In my effort to have an interesting and easy senior year, I signed up for a class titled "Monsters, Medicine, and Myths". After our first class, I became afraid that the class would be of little interest. And then I started my homework for the week and one of our topics was on cryonics.
This is the question we had to answer: Is cryonics science or bovine fertilizer? What is the basis for your opinion?
Here's how I replied:
The main question the cryogenics raises in my head comes from when the preserved person is ‘restored’ and returns to ‘life’. What is this person living for? The family they knew is gone, their friends are gone, they no longer have a job, the culture has changed so many times they would be like Brendan Fraser in the movie “Blast from the Past”. Besides, you’re still going to die.
In the FAQ section of the Alcor site http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq01.html they openly state that they don’t have the technology to revive someone from the preserved state they put them in.
“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 the cryonics process.”
People are being frozen in hopes that someday the technology will exist for them to be revived. Seriously? You couldn’t find a better way to spend your money? You don’t think there is a homeless person who would like a few hot meals and some clean clothes, or an orphan child in a third world country who could use some clean water, food, and maybe a place to live that doesn’t leak when it rains? Regardless of the technology or “science” involved in cryonics, I feel that it is ridiculous. I feel that this a prime example of how me-centered we’ve become and how little regard we show for others. Alcor requires a minimum insurance policy for their neuropreservation of $80,000.
I’ve learned about a few organizations who are trying to provide clean water, something we take for granted, to the people of Africa. One recent organization I heard about was the Mocha Club. On their website https://www.africanleadership.org/mochaclub/welcome, they outline what your money can do. If $7 can provide clean water to 7 Africans for one year, then 11,428 Africans can have clean water for a year for $80,000. 70 people could have clean water for a year for $70. $350 would provide clean water for 7 people for 50 years. $80,000 could give 1600 people clean water for 50 years.
But instead people decide to freeze themselves. They would rather live a full life, be frozen for an indefinite period of time and revived when then whole world has changed, instead of do an incredible amount of good.
I don’t care about the science behind cryogenics. I care about what else people could be doing with their resources and there is a lot that can be done.
This is the question we had to answer: Is cryonics science or bovine fertilizer? What is the basis for your opinion?
Here's how I replied:
The main question the cryogenics raises in my head comes from when the preserved person is ‘restored’ and returns to ‘life’. What is this person living for? The family they knew is gone, their friends are gone, they no longer have a job, the culture has changed so many times they would be like Brendan Fraser in the movie “Blast from the Past”. Besides, you’re still going to die.
In the FAQ section of the Alcor site http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq01.html they openly state that they don’t have the technology to revive someone from the preserved state they put them in.
“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 the cryonics process.”
People are being frozen in hopes that someday the technology will exist for them to be revived. Seriously? You couldn’t find a better way to spend your money? You don’t think there is a homeless person who would like a few hot meals and some clean clothes, or an orphan child in a third world country who could use some clean water, food, and maybe a place to live that doesn’t leak when it rains? Regardless of the technology or “science” involved in cryonics, I feel that it is ridiculous. I feel that this a prime example of how me-centered we’ve become and how little regard we show for others. Alcor requires a minimum insurance policy for their neuropreservation of $80,000.
I’ve learned about a few organizations who are trying to provide clean water, something we take for granted, to the people of Africa. One recent organization I heard about was the Mocha Club. On their website https://www.africanleadership.org/mochaclub/welcome, they outline what your money can do. If $7 can provide clean water to 7 Africans for one year, then 11,428 Africans can have clean water for a year for $80,000. 70 people could have clean water for a year for $70. $350 would provide clean water for 7 people for 50 years. $80,000 could give 1600 people clean water for 50 years.
But instead people decide to freeze themselves. They would rather live a full life, be frozen for an indefinite period of time and revived when then whole world has changed, instead of do an incredible amount of good.
I don’t care about the science behind cryogenics. I care about what else people could be doing with their resources and there is a lot that can be done.
posted by Jen at
1/21/2007 09:39:00 PM
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