Extend life with cryonics pausing the Dying Process
Cryonics is the practice of preserving life by pausing the dying process using subfreezing temperatures with the intent of restoring good health with medical technology in the future. Human embryos are routinely preserved for years at very low temperatures. Adult humans have survived being cooled for up to an hour at temperatures that stop the heart, brain, and all other organs from functioning.
The definitions of death change over time as medical understanding and technology improve. Someone who would’ve been declared dead decades ago may still have a chance today. Death used to be when a person’s heart stopped, then when their heart couldn’t be restarted, and is now being extended further.
Cryonics sounds like Science fiction, but it’s based on modern Science. Life can be stopped and restarted if its basic structures can be preserved. Vitrification can preserve biological structure very well – much better than freezing. Methods for repairing biological structure at the molecular level can now be foreseen. Nanotechnology will lead to the capability of extensive tissue repair and regeneration, including repairing individual cells one molecule at a time. This future nanomedicine could theoretically recover any cryopreserved person where the structures encoding memory and personality remain inferable.
Cryonics procedures, at present time and where is allowed, can begin only after the patients are clinically and legally dead. Procedures may begin within minutes of death, and use cryoprotectants to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation. It is, however with actual technology, not possible for a corpse to be reanimated after undergoing vitrification, as this causes damage to the brain including its neural circuits. The first corpse to be frozen was that of James Bedford in 1967. As of 2014, about 250 dead bodies had been cryopreserved in the United States, and 1,500 people had made arrangements for cryopreservation of their corpses.