Is cryonic restoration technically feasible in the future?

Cryonic researchers speculate that scientific advances, particularly in nanotechnology, will make it possible to reanimate a cryonically suspended human being.

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Is cryonics worthwhile?

Experts and Influencers

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Agree

Experts In Cryonics

Ben Best CEO of Cryonics Institute

Agree

Although steps can be taken to minimize freezing-damage, such damage cannot be completely eliminated. Nonetheless, damage is distinct from destruction. A structure that is merely damaged can ultimately be repaired. ... At liquid nitrogen temperature, biological structures in need of repair can be preserved many millions of years with virtually no change. Most cryonicists expect the necessary molecular repair technology within 50 to 100 years -- but are prepared to wait as long as it takes.

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18 Apr 1998 Source

Ralph Merkle Computer Scientist, Nanotechnologist

Mostly Agree

The damage done by current freezing methods is likely to be reversible at some point in the future. ... Restoration of the brain down to the molecular level should eventually prove technically feasible.

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01 Jan 1994 Source

Experts In Science

K. Eric Drexler Nanotechnologist

Mostly Agree

Cryonicists have focused on freezing because many human cells revive spontaneously after careful freezing and thawing. It is a common myth that freezing bursts cells; in fact, freezing damage is more subtle than this - so subtle that it often does no lasting harm. Frozen sperm regularly produces healthy babies. Some human beings now alive have survived being frozen solid at liquid nitrogen temperatures - when they were early embryos. ...

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16 Sep 1987 Source

Disagree

Experts In Science

Michael Shermer Scientist, Skeptic, Author

Disagree

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.

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01 Sep 2001 Source

John Bischof Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Cryobiologist

Disagree

What [cryonics researchers] are are pursuing is not science, and they are banned from membership in our bylaws [in cryobiology]. There's absolutely not one shred of evidence that they will ever be able to reanimate these people. The science doesn't exist.

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22 Aug 2005 Source

Experts In Philosophy

Robert Todd Carroll Philosophy Professor

Disagree

The technology to revivify a frozen body exists in the imagination. Nanotechnology, for example, is a technology that supporters of cryonics appeal to. Someday, they say, we'll be able to rebuild [the] diseased or damaged cells in the body, with nanobots. ... This seems like wishful thinking. A business based on little more than hope for developments that can be imagined by science is quackery. ... There is little reason to believe that the promises of cryonics will ever be fulfilled.

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23 Feb 2009 Source

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0 Points JGWeissman 06 Mar 2010 Stance on Question: Agree

There are so many ways this could work: uploading, cloning a new body, repair by nanotech. Knowing that science and technology keep advancing, it seems absurd not to bet and advances in at least of these areas, when the alternative is to just give up.