Incidentally, I understood that some deluded individuals who didn't have enough money for the whole body treatment were told they could have their head alone frozen, and expect it to be stitched onto any available body when the time came. Science fiction can't get much creepier.
Let's see. 1. It's vitrification, not freezing. 2. Nobody has proposed stitching heads onto random bodies. The idea is to re-grow the lost organs and tissues from the patient's own DNA. As long as the brain survives there is no rational reason to believe a person is truly dead.
(Edited)
Let's see. 1. It's vitrification, not freezing. 2. Nobody has proposed stitching heads onto random bodies. The idea is to re-grow the lost organs and tissues from the patient's own DNA. As long as the brain survives there is no rational reason to believe a person is truly dead.
It is? I thought scanning and emulation would be a more likely outcome.
The BBC News recently ran an interesting piece on living forever. They discuss some of the standard arguments against cryonics and transhumanism; overall, the article is pretty critical of both. I suspect most LessWrong readers won't find it convincing, but it's still worth a quick read.