[Plaything48]

Suspension procedure

A typical suspension procedure involves several steps.

First, upon legal death -- usually after the heart stops beating and the patient stops breathing -- a local cryonics team cools the patient using such things as a portable ice bath. The goal is to reduce body temperature to between 5°C and 10°C, with the head requiring particular attention to prevent brain damage. The treatment team also keeps blood flowing through the use of such things as anticoagulants and external chest compressions.

The next step is known as washout. In this step, the treatment team replaces the patient's blood with organ-preserving solutions. Following this, they pack the patient in ice and move him or her to a cryonic storage facility. Here they perform perfusion, pumping cryoprotectants such as glycerol through the patient's body.

Next the team cools the patient, using various procedures, to -79°C. If the patient has opted for neurosuspension (head freezing, with the idea that future technology can rebuild a body) then his or her head is removed and frozen. Otherwise, the whole body is frozen. It takes two to seven days to cool a body and about a day to cool a head to the required temperature.

Once the desired temperature is reached, patients are removed, put in a holding tank and cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen -- -196°C. Five to seven days later, they are moved to an insulated storage tank. This will either be a stainless-steel dewar or a fiberglass cryostat. Here they await development of the technology required to reanimate and cure them.

Chances are good that this technology will be developed in the next 50 years. Nanotechnology is considered essential to the process, as atomic-scale manipulation would allow for the necessary cellular repairs. In addition, cloning and stem cell therapies are considered important. All three are advancing rapidly.

Misunderstanding and misrepresentation

Mainstream medicine and society in general have made cryonics taboo, but this has less to do with scientific facts than scientific culture, media misrepresentation and public misunderstanding.

First, there's a common misconception that people undergoing cryonic suspension are dead, and therefore to live again must be resurrected. This stems from the fact that medical teams can only perform cryonic suspension on people declared legally dead, to prevent cryonics organizations from opening themselves to criminal or civil charges. But there is a difference between legal death and biological death. Legal death is the point at which a patient's heart stops beating or brain stops working. But this is not the end of all biological function. Studies show that cells in the body can remain alive for several hours after legal death. A better term than death to describe people undergoing cryonic suspension, therefore, is deanimation.

Another problem is that medicine uses clinical trials to gauge the effectiveness of techniques, technologies and medications. But clinical tests for cryonics are currently impossible because they rely on technology that hasn't been invented. Cryonics is therefore an experimental procedure, because nobody has yet revived a suspended patient to demonstrate its success. But it is not unscientific.

Suspension providers

There are several cryonics organizations in the world, most based in the US. These organizations use various processes to freeze people as close to legal death as is possible.

The cost of suspension starts at about US$30,000, but the price can depend on many factors, including the facility, the distance patients are from a facility and whether patients are choosing neurosuspension or full-body suspension. Most costs, however, can be covered by term life, whole life or universal life insurance policies, and several insurance agencies specialize in offering coverage for people interested in cryonic suspension.

For many organizations there are membership fees as well, as they try to promote interaction and involvement. In addition, most if not all employees are members, and some have friends and family already suspended. Such arrangements are intended to ensure the stability of cryonics organizations and guarantee the highest quality procedures.