Unfortunately, inserting complex novel gene sequences into every cell of an organism in a way that doesn't just cause massive, global cancer is very hard problem. Making those sequences do what you want them to do, and not, say, kill the target organism is even harder. Especially since human anatomy isn't well suited to the task, and would need to be modified. By the time we have the technology to do something like that, death is probably already a solved problem.
That said, I've used the premise in a science fiction book before. The main characters were members of Homo Sapiens Durabilis, and had genomes modified with tardigrade genetics. They could be pumped full of hydrogen sulfide, and reversibly dehydrated to death for long-term space travel, or during a medical emergency.
I didn't find any amphibians which survived complete dehydration, but I found an insect.
The useful word is anhydrobiosis-- but no amphibians are mentioned.
If you don't believe in an afterlife, then it seems you currently have two choices...
Believing in afterlife doesn't grant you one more option. This is a statement about ways of mitigating or avoiding death, and beliefs are not part of that subject matter. An improved version of the statement would say, "If there is no afterlife, then...". In this form, it's easier to notice that since it's known with great certainty that there is no afterlife, the hypothetical isn't worth mentioning.
The main problem with dehydration as I understand it is similar to that of cryopreservation, but worse: dehydration causes cells to shrink which damages organs. It also concentrates cellular components (salts, proteins, etc.) to the point where they start interacting with each other harmfully.
That said, it's an interesting starting point. Mike Darwin has proposed replacing cellular water with some kind of solvent carrying monomers that form a hard polymer under controlled conditions, possibly similar to Amber. Once it polymerizes and forms a glass, the cel...
Chemical fixation (sometimes called "plastination", although this conflates the practice with an unrelated procedure) is an in-progress technology to preserve brains at room temperature, and is being evaluated alongside cryonics by the Brain Preservation Foundation: http://www.brainpreservation.org/
It would probably be cheaper than cryonics, and would require much less long-term support - you can throw the brain in a shoebox instead of constantly maintaining it in liquid nitrogen. It still lacks a revival mechanism though - the current hope seems to be preserving enough information to get it back via slicing and scanning later.
Alcor's magazine Cryonics just published my article titled "Cryonics and the Singularity." It's on page 21 of this:
http://www.alcor.org/cryonics/Cryonics2012-4.pdf
The article argues that if you believe in the likelihood of a coming singularity you should sign up for cryonics.
Upvoted for clear setting of a line of reasoning
Pros for Down: Vague logic jump based on surface phenomena, organising rather than executing work
Pros for Up: Acknowledging ignorance, clear explicitation and individualization of stance
Why this proposal is a bad one :
Cryonics is based upon a working technology, cryogenic freezing of living tissues.
The latest cryonics techiques use M22, an ice crystal growth inhibitor that has been used to preserve small organs and successfully thaw them. More than likely, if you were to rewarm some of the tissues from a cryonics patient frozen today, some of the original cells would still be alive and viable. I don't know if this particular experiment has been performed, however : there is a reason why cryonics has a bad reputation for pseudoscience....
If you don't believe in an afterlife,
An afterlife doesn't really solve the problems people want it to solve. For one thing, ghost hunters with cable reality series might bother you with inane requests like pushing buttons on flashlights. ; )
But more to the point, why do people assume that an "afterlife," if it exists, has to last forever, or that you have to have one to give this life "meaning"? This shows uncritical, self-centered teleological thinking about human existence.
cryonics or permanent death
False dichotomy: Cryonics may fail (actually, will probably fail) to revive you. Or it may succed, and then you die anyway.
Robin Hanson uses an estimate of 5% here
It seems a quite optimistic estimate. Successful revival depends conjunctively on a large number of events, many of which are highly speculative (no damage from preservation, super duper nanotech) or outright implausible (cryo orgs not succumbing to organizational failure).
The best option is to embrace permanent death. The success of cryogenics or other life preserving technologies would be disastrous for humanity. Already population estimates for the near future cause panic about resources and sustainability, without further population increase due to a decrease in death rate. It would only be feasible if the birth rate was cut severely by imposing policies such as that in China. As procreation and cultivation of family life are seen as integral parts of the human experience these policies would probably be unsuccessful. Even if they were successful would this really be desirable? We should accept the transient, cyclical nature of life on this planet.
I certainly didn't intend to imply that this was the only viewpoint, or even that it was necessarily better, only that it addressed some of the issues with what seemed to be the only current possibility. I agree that it would require considerable research into how to achieve it: my point is that these would be upfront costs, whereas cryonics has backloaded costs (technological as well as financial). I also did not mean that a "hydronically" preserved organism (I like your term) could be stored anywhere, simply that it is easier to establish passive storage. Egyptian mummies lasted thousands of years in their dry, desert tombs, but can decay rapidly when exposed to moister climes. Bacteria need warmth and water to be active: removing one or the other is sufficient. We already preserve food at room temperature using the same principle (salt or sugar both preserve food by dehydrating bacteria).
Thus skipping or being ignorant of the details doesn't help that much.
The fact is, we do not currently have a reliable means of arresting a human's metabolic processes (including post-mortem decay) and restoring them. We don't have the details for restoring cryonically preserved persons. "Advanced nanotech" is just a mysterious answer until we know how to do it. The intention of the post was to stimulate thought (which I think it has done). I do not believe I have to have all the answers before I can ask the questions. New ideas arise from making new connections between existing concepts, and sometimes this means concepts existing in two different minds.
Personally, I'd rather just go on existing here and now. Preservation is just a backup option, much like backing up your computer files: you'd rather not have a system crash, but if you do, you can recover. On the other hand, cryonics is our only current "backup" option, so the choice is a "no-brainer". Even a slim chance is preferrably to no chance.
So eventually before long you have to dig deeper.
Agreed, but I don't know where to begin digging. Which is why I threw this open to the forum.
And doing today what you could do tomorrow ensures you don't get stuck in the past.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that: don't put off what you can do today?
Making small firm steps at a time is easily supported. Taking only a single step for not knowing how to take more is very probably underapplying ones knowledge. If the reasoning can go on with basically a empty reply from another party it's likely thought was suppressed very early. If one strives to take things to their logical conclusion this is a bad thing.
If it's not clear do understand that the post was supportable. I could just convince of ways it could have been awesomer. I could have communicated better what kinds of more sharper thinking could have...
If you don't believe in an afterlife, then it seems you currently have two choices: cryonics or permanent death. Now, I don't believe that cryonics is pseudoscience, but it's still pretty poor odds (Robin Hanson uses an estimate of 5% here). Unfortunately, the alternative offers a chance of zero. I see five main concerns with current cryonic technology:
So I wonder if we can do better.
I recall reading of juvenile forms of amphibians in desert environments that could survive for decades of drought in a dormant form, reviving when water returned. One specimen had sat on a shelf in a research office for over a century (in Arizona, if I recall correctly) and was successfully revived. Note: no particular efforts were made to maintain this specimen: the dry local climate was sufficient. It was suggested at the time that this could make an alternative method of preserving organs. Now the advantages of this approach (which I refer to flippantly as "dryonics") is:
There is one big disadvantage of this approach, of course: no one knows how to do it (it's not entirely clear how the juvenile amphibians do it) or even if it would be possible in larger, more complex organisms. And, so far as I know, no one is working on it. But it would seem to offer a much better prospect than our current options, so I would suggest it worth investigating.
I am not a biologist, and I'm not sure where one would start developing such a technology. I frankly admit that I am sharing this in the hope that someone who does have an idea will run with it. If anyone knows of any work on these lines, or has an idea how to proceed, please send a comment or email. Or even if you have another alternative. Because right now, I don't consider our prospects good.
[Note: I am going on memory in this post; I really wish I could provide references, but there does not seem much activity along these lines that I can find. I'm not even sure what to call it: mummification? Probably too scary. Dehydration? Anyway feel free to add suggestions or link references.]