report they an horrible experience of being frozen when they came back to life.
      - pedrosorio 12y ago
        I am not saying it is the case, but awareness does not imply memorization (which, if you think about it, is terrifying). See, for example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683150/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2683150/
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      The brain has no electrical activity, so physically impossible (alternatively, if it's possible in a cryonics patient, it would happen in a normal corpse too, in which case people should stop burning/burying them).
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    If you go for neuropreservation, you get a new body (although it possibly means revival later than whole body patient preserved at the same time). As most Alcor patients will die while very old as dying young is generally due to accident or disease (Alcor do have some younger patients, who mostly had terminal illnesses, cancer, or conditions such as AIDS, but also one suicide and one murder victim), it makes sense. It's a common idea to go for whole body while still young, then switch to neuropreservation as you get old where your body would be useless/detrimental if preserved. This also negates the problem of inflation meaning you suddenly aren't insured for enough money for a whole-body preservation too.
- kubiiii 12y ago
  Plus what companies from 50 years ago are still around?
  - onedev 12y ago
    No matter what happens, we can rest assured that IBM will be around.
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    It's not because companies disappear that assets do. Buildings, machineries, lands, are passed on to new owners. Now I'm not sure in which category of assets "frozen dead body" falls into, though.
    - teddyh 12y ago
      A frozen body is a liability to owners – there is every incentive for them to lose it or otherwise facilitate its loss. There is also no drawback, as there is no one who would notice or complain if they do.
      - ekianjo 12y ago
        Not sure... if you have a famous frozen person and the technology to unfreeze people ever comes to be, you could make money on "reviving a legend", kickstarter style, to recover the costs involved during the years.
        teddyh 12y ago
        Fine – that frozen body is an asset. But any random frozen body is not.
        blueskin_ 12y ago
        Not only are they in a contract, but Alcor is only going to be staffed by people committed to advancing the cause of cryonics. They don't have some shady fly by night low bidder maintaining their patients.
- apsec112 12y ago
  Demanding a particular form of proof, and one which might be impossible to get even if we knew for sure that cryonics perfectly preserved the brain, is a logical fallacy. It's the same type of argument creationists make when they demand biologists give them video footage of monkeys evolving into humans. See eg. http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_not_that/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ph/youre_entitled_to_arguments_but_....
  - annnnd 12y ago
    I never did that - they just need to prove that reviving (which is the end goal I suppose) is possible. I really don't care how they prove it, I just suggested a pretty good way (IMHO). Also, did anyone read Pet Cemetary? Yeah, it would be nice to be revived, but in what condition?
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/ tl;dr: A rabbit kidney was vitrified, then revived and successfully implanted into another rabbit which remained healthy.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Because they are a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing the state of life extension via cryonics as their entire goal. They aren't some shady for-profit scheme.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Every DBA knows that in its most basic form, a database is just a big text file. It's the same with a human's memory/personality. Just bits in a brain.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    > It's the same with a human's memory/personality. Just bits in a brain. We barely know how memory works. It is fantastically simplistic to suggest that personality is "just bits in a brain".
  - krisdol 12y ago
    If you don't know how to decompress data, you can't know that your compression is preserving all of the original information. If you backup a system but can't restore from it, you can't know that your backup has enough information to restore from. Same goes for this junk.
nikcub 12y ago
> and I don't really get how it's not a bigger operation yet. Overpriced insurance policy based on pseudoscience implemented by a shady industry. What is not to like.
- kvee 12y ago
  Not sure what you mean. It's not pseudoscience or shady. Still, that's the problem! It's probably physically possible, but we're not making much scientific progress towards making it happen. When I mention cryonics people tend to respond very negatively without engaging rationally. More so than with most anything else. It's sad that it's something you can't say even here on hn. http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    > It's probably physically possible Says who ? Just like it may be physically possible to create immortal humans, but it's extremely unlikely we find a way to make it happen anytime soon, and in the meantime your frozen body will be left to rot over time faster than science progresses in that field.
- baddox 12y ago
  I'm not sure how you can call it "pseudoscience," unless they're making false guarantees about current technology, or if it can be proven that current freezing doesn't prevent information-theoretical death.
  - lutusp 12y ago
    > I'm not sure how you can call it "pseudoscience," unless they're making false guarantees about current technology ... The term "pseudoscience" can be applied to a true result as well as a false one. The term refers, not to the result, but to how it was acquired. An astrologer may predict that you will have a nice day. If you then have a nice day, does that make astrology science?
    - 12y ago
gcb4 12y ago
you forgot some 12 "if"s on your comment.
easytiger 12y ago
Because there are better things to waste your money on?
teddyh 12y ago
“Now, I can think of three really good reasons why you shouldn’t do something like that, George.” 1. The process to revive a person after freezing does not exist. Current speculations about how it would work are so mired and poisoned by wishful thinking that it is essentially impossible to know whether it will ever exist. 2. Even if the process will some day exist, it will be too late for you if you were not frozen correctly. It’s like writing a zip/compress program and speculating that someone in the future might one day invent unzip/uncompress – if unzip or uncompress eventually does appear, it is extremely likely to show bugs in the implementation and/or specification of the original zip or compress program, making all data previously thought to be “compressed” instead utterly corrupt and worthless. 3. The incentives are all wrong for the actual truth to surface. The incentive for a company in this business is to imply that the science is (or will soon be) much farther along than it currently is, and a customer has the incentive to believe this, since the alternative is death. To paraphrase: It is difficult to get someone to understand something, when their life depends upon them not understanding it.
- kvee 12y ago
  Alcor is a non-profit, and they're not implying anything other than the truth, which is that you're unlikely to get unfrozen, but it'd be cool if somehow you could be and maybe one day someone will figure it out. And this is exactly why more research should be done to figure it out. Human creativity when provided the right incentives and not over-regulated is a pretty powerful thing. Future generations may look back on us as unbelievably primitive and may have trouble believing that we suffered physical death and thought it an inescapable and acceptable part of life.
  - teddyh 12y ago
    > […] maybe one day someone will figure it out. So it’s like Pascal’s wager, except it is a real wager which costs money. > […] more research should be done […] Absolutely, but it is very hard to guard against wishful thinking, which absolutely everybody has an incentive to succumb to. > Future generations may […] have trouble believing that we suffered physical death […] …and there it is.
jgrahamc 12y ago
but I'd recommend it if you'd prefer not to die. This appears to assume that your physical body will be enough for you to come back to 'life'.
- chroma 12y ago
  What else do you think will be necessary?
  - LyndsySimon 12y ago
    A soul, if one exists. Also, I understand that there is a school of thought that "you" are not only the physical body, but the ongoing electrical impulses in your mind. Reviving a brain that without its functional state might be akin to turning on a PC with no operating system installed.
    - ASneakyFox 12y ago
      Or a better anology. Your brain is (possibly) like ram and once you turn it off the data is whiped. So you'd need some thing like a hard drive to store the data on until the brain is powered up again and can be reloaded.
blueskin_ 12y ago
It's expensive to preserve people near-indefinitely, and they invest their money with that in mind. There are no billions because it doesn't cost that much (~$75,000 for neuropreservation and ~200,000 for whole body). As it is, I think they do very well with their resources - remember that cryonics is still such a small field, and Alcor are the largest company by a significant margin. Not an Alcor member yet, but will be when I can afford it.
tluyben2 12y ago
Let's assume they find a way to start waking you up, they will need to experiment for many years getting this process right. The first 100(0?) might wake up and remain in perpetual hell (no sensory input for instance or having some parts of the brain operational and others not) during that experimental time which might take years or might even never end. Exploration of dying & waking up was nicely penned down by dying writer Dennis Potter in http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115230/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115230/ and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115140/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115140/ .
- Lost_BiomedE 12y ago
  It is assumed that it will be a last in first out type of process.
  - tluyben2 12y ago
    Is it? Anything to read up on that? I would have myself frozen if this was my only worry though; I think the problem of having these vats survive even 100 years is unlikely, let alone more if that would be needed. It feels somehow that people are too optimistic about the whole process. Maybe when I have a lot of money to spare and the doctor brings bad news I will do it. I think I have to move to the US for it though?
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      Patients can be transferred between dewars if necessary. They are also very well designed, of a sturdy steel construction specifically built to last. they are regularly topped up with liquid nitrogen weekly, but can 3 months if not topped up[1]. You don't have to move to the US, there are organisations around the world who will perform the perfusion and handle shipping in an insulated box of dry ice to Alcor, but you should definitely budget extra. Many also rely on their members to help each other out a bit; you don't need medical training but might be trained by them and help in other ways with other patients; they also often offer a higher priced membership without this provision. An example: http://www.cryonics-uk.com/ http://www.cryonics-uk.com/ As for the cost of the preservation itself, the vast majority of people pay via life insurance rather than directly. [1]http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html#bigfoot http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html#bigfoot
ASneakyFox 12y ago
How do those numbers make sense? 300k to maintain a body indefinitely? Then pay for the operation to revive the body? I just don't see it. Not to mention there's nothing you can do to make sure that someone 1000 years from now will see the contract through in good faith.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Long term investment. When your timescale is longer than a human life, suddenly that becomes a lot easier to generate money. Remember that the longest term 'normal' investment funds (outside of banks and individual special cases like Nintendo's $10bn in the bank that is estimated to allow it to survive as a loss maker for 38 years) are probably pensions, which are generally a 50-70 year timeframe.
simias 12y ago
Besides the technical discussion in this thread I'd like to question this procedure from an other perspective: Suppose that in, say, 1000 years humanity develops a technology that actually can heal and resurrect people who have been "suspended" that way. What is their incentive to actually do it? I mean, it's hard to make hypotheses about the state of humanity so far into the future, but if we base ourselves on current humanity growth it's unlikely that we'll be in a population deficit any time soon. Especially if we develop technology that allows us to cure death... So basically, imagine if we had a fridge somewhere with a bunch of people from 1000 AD that we could bring back to life if we wished to. It would probably be very interesting to do it for a bunch of them, the most potentially interesting and influential people of the time. But would we bother bringing, say, 100 000 people back? Those people wouldn't be able to function really well in our society and even the best educated of them would have vastly outdated knowledge about practically anything.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Alcor will undertake the process themselves, and large parts of their operating budget are earmarked for this. Then there's the fact that if humanity survives long enough, it's more likely to resemble the Federation from Star Trek than corporate America where healthcare is only available to the rich.
  - LyndsySimon 12y ago
    > Then there's the fact that if humanity survives long enough, it's more likely to resemble the Federation from Star Trek than corporate America where healthcare is only available to the rich. Citation, please.
  - krisdol 12y ago
    nothing about the future is fact.
- ozgung 12y ago
  We already have that 'fridge' in the form of Pyramids of Giza or other ancient tombs. They even have their 'insurance' and incentives as the treasures and golden coins they are buried with. After thousands of years we are still unable to resurrect them and arguably we wouldn't even if we could.
MartinMcGirk 12y ago
>It's a pretty long, annoying process to become a member, but I'd recommend it if you'd prefer not to die. The thing that always disappoints me whenever I read about cryogenic freezing is that people seem to have to already be dead before anyone is allowed to freeze them. From the article: >Just after his legal death was declared Thursday at 9 a.m., Finney’s body was flown to a facility... As of Thursday night, Finney’s blood and other fluids were being removed from his body and slowly replaced with a collection of chemicals... Over the next few days, the temperature of his body will be slowly lowered to -320 degrees Fahrenheit. I always thought that the great selling point of cryo was that if you have some incurable-by-today's-science condition and you are shortly about to die, then you could be frozen instead, and then unfrozen and promptly cured many years later once someone has figured out a reliable treatment. Isn't waiting until you are already clinically dead before having yourself frozen missing the point?
- nshepperd 12y ago
  You're not actually dead when you're legally dead, in that everything that makes you you is still there in your brain, and it could in theory be restored to working order. Which is the general plan. It's still a shame we have to wait though, because being vitrified while still legally alive would majorly reduce the chances of brain damage due to lack of oxygen (ischemia).
  - DanBC 12y ago
    > You're not actually dead when you're legally dead, in that everything that makes you you is still there in your brain, and it could in theory be restored to working order. That's an extraordinary claim. Do you have any reliable cites for that?
    - lutusp 12y ago
      There are cases where people who were apparently dead for minutes to hours, were then successfully revived. All the cases involved very low temperatures that presumably prevented brain damage. http://www.livescience.com/5060-science-refrigerated-baby-miracle-revival.html http://www.livescience.com/5060-science-refrigerated-baby-mi... Quote: "'There have been a number of well-documented case histories of adults and children who drowned in very cold water, even trapped under ice for hours, and were successfully revived many hours later,' Alistair Jan Gunn, a professor of physiology and pediatrics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, told LiveScience. 'Of course, this is used routinely in modern cardiac bypass.'"

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Whatever the eventual chance of being revived, you have to have some respect for those who just refuse to give up.

pyrocat 12y ago
Fear of death + rich == respect?
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  No. Most folk fear death. If the reason that folk got froze was just because they were rich people who feared death, then a lot more of the rich would be doing it. I think many folk who do this are showing a level of extreme bloody mindedness combined with a completely ridiculous gambling streak, that I do sort of respect. I mean, even if it does work, or even worse, half works, you have no fucking clue what madness awaits. The chances of ending up in some Cold Lazarus lab experiment seem to be not completely discountable, seeing that is nearly what you are paying for.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Nonzero but still infinitesimal, especially considering Alcor's mission includes reviving its patients itself, and if humanity has the technology to do so, it could easily clone people so wouldn't need to bring back cryonics patients for malicious purposes
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  s/rich/life insurance/ Many Alcor patients are middle class rather than rich.

chroma 12y ago

I thought the comments on some articles were bad, but apparently cryonics takes the crown. It's sad that our community can't discuss this topic without a flamewar. Instead of going back-and-forth in comments, I think it would be much more productive to link to some FAQs or well-written articles from both sides. The current level of discussion is unworthy of us.

alexjeffrey 12y ago
> The current level of discussion is unworthy of us. I'm not usually one to be a buzzkill, but I should point out that Hacker News is largely filled with startup coders and small business owners, not trained academics - you can't set your standards too high for rational debate, especially considering the level of religious wars coders start over trivialities like text editor choice, operating system or programming languages (check out any thread that mentions PHP for a great example of group-think flaming).
blueskin_ 12y ago
While my own view is self-evident, where it comes to to the anti- side, I have found a fairly even mix of uninformed, interested/well balanced critical, and uninformed/critical for the sake of it comments. It's less civil than most here, yes, but not exactly youtube-level.

kbart 12y ago

Even if one day it will be possible to revive these bodies from the scientific perspective, a huge legal problems would be involved. I mean, they are officially dead. Risk is even bigger if cryogenics became popular - combined with ever increasing population I doubt future politicians will be enthusiastic about the idea of dead people coming back to life.

kvee 12y ago
Good problem to have. "In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows." -Superfreakonomics
blueskin_ 12y ago
There have been legal precedents in people declared dead in absentia for centuries (e.g. people who were lost at sea, or ran away, who later reappeared). An extension to a doctor declaring someone dead when they are not would be a clear logical step. If humanity survives long enough for revival to be possible, it will have already solved overpopulation problems, as otherwise it would have become extinct in the not-too-distant future.

liotier 12y ago

To hell with seeing the future - build the future today !

thejosh 12y ago
All innovators freeze themselves to see a better future, and who is left to build that future? :)
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

fideloper 12y ago

Kaaahhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnn!

Freyskeyd 12y ago
wat?
Blueowner 12y ago
Agree.
skippednote 12y ago
back from larakaaaaaaaaaan?

spacefight 12y ago

And once they go bankcrupt, all (or nothing, essentially) is lost.

blueskin_ 12y ago
Not going to happen. They invest for the long term, because when the goal of your company is generations off, you can afford to pick safe yet rewarding investments.
- spacefight 12y ago
  "Not going to happen" is a bold statement. We haven't even solved the problem of how to burry nuclear waste save (see Germany and their trials at Asse) yet - how are we supposed to safely store human bodies and keep coorporations alive for decades if not centuries?
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Because there really aren't any companies hundreds to 1500 years old, right? Oh, wait. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies
    - spacefight 12y ago
      Of course there are centuries old companies out there - but they didn't have the technical burden of storing along conserved bodies in a near perfect condition with them... Apple, meet Orange.
      - blueskin_ 12y ago
        It isn't that hard. Maintaining a building, as well as receiving a weekly delivery of liquid nitrogen and topping up a few dozen giant dewars and monitoring their temperatures. They don't even need weekly deliveries, as they are good for three months without refilling if necessary. http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html#bigfoot http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html#bigfoot Of course, they perform research too, but the core of their existence is the preservation of their patients.

alexjeffrey 12y ago

the thing I find most depressing about cryonics is that the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs for one rich person to desperately attempt to cling to life, in spite of the odds that cryonics is not reversible, would actually save hundreds, if not thousands of lives, today. Maybe instead of having your body frozen in the off chance that you can wake up 100 years old and with no friends, family, or prospects, you should give that money to a charity who will use it to save real lives that are being ended for ridiculous reasons like having no access to clean water or being attacked by malaria-carrying mosquitoes that can be deterred with a $5 net.

chroma 12y ago
Your argument applies equally well to experimental cancer treatments. And of course, it applies much much more to luxury goods like fancy cars, fancy houses, swimming pools, vacations, business-class plane tickets, cable TV, etc. The only way to avoid this criticsm is to live like a monk and donate all surplus income to the most effective charity.
- alexjeffrey 12y ago
  your criticism is correct of the argument that you're countering, but that's not the argument I was making - see my reply to blueskin_ for a clarification/rebuttal. [edit] just so you know, I upvoted your comment to counter a downvote from someone else. You make a strong case, regardless of the fact that it didn't address my original point.
  - kelnos 12y ago
    I think the parent has a fair argument, and I don't think blueskin_ was really off either. Do you know -- actually know -- the current state of the science behind cryonics? If so, good on you, but if not (more likely), how do you know exactly what the probability of being revived later is? People (even not-so-rich people) spend upwards of tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars just to prolong their own life a couple months. How is the cost of that expense more justifiable than even a small probability of being revived in the future and becoming healthy and possibly immortal? In the end, it's a judgment call as to what you do with your money. Unfortunately, fear of mortality and death is a very strong motivator for a lot of people, so we don't necessarily spend money related to death in a particularly optimal way. It's the height of arrogance to suggest that your way is better, or, even if it is objectively better, to impose your views on someone else's use of their money.

afafsd 12y ago

Cryogenics is a bit like Pascal's Wager. A gamble with a low probability of success multiplied by a supposedly-infinite payoff ought to be worth buying into at any price, whether it's paying money to freeze your brain or just worshipping whatever religion is promising to reward your faith with eternal paradise. It suffers from the same problem too. Just as the god of Christianity is in competition with the god of Random-Other-Religion, both of these are in competition with cryogenics. Maybe freezing your head will stop you going to heaven, so now you've got a low-probability infinite cost to set against your low-probability infinite prize.

blueskin_ 12y ago
Specious analogy - with cryonics, there aren't 500 other competing methods of escaping death where picking the wrong one would permanently ruin your chances.
scott777 12y ago
I don't follow your logic. If cryonics works then you will be awoken from death as certainly as people who are currently awoken from death via CPR and defibrillators. The people awoken under those circumstances still eventually die and either go to heaven he'll or nowhere but in the meantime they are great full to be alive because of modern medicine. ..why would cryonics be any different? And what criteria do you use to show that the chances are so slim ?
scott777 12y ago
It's like saying why opt for CPR when you could simply die and go for heaven if you choose the correct religion. OR as you put it you can't know which God to choose so to heck with religion and CPR as well. That makes no sense and is a misinterpreted version of a pascal's wager.

apsec112 12y ago

For those interested in the science behind cryonics, or who are skeptical that freezing preserves useful brain structure, I recommend reading Alcor's FAQ, which addresses most of the questions commenters new to cryonics have raised: http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/index.html http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/index.html

teddyh 12y ago
For a view slightly less likely to be biased, see the Cryonics FAQ: http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/CryoFAQ.html http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/CryoFAQ.html

Yardlink 12y ago

He waited a day or two to be frozen after he died. Doesn't that mean his brain will have already suffered massive damage from oxygen deprivation and be unrecoverable? I thought you would have to freeze yourself before your brain begins to destroy itself. However, that may mean doing it before you die, which could be illegal (assisted suicide) in the US.

blueskin_ 12y ago
>Just after his legal death was declared Thursday at 9 a.m., Finney’s body was flown to a facility of the cryonics firm known as the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. Sounds like a fairly standard preservation; definitely not days in between. As it is, even if a field perfusion is not performed, cardiopulmonary support plus gradual cooling still massively reduce any chance of brain damage. A standby is when they wait at your deathbed with a doctor, then get to work as soon as you are pronounced dead, including using a machine to perform cardiopulmonary support to circulate oxygen to the brain while cooling. They then start perfusion (replacement of blood with cryoprotectant), normally in the field. Cryonics as assisted suicide would be preferable as an option, but a standby is significantly better than nothing. As it is, several US states have legalised assisted suicide, so it could potentially become an option in those states, but I guess nobody wants the mess of the legal battle to set a precedent. If there was a Swiss cryonics company, it would probably be available as assisted suicide today. See also my other comment on assisted suicide: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8241828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8241828