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Comment by fulltimeloser | Hacker News Reader

Is reanimating these bodies even viable? What kind of energy waste are we talking about for this fools errand?

As far as I know you need to be dead already to be put in these facilities. So to get them back, we'd have to find a way to resuscitate them after "defrosting". The point of these facilities is exactly to wait for the technology to get them back to life.

One more interesting variation, while illegal, would be to freeze people when they are nearing death. If we could bring them back later, the scheme would have a chance of working if better surgeries and medicines are available. But I don't think we have the technology even for this.

EDIT: wouldn't places where assisted suicide is legal be cool (pun intended) with my proposed scheme of freezing when nearing death?

Before you even get to resuscitation, you would have to repair all of the fractured organs caused by thawing.

https://www.alcor.org/library/postmortem-examination-of-thre...

I'd do what you propose tbh.

I'd also consider it. But an interesting question would be: when should we do it?

Let's assume the doctor says that we have 1 year left but a reasonably good quality of life until death. Should we wait until we're a few days away from death, or go to freezing right after getting the "1 year left" news under the assumption that the disease isn't as advanced and thus wouldn't require as big of a technology leap for a cure?

If we wait, the chances of being cured after waking up are pretty low (we are almost dead already due to the disease), but we'd have lived an extra year.

If we don't wait, the chances of being cured are a lot higher (disease not as advanced) but we might not survive the whole freezing process at all, and thus waste a year of life.

Isn't the definition of death not exactly clear and changing? A stopped heart for example used to mean dead but not anymore.

But the point is that you don't actually die then, isn't it? So how can it be illegal?

Freezing someone is lethal to them. We have no way of bringing someone back from this state, so it can be seen as a form of assisted suicide.

They already do that.

(thought this was an edit not a reply)

They basically have you fill your bathtub full of ice, pop some downers then jump in the tub.

The hard part is the freezing. You need to prevent water crystals from forming (which will rupture cells), and the freeze has to happen really quickly. This is why some insects can tolerate being frozen, they are small enough to freeze quickly.

Reanimation is the easy part (relatively speaking), even though we have no clue as to how to do it.

We don't have the technology to do this to humans yet, so chances are high that none of them are viable.

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