2024-04-14 10:23:47
Science fiction has already seen a scenario where a person is completely frozen on their deathbed so that they can be revived in the future. But is it possible? In an excerpt from Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality, Nobel Prize-winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan examines the decades-long prospect of cryopreservation (where people are frozen on their deathbed and thawed in the future).
The Egyptians used to mummify their pharaohs so that they could be resurrected and travel to the afterlife at some point in the future. It seems that now, several millennia after the time of the pharaohs and more than a century of modern biology, we would not be so superstitious. However, there is indeed a modern counterpart to this behavior.
Biologists have long wanted to be able to freeze samples in order to preserve them for later use. It’s not that simple – because all living things are mostly made of water. When this water freezes into ice and expands, it breaks down cells and tissues. That’s partly why if you freeze fresh strawberries and thaw them, you end up with an inedible gooey mush.
An entire field of biology, cryopreservation, studies how to freeze samples so that they are viable when thawed later. Useful techniques have been developed in this field, such as how to store stem cells and other important samples in liquid nitrogen. It has been discovered how to safely freeze donor sperm and human embryos for later use in artificial insemination.
Animal embryos are routinely frozen to preserve certain breeds, and worms can be frozen as larvae and revived. Cryopreservation of many types of cells and tissues is effective. This is often done by using additives—such as glycerol—that allow the object to be cooled to very low temperatures without allowing the water to turn to ice—like adding antifreeze to the sample.
The idea of cryonics has been around for a long time, but it gained popularity thanks to Robert Ettinger, a professor of physics and mathematics at the College of Michigan (USA), who also wrote works of science fiction. Ettinger had a vision that future scientists would revive frozen bodies and not only cure them of disease, but also make them young again.
in 1976 he founded a cryonics institute near Detroit and convinced more than 100 people to pay $28,000 each to have their bodies preserved in liquid nitrogen in large containers. One of the first people to be frozen was his own mother, Rhea, who died in 1977. His two wives are also held there. When in 2011 when R. Ettinger died at the age of 92, he joined them.
Today there are several such cryonics facilities. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, charges about $200,000 for full-body storage. How do these institutions work? Basically, as soon as a person dies, their blood is drained and replaced with antifreeze, and the body is kept in liquid nitrogen. Theoretically – for an unlimited time.
There are also transhumanists who believe that eventually humans will be able to transform themselves into far more capable beings and that things like disability, suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death are undesirable and avoidable. But they don’t want humanity to end until we find a way to preserve our minds and consciousness indefinitely in some other form.
In their view, intelligence and reason in the Universe can only be found in humans (or at least they see no evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence). Therefore, it is very important for them to preserve our consciousness and mind and spread them throughout the Universe. After all, what is the point of the Universe if there is no intelligence to appreciate it? These transhumanists are only content to freeze their brains. It takes up less space and costs less. Also, after death, it would be possible to inject the magic antifreeze directly into the brain more quickly, thus increasing the chances of successful preservation.
The brain is the seat of memories and consciousness, which makes it the only thing they care about preserving. According to transhumanists, at some point in the future, when technology has matured, the information in the brain will simply be transferred to a computer or other similar device. That entity will take over the person’s consciousness and memories and start “living” again. It will not be limited by human concerns, such as the needs of food, water, oxygen and a narrow temperature range. We will have transcended the limits of our bodies and have the ability to be anywhere in the universe.
It is no wonder that transhumanists passionately advocate space travel as the only way to avoid destruction on Earth. One such proponent is business tycoon and investor Elon Musk, who is considered one of the richest people in the world and is well known for his desire to “die on Mars.” One of his first goals after reaching the red planet is likely to be to build a cryonics center.
The bad news is that there is no reliable evidence that human cryogenics will ever work. There are many potential problems. By the time a technician can inject antifreeze and freeze the body, it may be minutes or even hours after death.
During this time, every cell of the dead body undergoes dramatic biochemical changes due to the lack of oxygen and nutrients, so the condition of a cryogenically frozen body does not correspond to the condition of a living person. But according to cryopreservation advocates, this is irrelevant—we simply must preserve the physical structure of the brain until we can map all the brain’s neurons.
Mapping all the neurons in the brain is a new science called connectomics. connectomics). Although he has made tremendous progress, scientists are still working with flies and other small organisms. Also, we don’t yet have the knowledge to properly care for a cadaver brain while we wait for connectomics to become sufficiently advanced.
Only recently, after years of research, has it been possible to preserve a mouse’s brain – which involves pouring embalming fluid into it while the mouse’s heart is still beating – a process that kills the mouse. None of these cryonics companies have provided any evidence that their procedures preserve the human brain in a way that allows researchers to create a detailed map of neural connections in the future.
Also, the idea that each neuron is a simple transistor in a computer circuit is naive. V. Ramakrishnan’s book focuses on the complexity of cells.
Each brain cell has an ever-changing program executed by thousands of genes and proteins, and its relationships with other cells are constantly changing. Mapping the brain’s connections would be a big step forward, but even that would be a static picture. It wouldn’t allow us to reconstruct the true state of the frozen brain, let alone predict how it would “think” from that point forward.
Albert Cardona, a scientist at the UK Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, who is a leading expert on the connectivity of the fly brain, points out that apart from the practical difficulties, the architecture and very nature of the brain is determined by its connection to the rest of the body.
Our brain has evolved along with the rest of the body and is constantly receiving and acting on sensory signals from the body. In addition, they are not stable: new connections appear in them every day, and they regenerate at night when we sleep. There are daily and seasonal rhythms associated with the growth and death of neurons, and this constant reorganization of the brain is poorly understood.
Besides, a brain without a body would be a completely different thing. The brain is not only controlled by electrical impulses that travel through connections between neurons. They also respond to chemicals in the brain itself and emanating from other parts of the body. Her motivation is very strongly determined by hormones that come from the organs and include basic needs (such as hunger) as well as internal desires. The pleasures our brain experiences are mostly physical. Good food. Climbing the mountain. Exercises. Sex. Also, if we wait until we’re old and dead, we’ll be choosing old brains, not “sharp” 25-year-old brains. What would be the point of keeping such a brain?
Transhumanists argue that these problems can be solved with the knowledge that humanity will acquire in the future. But in any case, there is no evidence that freezing the body or brain and restoring them to a vital state would be effective, according to Live Science.
2024-04-14 10:23:47