I just saw a segment on Fox News (Shepherd Smith's evening show) that said that Greg Fahy is going to announce the ability to restore animal kidneys to full function after freezing them to deep subzero temperatures. I visted Greg in his lab over a decade ago when he was doing organ preservation research for the Red Cross in Rockville, Maryland, and he was doing some breakthrough work with rabbit kidneys then. According to the report, tests with human organs may commence within two years.

The purpose of the research is to make it possible to preserve organs for transplant for longer periods of time, but the implications for making cryonics ever more viable are obvious. Of course, they had to have the usual "scientist" on as a nay sayer. However, they're having to cling to straws more as time goes on. They used to talk about making cows out of hamburger. Now they're reduced to saying, "Well, OK, they can do it with a mouse, but that's a long way from doing it with a human."

That's how science progresses, professor.

Oh, and kudos to Fox for using the correct term "cryonics," rather than cryogenics.

YES!!!

It's finally starting to trickle out to John Q. Public that human immortality IS coming, sooner or later.

JR, I wish that all my readers were as enthusiastic as you. I admire your love of life.

While I suspect that "immortality" or at least living as long as you want to, is coming at us pretty fast, I'm still not convinced we're doing to achieve it with cryonics.

Still, its a good step to solving the organ crisis. Hopefully, however, Larry Niven's Gil "The Arm" future isn't coming with it!

Why thank you Rand! Absolutely, I'm totally committed to living forever. Some people hide their cryonics affiliation, I wear mine on a T-Shirt. I?ve even just managed to start a friend on the process of signing up (he?s going with CI as it?s cheaper and he can?t afford my sign up with both route at present, but he may upgrade later).

Dave: Cryonics in and of itself doesn?t do a darn thing to grant you immortality. It is, as popularly described, ?an ambulance to the future.? Meaning that the nanotechnology necessary to do the job doesn?t exist NOW, but will someday. Unfortunately, if you die before then, you?re toast and you lose out on all eternity. THAT?S where cryonics comes in ? it gets you to that future hospital where the technology is available. Another analogy I?ve seen used is coming down with a serious illness out in the middle of a jungle. Can?t do much for you there, but if we can get you to a modern hospital, you should be alright. Right now we?re all living out in the jungle.

P.S. Dave: Actually, that's exactly what I was thinging about driving home last night. Fortunately, I don't think Larry Niven's future will ever come about (it just doesn't sound realistic to me), and even if it did, they wouldn't have any use for my BRAIN (I hope!) and that's the important part to survive. I'm signed for whole body suspension, however, not just neurosuspension.

Hey, I've never been convinced about this death thing. I have every intention of kicking back in my easy chair, popping open an ice cold brewski, and watching the heat death of the universe. So far, my plan is working.

JR,

I'll wait and see on the cryonics issue. I currently have more hope that a post mortem high resolution brain scan would be more effective at capturing the essence of "me" than cryonic suspension of my head. I'm not entirely convinced the neural pathways will be adequately preserved in any freezing process. I'll accept the same caveats regarding any potential "uploading" technique too.

Well, I've certainly done some looking into this and I'm pretty sure they are. Adequately enough anyway, there's still a bit of cell rupture, but it's VASTLY less with modern cryoprotectants. You do know this has been checked with frozen brains, both with and without cryoprotectants, to compare them against each other?

Here's a brief overview of freezing/cryoprotectants, complete with cell pictures.

http://www.alcor.org/Procedures.htm

You do know this has been checked with frozen brains, both with and without cryoprotectants, to compare them against each other?

I still have concerns that the neural pathways will be intact during this process. We shall see, I have a suspicion that in the end people will see Cryonics as being rather crude, if you want a new body, you'll work from an uploaded mind and a nano-technology manufactured body.

Wouldn't work for me, as I say that wouldn't BE me. A copy of me isn't me. While cryonics is crude compared to some sort of full-nanotech biostasis, it's the best we've got now, and it beats non-existence.

Essentially, what I'm saying is, to me your idea translates you committing suicide and leaving all your stuff to your twin. You're gone, he goes off to live your life in your stead. Kinda like Star Trek, where they constantly kill everyone and make copies of them to "beam" them places.

Your point is a valid one JR, but given that your body is composed of completely different atoms when you die to those it was made of when you were born, I'm not sure that there is a valid distinction between a copy of you and the 'original'.

Here's a puzzler for you - If instead of copying you, they removed each atom (electron, etc) of your brain one by one and replaced it with an identical copy. meanwhile they re-assemble each of those atoms to form another copy of you a few feet away. You are concious throughout the whole process.

At what point does your conciousness transfer to the copy of you? Or does it do so at all? And at the end of all this, which of the two copies of you is the original? The one made from all your original atoms, or the one who is made from all new atoms, but who was concious throughout the whole process. Is it even meaningful to ask this question? I suspect not.