Abstract
Cryonics is the act of preserving legally dead individuals at ultra-low temperatures, in the hope that they can someday be revived using future technology. Although still in its infancy, the potential success of cryonics carries many crucial implications for human society, and discussing these ahead of time may help us avoid unwelcome developments and unnecessary conflicts. However, the discussion around cryonics has not advanced significantly since its introduction over 50 years ago, and we must look to other advances in biotechnology for clues about how society should deal with cryonics. This chapter reviews the public response to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryo cryopreservation (EC), two closely related medical technologies that have been available to the public for over 30 years and that share many relevant aspects with cryonics. Objections to IVF and EC have tended to fall into five broad categories: unnaturalness, playing God, repugnancy, uncertainty, and social inequality.
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Notes
- 1.
Mike Perry reports that John Hunter, a renowned physiologist and surgeon, in 1776 attempted to freeze a fish with the idea that the process might be reversible.
- 2.
For a discussion of a wider range of issues within cryonics, I highly recommend De Wolf and Bridge’s edited volume of selected articles from Cryonics Magazine, entitled Preserving Minds, Saving Lives (Alcor Life Extension Foundation, 2015) as well as the official websites of Alcor (http://www.alcor.org/) and the Cryonics Institute (http://www.cryonics.org/).
- 3.
The topic of consciousness is very complex and cannot be adequately discussed here. For a comprehensive overview, see, for example, Chalmers (1997).
- 4.
Indeed, even though artificial intelligence currently lacks consciousness (widely considered a defining quality of humans), experts are discussing the possibility that machines may one day have the capacity for consciousness, and might therefore come to resemble humans in important respects. For more information, see, for example, Koch and Tononi (2008).
- 5.
This is not an issue for all religions. For instance, according to Islam, the soul enters the body only 120 days after conception. Moreover, the Catholic Church originally shared the Aristotelian view that ensoulment happens at 40 days for male embryos and 80 days for females.
- 6.
For an analysis of this issue, see, for example, Mercer (2017).
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Minerva, F. (2018). Pausing Death. In: The Ethics of Cryonics. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78599-8_1
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