“Cryonics (often mistakenly called "cryogenics") is the practice of cryo-preserving humans or animals that can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine until resuscitation may be possible in the future. The process is not currently reversible, and by law can only be performed on humans after legal death in anticipation that the early stages of clinical death may be reversible in the future”
– Wikipedia Definition
Recently, I heard a story from the TV about an American lady decided to “cryonics” herself before she finished her last breath. Put it into simple, Cryonics is the term for freezing humans to prolong life. People who chose to have Cryonic has a common belief that future medicine will enable molecular-level repair and regeneration their body, disease and aging are also assumed to be reversible after decades or a century. The program also said that people can have different options when doing a cryonics process: for entire body frozen is AUD$160,000, or just have the head preserved at the cut rate of AUD$80,000. The rationales of those who choose the head-only option are hoping that when they are brought back to life, science will give them new bodies as people don't want to bring someone 99.5 years old back in a 99.5-year-old body. The “company” Alcor who provides cryonics services claimed itself is a non-profit organization (located in Scottsdale and Arizona).
Similar to most of the experts and scientists, I am very skeptical about the reversibility of the processes. Although science already have shown that a frozen rabbit kidney can be defrosted and successfully reimplanted it in the living animal, restoring a frozen kidney to an animal in a lab is still a very long way from bringing back to life a human being. No-one has been able to capture the vast complexity of thoughts, memory and personality that makes us what we are. So, for me it is also ethically unacceptable.
Science fiction now is becoming science fact on a daily basis. It is just like what happens in the animation Futurama. Well I would like to live as long as I can, but definitely I don’t want to “prolong” my life for decades or centuries by this kind of freezing process.
Links:
News story: Back from the dead
If you want to bet on the future medicine: Cryonics Institute
1 comment:
"Science fiction is now becoming,,,,". Yes, true, never been such a mess.
Post a Comment