Cryonics: A Probability Greater Than Zero

Since the recent publication of Kim Suozzi’s story in The New York Times, interest in cryonics has spiked. This is hardly surprising, as Kim’s story is such a heart-rending one. It has evoked much polarised debate. I discuss Kim’s case briefly in my book Frozen to Life. Like me, Kim chose neuropreservation – technically, preservation of the brain, but in practice, preservation of the entire cephalon (head). Unlike me, she is now a de facto ‘cryonaut’ – a person actually cryopreserved. At Alcor’s facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, her head will remain indefinitely in a ‘neurocan’ inside a stainless-steel dewar, bathed in liquid nitrogen and monitored constantly by ‘crackphone’.

I know it sounds bizarre. ‘Cryonicists’ like me are well aware that the majority will find this process at very least distasteful. Some view it as nothing but a weird 21st-century burial practice, perhaps comparing it to Pharaonic embalming. Others see it as desecration of dead bodies. Most critics highlight cost, accusing Alcor and other cryonics organisations of swindling the vulnerable into parting with $80,000 plus for a chimera of immortality.

What the critics don’t come up with is an alternative. One consequence of sapience is that persons don’t want to die. What are we to do about this plangent cry for continued existence? Tell people to get back in their rotting-boxes?

Neuroscientist Ken Hayworth supports cryonics research but criticises Alcor’s preservation methods. His Brain Preservation Foundation is developing a new method – Aldehyde-Stabilised Cryopreservation (ASC) – involving use of glutaraldehye fixative to stabilise brain ultrastructures such as neurons and neurites by crosslinking proteins. ASC is aimed at preventing the osmotic dehydration, and consequent tissue shrinkage, seen in fixative-free cryopreservation methods.

Hayworth is involved in a heated debate with Alcor about cryopreservation techniques. This is science in action, and it is healthy. Less constructive is his criticism of Alcor’s financial model (suggestions from him on improvements to Alcor’s insurance-funded, non-profit set-up would be welcome). Hayworth understands the importance of trying to preserve brains, and to preserve them as best we can using the available technology. Poignantly, he compares destroying brains in the customary manners to the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I take a similar line in Frozen to Life, where I ponder how future civilisations will look upon our wanton failure to preserve these most unique and irreplacable data stores. I find this behaviour crass and negligent.

But methodological debate aside, Hayworth and the cryonics organisations agree that brain ultrastructure preservation with a view to future data extraction – or even quickening – is a worthwhile pursuit. Seeing so much to gain, and the probability of success (at some time in the future by some future method) as greater than 0, they proceed with their immense endeavour.

Meanwhile, however, the zero-probabilists – including Michael Hendricks of McGill University – are industriously constructing not technical alternatives but absolute dismissals. Is he really saying that extraction of data from preserved brains in not, even in principle, possible? Not even a little bit? Not even with neurotechnologies centuries advanced from our own? His view is that cryonics is ‘a purposeful conflation of what is theoretically conceivable with what is ever practically possible.’

There is a vitalist tone to Hendricks’ piece. Neurophilosophy arose because scientists and thinkers found that philosophy and neurophysiology taken in isolation each failed to explain adequately the consequences and contradictions of consciousness. Hendricks might consider delving further into this field before pre-loading personal-identity-related questions like ‘What is this replica? Is it subjectively “you” or is it a new, separate being?’

As an Alcor member, I’m hardly an impartial observer of this debate. My plea is simply for intellectual rigour and empathy from both sides. I find current death customs crass, but I understand something of where they came from and why they matter to people. Absolute dismissals of the scientific efforts of cryonicists rankle, but I understand why scientists guard against ‘false hopes’ created by pseudo-scientific claims. As a non-scientist advocate of cryonics, I merely expect neuroscience researchers both supportive and critical of its claims to attempt their falsification. That is their job, after all. I think, in this way, we will eventually come to see cryonics at least as a pattern-storage technology, and certainly no longer as an adjunct to death rituals.

Probabilistically speaking, Kim’s chances may be infinitesimally small, but can you be absolutely sure that they’re precisely equal to 0?

The Art of the Archivist

My friend’s approach to dealing with the accrued data of his life is different to mine: He treats his with reverence; I treat much of mine with cold pragmatism.

This makes little sense. I have experienced the trauma of losing personal-meaning-suffused data when, many years ago, a lightning strike fried my PC and, along with it, the hard-drive containing the sole copies of songs I had written. Losing such data feels a lot like grief, probably because it is grief. You can see such grief in the expressions of those who have lost all their possessions to fire or flood. The rationalist in us may shrug and say, ‘Well, nobody died’; clearly, however, something died – the part of the person that was implicit in their now-destroyed archive.

To a large extent, we take our personal data for granted. It has become easy for us to create (and back-up) vast amounts of it. For some, physical things that cannot be converted into easily-storable binary data have become a burden; for others, an MP3 file could never substitute for a cherished disc of grooved vinyl. But consider, for a moment, the burdens (both physical and metaphorical) of earlier archivists: inscribed stone tablets; purport-laden sheets of carefully-prepared Cyperus papyrus; symbol-etched tree bark, bamboo, bone; ‘illuminated’ codices on parchment of goat skin; and, of course, delicate and easily-corrupted networks of interconnected neurons (present in the brain of the skilled storyteller – in effect, an oral archivist – charged with memorising and relating the history of his/her people).

Ancient archive disasters such as the destruction (by various fires, spaced over hundreds of years) of the Library of Alexandria demonstrate the vulnerability of some of those early systems. Though less vulnerable to complete destruction, well managed modern-day digital archives are still burdensome and, regrettably, still prone to corruption.

For cryonicists like me, the understanding of self as potentially-preservable pattern demands a practical/radical approach to archival. I am my own medium, so my approach to the storage of this particular archive has been to choose a method by which the important parts of the pattern might just survive my death: the cold, radical pragmatism of cryonic suspension. The other practical strand of the required approach (which I have not yet fully addressed) is to do with the archival of the externalised parts of myself – the valued data that I have acquired, created, and sometimes stored, that constitutes my distributed avatar-halo.

An article by Mike Anzis in the April 2013 issue of Cryonics magazine goes into the issues of ‘very long-term storage of personal information and materials’ at length. It’s all delightfully practical. I already knew that the head would be going in the liquid nitrogen ‘box’, but Anzis has the other bases covered too: the physical possessions go in the Alcor storage box; the data archives go onto a Millenniata M-Disc (‘a DVD made out of stone that lasts 1,000 years’), or up to cloud storage services such as Google Drive or SkyDrive. None of this sounds much like encapsulation of an avatar-halo, until, that is, we get to ‘mind files’. LifeNaut and CyBeRev are secure, cloud-based services that allow the user to create a central hub linking together their various online presences, to upload files for secure storage, and to generate (from photos) an avatar that can relay stored information to those granted access to their profile.

My friend already has part of my mind file. Whereas I have misplaced much of the music we created together and the photos taken when we were in a band together, he has kept it all. And he knows where to find it: it is all neatly stored and clearly labelled. Because of his diligence, parts of my life have been preserved that would otherwise have been lost. I admit that I have been careless with my own past, but, paradoxically, that’s not because I don’t care about it; I think it has to do with the fact that the connections to it that remain are painfully tenuous. That’s no excuse, though. I care deeply about the preservation of life, so I should also care deeply about the preservation of the stacked or scattered elements that go together to make a whole one.

Perhaps what is missing from my attitude to archival is the art. My friend feels and knows how to enhance the significance of the objectified data in his hands. For him, a cassette tape containing old songs is more than just that; the spine and the song titles have been inscribed – in his inimitable jagged-pen style – with care, with love, and with moment. He, like other archivists through the ages, makes the object itself, not just the data, radiate significance. This ability to capture meaning and moment is an integral part of his personality. It is what makes him both artist and archivist.

Today is his molybdenum birthday. This piece of writing is my cheapskate gift to him. Happy birthday, Scott. Keep on caring. And keep on keepin’.