Or, you know, we could practice on C Elegans and move on up to larger organisms once we've got that figured out. Humans aren't the only brains on Earth.
I didn't state that suicidal humans are the beat-all end-all for testing subjects.
I was pointing out, and will clarify here, that they may be the most viable option for human testing, regardless of probability of a successful restoration. The success rates would probably be a major consideration from moving from smaller organisms, of which testing isn't really opposed mainstream, to humans.
This is a horrible plan for maximizing human survival rates. Downvoted.
Human brains are relatively unique in their size. You can of course do relevant research on other mammals, but higher primates (let alone exotic creatures like dolphins, whales, and elephants) are extremely expensive and attract the negative attention of animal rights activists. Horrible PR, even if you are doing humane (non-revival) experiments. Rodent research is a good idea, but many of the fundamental problems for human cryopreservation do not apply due to the drastic difference in brain size.
Waiting for people to pass through agonal death prior to experimenting on them is a pretty horrible research strategy too, because that adds complicating factors of zero relevance to the actual problem of cryonics damage. It's better than nothing though, and is both legally and ethically defensible. It should also be possible to do non-revival experiments on terminally ill patients who meet criteria for lethal medication.
All we need is to reduce damage sufficiently for future science to do its job. Revival experiments (except maybe for small critters like C Elegans, or for tissue samples) are a waste of time at this point in the tech tree. Eventually we'll get there with whole brain revival, but it will be many years before that happens, during which many people will die of old age.
Human brains are relatively unique in their size.
But all other human organs are not unique. Once you can successfully revive other animals that are like humans except for their brains, you can move on to humans for the missing parts. It makes sense to minimize the amount of dangerous testing on actual humans.
On the other hand, if the idea is to focus preservation on the brain only, then revival would be very far beyond our present abilities and we can't do meaningful tests even on humans today.
Horrible PR, even if you are doing humane (non-revival) experiments.
Surely the PR from failed tests on actual humans would be even worse.
Before we get to dolphins and chimps, it would be nice to know that we can revive a frozen mouse or sheep.
Among other things, it would be very reassuring evidence that we are on the right track for preservation to demonstrate successful revival in non-human mammals.
I don't think we're close enough to a viable restoration procedure that we need to think about this too hard. When we are, we'll see what kinds of testing we need.
I wasn't thinking about it TOO hard, just considering whether it would be a realistic option and weighing the pros and cons.
How far along is the research on bringing people back? What I found was general information and promises of future medicine potential, etc.
The future is nice to think about - I get caught up in it myself. But I'm wondering about tackling these things before they come up, or at least having a better understanding of it. I'm not a cryonicist.
I'm not a cryogenicist (sp?)
Cryonicist. Cryogenics is actually the practice of producing cold temperatures rather than freezing people. It's a common point of confusion.
Why would you use healthy members of society to test the effectiveness of cryogenic revitalization when animal testing is perfectly legal, and would demonstrate feasibility? After demonstrating feasibility with other primates, then it would be easier to gain voluntarily human participants.
I think this was partially addressed in my comment response to the C Elegens post, but I will add to that with this:
If they're genuinely suicidal they wouldn't be healthy members of society for long, as they would kill themselves. The idea presented provides a chance to both improve current tech - with potentially faster and more effective results since they are human minds and bodies and we could more directly see different effects of revitalization, which may not be the case with the animal progression of testing - and ideally reduce the amount of death, even if by a little.
Coming from a depressed person and (anecdotally) a competent liar when it comes to all mental health professionals I've met so far, I am not intent on killing myself presently, and would do anything I could to take this opportunity if it arose. I expect it would be exceedingly difficult to find mentally healthy (or untreatably depressed) people for such purposes, or to have effective tests to differentiate them from treatably depressed people.
Somewhat counterbalancing the disutility from the likelihood that more people would (almost certainly, in my opinion) opt for this, is the fact that if it works, it would actually save them from death from committing suicide. So your assessment of cryonics chances of working (under ideal conditions) definitely matters here.
I don't see why some of you think it is vital to have a mentally-healthy participant. The purpose would be to achieve reanimation for the first time. Even if the person did attempt suicide afterward, the experiment would have by then be validated. As soon as reanimation was actually achieved, more participants would most likely follow. The true opponent of this, of course, is the illegality of suicide and the fact many cryogenic preservations are paid for by life insurance companies, who usually refuse suicide cases.
Two possible suggestions could be coherently made involving the use of premortem cryonics for people who legitimately prefer to be dead rather than go on living in their current state:
The two positions are fundamentally distinct and optimize for different outcomes.
In the first case, the main concern is the potential research material that goes to waste every time someone kills themselves under uncontrolled circumstances. It does not concern itself with the possibility of preserving the individual patient, and focuses instead on the utilitarian gains that improving the state of the art in cryonics would bring for others.
In the second case, the main concern is the lives that are directly wasted due to people killing themselves off for good when in reality they would be fine with cryonics, and their preferences are not insistent on death. This argument does not concern itself with improving the state of the art, but is concerned with the ongoing and potentially preventable loss of life from suicide.
Either loss -- the individual life, or research that could radically extend lots of lives -- is a tragic one which could perhaps be avoided, if premortem cryonics were permitted by society. However, the two arguments have different strengths and weaknesses which make them hard to use.
The first makes no assumption about whether cryonics currently achieves its objectives, only that the lives of people who are committing suicide would have some use for research that might improve cryonics. On the other hand, it relies on the moral notion that people who want to commit suicide should in fact be free to do so, and that research scientists who actively participate in that event are not in some way morally tainted, threatening the basis of civilization, or otherwise losing more than they gain by doing so.
(In case it's not already completely obvious to everyone, I'll spell it out: The humane advantages from perfecting cryogenic suspended animation technology in humans would be HUGE, as it would bring an immediate end to death from every disease and buy many decades of pain-free time for patients to have their illnesses cured.)
The second relies on the notion that cryonics patients are not actually dead in the sense that we are worried about, that cryonics is better thought of as an alternative to suicide, and so forth. Instead of simply being dead, the patient is accepting a risk of being dead when all is said and done. This becomes a question of risk tradeoffs -- the risk that you will kill yourself during a future depressive episode and/or die of aging, versus the risk that cryonics doesn't work.
The main problem though is that if you don't have an audience with a fairly sophisticated grasp on transhumanism and utilitarianism already, and a respect for the chances of cryonics working already, they are going to be mindkilled pretty quickly by the apparent endorsement of taking advantage of suicidally depressed people.
I agree with your reasoning on the presentation of those arguments towards the benefit of using premortem cryonics for the suicidal.
If worded well enough, we could incorporate both when the idea circulates among the masses, but it would have to be very carefully done. The second argument would most likely be more effective on the general populace, as it has more of a touchy-feely we care about the individual sound, whereas the first is very much about utilitarianism and those with little understanding of that mindset would consider it to be ‘cold’ (no pun intended?).
What seems to be the hardest sell is whether people should have the ‘right’ to supposedly end their lives. While their lives wouldn’t be considered over in cryonics, the legal implications of this would be HUGE. Not that it really affects those who truly want to die, but we would have to tread lightly here. Worst-case scenario, people refer to this as assisted suicide. Best-case scenario, people consider this intense treatment for depression (or whatever reason the person wants to die)?
Thanks for the detailed response!!
Here is my understanding - correct me if I'm wrong:
Cryonics is only allowed once a person is determined legally dead: when the heart stops beating.
One of the reasons why they have to be dead seems to be that the majority of the population consider cryonics to be a death-sentence, as there is no guarantee at this time that subjects can be revived - regardless of if there's a cure for whatever ailment caused a person's death.
It is difficult at this time to improve the revitalizing process as the patients - or clients - are incapable of surviving as their body was already in the process of shutting down, and we do not have the technology to bring them fully back.
Now, to some conjecturing.
We might be able to more reasonably test the effectiveness of procedures to revive current patients if we had healthier people, ones not yet at death's door.
Here's where the ethical dilemma hits home: we could use people who are in good health, here defined as 'not terminally-ill or otherwise dying from health complications in the near future,' who are already intending to end their life. Simply stated, those who are suicidal.
For all intensive purposes they would cease to exist, which would be part of the appeal to that subgroup. At this time there is a probability of them dying from the procedure, which should be ok as they were self-destructing anyway. And if they don't die, they get the chance to reflect on their life or go at it again. In this way their death would be more beneficial to the whole.
The benefits to this would be the additional research into the effects of cryonics on the body and how to develop a procedure to guarantee that you CAN be revived once put under.
I am aware of a couple of problems: legal complications, how to find willing participants, etc., and am thinking of ways to resolve that.
I've just been thinking about this for the past week or so and wanted additional insight. Thoughts?
***On Suicide
For those opposed to suicide: this idea does not encourage people to kill themselves. Rather, it provides those who are already intent upon ending their existence a means to do so more honorably.
In case people have not read it, I recommend Schopenhauer's Essay on Suicide, found here: http://www.egs.edu/library/arthur-schopenhauer/articles/essays-of-schopenhauer/on-suicide/