Cryonic Suspension

Last updated 20-8-97
By Henry Kluytmans.

For somebody who does not believe in an afterlife, this is the solution nearest to "reincarnation" .

This is a concept which arose out of rational scientific thinking, this is no pseudoscience.

The goal is not transportation to the future but SURVIVING !

First I have to destroy a misconception. The purpose of cryonic suspension is not to transport a healthy person to the future, where he continues his life unaltered. Cryonic suspension is intended for people who don't want their lives ended, forced by natural causes. People who do not want to accept the short standard life expectation imposed on them by natural evolution. It is clear that, in the not all to far future, the human life expectancy will be extended with a considerable amount. The same technology used for that purpose will also make it feasible to recover people from cryonic suspension, after which they can continue their lives, however with the prospect of a much longer and healthier life.

Maybe these new medical technologies will be available sufficiently quick, to even safe most of the currently living people. However the chances are considerable that diseases or accidents (if not old age) will end life prematurely.

Cryonic suspension is ONLY intended to be used as a last remedy, when the body cannot be kept functioning with the currently available medical technologies.

Although precautions can be taken to minimize the damage caused by freezing, such damage cannot be eliminated completely. However damage is not the same as destruction. A structure which has only be damaged, can in principle be repaired. Future science and technology will probably be able to heal most diseases, to repair freezing damage, and to hold aging or even reverse it. Although the time required for the development of these technical capabilities is open for debate, the basis for these future technologies is very plausible. At a temperature of liquid nitrogen (-196 degrees Celsius) biological structures which have to be repaired can be kept millions of years, with almost no change.

Physical immortality

The most urgent problem facing us is not social - economic - political. The most pressing problem facing us all everywhere is death. All other human constraints are derivative. So long as there is death no one is free. So long as there is death we cannot upgrade the basic quality of life. The elimination of death has never been on anyone's agenda because throughout the ages we were never able to do anything about it. Today for the first time ever we are significantly slowing down the aging process. We are devising more and more spare parts for malfunctioning body organs. We are slowly learning to transfer intelligence. Other extraordinary advances are now on our launching pads. Immortality is now a question of when - not if. The elimination of death will not do away with problems. It will take away the tragedy in human life. Once we attain immortality everything will be possible.

(by FM-2030)

We are living in an era where one of the most profound changes ever, is appearing at the horizon : "the end of death" Regrettably many, most or maybe even all of us will not live long enough to experience this grand liberation. However cryonic suspension offers a person that dies now, a reasonable chance to be transported to the period where this biological death sentence does not exist anymore.

Whatever the mechanisms responsible for aging are, they are biological or biochemical and therefore susceptible to (future) human intervention, they can be controlled or reversed. Aging is not inevitable barrier for human ingenuity, just like gravity, which is a law of nature, made it impossible to build machines that fly.

Often it is claimed that death is necessary to remove old inflexible persons from their seats of power so humanity can progress. But when technology has concurred aging, old persons will be just a vital as young people and will also have a young and healthy body. Human minds will continue to grow without becoming inflexible and rigid. Hundreds of years of acquired knowledge and wisdom by minds that do not age could prove themselves as valuable assets for humanity. Such individuals would certainly be more farsighted and caring for the future environment, because they will expect to still be there in the future.

When people become immortal this will create overpopulation

An often heart argument against the social desirability of immortality is the resulting overpopulation. The weakness of this argument can be concluded from the following counter arguments:
  • When there is exponential growth this will result in overpopulation anyway, with or without the immortality of the preceding generation, because in both cases the growth will remain exponential. So in both cases a population limit will be reached, however in the first case only some 30 years earlier.
  • There is still sufficient living room on the Earth. The present limiting factor is not lack of room but the production of food and raw materials. New technologies will result in ever more raw materials (and also food) per head in the future. In the future., in principle there could be room on Earth for more than a 100 billion people.
    To create an impression of the factual space occupied by the total population of the Earth at this moment imagine this : "The complete worldpopulation could fit in a cube of a mere two cubic miles (assuming an average body volume of two people per cubic yard) Such a cube could be placed in a corner of the Grand Canyon without being noticed." Overpopulation is only a function of technology.
  • Emigration to outer space will be utilized in the future. In space the human population could continue exponential growth for a long time.
  • In general it holds that when populations are getting more prosperous its reproduction rate decreases. A society sufficiently advanced to create immortality will very certainly have a very low reproduction rate.
  • If you're being told that there is overpopulation and people are required to commit "euthanasia", would you volunteer? Or asked differently : "Do you love your life?"

A life after death ?

Why do people believe so easily without any prove in a god, supernatural phenomenona, UFO's, or souls, even when there are no scientific motivations. Apparently such issues are simply accepted by most people (probably because of emotional reasons). I suspect upbringing and education to play a mayor role in this. During their childhood most people are still being imprinted that a god exists, this without any proof or reason.

This however does not mean that a belief in a soul (or "holy spirit") contradicts with the cryonics concept. The fact that frozen embryos have developed into normal and healthy adults demonstrates that cryonic suspension does not eradicate the "soul".

Why freeze, if we can't even restore frozen people. !

Freezing is a treatment which keeps the body (or at least the essential parts) in a chemical stasis. (And biology only consists out of chemical processes.) This means that all chemical (and therefore also biological) processes are stopped. It is the intention to use this treatment only when the body (mind) cannot be kept functioning with the current medical technologies. The body can be preserved until new technologies become available that can restore the body to a healthy and functioning state. (Aging is considered a disease too.)

In frozen condition at a temperature of liquid nitrogen (77 Kelvin) chemical processes are not stopped completely, but they are slowed by a factor of millions times millions (more than 10^14 times). However because of the freezing and coagulation of the medium in which all biological chemical processes occur, (mostly water, for cryonic suspension mixed with glycerol), the molecules cannot move, and therefore are not able to come into contact with any potential reagent. Chemical processes are not only slowed down to an almost stop but can simply not occur. This way the body can be preserved for at least a thousand years (if not longer) without any biological deterioration.

Considering the technological progress of the last 100 or 200 years, and taking into account the exponential developments to be expected, one can assume that within a at least a thousand years (but probably more like a hundred), technologies will become available that will be able to completely repair the body (or even improve it).

It is extremely important that all essential information necessary for the repair of the body (including the mind) is preserved by freezing. About this there is no consensus yet. In the DNA all information is stored to create a exact duplicate of the original body. This has been proven in practice by the demonstration of cloning animals.

More important than the body though, is the mind. Personality, identity, memories, skills, passions, tastes, temperament and habits are all part of the mind. The mind is almost certainly stored in the connections between the neurons (i.e. the synapses of the brain-cells) in your brain. The geometrical structures of the connections are unmistakably preserved by freezing at a temperature at 77 Kelvin. However also the chemical structures of the connections are important, if these are sufficiently preserved is a little bit harder to determine.

I myself am completely convinced that the mind is stored in the neural network of brain. Although there has not been reached a consensus among scientists, almost all neuro-biologists agree that the complex behavior of the network of connections between the neurons is sufficient to explain the emergence of the human mind.

Some people think that the molecules in the walls of the dendrites function as quantum computing systems. In that case the complexity of the mind should even be orders of magnitude larger. However it seems very unlikely that there can exist coherent quantum systems in the so called microtubules in the walls of dendrites. People who are submitted to a NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) scan are not experiencing any thinking problems. The enormously strong alternating magnetic fields should certainly disturb any coherent quantum systems and therefore disturb the thinking process. Furthermore there seem to be no explanations how these quantum systems are supposed to communicate with the normal neural processes in the brain.

The crucial question is : "Is the biological basis of consciousness and identity irretrievably destroyed by the damage caused by freezing?" Nobody can answer this question for certain as long as science has not determined the physical basis of consciousness and identity.

Why is the "soul" stored in the brain.

  • Injuries to the brain created by diseases or accidents mostly damage specific mental functions depending on the physical location of the damage.
  • Through electrostimulation of specific areas in the brain it is possible to induce certain mental states (like specific memories, desires or emotions)
  • Cutting the corpus callosum (the connection between both halves of the brain) results in an almost independent functioning of both halves thereby creating two separate mental systems (i.e. two identities)
  • By using chemical drugs mental conditions can be influenced in a predictable way
From all these facts it appears that almost all aspects of the human "spirit" (mind) can be linked to physical locations or physical processes in the brain. This leads to the strong assumption that the "spirit" is completely stored in only the physical matter of the brain.

Since several decennia artificial neural networks of a hundred (or more) simulated neurons are used in computer software to perform tasks of pattern recognition (like optical character recognition or speech recognition). However although we can train such networks to perform the tasks we want, we still are unable to analyze why they can do what they do. If we cannot do this for such simple networks we can certainly not understand how a neural network of a hundred billion neurons (the human brain) functions. If simple neural networks can already display such complicated behavior it is a quite logical assumption that the human spirit only emerges from the complex behavior of a very large neural network.

Of course there are many people who keep claiming that there exists something like a non-physical spirit. Most people do! This assumption can however never be scientifically tested, therefore it is called a belief. I myself do not believe this. Everybody can make claims that cannot be tested. The present method of practicing science, from which arose our current technological civilization, has only succeeded so marvelously because only those issues are examined that can be tested or proven. It has no practical use and it is a waste of resources to put any effort in examining issues that cannot tested. (Occams razor)

Why is it likely that freezing conserves the "soul"

  • Experiments have proven that simple worms preserve their memory after being frozen for a certain time.
    The experiments concerned a simple worm with a neural network consisting of only a hundred neurons (the nematode). These worms demonstrate to develop a preference for the temperature of the environment in which they grow up. Worms that grow in a cold environment appear, when fully grown, to move to locations with a corresponding temperature. This preference that has been learned must in some way be stored in its neural network. During an experiment a hundred worms were grown in a cold environment and another hundred worms in a warm environment. After being frozen at a temperature of frozen nitrogen it appeared that all surviving worms (90%) preserved their preference. This is a prove that neural structures that store experience are preserved during freezing. The human neurons only differ slightly from other organisms like these worms.
  • Experiments where the brains of cats were frozen did not show any difference between the EEG measurements prior and after the freezing. Of course this is no direct evidence but it is a strong indication because it has been demonstrated that EEG measurements are strongly correlated to the thought processes that occur in the brain. A similarity between the EEG measurements therefore strongly suggests a similarity between the thought processes taking place.
  • Human embryos that have been frozen have developed into healthy adults.
  • Microscopic research of frozen brain tissue shows that the connections between the neurons remain intact.
  • Various higher mammals (e.g. dogs and bavians) have been cooled for multiple hours to a temperature just above the freezing of water (to about 1 degree celsius) and afterwards have been warmed back to normal body temperature. The animals appeared not to have suffered any brain damage and were able to function normally again.

Why is it likely that technology will arrive (probably within a hundred years) capable of recovering frozen people.

During the freezing process (especially using the current imperfect methods) often molecular damage is created. To repair these damages medical techniques are necessary that can surgically intervene inside a cell, i.e. that can perform molecular operations. It is clear that this is only possible using a kind of technology at the molecular scale. If not dry nanotechnology than it should be the wet form.

With dry nanotechnologie is meant the kind of Molecular Nanotechnology using microscopic cell-repair-robots, described elsewhere on this website.

Wet nanotechnology is aimed at the getting control over the existing biological molecular machines. By applying genetic manipulation methods it is possible to develop new type of polypeptides (de novo protein design). Using an advanced form of this technique one must think about artificially designed viruses for cellular repair tasks.

Because of the foreseeable development of molecular nanotechnology, cryonic suspension has changed from a wild guess aimed at the far future into a plausible and scientifically medical option (that regrettably has not been generally accepted by society yet).

Using theoretically applied molecular nanotechnology it is now at last possible to create realistic technical scenarios on how to repair frozen bodies in the future to make them biologically functioning again.

Is aging a curable disease ?

Aging appears to be due to a limited number of factors:
  • build in genetic programming (like the Hayflick cell division limit)
  • damage of genetic information by free-radicals and other agents
  • occurring of undesired crosslinkings in functional molecules, that cannot be repaired by the cell itself
  • accumulation of various kinds of "garbage" from internal and external sources that is not eliminated, and "clogs" biological function.
Future medical technology should be able to undo these causes by :
  • change the genetic code concerning aging by direct manipulation in the DNA
  • repair damaged genes and reduce access of free radicals to the DNA
  • undo cross-linking and repair or replace damaged structures
  • engineer nanorobots or other means to remove accumulated body garbage from the cell interiors.
It is clear that to perform these tasks methods are necessary that can manipulate at a molecular scale (i.e. molecular nanotechnology).

The production of free radicals is a function of the speed of metabolism of the cell. From experiments with rats that were fed only an absolute minimum amount of food during their lives, it appeared that their lifespan could be considerably extended (to about twice the natural time!). This seems to be caused by a lower production rate of free radicals and waste chemicals in the cells. Regrettably for most people it is practically impossible to submit to such a radical restriction of caloric food intake. (However a very few people actually do seem to practice this so-called "caloric restriction" therapy in practice. )

What is the procedure.

When the supply of blood to the brain has stopped almost within minutes processes will start that will damage the brain cells internally. After a certain amount of time (it is not determined exactly yet but it is couple of hours) also the structures that are information critical will be affected. Therefore the cooling and freezing process has to be started as quickly as possible.
  • Specific drugs, especially calcium blockers and heparine (blood thinner), are administered. Calcium blockers interfere with the chemical degradation of certain proteins that are essential for memory preservation.
  • Immediately after stopping the bloodflow the body will be cooled down to a temperature just above freezing using an ice/water mixture. At this low temperature the remaining metabolism (the chemical processes) in the cells will be slowed down several times. This creates some extra time for performing the next actions.
  • A heart-long machine is connected to perfuse the blood out of the body. (Also some extra oxygen and food is added for supplying to the tissues)
  • Flush the body is with a cryo-protectant liquid (consisting mainly of glycerol). Contrary to water this liquid does not expand when freezing and also does not form any crystals that can do damage.
  • Then the body is frozen to the temperature of dry ice (i.e. frozen carbon dioxide). If necessary the body can now be transferred to the facilities to lower the temperature further.
  • Finally, controlled by a computer, the temperature is lowered to the temperature of liquid nitrogen (77 Kelvin = -196 Celsius ), this is done very slowly (to prevent irregular swellings that can result in cracks).

What if there is a power failure.

Frozen bodies or heads or contained in a sort of big thermosflask. This flask is continuously being filled with liquid nitrogen because the nitrogen is evaporating continuously to keep the temperature low. Liquid nitrogen can purchased from various industrial suppliers for about 50 cents per liter. Only if all these suppliers would be deprived of electrical power for a prolonged period of time (weeks or months) this would result in problems. I.e. : the whole world deprived of energy for multiple months. This seems very unlikely.

What are the costs.

A typical cryonic suspension arrangement for only $200 a year! (i.e. a twenty year life insurance of about $75.000) Furthermore a $300 a year are required for a cryonic first aid service. Then a team will stand by to "put you on ice" as fast as possible in case something should happen.

For people with very small budget the cheapest possibility is a whole body suspension using a simple procedure for only $28.000, offered by the Cryonics Institute. For a typical person this means an insurance policy of about a $100 per year. This seems to me like a small price to pay for immortality...

Links for more information :


You can never be to quick making your cryonic suspension arrangements. Accidents happen ....

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