Discussion » Statements » Rosie's Corner » One thing led to another as things often do and here I am back from having researched CRYONICS. Ready to share what I found?
RosieG

One thing led to another as things often do and here I am back from having researched CRYONICS. Ready to share what I found?

It is located in Clinton Township, Michigan.

"We specialize in full body cryo preservation of humans and pets."

"Members are afforded the opportunity to be preserved at cryogenic temperatures in hopes that future medical technology may be able to some day revive and restore to future health."

In 2016 there were 145 corpses and 125 pets preserved in tanks

The company was formed in 1976 and moved to their current location in 1993.

Now Cryonics and Cryogenics are not the same thing though there is relationship.

Cryogenics has to do with extremely low temperatures
Cryonics deals with a person's body or body parts being stored in a cryogenic vessel and later be "brought back to life" or defrosted I expect.

Interested?

Posted - February 22, 2021
Tags : None

Responses


  • 19937
    This is not something in which I would be interested.  Once around the block will be sufficient for me, thank you very much. :)
      February 22, 2021 11:00 AM MST
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  • 113301
    It creeps me out bigly. I had no idea there were so many frozen. Why anyone would want to "wake up" to an unknown world of unknown people is beyond me. Thank you for your reply L! :)
      February 23, 2021 5:25 AM MST
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  • 19937
    In a way, it's like being in prison for several decades.  The world in which you come out into is nothing like the world to which you were accustomed.  
      February 23, 2021 10:52 AM MST
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  • 113301
    It could be many decades. So much could go wrong. Perhaps those charged with carrying on are not as devoted or diligent or meticulous! Those who get frozen have such faith. Where does that come from? Desperation? Thank you for your reply L! :)
      February 23, 2021 12:30 PM MST
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  • 19937
    I think someone who wishes to be cryogenically frozen to be brought back at a later date is a egotist who can't imagine the world without him/her.  I have no such desire.  The world will do just fine when I leave this mortal coil.
      February 23, 2021 3:23 PM MST
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  • 113301
    That may well be true L. Honestly I cannot even almost imagine a logical WHY though. What kind of world would you be waking up to? You would certainly not be in charge or in control but at the mercy of others. It's too chancy for me. Even if it were possible (which I very bigly doubt) it would not appeal to me at all. Different strokes. Thank you for your reply! It would be scary and lonely for starters. What's not to love about that right? Happy Wednesday! :)
      February 24, 2021 1:18 AM MST
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  • 19937
    It isn't for me either.  I guess for some, it's a matter of just being able to say they did it.  Why is another story. :)
      February 24, 2021 3:31 PM MST
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  • 113301
    We live in a world that is increasingly becoming more bizarre. Can you imagine back in the day a FOOTOO president? Can you imagine back in the day the weaponized wackadoodlenoodle "dogs of war" at his command to take out the government he was in charge of? I mean even writing those words seems ludicrously absurd. Thank you for your reply L and Happy Thursday to thee and thine! :) This post was edited by RosieG at February 25, 2021 8:58 AM MST
      February 25, 2021 3:15 AM MST
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  • 19937
    I know, I know.  I find it disturbing that Trump holds so much sway with the GOP even out of office.  I find it even more disturbing that he still has so many followers.
      February 25, 2021 8:59 AM MST
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  • 113301
    Well apparently the underbelly of America was waiting for a saviour and along came FOOTOO! The great unwashed unwanted rejected mocked ridiculed shunned found a leader to cling to and you see how well it worked for them? Thank you for your reply L. March 4 is coming. What will it bring?
      February 25, 2021 1:38 PM MST
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  • 19937
    If the powers that be are not prepared for anything that might happen on March 4, then it won't be due to not knowing that these misfits may have something planned.  If something like January 6 should re-occur, then they should all be tear-gassed, water-hosed or any other non-lethal action taken against them.
      February 25, 2021 5:05 PM MST
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  • 113301
    In the meantime life goes on. All the chatter and gibberish and balderdash and babble continues on. Sigh. Thank you for your reply L and Happy Friday to thee! :)
      February 26, 2021 7:57 AM MST
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  • 19937
    Happy Friday. :)
      February 26, 2021 8:35 AM MST
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  • 113301
    :):):)
      February 27, 2021 2:07 AM MST
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  • 3719
    I'm with Spunky on that one.

    I think it a very cynical and frankly very unethical, commercial experiment with absolutely no guarantee of physical, psychological and social success, but a good guarantee of the proprietors' bank-balances.

    I believe in some forms it's not the entire body that is preserved but just the head, hoping that it will become possible to regenerate the body. (Or give a head a donated body, the body being the transplant "organ"?)

    '
    There are points the cryonics companies and their customers don't seem to consider. Or they do but they ignore. Let's stick to the whole-body preservation.... That's bad enough, but the idea of heads-only is too much.  


    The person has to be clinically dead but whisked off for processing extremely rapidly after death because the first part to deteriorate irreparably is the brain, and that happens very quickly. So no time for sitting at the hospital bed-side for a while to say goodbye; but that time-limit also places one huge and very serious clinical obstacle - what level of brain function would survive death, freezing and revival? I imagine that all memory would have gone, putting the revivee in much the same learning, emotional and psychological position as a new-born baby. 

    It raises vital ethical considerations on what is meant by "death"'. That is heavily dependent on personal ideas and beliefs; but also because although the majority of people end in a slow, painless drifting away, the body does not just "switch off". Different parts and systems have already stopped. Now, I don't know the times-limits on these, but post-mortem organ donations for transplants suggest many healthy organs remain healthy for long enough for both decency and re-use; but so far at least the brain is not one of them.

    So let's consider the body might be revived....

    With level of brain function?

    With what general state of health? At best it would be in the same age- and health- state as at death... or was it "death"? 

    Who are the revivees? The Fred & Fred Bloggs who d. 2021? Or two new individual personalities developed in the bodies of and resembling, the Fred and Freda Bloggs of 2021?  

    When will our Fred & Freda be revived? Let's say it will take as much as 100 years of both medical research and -crucially - uninterrupted preservation for it to be both possible and safe routinely to thaw anyone from now.  What sort of society will our couple find themselves in?

    Will they still be in the USA, UK, France, Russia, India they departed; or some new nation and system?

    How much will they have re-learn?

    Will they recognise each other or have to be introduced - "Fred Bloggs, meet Freda Bloggs, your wife" - will they actually still love each other, or fail to have any mutual attraction thanks to their emotions and memories having evaporated like uncorked liquid nitrogen?

    How will the society of 2121 accept revivees from several generations previously? Humanity has never been good at accepting "outsiders" and I think Revivees would be very much outsiders needing very careful integration. They may have no-one they know from their past lives, they would recognise precious little of what they see; they may even have to start learning again how to speak, count, wash, tie their shoe-laces. 

    '
    Even before those, how do you pay for it? A high up-front cost that you would otherwise bequest to your family? An investment trust with  no guarantee of sufficient dividendse to support your preservation and eventual revival an unknown but large number of decades hence? What happens if your own investment fails.....? 

    What happens if the cryonics plant suffers a major breakdown or criminal attack, irretrievably thawing the bodies. Of if the company becomes bankrupt? Or future law makes the process illegal? Fred and Freda had to be clinically dead at the start. So:
    Would the now-destroyed bodies be legally regarded as needing respect but otherwise simply corpses in a mortuary?
    Would turning off the plant be legally the same as closing a mortuary, or be "assisted suicide", manslaughter, or what, in law...?
    Would any surviving friends and relatives who were around at the time of death, then effectively have a second funeral or celebration of life past? Could they have had such a ceremony in the first place, or what?

    ++

    A young and very naïve PM correspondent on another forum raised the concept with me as a sort of latter-day version of the after-life, and wanting it for himself. I did not express my doubts that he could ever afford it, but did comment that I would rather gamble on their being a spiritual after-life, as at least you would not know if it does not exist.

    However, he ask one difficult question about the present-day status of this trade.

    He'd heard news reports that a judge in France had over-ruled a young woman's wish to be cryonically preserved. I think her family had wanted her wishes granted. My keyboard-pal's view, with no analysis, was that this was murder, and will stop anyone else having the service, in France at least. So I knew what were talking about, I read the web-site for a cryonics company - in one of the USA's torrid States, rather ironically. Very impressive it looked too - lots of white tiles, shiny equipment and smiling (I think) people in surgical scrubs. 

    I pointed out that first, we were not certain if she was already preserved; but anyway do know that clinically she should have to have died by all present medical and legal definitions before being frozen, and you cannot "murder" a dead body.

    Also, neither he nor I know French law and judicial processes; but I was sure the judge would have considered all the evidence and arguments in the context of legal, social and medical norms now; and the possible legal, social and biological outcomes of cryonics preservation. I expect he had every sympathy for the family but had to think far more widely than simply granting one individual's wish.

    This the same correspondent who had once waffled on about something else nearly as grim he'd found, people wanting a fully-sealed coffin they and he naïvely believe somehow "preserves" the body intact. It doesn't, of course.


      February 23, 2021 5:15 AM MST
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  • 113301
    You, as usual, bring up many levels regarding this I was unaware of or had not considered. But here's my thought. Why would I want to "wake up" in a society unknown to me among complete strangers? I wouldn't. I'd have no idea about the integrity morals honor ethical or other considerations of that society. In fact would I even understand what any of that was? If I couldn't speak the language how would I communicate my fears or issues? If I had a functioning brain of whom could I ask the questions that would be begging to be asked? So there I am a lump of flesh surrounded by a sea of Homo saps who looked at me as if I were a curiosity...which I would be. Something anomalous in a zoo? Put in a research lab to further test? What kind of life could I possibly have? I see no light at the end of that tunnel. How and why anyone does puzzles me. Perhaps a tinge of insanity or other mental defect/damage? I think it is illogical. Kinda creepy. Another Frankenstein's project? Not my cuppa tea. Thank you for your reply Durdle! :) This post was edited by RosieG at February 23, 2021 5:35 AM MST
      February 23, 2021 5:34 AM MST
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  • 3719

    Yes - those are all questions the cryonics companies would not want you to ask.

    They cannot honestly guarantee anyone would "wake up" at all because even if it proved medically possible, it is impossible to guarantee that the facilities would be operating for long enough. Though how would anyone prove it would work, is anyone's guess...

    Allegedly one of the leaders in this has received an award for managing to revive rabbits, but that's a small animal and the time involved would have been fairly short - and the award was within the trade, not from a recognised scientific or medical advancement organisation.

    I think it foolish to pay good money for this "service",  but I do not associate silly decisions with a "mental defect". Perhaps it exploits a mixture of natural fear of being dead, vanity and possibly curiosity.

    One of the primary reasons for religion was to offer some sort of continuing life, but at least religions define that as existing as a "soul" and recognise that the body dissolves away. Perhaps for some, cryonics offers a chance of a corporeal "after-life" or "re-incarnation".

    Cost? Newsweek asked: $36000 for the whole body, $12000 for a head.

    It seems the body needs treating within  minutes of death, by infusing it with chemicals that prevent ice forming, as that would damage or destroy the brain for a start.

    This is how Newsweek summed it up:
    "

    n pursuit of life everlasting, some turn to God. Others turn to science. Or rather, something science-ish.

    If
    you've ever hoped to be cryogenically frozen, you might come across a
    legal hurdle: while human cryonics is legal in several countries, you
    have to be dead before going into the cryonics tank. Otherwise, freezing
    someone alive is tantamount to killing. So, as it is, you can only get
    your dead body or head frozen—and when thawed, you'd still be dead.

    This
    doesn't deter some people, who simply hope to be cryopreserved until
    the day comes that humanity masters the art of resurrection, so
    scientists can re-animate them and cure their ailments. Or upload their
    consciousness into the cloud. Whichever comes first.  "

     
    I like that last sentence! Note though the comment that you'd be dead when frozen, and still dead when thawed.  The magazine goes on to relay The Telegraph reporting that one cryonics company considering setting up in a country where euthanasia is legal, to  bypass some of the legal barriers.

     Creepy? Oh, definitely very unsettling and bizarre. Naked exploitation too....

      February 24, 2021 2:54 PM MST
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  • 113301
    Yikes Durdle. That's all I can think of to say is YIKES! Somewhere in the GREAT BEYOND some folks think life awaits them again. Here's another question. Why would I want to come back looking like that? I mean presumably I'd be old (I am old) and even if what killed me was a disease for which they'd found a cure I'd still have only a certain amount of time left to live until age took me out. It certainly doesn't appeal to me at all at any level. Why it does to others I cannot fathom! I think I shall ask that question. Thank you for your thoughtful and INFORMATIVE reply. I appreciate it bigly! :)
      February 25, 2021 4:19 AM MST
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  • 3719
    I can't understand it either, but the idea of such preservation obviously appeals to enough people for the cryonics companies to invest in very expensive facilities while still looking forwards to handsome profits and dividends.

    I wonder how many of the owners will have their bodies "preserved" ?

    ====

    I'm feeling very un-preserved today. First Covid vaccination yesterday, and I had a sleepless night and am now feeling utterly washed-out! I did know something like this might happen, and the centre gave me the medical-information slip that comes with each dose. 
      February 25, 2021 10:06 AM MST
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  • 113301
    Which one? D'ya know? Well getting a shot is better than not. Apparently 40% or so of Americans don't plan to so what happens to us is unknown. We haven't gotten ours yets. I'm hoping holding out will give us a chance to get the Johnson and Johnson. New worries. There are variatns that are more deadly and spread faster. Whether the original formula people are getting will work for that no one knows. Pincushioning is our future? Thank you for your reply Durdle and good luck with any side effects! :)
      February 25, 2021 1:34 PM MST
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  • 3719
    So far at least the Covid variants have not been too difficult to deal with, but the British authorities are busily trying to trace those who brought the so-called Brazilian one home. This one does seem tougher and more dangerous. 

    These things can mutate fairly easily, so because the disease is world-wide it is very possible there are other strains yet to be identified , already around.

    The side-effects only lasted a couple of days. I was still a bit weak on the second day but definitely better than on the night of the vaccination.


    Good lick with yours! 
      March 3, 2021 2:31 PM MST
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  • 113301
    Thank you Durdle. Good luck to you too and to all of us everywhere. You've probably heard by now that TEXAS and MISSISSIPPI will now be maskless and "back to normal" with everything open 100%! I expect FLORIDA has been doing that for awhile too. All the "red" states who kowtow to FOOTOO will likely fall in line follow suit and go maskless and open up 100% too. Which leaves us where? BACK TO SQUARE ONE or even worse? There's no accounting for no-accounts so I won't even try. Thank you for your reply! :)
      March 4, 2021 5:07 AM MST
    0