Cryonics

[Alpine]

Hello world. Well, currently I have been studying about cryonics just out of curiosity. But there is one thing that bugs me a little about it. According to what Wikipedia says, and if it is right, cryonic-freezing is done on humans who are dead in hope that they maybe re-animated in future with high-tech stuff.

 

But, why AFTER they are dead? Why not before they are going to die? I'm not a scientist by any means, but I'm sure that it would be a lot easier to revive someone who is on the verge of dying than it would be to someone who already is dead. That requires no rocket science because we all know it that we are not going to advance in technology so much, at least not in the next say 45 years.

 

Most of the medical experts can estimate the approximate time left for a person to live who is suffering from a certain disease. So, can this person not be given anesthesia perhaps a few weeks before the time runs out and then be frozen internally or externally or maybe completely? Of course, it would be difficult, but then again it would be easier to do that wouldn't it?

[dduckwessel]

Once oxygen-starved (and it happens quickly), the brain dies and in that state no one would want to be revived:

 

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death)The brain, however, appears to accumulate ischemic injury faster than any other organ. Without special treatment after circulation is restarted, full recovery of the brain after more than 3 minutes of clinical death at normal body temperature is rare.[6][7] Usually brain damage or later brain death results after longer intervals of clinical death even if the heart is restarted and blood circulation is successfully restored. Brain injury is therefore the limiting factor for recovery from clinical death.

 

I don't think that caring families would want to freeze their alive loved ones simply because it might add to their suffering. The freezing process would most likely kill them anyway.

 

Some mammoths were reportedly found that were flash-frozen (such stories appear to be false: http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/Europeweb/factfile/Unique-facts-Europe28.htm) but if so they most certainly never revived or we would have heard about it.