Alcor Life Extension Foundation - Cryonics

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http://alcor.org/

i am considering signing up with Alcor so that upon my death i will be frozen to be resusitated in the future with, presumably, Molecular Nanotechnology

im considering Full Body Preservation instead of just Neuropreservation but idk yet

Don't waste your money, this is a scam. Although there are ways to jump start the heart and lungs, there is no known way, and none likely in the foreseeable future of reanimating your brain. On rare occasions a person will go so deep into a coma that they are in a pseudo-hibernation mode, and then they come out of it, sometimes in the morgue. Some of these people are mentally okay, or nearly so, others are mentally damaged, some severely. But there is no way to induce a long term hibernation coma from which people can be restored. It may be possible to do that some day in the future, but what ever process they use to induce a hibernation from which people's brains can be reanimated at that future time is not available today. That means there is no procedure available at this time for it. At that time they would not be able to reanimate people frozen in the the past (our time), because all they do today when freezing people is freeze dead meat. There is no special process done on the bodies now that would make reanimation possible at a later date. Simply freezing the corpse is not enough, and it doesn't matter whether it is slow or quick frozen. In either case the corpse is just dead meat. Any company that says they can reanimate your brain later on based on just freezing the corpse today, is lying to get money from people without really doing anything, other than putting the corpse in cold storage. Some of them say they will invest a persons money until they can be revived to reclaim it, but there is no way to be sure the money will be there in the far future. The company can abscond with the money, whatever the money is invested in can go belly-up, the cryogenics company can go bankrupt leaving no money to power the refrigeration units, or a natural disaster can wipe out the power. All of these things have all ready happened to different cryogenics companies. So please, don't waste your money on this scam.

If you have that kind of money to spend, don't blow it on this scam. Use it for your own needs and pleasures, to help out your family, and to help out legitimate charities.

The problem of water crystallizing still has not been fully solved. Like a can of soda left in the freezer, the cell walls rupture as the remaining water in the antifreeze-flushed cells freezes and expands.

In the fifty-plus years of cryonics, there is no record of anyone having been frozen at the moment of death, and then being successfully revived.

The cryonic process eventually turns their brains into organic mush.

things could very well have changed quite a lot by the time you die and maybe the freezing process could be improved.

I find this quite interesting
http://labs.fhcrc.org/roth/
http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_roth_suspended_animation.html

Maybe running a very powerful magnetic field through the body as it freezes could hold the hydrogen atoms of the water molecules in place to prevent crystallization.

the process of Vitrification is used to reduce damage. im a Transhumanist, i have optimistic hopes for the future and regarding questors claim Molecular Nanotechnology looks very promising in reviving the cryo patients, Indefinite Life Extension will probably be solved in my lifetime(scientists are researching Telomere shortening and the enzyme Telomerase as a possible cure for both aging and cancer) so its unlikely i will need to sign up for Alcor anyway but if i do it will be for a "just in case" scenario

Neuroscientist Sebastian Seung defends cryonics as a reasonable medical experiment in his new book Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are.

Refer to my post about Sebastian Seung's book regarding the scientific aspects of preserving human brains to protect their connectomes.

As for the "scam" accusation,, why do cryonics organizations accept as members people who according to the actuarial tables won't likely die for many decades?

You sound like a young'un to me. I turn 53 this year, and I've lived with these ideas for nearly 40 years,since I read Robert Ettinger's book Man Into Superman. I've also had arrangements for my cryonic suspension with Alcor since 1990. Take it from a sympathetic elder: We cryonicists have a long, hard slog ahead of us, and we can't depend on gimmicky techno-fads like "Molecular Nanotechnology" to solve our problems. In fact I've lately suspected that "Molecular Nanotechnology" as presented by Drexler and his pals can't exist because it gets the physics wrong. By contrast look at the rapid progress in human genomics in the past 30 years. Why do organizations like 23andMe have the ability to tell you all kinds of stuff about your genome which you didn't know before, like how much Neandertal DNA you have, when we still don't have anything like a "nanoassembler" to speak of since Drexler popularized the idea in the 1980's?

Who has a more credible track record for doing many of the things they claim, in other words? Nanotechnologists? Or genomicists?

out of Alcor's 1000+ members, only a little over 100 are dead

that's just a possible idea, Nick Bostrom(professor of philosophy at Oxford) said the beauty of Transhumanism is that there are countless ways to get to our goals. im glad to see a fellow Cryonicist here, are you a Transhumanist also by chance? i have only been into Transhumanism for 3 years but i have dozens of books and articles about Transhumanism on PDF and have been absorbing as much as i can, my age is a gift and a curse, im too young to get seriously involved in anything(after i get a job i want to start attending events like the Singularity Summit), but it's also a gift because i may still be alive when most of the technology we discuss actually comes about, i wish i was smart enough to actually help out, i don't have a superior intelligence, only above average. but i will support it however i can until our goals are met, it's the least i can do

nup, sorry.
telomere shortening is definitely a factor in DNA damage with respect to aging and cancer but it is a very small part of a foooooooking massive picture. Trust me, i'm studying molecular genetics

You beat me to this one, I was going to point out how bad Telomere shortening would be! You run out of telomeres, your DNA unravels!

http://www.lanl.gov/news/releases/archive/00-057.shtml

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/ ... -reversal/

thats the point, cells can only duplicate around 80 times before the Telomeres are so short that the cells die, scientists are trying to cure ageing and cancer with the enzyme Telomerase, which prevents the Telomeres from shortening.

it's not that simple. if you looked at the actual papers the scientist were writing they would really not be jumping to conclusions like almost every news source about science does.

it is fascinating stuff and will play a part but like i said. it is a small part of the picture. You can't cure aging or cancer with one enzyme. one problem is that there will be other problems that arrise if you then decide to extend the cell's proliferating capacity beyond normal.

Why is it that cancer cells are able to proliferate indefinitely rather than 80 times? partly because of telomerase in some cases! have a look at the HeLa cell line. from wiki "A proposed treatment for cancer is a telomerase inhibitor that would prevent the restoration of the telomere, allowing the cell to die like other body cells." This and many other things should lead one to the conclussion that gene expression leading to protein synthesis and it's effect are entirely contextual.

i'm not saying it's not going to happen but i'm saying just inducing expression of one gene does not mean much, particularly in multicellular organisms. it's certainly will happen if research is pushed in the right direction.

i'm not sure about stem cells and the Hayflick limit. here says that " Stem cells, by definition, have not yet been fully differentiated, and therefore many of these cells may continue to regenerate new cells for the entire lifespan of the organism, without limit, thus constituting a notable exception to the Hayflick limit in humans and other organisms."

i think there are many many exceptions to the hayflick limit

i can't say i'm that familiar with cancer or the process of aging beyond cell senescence and apoptosis and a bit about the cell cycle but i do know that any given cell is full of interdependencies, trade offs, contexts etc etc. still, it is an interesting point and i hope you become a biologist!