Frequently Asked QuestionsPage 1 - Basic Questions
A: Cryonics is the practice of using very cold temperatures to stop the dying process when ordinary medicine can no longer sustain life. This is done with the intention of saving a patient's life until a cure for their illness can be found, and means developed to reverse the cryonics process. The technology to reverse cryonics is still theoretical. See About Cryonics. | top |
Q: Has anyone ever been revived? A: No adult human has ever been revived from temperatures far below freezing. Cryonics patients are cared for in the expectation that future technology, especially molecular nanotechnology, will be available to reverse damage associated with the cryonics process. This technology may become a reality a century or more in the future. | top |
Q: Aren't cryonics patients dead? A: Law requires cryonics patients to be legally dead, but this does not mean they are biologically dead. Under ideal conditions, cryonics can begin moments after the heart stops beating. Blood circulation and breathing are then artificially restored, keeping cells of the brain and the rest of the body biologically alive during the early stages of the procedure. The blood chemistry and blood gases (oxygen, carbon dioxide, pH) of a cryonics patient receiving good cardiopulmonary support are similar to those of a legally living person. Cryonics patients are therefore legally dead, but biologically alive, depending on how rapidly procedures are begun after the heart stops. For further clarification of this often confusing issue, please read Cardiopulmonary Support in Cryonics in the Alcor online Library. | top |
Q: How soon after the heart stops must cryonics begin? A: Cryonics procedures should ideally begin within the first one or two minutes after the heart stops, and preferably within 15 minutes. Longer delays place a greater burden on future technology to reverse injury and restore the brain to a healthy state, and make it less likely that the correct original state can be determined. Exactly when such restoration is no longer feasible is a matter of some debate and could be many hours. The greatest impact of delay is that it prevents treatment by chemicals that reduce freezing injury. For further information, see the FAQ question "Doesn't the brain die after 4 to 6 minutes without oxygen?" and the Post-Mortem Cases section of Alcor Procedures.
Q: Isn't the preservation process fatal? A: Cold preservation (cryopreservation) is not yet reversible with present technology, but this says nothing about the abilities of future technology. What is "fatal" varies from place to place and time to time depending on available medical technology. Future medical capabilities should be able to heal and cure in cases that today would be considered hopeless, just as today's medicine would be viewed as miraculous in past centuries. | top |
Q: When will patients be revived? A: That depends on when they are cryopreserved. Cryonics technology is always improving; it is better now (2007) than it was in 2000, which was better than it was in 1990, which in turn was much better than the crude methods used on the first cryonics patients in the late 1960s. Eventually a time will come, perhaps in the mid-21st century, when human suspended animation will be perfected. In other words, it will be possible to routinely turn people "off and on" for medical time travel, space travel and other purposes. As progress continues, it will then become possible to recover people preserved at earlier times, with less perfect methods and greater degrees of injury. Cryonics is a last-in-first-out process, wherein the first in may have to wait a very long time (possibly centuries) to get out. | top |
Q: What about aging and disease? A: There is no point in prolonging life if the result will be illness and debilitation. People are now living longer, healthier lives than their grandparents, and their children will live longer still. By the late 21st century, aging itself will be a treatable, reversible condition as medicine attains full control of the human body at the molecular level. By the time it becomes possible to revive cryonics patients, especially today's cryonics patients, biological aging as we know it today will not exist. In the 19th century, 30% of people living in Paris died of "consumption." Today almost no one in the industrialized world even knows what "consumption" is. | top |
A: The practice of cryonics is justified by three facts:
That is the argument for why cryonics should work, even though it is not reversible today. It should also be realized based on point (c) that people in the early stages of what is considered death today will merely be in cardiac arrest to future physicians, and will be "coded" for resuscitation. Today's limit of 4 to 6 minutes for resuscitation without brain injury will likely expand to an hour or more in the future. That is why people are cryopreserved even if prompt cardiopulmonary support is not possible. | top |
Q: Is cryonics guaranteed to work? A: No. Cryonics can fail in two ways. Either cryonics patients will not remain cryopreserved long enough to reach the medicine they need, or an insufficient record of their mind has been successfully cryopreserved. The likelihood of the second failure mode has been diminishing for years as cryonics technology improves, and will continue to diminish. The risk of inadequate preservation may be ruled out completely within another decade if techniques for transplantable organ banking can be adapted to achieve reversible preservation of the brain. At present, the greatest uncertainty seems to be whether cryonics patients will remain preserved long enough to reach the medicine they need. This includes the risk of socio-economic disruption, and the fact that the general public does not currently regard cryonics patients as people worthy of protection. | top |
Q: If cryonics fails, how will it fail clinically? A: Future medicine will not fail by patients failing to wake up. If patients can be overhauled completely at a molecular level, it's hard to imagine any injury other than complete physical destruction that would not permit repair and restoration to an awake state. The final intractable problem of future medicine will be the problem of amnesia — the problem of information loss following major brain repair. Assuming general repair technologies are reached, the success or failure of cryonics for a particular patient would depend on how much of their original memory and personality survived the preservation and restoration process. Unlike the binary live-or-die outcomes of medicine today, outcomes of future medicine will often be shades of grey. While cryonics under ideal conditions appears to result in good preservation of brain information, cryonics under non-ideal conditions is common and more problematic. It is difficult to say with present science how a given degree of preservation would translate to a given degree of memory retention after extensive repair. One of the purposes of cryonics is to give patients the benefit of the doubt. | top |
A: Cryobiologists are scientists that specialize in cold tolerance in nature and demonstrably reversible cold preservation of cells and tissues. Cryobiologists correctly point out that cryopreservation of whole humans is not demonstrably reversible. Some cryobiologists say that this means that cryonics is not founded on science. This would be correct if cryonics were claimed to be reversible today, which it is not. The claim of cryonics is that it is possible to preserve sufficient biological information today to permit reversal in the future with foreseeable technology. Evaluation of this proposition requires knowledge of cryopreservation methods used in cryonics, knowledge of neuroscience, and knowledge of future technologies proprosed to reverse the process. Very few scientists possess knowledge of all these areas. | top |
Q: How much does cryonics cost? A: Most people pay for cryonics with life insurance, and since the actual cost of that depends on your age and health, to find out your specific cost you would need to shop for life insurance. Alcor offers two options: for whole body preservation you would need a minimum policy of $150,000, and for neuropreservation you would need a minimum policy of $80,000. (Neuropreservation is explained in the Technical Questions section.) Other funding options are available besides life insurance, including trusts, annuities, and prepaid cash or equivalent (for details see Funding Methods). Alcor members also pay annual dues, as explained in the Membership Questions section. | top |
Q: How many members are currently signed up with Alcor? A: For the latest statistics on this, see our membership statistics page. | top |
Q: How many people are cryopreserved at Alcor? A: For the latest statistics on this, see our membership statistics page. | top |
Q: Under what laws does Alcor operate? A: Alcor is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization authorized to accept anatomical donations under the provisions of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA) and Arizona Anatomical Gift Act (AAGA) for research purposes. These are the same state laws that govern medical schools, neurological research banks, and other scientific uses of donated tissue. Several courts have also ruled that decedents or their relatives have the right to choose cryonics based on laws that empower people to choose the disposition of their remains. For further information, read The Legal Status of Cryonics Patients. | top |
Q: Can I be cryopreserved before I legally die? A: No. Current law does not allow freedom of choice in this matter. Since human cryopreservation is not currently reversible, it is under current law a state of legal death. Actively making a person legally dead is a crime regardless of what that person's wishes may be. For this reason, Alcor must wait until illness or injury causes the heart to stop, and for an independent authority to declare that further medical care is not appropriate and that therefore the patient is legally dead. Only after that determination is made can the cryopreservation procedures begin. | top |
Q: Why did you choose the name Alcor? A: In September of 1970, Linda and Fred Chamberlain, the founders of Alcor, were asked to come up with a name for a rescue team for the now defunct Cryonics Society of California (CSC). They believed that people would someday travel to the stars, so they searched through star catalogs and astronomy books, hoping to find a star that could serve as a cryonics acronym. Alcor, 80 Ursae Majoris, was precisely what they had been looking for. It is a dim 5th magnitude star near the bright star Mizar. It roughly fit the acronym Allopathic Cryogenic Rescue. (Allopathy, as opposed to Homeopathy, is a medical perspective wherein any treatment which improves the prognosis is valid.) Alcor has been used for centuries as a test for good eyesight. If you can see Alcor, you have excellent focus and vision. | top | | next page | |
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