Cover Image: September 2001 Scientific American Magazine See Inside

Nano Nonsense and Cryonics [Preview]

True believers seek redemption from the sin of death















Share on Tumblr

Cryonicists believe that people can be frozen immediately after death and reanimated later when the cure for what ailed them is found. To see the flaw in this system, thaw out a can of frozen strawberries. During freezing, the water within each cell expands, crystallizes, and ruptures the cell membranes. When defrosted, all the intracellular goo oozes out, turning your strawberries into runny mush. This is your brain on cryonics.

Cryonicists recognize this detriment and turn to nanotechnology for a solution. Microscopic machines will be injected into the defrosting "patient" to repair the body molecule by molecule until the trillions of cells are restored and the person can be resuscitated. Every religion needs its gods, and this scientistic vision has a trinity in Robert C. W. Ettinger (The Prospect of Immortality), K. Eric Drexler (Engines of Creation) and Ralph C. Merkle (The Molecular Repair of the Brain), who preach that nanocryonics will wash away the sin of death. These works are built on the premise that if you are cremated or buried, you have zero probability of being resurrected--cryonics is better than everlasting nothingness.


This article was originally published with the title Nano Nonsense and Cryonics.



Subscribe     Buy This Issue

Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.

6 Comments

Add Comment
View
  1. 1. Steve Witham 09:39 PM 1/6/08

    Why does anything related to hope and taking chances have to be compared to religion? Science deals in near certainties, and failing that, gives ways to estimate probabilities. Does that mean that wherever science has nothing to say yet, the rational thing is not to have hopes and not to make guesses and gambles? Since when does planning ahead in the face of unknowns count as religion?

    How does "the sin of death" resemble transhumanist thinking? Death is a result of damage. Plus, doh, it's really unfortunate, especially if it turns out it was avoidable. The question is whether and how the damage might be repairable. A merely practical, if interesting, question. But in the meantime we have to decide whether to account for the possibility in our plans.

    Knowing Alcor, Esfandiary's head has been vitrified-- frozen in a way that minimizes crystallization. Someone give Michael Schermer a vitrified and restored strawberry.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  2. 2. posthumandeus 04:11 PM 5/19/09

    The separartion of religion from state,science,art etc. should be enforced....always!!!Remember the dark ages?!How quickly we forget.Is science getting soft???

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  3. 3. Mysterius 05:22 AM 10/14/09

    According to Alcor, FM-2030 was actually their pioneer vitrification patient, the first to undergo the (then) experimental procedure. To be fair to the author, vitrification was still a very new development in 2001, so news may not have filtered out of the cryonics community yet.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  4. 4. thenanoage 01:04 AM 4/27/10

    Ever heard of vitrification? - TheNanoAge

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  5. 5. whymustisignin 11:40 AM 6/11/10

    This is completely misleading and Scientific American has gotten complaints about this but refuses to clarify. Regardless of your views of cryonics, current techniques prevent the water rupture problem. The 'strawberries' quote has become something of a joke because it points out a bias and lack of due diligence in researching this story.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  6. 6. gyrusfusiformis 01:51 PM 10/18/10

    Actually I am a neuroscientist and have visited Alcor, met the people who run it and several of their members. And, no, I am no supporter of cryonics. I agree that Shermer's article would be better if he explicitly mentioned vitrification. Indeed, cryopreservation is a ligitimate area of science that makes for a good contrast with cryonics. However, Shermer's imperfect strawberry example more or less stands, in my view. Vitrification can cryopreserve small samples of certain types of tissues. These samples do not include whole brains or whole bodies. Alcor's post-FM2030 vitrified brains are less mushy than their frozen brains, but they are still mushy. Alcor claims imagined future technology will solve this problem. Further, Alcor still maintains their frozen non-vitrified brains at their facility, they still overtly claim that some unknown future technology might thaw them and they still keep the money of these members. So, in my opinion, criticizing them for freezing brains is fair game.

    I also agree entirely that cryonics, while well-meaning, is in some ways analogous to religion. Sure, many members are indeed just gambling with small probabilities. But Alcor and cryonics is supported by an almost cultish ideological subculture associated with transhumanism, extropism, futurism, etc which is largely concerned with imagining how a morally superior society of immortal superhumans might be engineered. I'm not sure sociopolitical ideology and science always make the best bedfellows.

    Shermer mentions some of transhumanist players here, including FS2030. I might add Cambridge IT guy Aubrey de Gray to this list. Its laughable to see this guy speak. I especially enjoy his "graphs" with schematic data (he doesn't have real data to present) which show that his so-called "engineering approach" to aging (which he never actually describes in detail) works better than "conventional" ones (even though nothing was ever actually tested).

    Sorry, but imagining future data doesn't make you a scientist: ACTUALLY PRODUCING DATA makes you a scientist. I suppose I should start submitting papers to Science and Nature making big sweeping claims with no data. I mean, I promise the supporting data will appear in 2030. Ha! That doesn't happen because that's not science. Alcor employees mean well, but they are science fiction fans, not scientists.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Leave this field empty

Add a Comment

You must sign in or register as a ScientificAmerican.com member to submit a comment.
Click one of the buttons below to register using an existing Social Account.

More from Scientific American

See what we're tweeting about

Scientific American Editors

More »

Free Newsletters


Get the best from Scientific American in your inbox

Solve Innovation Challenges

Powered By: Innocentive

  SA Digital
  SA Digital

Science Jobs of the Week

Email this Article

Nano Nonsense and Cryonics: Scientific American Magazine

X
Scientific American Magazine

Subscribe Today

Save 66% off the cover price and get a free gift!

Learn More >>

X

Please Log In

Forgot: Password

X

Account Linking

Welcome, . Do you have an existing ScientificAmerican.com account?

Yes, please link my existing account with for quick, secure access.



Forgot Password?

No, I would like to create a new account with my profile information.

Create Account
X

Report Abuse

Are you sure?

X

Institutional Access

It has been identified that the institution you are trying to access this article from has institutional site license access to Scientific American on nature.com. To access this article in its entirety through site license access, click below.

Site license access
X

Error

X

Share this Article

X