Can a dying person be frozen and preserved for future revival, and does it make any sense at all? This is the question posed by biologist and Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan in his new work “Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality.” In this book, he questions the decades-long pursuit of cryonic preservation, in which individuals are frozen at the point of death and then thawed out in the future, uncovering the pitfalls and misconceptions of the industry stemming from this idea.
From Pharaohs to Ettinger Ancient Egyptians mummified their pharaohs in order to potentially rise again bodily at some point in the future for their journey into the afterlife. Ramakrishnan writes that something similar is being pursued today through cryopreservation, an entire field of biology that studies how to freeze samples so that they remain viable when thawed out later.
At Alcor, for $200,000, they drain the blood from the deceased and replace it with antifreeze, storing the body in liquid nitrogen. The practice of cryopreservation indeed works for many types of cells and tissues. Scientists have developed useful techniques, such as storing stem cells and other important samples in liquid nitrogen, and have figured out how to safely freeze donor sperm and human embryos for in vitro fertilization.
The idea of freezing entire humans immediately after death has existed for some time, particularly gaining traction after physicist and mathematician Robert Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute in 1976 near Detroit and persuaded over 100 people to pay $28,000 each to have their bodies preserved in liquid nitrogen. Among those frozen are Ettinger himself and his mother, Rhea.
Antifreeze and Liquid Nitrogen Today, there are several cryonic facilities; the Alcor Life Extension Foundation charges around $200,000 for such a service. They drain the blood from the deceased and replace it with antifreeze, storing the body in liquid nitrogen, theoretically indefinitely. Unfortunately, writes Ramakrishnan, there is no credible evidence that human cryonics will ever work.
There are countless potential problems, and dramatic biochemical changes in the body due to lack of oxygen and nutrients are just one of them. Some cryonics advocates believe that preserving the physical structure of the brain is sufficient, and that we will be able to reconstruct it as long as enough is preserved to see the connections between all the billions of brain cells.
Where’s the Evidence?
That’s easy to say, but connectomics, the science of mapping neurons in the brain, has yet to progress beyond poking around in flies and other tiny organisms. We still do not know how to properly maintain the brain of a corpse, and no cryonics company has offered any evidence that its procedures preserve the human brain in a way that would enable future scientists to obtain a complete map of its neuronal connections.
Even if we could develop such a map, Ramakrishnan warns, it would not be nearly enough for brain simulation. The idea of every neuron being like a simple transistor in a computer circuit is hopelessly naive.
Impulses and Hormones “Because the brain is not only driven by electrical impulses traveling through connections between neurons; it also reacts to chemicals within the brain and from the rest of the body. Its motivation is greatly driven by hormones originating from organs, including basic needs such as hunger, but also intrinsic desires.”
Delusions of Transhumanism “The pleasures our brain receives are mostly physical. A good meal. Climbing a mountain. Exercise. Sex. Moreover, if we wait until we grow old and die, we would acidify an old, decrepit brain, not a finely tuned machine of a 25-year-old. What would be the point of preserving that brain?” Ramakrishnan asks, believing that transhumanists are mistaken in claiming that problems can be solved by knowledge humanity will gain in the future.
Venki Ramakrishnan is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 and a former president of the Royal Society. “They base their beliefs on the assumption that the brain is just a computer, only more complex than our silicon-based machines. Of course, the biological state of its neurons is as important as the connections between them to reconstruct its state at any given time,” Ramakrishnan concludes.
