I broached the subject of cryonics with a family member today.  He offered almost none of the normal objections and I've been happy all day about the way the conversation went.  One interesting issue that he raised that I'd like to find an answer for is the question in the title.

Butter goes rancid after a while at room temperature.  It also goes rancid in the fridge and can absorb the other flavors if things aren't well contained inside the refrigerator.  Butter also goes rancid if left in a normal freezer, which mostly is designed to bring things very close to the melting point of water around 273 kelvin.

This suggests that lipid chemistry responds to temperatures in a different way than intuitions mostly educated by other examples of freezing, which is relevant because the brain is mostly made out of fat, with some complicating proteins mixed in.  My guess is that developing a "rancid brain" isn't likely to be a serious issue when you get down to the 77 kelvin of liquid nitrogen, but its still something I'd like to be able to answer directly and honestly, after really thinking about it in terms of "safety engineering".

One way to answer the direct question about butter might be to just perform the basic experiment with some butter samples at different temperatures (room, fridge, freezer, -80C freezer in a bio lab) and figure out how long butter stored each way takes to go rancid and then do some curve fitting, but that seems like it would take months or maybe even years, and butter doesn't even necessarily answer neurological questions directly.  Even if I learned about butter chemistry, there could be open questions about brain chemistry.  I've tentatively googled around for 30 minutes but organic chemistry isn't a primary area of expertise and I wasn't sure out to dig up the specialist scientific literature that might answer my question.

This community seemed like a good place to get help on the subject!

Here are some specific questions I'd love to know the answers to...

1. What are the precise chemical reactions are that are collectively referred to as rancidity in english, and how to they change at cryogenic temperatures?  Does butter stop going rancid in liquid nitrogen?

2. Are these or similar reactions possible in the brain, given all the cell membranes and mylenation and so on that are primarily made out of fat?

3. How much personality/memory/mind relevant information might be lost to rancidity, if it happened?  If there are brain or neuronal structures that are more likely to go rancid first, would the chemical changes involved in rancidity be likely to change our estimation of the structures "historical operation" or not?

4. The boiling point of oxygen is about 90 kelvin (13 degrees higher than nitrogen's boiling point).  If the liquid around a cryo-patient is not changed over time then we might expect the ratio of liquid oxygen to liquid nitrogen to increase over time.  Is the presence of the liquid oxygen relevant to rancidty issues or not?

I expect to have a conversation soon with my parents about cryonics. My parents are both professional scientists, but are vaguely religious. They certainly aren't fundamentalists; they are pro-choice, pro-gay rights, think "intelligent design" is nuts, etc. My father is less religious than my mother, the best description I can give is probably Deism. Doesn't believe in miracles, prayer, etc, but considers an afterlife likely. My mother is slightly more religious: in the past, she's prayed for help and things have worked out (positive bias). However, even she is far more skeptical than most theists. I remember one conversation as a kid in which she that she thought Jesus' resurrection was a metaphor. One one occasion, when I was in middle school, I asked her why she believed in God, and she replied that it was the only good explanation she could come up with for why there was good and evil in the world. She once quoted John Lennon, I think, talking about God as simply a personification of Good. She also believes in an afterlife.

Both of them I think would be very reluctant to engage in an open discussion about religion. In addition, both are intelligent enough, and have heard enough arguments, to make it enormously difficult to get them to change their minds, especially since the idea of an afterlife is a comforting thought for their own grandparents.

I would like to, if possible, avoid the discussion of religion, and instead simply persuade them to sign up for cryonics, without trying to force them to give up their belief in an afterlife. I've spent some time thinking about this, and have come up with some arguments. I do not want my parents to die. If there is any way I can be more persuasive, I have to find it, and I have to try it. So I am appealing to the collective brainstorming power of LW. If there is any argument you can think of that I can use, let me know.

Today it struck me just how dumb it was to agree fully with the desirability of being signed up for cryonics and yet not be so. I may, in perfect honesty, also be procrastinating from a piece of uni work that I need to do by Tuesday, but I intend to get right back to it after posting this.

Last time I looked into signing up for cryonics I found it confusing and intimidating, which quickly built up to a level where I abandoned the quest. Now that I have a piece of assessment looming, it is time to do something about it.

But I don't really know where to start. What do you do to get signed up for cryonics? Join the Cryonics Association of Australia? There seems to be a requirement for membership of a US organisation too. You can either say "I have joined/intend to join a US cryonics organisation" and pay $1000, or say "I haven't joined/don't intend to join one" and pay $30, which is sufficiently confusing to make me conclude that I don't actually understood how this organisation works. There aren't any facilities in Australia AFAIK, and there is no indication of what the CAA actually does in the event of unexpected death. Plus, they haven't updated their website for over a year.

Do you skip the CAA, and just sign up with Alcor or someone else based in the US? I don't know which ones are good or bad, or even have any firm idea how to find out which ones are good or bad. How do you arrange transportation to the cryonics facility from another country? Do you need to pay for everything in advance? Life insurance seems to be the ticket, but how do you go about getting that? I live with my parents and the car I drive belongs to them, so I've never insured anything.

Is there anybody who knows, or has some ideas, about what I should be doing?

Many approaches to cryonics assume that a detailed map of the neural patterns in a brain (via brain scanning technology) may be sufficient, using future technology, to bring that person "back to life." But cognition is greatly shaped by more than just the neural pattern: it is shaped by biology - by the body. (See Noe 2009; Pfeifer et al. 2006; Lakoff & Johnson 1999.)

I admit I'm pretty unfamiliar with the cryonics literature. I assume this is a standard objection, and has standard responses. Where can I find those responses?

Thanks!

The Cambridge UK meet-up on Saturday 12 February went really well. Many thanks to everyone who came and provided a wonderful and entertaining discussion.

One of the topics that came up was that of cryonics. This is the idea of having your body (or maybe just your brain) frozen after death, to be thawed and revived in the far future when medical technology has advanced to the point where it can heal you. Is this a rational thing to do?

The argument I heard from some of the other attendants effectively boils down to “what have you got to lose?” In other words, have yourself frozen just in case it works and you can be resurrected.

This struck me as awfully reminiscent of Pascal’s Wager, which is similarly a “what have you got to lose?” type argument. Cited in its original form, it is about belief in a god and goes something like this:

You can either believe in God or not. If you do, you will either be rewarded with eternity in heaven (if you’re right) or nothing happens (if you’re wrong). But if you don’t believe, you will either be punished by eternal torture (if you’re wrong) or nothing happens (if you’re right). It’s a no-brainer! You’re better off believing.

This argument falls down on many counts, but I’ll concentrate on a specific one. It makes a far-fetched assumption about the set of possible outcomes. It assumes that there are only the two possibilities quoted and no others. It ignores the possibility of a god that only rewards sceptical atheists.

Coming back to cryonics, the argument seems to proceed approximately like this:

You can either have yourself frozen or not. If you do, you will either wake up in a wonderful, happy-go-lucky utopian future with amazing technological advances (if cryonics works) or nothing happens (if it doesn’t). But if you don’t have yourself frozen, nothing happens either way. It’s a no-brainer! You’re better off in cryopreservation.

If I haven’t already made it abundantly clear, the assumption that the future you wake up in is at all desirable for you is a far-fetched one. It ignores the possibility of waking up as a slave with no opportunity for suicide.

What are everybody’s thoughts on this?

From Mike Darwin's new blog:

DCD has lead to a fracture within the medical community [7,8] wherein some centers, such as the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, have taken patients who want ventilator support withdrawn, placed femoral cannulae under local (spinal) anesthesia, turned off the ventilator after effectively anesthetizing the patient, waited until the patient’s heart stops, and then restarted circulation with CPB. They also, of course, give paralytic neuromuscular blocking drugs (as is routine in all visceral organ retrieval) to prevent the thoracoabdominal incision, and the terminal drop in blood pressure (when the organs are removed), from causing muscle vesiculations (twitching) or actual limb movement as a result of stimulation of the nocioceptive pathways in the spinal cord (pain is a local phenomenon first and a central nervous system one secondly with the process proceeding up the spinal cord to the brain). [9,10]

To be blunt, this procedure resulted in all hell breaking out. [11,12,13] Bioethicists, such James Bernat and Leslie Whetstine, accused the surgeons and neurologists involved in this undertaking of every ethical evil, including homicide.[14,15] A compromise position is to restore circulation in the body using a special balloon-tipped aortic catheter that prevents ‘all ‘ flow to the brain. This results in a ‘resolution’ to the ‘paradox’ of removing organs from a patient with a ‘viable, or potentially viable brain.’ Of course, from our perspective as cryonicists, this whole exercise is nothing more or less than a procedural contortion designed to avoid confronting the reality that death is not a binary condition, and that if you are going to allow people to withdraw from medical care they no longer want, and that they (rightfully) consider an assault, then the corollary to that is that they also get to decide when they are dead. [16] That means that they have the perfect right to ask for, and receive a treatment (i.e., in the presence of informed consent) whereby they are anesthetized, cooled, subjected to blood washout, and their organs removed – at which point they are indeed DEAD, in the sense that their non-functional condition is now irreversible, or not going to be reversed, because they do not want it to be. When, exactly, they become irrecoverable from an information-theoretic standpoint is irrelevant, because they don’t want to be recovered, and no technology currently exists that will allow them to be recovered.

We, as cryonicists, could argue that if such patients were cryopreserved, they might possibly be recovered in the future. But if they do not want cryopreservation, then they are dead when they say they are dead, and when they meet the current medico-legal definition of cardiorespiratory death (i.e., no heartbeat or breathing and no prospect of their resuming). The medical response to this fairly straightforward situation has been, as expected, convoluted and irrational, and profoundly dangerous to cryonics. The recent paper “Clarifying the paradigm for the ethics of donation and transplantation: Was ‘dead’ really so clear before organ donation?” [17] is an excellent window into current medical policy, not just on the issue of DCD, but on the application of any kind of circulatory support to patients who have been pronounced dead on the basis of clinical (cardiac) criteria.  This article is one of the most cited in current DCD debates, and the closing sentence in its abstract says it all (emphasis mine):

“Criticism of controlled DCD on the basis of violating the dead donor rule, where autoresuscitation has not been described beyond 2 minutes, in which life support is withdrawn and CPR is not provided, is not valid. However, any post mortem intervention that reestablishes brain blood flow should be prohibited. “In comparison to traditional practice, organ donation has forced the clarification of the diagnostic criteria for death and improved the rigour of the determinations.”[17]

...

The UK has already adopted standards for determining and pronouncing death that expressly prohibit the application of CPR, or any modalities that restore flow to the brain or conserve brain viability. I have made inquiries, and been informed that failure to follow these Guidelines would be a serious breach of professional conduct, resulting in any licensed person being struck off; and that such action would very likely constitute a criminal act in the UK, as well (prosecution to be at the discretion of law enforcement and the prosecutor). [21]

The whole point of cryonics -- not to put too fine a point on it -- is to conserve brain viability, in the sense of keeping as much of the brain in as close to a viable state as possible.

ETA: Mike has confirmed that the UK law applies to non organ donors. He also has stated that new changes have been made to the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (a sort of template by which state laws are drafted) which are likely to be similar in nature, in the US.

I hope this post will help to those who think about cryonics. 

My mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer on 1 Jules 2010.

It was on terminal stage and she died 24 September 2010.

Before, in March she publically said that she is against cryonics on the party at her home.

But several weeks after she learned about cancer I asked her again. I told her that only her brain will be cryonised. But head and body will be buried by Christian ritual.

To my surprise she agreed. She said that she do it because she knows that it is important to me, and also she thought that “studying her brain will help science”.

I ask her to write special will about funeral in free form. The exact text of needed will I got from Cryorus, the only available cryonic company in Moscow.

After it I go to Cryorus and signed two contracts for me and for her.

We reach agreement that I will make payment in the moment of cryopreservation.

She was prominent scientist in the field of art history http://bit.ly/gsa5mq  - wiki 

So we need to keep the fact or cryopreservation in secret, and I ask the readers of this text not to mention about it in Russian.

23 September she was in hospital and her condition was unstable, but even though the call from hospital in 1.50 AM was unexpected. She died from heart failure. She was fully consciences until last day and didn’t have much pain.

I already have instructed stuff in the hospital that they should call me immediately if she dies, and should put cold wet blanket on her head.

But Russian laws are not well for cryonist: you can’t get full accesses to the body until all documents are prepared in the office of state agency – which is opened only in day time!

I took a car and rush to the hospital together with Danila Medvedev, head of Cryorus and russian transhumanist. We took the body to the cold room  with near zero (C) temperature in morgue, put on it wet blankets, and leave until morning.

The next day I have to do a trick – to cryopreserved my mother and ensure that nobody of her friends will know about it.

This is the main important point of story, because here is the difference about what I expected I will feel, and what actually I felt.

I felt that they could stop me somehow, if they learn that cryopreservation is in progress, because they think that it is against Christian laws, it is mutilation of her body and is against her will after all - they remembered that she publically told that she don’t want cryopreservation.

It was a lot of problems with papers in the hospital, and a transportation car was lost in traffic jams until 2 PM.

Her body had to be transported out of Moscow to another hospital where cryopreservation will start. It taked several hours in traffic jams. During this time we find some ice and also I bought freezed vegetables for her head.

I called her friends and her husband and told everything except that I took the body from the hospital.

In morgue of the second hospital also arrived American cryonist Saul Kent who was visiting Russia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Kent

The stuff quickly take the brain out and start cooling it. They put scull back on place so nobody will see that the brain is removed.

Three day later she got public service in the museum and in the church, and nobody knows that she is not here. Her body was then cremated and the urn was put in family cemetery. I told to several close friends that I move her body to another hospital morgue because “funeral there is cheaper” (it is true).

So, did it help my grave? No. But I think that I did right thing.

I understand that most likely cells of her brain have died, but connectom should preserved for the future scanning. I estimate the total chances of her resurrection in 5 per cent.

If someone is sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty, should they also be prohibited from signing up for cryonics? Specifically, I'm referring to people like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_death_row_inmates

I am not talking about providing it for them, just allowing them to sign up for it provided they can somehow get enough money together and allowing a response team into the prison to retrieve the body after the prisoner has died or been executed by lethal injection. I think they should be allowed access to cryonics, because we don't know enough yet about the brain to determine how much of their criminal behavior is due to mental illness/disorder and how much is due to free will. It may be possible to diagnose and cure people like Jeffrey Dahmer in the future before they commit any crimes, or to cure those already in prison such that they won't commit any more crimes.

As cryonics gets more and more popular, this will become an issue, especially when the first death row inmate wants to sign up for it.

A brief line from this comment indicates that the author of the cryonics-critical comment quoted here was perhaps not the one that deleted it.

You know what - I am rather glad my comment was deleted on less wrong - good reason for people not to post on there.

Was it deleted by a moderator?

Honestly, the decisive downvoting seemed to do the trick of hiding it from casual readers who don't want to see the long annoying rants. I don't think it was casting any doubt on the credibility of cryonics.

While it sounds like the author regrets posting it, I would think they should be allowed to delete it themselves.

Edit: Originally titled "Cryonics critical comment deleted?"

...according to this front-page Reddit headline I just saw, which links to this Guardian article. I wonder if he's heard of KrioRus, whether he's signed up (Wikipedia says they offer services "to clients from Russia, CIS and EU"), and what his odds would be if he were (would it be possible to emigrate to Russia to be closer to the facility, and if not, what would be the best possible option?). Given his being a head of state, presumably it'd be pretty tough for an advocate to even get close enough to try to make the case.

Searching the Reddit comment thread for "cryo" turned up nothing.

I recently found something that may be of concern to some of the readers here.

On her blog, Melody Maxim, former employee of Suspended Animation, provider of "standby services" for Cryonics Institute customers, describes several examples of gross incompetence in providing those services. Specifically, spending large amounts of money on designing and manufacturing novel perfusion equipment when cheaper, more effective devices that could be adapted to serve their purposes already existed, hiring laymen to perform difficult medical procedures who then botched them, and even finding themselves unable to get their equipment loaded onto a plane because it exceeded the weight limit.

An excerpt from one of her posts, "Why I Believe Cryonics Should Be Regulated":

It is no longer possible for me to believe what I witnessed was an isolated bit of corruption, and the picture gets bigger, by the year...

For forty years, cryonics "research" has primarily consisted of laymen attempting to build equipment that already exists, and laymen trying to train other laymen how to perform the tasks of paramedics, perfusionists, and vascular surgeons...much of this time with the benefactors having ample funding to provide the real thing, in regard to both equipment and personnel. Organizations such as Alcor and Suspended Animation, which want to charge $60,000 to $150,000, (not to mention other extra charges, or years worth of membership dues), are not capable of preserving brains and/or bodies in a condition likely to be viable in the future. People associated with these companies, have been known to encourage people, not only to leave hefty life insurance policies with their organizations listed as the beneficiaries, to pay for these amateur surgical procedures, but to leave their estates and irrevocable trusts to cryonics organizations.

...

Again, I have no problem with people receiving their last wishes. If people want to be cryopreserved, I think they should have that right. BUT...companies should not be allowed to deceive people who wish to be cryopreserved. They should not be allowed to publish photos of what looks like medical professionals performing surgery, but in actuality, is a group of laymen playing doctor with a dead body...people whose incompetency will result in their clients being left warm (and decaying), for many hours while they struggle to perform a vascular cannulation, or people whose brains will be underperfused or turned to mush, by laymen who have no idea how to properly and safely operate a perfusion circuit. Cryonics companies should not be allowed to refer to laymen as "Chief Surgeon," "Surgeon," "Perfusionist," when these people hold no medical credentials.

Open discussion.

I think my dog is about to die. Even if I thought it was worth it I don't have the money to freeze her. But I am curious to know how people here feel about the practice and whether anyone plans to do this for their pet. It seems like a practice that plays into the image of cryonics as the domain of strange and egotistical rich people. On the other hand it also seems like a rather human and heart warming practice. Is pet cryopreservation good for the image of cryonics?

Also, do people who just do neuro get their pets preserved? Will people upload pets? Assuming life as an emulation feels different from life as a biological organism is it ethical to upload animals? The transition might be strange and uncomfortable but we expect at least some humans to take the risk and live with any differences. But animals don't understand this and might not have the mental flexibility to adjust.