X-Message-Number: 7053
From: Joseph Strout <>
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Freeze tissue young?
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 13:55:11 -0700
Message-ID: <>
References: <54f2b8$>

On 21 Oct 1996, Michael Vaclav Stembera wrote:

> I was wondering if it would make any sence to get samples of
> your tissue frozen while you are young if you
> plan on getting your whole body frozen after you die.
> Presumably you will be old then.  

This is an interesting suggestion, but I don't think it would help
much.  To be blunt, old age is the least of your worries after you've
been frozen.  If the technology is ever developed to revive you, it
will almost certainly be able to cure the effects of aging as well.
(To look at it the other way: if we don't even come up with a cure
for aging, we'll probably never be able to revive you.)

There are two main technologies that might lead to reviving cryonics
patients.  One is full-blown, highly advanced nanotechnology.  Some
folks think machines will be able to put you back together atom by
atom, and while they're at it, put all the atoms where they would be
when you were 20.  In this case, there will be no need for young
tissue samples; the correct arrangement would be obvious from the
whole-body data.

The other approach is mind uploading, wherein your brain is copied
into an artificial body.  In this case, there is no need for young
tissue samples, as you'll be discarding biological tissue altogether.
(For more info, see: http://sunsite.unc.edu/jstrout/uploading/ )
So in either case, there's not too much point in freezing tissue
ahead of time.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|               http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/  |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'


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