What is Cryonics? [UPSC Science & Technology Notes]

Peter Thiel, who is a co-founder of Paypal, revealed that he signed up to keep his body cryogenically frozen after his death in hopes of future revival. This news has brought cryonics, the low-temperature freezing and storage of human remains, with the speculative hope that resurrection may be possible in the future, into the limelight. In this article, we cover what the technology is all about from the IAS exam perspective.

What is Cryonics?

Alcor Life Extension Foundation describes cryonics as an ‘Ambulance to the Future’.  

• Cryonics technology involves preserving legally dead patients in sub-freezing temperatures in a vacuum-insulated metal box using liquid nitrogen instead of electricity to guard against power outages and lower maintenance costs.
• Those opting for cryopreservation must subscribe to the life insurance policy that will pay for neuro-preservation or whole-body preservation during death.
• Various institutes and startups provide for cryopreservation such as Cryonics Institute in Michigan, Berlin-based Tomorrow Biostasis, KrioRus in Russia, and startups in Australia and England. 
• No company has so far revived a cryopreserved human patient but embryos are often cryopreserved and can be revived later.

How can dead patients be revived?

• The Brain Preservation Foundation says that only the brain needs to be revived and not the body as the foundation believes that the brain can survive years of shutdown.
• However, Alcor says that in order to successfully revive, the technology must ensure that the patient’s own cells regrow a body that matches its preserved brain.
• Elon Musk proposed the idea of cyborgs which involve mounting human minds into robotic exoskeletons.
  • Cyborg is a machine that looks like a human or a being that is partially human in nature.

Implications of Cryonics

• Reviving a person after many years will give rise to complex problems as the world would have changed in the meantime.
• Persons who are in memory of the brain won’t exist and there is also a question of the legal status of the person.

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