Should We Freeze Our Bodies for Future Resuscitation?

Abstract

This chapter examines the ethical implications of cryopreservation. Cryopreservation is usually performed soon after the heart has stopped beating, and after the individual has been pronounced legally dead. A few hundred people in the world had been “cryopreserved” — that is, fully immerged in liquid nitrogen at -196 C — in the hope that science will eventually discover a therapy for the disease that has killed them, and that future technology will succeed in bringing them back to life. Understandably, the root of many objections to cryonics seem to be its perceived weirdness. Another major objection to cryonics is that it is a waste of money, or a scam, i.e. a way to make money by promising dying people something that cannot possibly be achieved. The chapter then considers the concepts of human mortality and immortality.