X-Message-Number: 2396
Subject: CRYONICS Cryonics as a Social Trend
From: (Charles Platt)
Date: Fri, 03 Sep 93 11:32:32 EDT
September 3, 1993
Some regular readers of CryoNet are aware that I have been
trying to find a publisher for a book that I have been
working on, describing all aspects of cryonics as it is
practiced today. Unfortunately, New York book editors are not
easily convinced that many people want to read about cryonics
as serious nonfiction, and there's no way to dismiss their
skepticism, because no similar books have been published in
the last couple of decades. Faced with an unknown quantity
such as a cryonics book, editors therefore tend to err on the
side of caution. This has afflicted not only my cryonics
project but a proposed book by science writer Patrick Huyghe,
whose work circulated without finding any takers and has now
been withdrawn. (Huyghe didn't do as much research as I have
done, but I saw his proposal, and it was a professional piece
of work.)
Currently, I have tentative interest from one publisher in
the United States, and one publisher in Britain. The British
publisher wants a more sober, discursive style than the
American publisher, so I have rewritten my original
introduction for the book. In the course of doing so, I came
up with an argument which demonstrates that cryonics, far
from being a wacky notion flying in the face of common sense,
can be seen as the leading edge of a trend which has already
occurred in almost all Western nations since World War II.
I would be interested if anyone on CryoNet has comments on
this argument, pro or con. I would also appreciate it if
anyone can supply additional factual material to support the
argument.
--Charles Platt
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Introduction to Cryonics book, by Charles Platt
For circulation only on CryoNet
The Awareness of Mortality
Ever since the dawn of human consciousness, we have
known that life is fragile and its span is brief.
In primitive times, this was painfully clear. The lives
of our distant ancestors were constantly threatened--by
fierce animals, accidents, disease, hunger, and warring
tribes. Death must have seemed omnipresent; and so, like most
mammals that live communally, we learned how to warn each
other when a threat was near. The precursor of human speech
may have been a simple cry meaning, "Danger! Protect your
life!"
Gradually, as intelligence evolved, we gained the
ability to understand more complicated concepts. As a result,
our warnings became more specific. We started grouping sounds
to convey ideas such as, "Don't take that path; there are
fierce animals there," or, "Avoid those green berries--they
contain poison."
Life today seems reassuringly safe by comparison. And
yet, as any parent knows, the world our children live in is
still full of potential harm. As a result, we now speak
warning messages such as, "Always look both ways before you
cross the street," or, "Don't ever play with matches, you
could burn the house down."
The conclusion is clear: from the earliest times to the
present day, from childhood to adulthood, all of us have
learned to be deeply aware of our own mortality. The value of
life, and the threat of death, are coded into the lowest
levels of the human brain.
Doublethink about Danger
On the other hand, there have always been some dangers
which we've had to learn to live with. In primitive times, an
immediate threat such as a fierce predator required immediate
action: fight or flight to protect life and limb. But
constant, "background" dangers were a different matter. If
there was a very small but constant chance of predators
hiding amid the foliage, people had to live with this danger
and carry on regardless, just as a herd of wildebeast will
expose itself to the slight but constant threat of being
stalked by a lioness.
This "doublethink" about danger was necessary for
survival. Our ancestors couldn't afford to cower in their
caves all the time, just in case something bad might happen.
They needed the courage to go out and hunt, forage, and
explore new territory. If they had been unwilling to take
this risk, they would have been at a competitive disadvantage
with other species that were more aggressive and daring.
And so, by natural selection, our "doublethink" about
danger evolved into a remarkable form of self-deception that
persists to the present day. We tell ourselves, "I know that
there's some danger, but it's not big enough for me to worry
about. I know that I'm mortal, but I don't believe I'll die
today."
This self-deception has enabled armies to march off to
war, with every man telling himself that he's less likely to
be a casualty than the man next to him, because something
makes him different or special in the eyes of fate. In
peacetime, the same self-deception causes people to take
totally unnecessary risks such as driving sports cars and
maintaining a high speed even in heavy rain or fog. Even more
commonly, many of us eat unhealthy food, drink heavily, and
live in polluted cities, knowing that this is bad for our
health, but still refusing to worry about it.
Sometimes the capacity for self-deception is so strong,
the results are incongruous. For instance, patients who
undergo operations for lung cancer often resume smoking after
they get home from the hospital. Even some surgeons who
perform lung-cancer operations will smoke cigarettes once in
a while.
We should realize, however, that this "doublethink"
about danger is no longer a survival trait. Our species
doesn't need to take constant risks, anymore, in order to
find food and compete with other species. In fact, if we
could deceive ourselves a little less about the dangers in
everyday life, we would live longer, healthier lives.
A Shift in Values
For the first time in human history, this shift in
values has now started to occur. In the decades since World
War II, in some Western countries, risk-taking has been
rapidly falling out of fashion.
We are surrounded by safety precautions today that would
have been unthinkable just fifty years ago. There are child-
proof caps on medicine bottles, crash helmets for cyclists,
smoke detectors in our homes, guard rails to prevent people
from crossing the street at dangerous junctions, and
suffocation warnings on plastic bags. Many people still eat
traditionally fatty foods, but others have changed their
daily diet to one which is healthier. These same people
people may also take vitamins, and they're unlikely to smoke
cigarettes. Meanwhile, almost everyone now wears a seat belt
while driving, and cars fitted with air bags have become
commonplace.
Today, in the Western world, we are less willing to
fight wars, more concerned with being healthy, and more
demanding about the quality of our environment than any
generation in history. Grim warnings are displayed
prominently on cigarette packets and where alcohol is served.
Drunk drivers are put in jail. These changes are not trivial;
they are profound. Why have they come about?
One reason may be that medicine has transformed our
outlook on life and death. Diseases such as tuberculosis and
influenza used to rage virtually unchecked, killing millions
of adults well into the middle of the twentieth century.
Infant mortality was so common that people tended to have
many children just to insure that two would survive.
Better hygiene, antibiotics, vaccines, good nutrition,
and sterile surgery created hope that had never existed
before, eliminating forms of death which people had always
accepted as being inevitable. Moreover, as medical research
focused on heart disease, cancer, and the aging process, it
became clear that we could take simple preventive measures
entirely on our own initiative to increase our wellbeing and
our chances of living longer.
This was a radical concept: that we are not at the mercy
of fate, and we can take action to prolong our lives. Old
fatalistic sayings, such as, "We all have to go when it's our
turn to go," no longer have the same meaning or the same
power.
This, then, is the story so far: our species, which
learned to survive via a mixture of fear and self-deception,
is now just beginning to question and reject some of those
old mental habits. So long as our world was full of dangers
which we could do nothing about, the only way to cope was by
carrying on regardless and pretending that everything would
be all right. But in a peacetime, postwar culture where many
threats to life can be controlled, it doesn't make rational
sense, anymore, to deceive ourselves.
Limits to Life
Today, the average citizen in Japan lives almost three
times as long as the citizens of ancient Rome. And yet,
paradoxically, the maximum life span of human beings is just
the same as it used to be. How can this be true?
It's important to understand the difference between
"average" and "maximum." Through mechanisms that are still
not properly understood, the aging process seems to cause a
kind of "wear and tear" which imposes a time limit on human
life. This inbuilt mechanism determines our maximum life
span, which seems to be about 110 to 115 years. (The world
record is 121 years. Ages greater than that are not properly
documented and are probably exaggerations, according to Roy
L. Walford, M.D., who discusses the subject in his book,
_Maximum Life Span_.)
Improvements in hygiene, medicine, and diet have not
made any difference to maximum life span. Rather, they have
made it possible for people to avoid illnesses that used to
kill them prematurely. As a result, even though the maximum
life span is still the same, more of us now manage to get
closer to it, and consequently, average life span has
increased.
Is our maximum life span an unalterable constant, like
the speed of light? Or could it be more like a clock whose
mechanism can be disassembled and regeared?
Until relatively recently, anyone who talked about
doubling or tripling maximum life span was regarded as a
heretic. But there is now some solid evidence that it may be
possible. Experiments have even shown that the maximum life
span of some species can be increased merely by adjusting
diet or hereditary factors.
Laboratory mice that are fed a restricted-calorie diet
live longer than normal. Moreover, they stay healthier and
more active throughout their entire lives. Roy L. Walford's
pioneering studies in this area have prompted him to suggest
a similar diet for people, in his book _The 120 Year Diet._
Results with fruit flies have been even more dramatic.
The fruit fly is a humble creature with simple genes and a
short life span, which makes it easy to study. Simply by
selecting and mating the strongest, longest-lived flies in
each generation, their maximum life span has been tripled
over a period of fifty generations.
Turning to pharmaceuticals, there's some evidence that
Eldepryl, a drug developed for Parkinson's disease, can
extend the life span of laboratory animals. Meanwhile, it has
been proved that the aging process can be "switched off" by
manipulating genes in some types of cells. Currently this can
only occur if cells are allowed to divide uncontrollably; but
many longevity researchers believe that something similar may
enable cell rejuvenation on a limited scale within the next
fifty years. Even if the aging process cannot be "switched
off" in all the diverse cells that constitute a human being,
it's clear that the effects of aging can be eliminated if we
develop the capability to repair cells inside the body on a
continuous basis.
Overall, there are hardly any biologists today who will
flatly insist that the aging process cannot be arrested. In
fact, some authorities have started to argue that aging
research should be stopped because it may be too successful,
causing a huge social upheaval.
The Social Impact
Our ideas about life and death are deeply embedded, our
world is already overcrowded, and our maximum life span has
remained constant throughout human history. Under these
circumstances, is it really wise to consider a massive, far-
reaching change?
Many people feel we have enough problems already without
developing "immortality drugs" which only a privileged
minority will be able to afford. Others will simply say that
a "natural" maximum life span is enough for them, and should
be enough for anybody.
On the other hand, any generation tends to think of its
current state as "natural." Quite possibly, people in ancient
Rome felt that an average life expectancy of thirty years was
"natural," and they would have been concerned that
eradicating malnutrition and disease would cause huge social
problems. In a sense, they would have been right, because
there certainly have been huge changes as a result of our
modern ideas about medicine. On the other hand, no one argues
that we should reintroduce the malnutrition and disease that
existed two thousand years ago.
Historically, people have compensated surprisingly
quickly to increases in life expectancy. For instance, in the
Western world, in less than a century, family size has shrunk
from five or six children to a median number of two. And
outside of China (where there are strict laws restricting
family size), these changes have come about voluntarily.
If the next big step in medicine is to prolong maximum
life span, this will certainly cause radical changes in the
world we live in. That doesn't mean, however, that the
changes will all be bad, or that we'll be unable to adapt to
them. Many problems could be addressed by raising the
retirement age by one year for each extra year of expected
life, which might be an attractive proposition so long as
those extra years are filled with healthy, youthful vitality.
Either way, it is largely pointless to argue whether a
longer maximum life span should be permitted. Science tends
to advance regardless of people's hopes and fears. If
researchers learn how to slow the aging process, this
knowledge will not be easily contained. If some countries try
to outlaw life-extension drugs, other countries will
manufacture them, and a black market will thrive. Cocaine
still manages to cross national borders despite massive
efforts to restrict its trade, so why should longevity drugs
be any different?
A few people may "just say no" of their own free will,
because they feel it's selfish to claim more than a "natural"
ration of life, or they believe that life is not such a great
bargain in the first place. But when one person starts taking
a longevity drug and stays younger longer, won't his friends
and relatives feel tempted to follow suit? Surely, few people
will really be stubborn enough to choose to grow old.
It is in the nature of life to love life. It is natural
for living things to want to live as long as possible. This
is the fundamental goal that his driven medicine and insured
our survival throughout history.
The Cryonics Option
At the present time, longevity drugs are hypothetical.
The promise (or threat) of life extension still lies in the
future, and for most of us, it won't happen soon enough to
make a difference. We'll be in our seventies or eighties, or
we may even be dead and buried, when science finally perfects
a way of stopping the biological clock.
There is another factor, though, which brings the
promise of life extension much closer to home. And that,
finally, is cryonics.
Cryonics means freezing a person who has suffered an
accident or a terminal illness, in the hope that future
medical science will enable life to resume. If we wait long
enough, in a state of suspended animation, with our brain
chemistry and our brain structure faithfully preserved, it
seems conceivable that doctors of the future may be able to
revive us and cure us. The fruits of life-extention research
will then be available to us. When we wake up in the future,
we may hope not only to stop the aging process, but to
reverse it.
This, of course, is even more hypothetical, and it
raises more questions than it answers. For example:
Has anyone actually been frozen and revived?
Are there any reputable scientists who believe that it
can be done?
Why should people in the future bother to revive people
who have been frozen today?
Won't it be too expensive?
Isn't it selfish for frozen people to take resources
away from people who are still alive?
What happens to people who have been frozen, if a
cryonics organization goes out of business?
Is there are a chance that the whole thing is some kind
of confidence trick?
If it does work, how will people feel when they wake up
in a strange world where life is unrecognizable and their
family and friends have gone?
What are the religious implications?
What will the impact be on society if large numbers of
people are frozen and subsequently revived?
These questions are not trivial. Some people, however,
have decided that the temptation of cryonics is too great to
resist, regardless of all the unknowns. These people are the
small, diehard minority who have already signed up for
cryonic suspension.
The Frozen Few
Cryonics was first widely publicized in the mid-1960s.
Today, three organizations are capable of freezing and
storing human patients. All of these organizations are
located in the United States, although one of them has
affiliates in Britain, Canada, and Australia. They are open
to the general public, and the service they provide is
relatively cheap. (Most people pay in advance, in small
instalments, by taking out life-insurance policies.) You
certainly don't have to be a millionaire to afford it.
However, for various reasons, cryonics is not for the
faint of heart. You need to believe in the promise of the
future; you need to trust in yourself and in the cryonics
organization that is supposed to protect you; you need to
love life and want more of it; and most of all, you need to
recognize and reject the doublethink which tells us all, "I
know that there's some danger, but I'm not going to bother
worrying about it. I know that I'm mortal, but I don't
believe I'll die today."
We've already seen that more people, today, are
questioning this self-deception than ever before. Also, there
are more people today who seem willing to put some faith in
science to save their lives. Perhaps these two factors
explain why interest in cryonics has grown radically in the
past decade. There have been countless news items about it,
television documentaries, even Hollywood movies based around
the idea. As a result, the largest cryonics organization has
tripled its membership in just five years.
When the concept of cryonics was first introduced, it
was ridiculed. Today, it tends to excite cautious curiosity.
As suspension techniques become more sophisticated and
cryonics organizations grow larger and stronger, the process
of gradual acceptance may continue--just as the idea of men
walking on the moon shifted from being absurd, to being
conceivable, to being a reality.
Life Unlimited
This is the first book to investigate and report on
every aspect of cryonics organizations and the science that
supports their claims. Currently, I am the only science
writer who has participated in cryonic suspensions and
explored cryonics from the inside, with full trust and
cooperation from everyone in the field.
Here are some of the topics that this book explores:
How life can be stopped and started again, in theory and
practice, in laboratories today.
What really happens when living things are frozen.
The turbulent history of cryonics, including early
events that alienated the scientific community.
The people of cryonics, fighting an ongoing battle with
scientists and bureaucrats.
How a cryonic suspension is done, including the first-
ever eyewitness account of surgical procedures that are used.
The science that may make resuscitation possible, from
cryobiology to nanotechnology.
The cost of cryonics, and its future impact on society.
The problems that make it a gamble; the promise that
makes it a gamble which may be worth taking.
Cryonicists believe that if we're going to try to
minimize the background dangers in our lives, we should
follow the process through to its logical conclusion. For a
relatively small amount of money, many people can now buy
themselves a chance to travel forward into a time where the
biggest risk of all--the aging process--will be eliminated
completely.
This may seem a far-fetched proposition. But there are
valid scientific reasons to take it seriously, and it follows
naturally from our new-found understanding that individuals
are not at the mercy of fate, and can actually do something
to prolong their own lives.
Personally, this excites me, because I have always found
it impossible to accept the cruelty and wastefulness of
death. Too many of my friends have been taken by heart
attacks, road accidents, and other random, senseless events
that erased their personalities, memories, and skills without
a trace. I feel moved by the words of Dylan Thomas, who
wrote, "Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage,
against the dying of the light."
Despite all the advances we have made, life is still
fragile, and its span is still brief. For the first time in
human history, however, we have taken some small steps toward
revising that brutal, basic human truth. In the future, the
boundaries of life should be pushed back still further.
Meanwhile, here and now, cryonics serves as a bridge--
still being developed, and still unproven--between our mortal
lives today and the promise of life unlimited.
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