Content note: discussion of things that are worse than death

Over the past few years, a few people have claimed rejection of cryonics due to concerns that they might be revived into a world that they preferred less than being dead or not existing. For example, lukeprog pointed this out in a LW comment here, and Julia Galef expressed similar sentiments in a comment on her blog here. 

I use brain preservation rather than cryonics here, because it seems like these concerns are technology-platform agnostic.

To me one solution is that it seems possible to have an "out-clause": circumstances under which you'd prefer to have your preservation/suspension terminated. 

Here's how it would work: you specify, prior to entering biostasis, circumstances in which you'd prefer to have your brain/body be taken out of stasis. Then, if those circumstances are realized, the organization carries out your request. 

This almost certainly wouldn't solve all of the potential bad outcomes, but it ought to help some. Also, it requires that you enumerate some of the circumstances in which you'd prefer to have your suspension terminated. 

While obvious, it seems worth pointing out that there's no way to decrease the probability of worse-than-death outcomes to 0%. Although this also is the case for currently-living people (i.e. people whose brains are not necessarily preserved could also experience worse-than-death outcomes and/or have their lifespan extended against their wishes). 

For people who are concerned about this, I have three main questions: 

1) Do you think that an opt-out clause is a useful-in-principle way to address your concerns?

2) If no to #1, is there some other mechanism that you could imagine which would work?

3) Can you enumerate some specific world-states that you think could lead to revival in a worse-than-death state? (Examples: UFAI is imminent, or a malevolent dictator's army is about to take over the world.) 

He writes this essay in response to someone who writes about their "gut level emotional response when [they] thought about dogs being likely killed by an as yet unproven and dangerous medical procedure." 

I recommend the whole thing. If you are going to read it all, note that some text is duplicated near the end, though there is one paragraph at the very end which is not. 

First, he describes how animals share empathy and emotions with humans:

It is a maxim of the Animal Rights ideologues that "a rat is a dog is a boy." [PETA] This is patently not true, and might just be denounced as absurd on its face. But, it is true that rats, dogs and boys share important properties, or more generally, that rats, dogs and people share important properties. I have a huge reservoir of experience with rats, dogs and people. All three have a well developed sense of self, the ability to read my face and determine my mental state, and, obviously, the ability to experience most, if not all of the basic emotions and mental states that humans experience: anxiety, fear, emotional attachment to others (or their own and other species), sexual arousal and release, anticipation, enjoyment, curiosity, and so on. Most importantly, they have the ability to experience empathy - to extend their internal feelings to others. Well socialized rats and dogs know that the people they interact with can be hurt, provoked, pleased, and otherwise be emotionally and physically affected by their actions and they, in turn, act accordingly within the limits of their abilities to do so. Neither "pet" dogs nor rats bite their owners with abandon nor destroy their homes. This isn't just "conditioned behavior," but rather is the result of a more global understanding that humans, like them, can feel; and thus can be rewarded or made to suffer.

This is a very important and valuable property to people. it is so valuable that, when members of our own species fail to demonstrate it, we imprison them or even kill them! Jails and prisons are full of people who either lack empathy, or lack the ability to act upon it. What then does it say of us if we treat animals in ways that demonstrate a lack of understanding or respect for their feelings - for their ability to suffer or experience pleasure?

The answer is that it would, at first glance, say that we were either sociopaths, profoundly ignorant of the nature of animals, or taken over by some ideology which induced a state of perceptual blindness to their plight. Thus, what I am saying here is that I agree that it is neither reasonable nor moral (within our value structure as empathetic beings) to regard animals as unfeeling automatons, let alone treat them as such.

However, there is a problem with this approach to dealing both with our fellow humans and with other animals as the sole guide to our actions. The problem is, put simply, this: The native state of man and beast is one of unfathomable suffering.

Next, he explains ethics in a way that seems to correspond with a lot of Eliezer's writing: 

The central moral kernel of almost every religion is that we are born into a world of injustice and suffering. There can be little quibbling with that observation, since everywhere we turn we see living systems whose very structure brings them into "conflict" with their environment and causes enormous suffering. This is how it has always been. It is the reality of our existence in this universe. Evolution, the beautiful star studded sky at night, the cool lapping ocean - they don't give a damn about anything, least of all a mouse in a cage with cancer or a woman with her breast rotting off. And as far we can tell, they never will.

The best the universe has done so far is to produce us - creatures who both can and do care about injustice and suffering. If you believe in a Grand Design, or some other teleological explanation that results in universal justice, then, go to the mirror right now and take a long hard look, because buddy, you are it - you are as good as it has gotten, so far.

Then, unless you are cretin or a fool, or both, realize that suffering and injustice are both inescapable contemporary and future realities which you have to deal with rationally (or not) as you choose. You do not get to choose Door Number 3, which is "no suffering and injustice." In fact, even you kill yourself straightaway to avoid inconveniencing a mouse with a plow, the suffering and injustice will continue to march on, even for billions and billions of years.

There are no easy choices.

The best you can do is to choose carefully and rationally what kinds of misery you will inflict and to work, relentlessly, to minimize it and to make the universe a more just place. Those decisions will be informed by your values - by what you hold most worthy and in highest esteem. You are, of course, free to choose mice over men, a hunter-gatherer life over that of an agrarian, the world of the primitive or technological civilization.

Next, he tackles questions about whether animal research is, on net, beneficial: 

However, what you are not free to do, at least not around me, is to spew out lies and moral falsehoods about the supposed real nature of the universe and the real consequences of the choices you (and others like you) make. If you think that animal's have rights in the classical and real sense that has historically been applied to humans, then I will call you a liar and a moral blackguard who would, and has, condemned not only countless humans to unnecessary suffering and death, but countless animals whom humans value highly (our companion animals and livestock) as well - because much of veterinary medicine is a direct result of animal research.

If you argue that humans should be used in research, there I would agree with you. Most of the pharmacological research done with rodents is junk science which has led to few real medical advances. But be advised that such research will be ugly and terrifying and very likely costly in some meaningful proportion to the benefit it yields.

I am sorry to be so harsh, but technological civilization has robbed most of the Western world of any sense of reality - of how the universe works and of just how much suffering accrues from every frozen ready meal and every lipstick or plastic bottle of beverage consumed.

That dreamy, soft-bellied state of unreality is intolerable and it is also incompatible with our continued existence as a technological species, and probably as a species at all.

And it is most certainly incompatible with any hope we can currently see of the universe becoming a more just, decent and humane place.

Thus, I see your feelings and attitudes as profoundly incompatible both with your long term personal survival, and that of our species. As such, they evoke in me a feeling of revulsion and strong feeling of anger for the damage they have already caused to biomedical research - and will likely continue to cause.

Next, he goes into details of what animal lifespan research entails: 

I would also like to note that "the worst" of animal research in terms of inflicting suffering is not the acute experimental work conducted by cryonicists and most other mainstream medical research, but rather is to be found in the work of gerontologists conducting life span studies on rodents and primates. Research which virtually all on this list serve avidly lap up and never criticize - even though much, if not most of it, is junk science.

I can say, without reservation, that of all the pain, horror and cruelty that I have inflicted, either inadvertently, or as an anticipated consequence of research, by far the most cruel work I've ever (done or) observed is that of the gerontologist doing lifespan studies. ... 

The fact is, that aging animals get a dreadful array of truly horrible and disgusting pathologies and, because they are not humans receiving human medical care, they die in fantastically gruesome ways more often than not. ...

Rodents often develop not only mammary neoplasms [breast cancers], but tumors of the food pouches and buccal mucosa [inside lining of the cheeks]. Since there is no surgical intervention, these masses often grow to colossal size, ulcerate, break down and fungate. A common cause of death is starvation, which is truly terrible to watch. Sometimes, the animals lose the ability to drink, in which case death is mercifully faster and less painful as a result of dehydration.

The visceral and bone pain that results from tumor invasion of vital organs, the skeleton and joints must be unimaginable. And cancers kills the majority of animals in gerontological lifespan studies. I've seen animals languish in their cages for weeks or months being slowly consumed by lesions so revolting I could barely force myself to handle them in order to document their decline.

And of what the lucky ones who don't die of cancer? Are they in rodent care homes in tiny beds with tiny egg crate mattresses with a staff of rodents careers to lick their bums and turn them? Hardly. As animals age and develop spondylosis [spine osteoarthritis] and sarcopenia [age-related loss of muscle mass], they become unable to reach their anuses and urogential areas with their mouths. As a result, they cannot clean themselves, and they develop an ammonia-generating, bacteria infested crusting of urea and feces in these delicate areas, which, not infrequently results in ulceration. They are often blind from cataracts, and are, of necessity, usually housed one to a cage (they have a propensity to cannibalism, especially if calorie restricted), so they die alone, slowly, most often of starvation and dehydration.

Of course, the first question that likely comes to most peoples' minds upon hearing this a tale of horror is, "For the love of god man, why don't you euthanize such poor creatures, or at least medicate them for pain?" The answer is that you can't, not without developing a whole new, complex and costly model which has highly specific (and uniform) and almost completely NONSUBJECTIVE algorithms for when euthanasia should take place. And, you can forget about knowing what the "maximum lifespan" is, because it is flat out impossible to tell how long a moribund and likely suffering animal will live. I've seen animals I thought were certain to die within days survive for MONTHS! And so has every other experienced gerontological researcher.

That is the reality gerontological lifespan research.

So, you want to trespass on the territory of the gods and life forever, or even just another 50 or 500 years longer and you want to do it whilst being a nice guy? Give me a break!

The ending is poignant, and I think an excusable violation of Godwin's law: 

Cryonics has largely been taken over by this moral world-view and with an understandable, if inexcusable accompanying moral cowardice which dictates that we hide our animal research and cower in fear because the "Animal Rights" people will attack us (and by implication our poorly protected patients stored in vulnerable, unhardened facilities). This is the direct path to the Dark Ages or to the Soviet, or to the Third Reich, which was ironically, the only nation-state to completely ban animal research because of its cruelty and inhumanity. Instead, they built concentration camps and turned loose the likes of Holzhoner, Rascher, Mengle, Whichtman, Caluberg and countless others like them on humans, who, unlike animals, have the rich perceptual ability to comprehend their own mortality and to contemplate, at length, the certain inevitability of their fate.

Darwin does not mention it in this essay, but he is a vegetarian, and his dog is cryopreserved at Alcor. 

About a month ago kalla724 posted a number of comments on this post, many of which were highly upvoted.

Synopsis: I) I think that kalla724 is too pessimistic about the practice of cryopreservation to preserve personal identity, because we don't know what level of synapse/active zone/protein structure is preserved in human brains, and we also don't know what level is required for personal identity. II) I think kalla724 is wrong about the required detail necessary to simulate a C. elegans. This is testable in the relatively near-term, and the results of that test might yield insight into whose argument in point I is stronger. 

I

kalla724's main argument: it is not possible (p = 10^-22) that cryonics will preserve personal identity, because replacing water with cryoprotectant will cause too much damage to proteins and lipids in the brain.

My view is that kalla724 is too pessimistic. To find a specific example to expand upon this intuition, I searched for "c elegans memory". I chose one of the first reviews in the results: http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/17/4/191.full, published in 2010 by Ardiel and Rankin. Here's their first example: 

Rankin et al. (1990) were the first to characterize learning and memory in C. elegans. They studied plasticity of the “tap-withdrawal response” (TWR), a behavior whereby worms swim backward in response to a nonlocalized mechanical stimulus generated by tapping the Petri plate containing the worm. The magnitude of this reversal response is around 1 mm (roughly the length of the worm), but this can change with experience. Repeated administration of the tap results in a decrement of both the amplitude and the frequency of the response

The specific neurons mediating this are known: 

Using the circuits described by Chalfie et al. (1985) in conjunction with the neural wiring diagram (White et al. 1986), Wicks and Rankin (1995) identified the mechanosensory cells (ALM, AVM, PLM, and PVD) and interneurons (AVD, AVA, AVB, PVC, and DVA) mediating the TWR.

Through more science, they found that: 

the locus of mechanosensory habituation is in a part of the circuit unique to the TWR, i.e., the touch cells and/or the synapses between the touch cells and the interneurons. Now the hunt for the underlying molecular mechanism could begin.

There is some evidence for how the short-term component of the tap-withdrawal response plasticity. This is it: 

repeated activation of the touch cells results in autophosphorylation of the SHW-3–MPS-1 complex, thus diminishing K+ flux and prolonging the duration of mechanoreceptor potentials. This would slow the recovery from inactivation of EGL-19 (the L-type calcium channel mediating touch-evoked calcium currents) (Suzuki et al. 2003) and dampen cell excitability

This means that the complexes of proteins, working together, add phosphate groups to themselves as a post-translational modification. Each individual complex functions as a potassium ion channel, so changing its structure can alter the excitability of the cell.

Whether vitrification will preserve this specific post-translational modification is, as far as I know, an open question. The current cryoprotectant solution, M22, is pretty physiologic, which means that it functions similarly to water. But, we don't have this data. 

It's likely that when the protein complex undergoes autophosphorylation, other changes occur in the cell as well. If this led to changes in the cell's epigenome, which is very common, and the structure of the epigenome is retained by the cryopreservation, then the cell's epigenome could allow reverse inference of the state of its ion channels. We also don't have this data. 

The authors also discuss evidence for the long-term component of the tap-withdrawal response plasticity: 

the AMPA-type glutamate receptor subunit, GLR-1, was required for long-term habituation—glr-1 loss-of-function mutants habituated but did not retain decremented responses ... long-term habituation was associated with a significant reduction in the size, but not the number, of the GLR-1::GFP clusters in the posterior ventral nerve cord

This means that the number and distribution of a well characterized protein at the synapses of cells is highly correlated with the strength of the memory. This is consistent with current paradigms of long-term memory. 

Under ideal cryopreservation conditions, synaptic vesicles and receptor distributions are likely retained, even if some of the proteins may be a bit denatured. The data is far from perfect here, either. 

It's also important to stress that this only occurs under ideal conditions. Given the current practice of cryonics, cryoprotectant will not reach many or most areas of the brain. In these cases, there is a large amount of ice damage and the information is much more likely to be irretrievable. 

II

kalla724 says:

Uploading a particular C. elegans, so that the simulation reflects learning and experiences of that particular animal? Orders of magnitude more difficult. Might be possible, if we have really good technology and are looking at the living animal.

kalla724's requirement is that we look at live C. elegans to simulate them. But, the evidence above indicates a good correlation between AMPA receptor distribution and tap-withdrawal reflex. And there is good reason to believe that these features are retained by vitrification under ideal conditions. 

So, it seems to me that if you were to emulate a particular C elegans, you could add more receptors (or just up the strength parameter) at those synapses, and thus mimic the plasticity of the tap-withdrawal reflex. Looking at live animals would not be required. 

One more note:

Extrapolating results on personal identity from C. elegans to humans is not ideal. If the results are biased in one direction, we should expect more redundancy in mammalian neural systems than there are in nematode ones, because mammals have so many more brain cells. 

Edit 6/15: fixed format of quotes. 

Edit 6/16: added synopsis to clarify main points. 

He has resumed posting at his blog Chronopause and he is essential reading for those interested in cryonics and, more generally, rational decision-making in an uncertain world. 

In response to a comment by a LW user named Alexander, he writes:

I have no objection to you promoting Chronosphere on LessWrong and would strongly encourage you to do so. But my guess is that you will find it an unrewarding, and possibly punishing exercise.... I’m not being trite when I say that people do NOT like reality.... Life is scary and hard, in fact, it is absolutely terrifying if looked at objectively, and things like cryonics and religion ostensibly exist to REDUCE that terror and to make to life (and death) more bearable.

For that to work, there has to be a happy sense of optimism and trust that everything is going to work out just fine. This makes sense, and, arguably, is even necessary, because the alternative would be that everyone who chose cryonics would have to more than a customer – they would have be involved – at least to some extent – as an activist. That’s asking an awful lot. But most of all, it is asking that people who opt for cryonics give up the comfort of the fantasy that they can be customers, buy the product, pay their money every month or every quarter, and that they will then be taken care of when the need arises. It means that they will have to do two exceedingly difficult and uncomfortable things:

1) Confront and understand the reality of the the many shortcomings and uncertainties of contemporary cryonics and live with them.

2) Work industriously, creatively and continuously to overcome those shortcomings.

It is very, very hard to create and sustain an organization and a community where the above two dictums are practiced. It is not only hard for the community members, it is hard for the community leaders.

(Sidenote: This reminds me of what Luke considers his most difficult day-to-day tasks.) 

...[I]f you expect to see cryonics organizations to have validated the quality of their brain cryopreservation technology under a wide variety of real world conditions, you will be disappointed. If you expect to see contingency planning for serious, inevitable near-term existential risks, such as pandemic disease, you will also be disappointed. Similarly, if you expect to see technologies in place to mitigate post-cardiac arrest normothermic ischemic injury, more accurately predict when a patient will experience cardiac arrest (i.e., is truly terminal), experience less cold ischemic injury, or be better protected from outside attack, again, you will be disappointed.

LessWrong is structured around the rational cognition of Eli[e]zer Yudkowsky and his colleagues. They posit that they have a better (i.e., more rational, more functional) way of decision making and of living their lives. They also advocate being signed up for cryonics, and in particular making cryonics arrangements with Alcor. [ed note: Actually I think EY is with CI.] I don’t dispute that this a better and more rational choice than having no cryonics arrangements. I would say that this is necessary, but not sufficient. Or in other words, a small, but wholly inadequate step in the right direction. More generally, I would say that LessWrong suffers from the same sort of deficiency that cryonics does. The world is clearly racing towards catastrophe on many fronts. In some areas these catastrophes are not due to any kind of bad “active” decision making by humans. For instance, any competent epidemiologist at the CDC or WHO can give you fairly precise odds of when the next global pandemic will occur with a mortality of 30% to 50% of the population. No expert in this area voice any doubt that such an outbreak will occur. It is not a question of if, but of when. It is also clearly the case that the general population will not be prepared and that vast numbers of people will die, including some you reading this. It is also clear that most or all cryonics patients will be lost in any such pandemic.

My point is, that if “immortalism,” which includes both radical life extension and cryonics, is to have any material chance of working, a far higher degree of cohesion, activism, planning and commitment are required. Pandemic disease is just one example. Crazy behavior in a multitude of forms is another – and it is arguably more prevalent, more virulent and more of an immediate threat.

So, my guess is that most of the other cryonicists of your generation will prove singularly uninterested in my message and that they will not want to do anything – and indeed, that most have not even signed up for cryonics! I sincerely hope you prove me wrong!

As to your last question, by no means have I given up on cryonics, nor will I ever, within reason. As long as it is at all practical to be biopreserved, it makes sense to do so. No matter how small the odds, some chance is better than no chance at all. I am signed up with Alcor for now.

On a related note, Carl Shulman has said that more widespread cryonics would encourage more long-term thinking, specifically about existential risk. Is it a consensus view that this would be the case? 

Every now and then people ask LW what sort of career they should pursue if they want to have a large impact improving the world. If we agree that cryonics would encourage long-term thinking, and that this would be beneficial, then it seems to me that we should push some of these people towards the research and practice of brain preservation. For example, perhaps http://80000hours.org/search?q=cryonics should have some results. 

I had not heard of this until recently, and I doubt I am alone. I will quote from this source, which looks OK (there is also this).

What is the idea?

[D]uring the 1970s, researchers discovered that umbilical cord blood could supply the same kinds of blood-forming (hematopoietic) stem cells as a bone marrow donor. And so, umbilical cord blood began to be collected and stored.

How the cells are collected: 

After a vaginal delivery, the umbilical cord is clamped on both sides and cut. In most cases, an experienced obstetrician or nurse collects the cord blood before the placenta is delivered. One side of the umbilical cord is unclamped, and a small tube is passed into the umbilical vein to collect the blood. After blood has been collected from the cord, needles are placed on the side of the surface of the placenta that was connected to the fetus to collect more blood and cells from the large blood vessels that fed the fetus.

How the cells are stored:

After cord-blood collection has taken place, the blood is placed into bags or syringes and is usually taken by courier to the cord-blood bank. Once there, the sample is given an identifying number. Then the stem cells are separated from the rest of the blood and are stored cryogenically (frozen in liquid nitrogen) in a collection facility, also known as a cord-blood bank.

How the cells can be used: 

Then, if needed, blood-forming stem cells can be thawed and used in either autologous procedures (when someone receives his or her own umbilical cord blood in a transplant) or allogeneic procedures (when a person receives umbilical cord blood donated from someone else — a sibling, close relative, or anonymous donor).

The major upside: 

The primary reason that parents consider banking their newborn's cord blood is because they have a child or close relative with or a family medical history of diseases that can be treated with bone marrow transplants. 

The monetary cost: 

The expense of collecting and storing the cord blood can be a deciding factor for many families. At a commercial cord-blood bank, you'll pay approximately $1,000-$2,000 to store a sample of cord blood, in addition to an approximately $100 yearly maintenance fee. You might also pay an additional fee of several hundred dollars for the cord-blood collection kit, courier service to the cord-blood bank, and initial processing.

Is it useful as "biological insurance"? Some say no:

Some doctors and organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), have expressed concern that cord-blood banks may capitalize on the fears of vulnerable new parents by providing misleading information about the statistics of bone marrow transplants.... The AAP doesn't recommend cord-blood banking for families who don't have a history of disease. That's because research has not yet determined the likelihood that a child would ever need his or her own stem cells, nor has it confirmed that transplantation using self-donated cells rather than cells from a relative or stranger is safer or more effective. According to the AAP, "private storage of cord blood as 'biological insurance' is unwise. However, banking should be considered if there is a family member with a current or potential need to undergo a stem cell transplantation."

Some say yes: 

Other doctors and researchers support saving umbilical cord blood as a source of blood-forming stem cells in every delivery — mainly because of the promise that stem-cell research holds for the future. Most people would have little use for stem cells now, but research into the use of stem cells for treatment of disease is ongoing — and the future looks promising.

Three questions for LW:

1) Based on the above and/or outside information, would you recommend this procedure for two parents in their mid-20s living in the US with a middle class income whose babies will have no known risks for disease?

2) This seems like a good analogy for brain preservation using cryogenic nitrogen. Why do you think that umbilical cord stem cell banking is FDA regulated whereas brain preservation procedures are not?

3) Instead of privately banking them, it is possible to donate umbilical cord stem cells to public banks, for the benefit of others. Similarly, it is possible to donate one's postmortem brain (and organs) to the public, for the benefit of others. In both cases, there is the third option to do neither. In making these decisions, how do you weigh your own interests against those of others? 

In a comment on his skeptical post about Ray Kurzweil, he writes,

Unfortunately, [Kurzweil's] technological forecasting is naive, and I believe it will also prove erroneous (and in that, he is in excellent company). That would be of no consequence to me, or to others in cryonics, were it not for the fact that it has had, and continues to have, a corrosive effect on cryonics and immortalist activists and activism. His idea of the Singularity has created an expectation of entitlement and inevitability that are wholly unjustified, both on the basis of history, and on on the basis of events that are playing out now in the world markets, and on the geopolitical stage....

The IEET poll [link; Sep 7, 2011] found that the majority of their readers aged 35 or older said that they expect to “die within a normal human lifespan;” no surprises there.

This was in contrast to to an overwhelming majority (69%) of their readers under the age of 35 who believe that radical life extension will enable them to stay alive indefinitely, or “for centuries, at least.”

Where the data gets really interesting is when you look at the breakdown of just how these folks think they are going to be GIVEN practical immortality:

• 36% believe they will stay alive for centuries (at least) in their own (biological) bodies
• 26% expect that they will continue to survive by having their “minds uploaded to a computer”
• 7% expect to “die” but to eventually be resurrected by cryonics.

Only 7% think cryonics will be necessary? That simply delusional and it is a huge problem....

Nor are the 7% who anticipate survival via cryonics likely to be signed up. In fact, I’d wager not more than one or two of them is. And why should they bestir themselves in any way to this end? After all, the Singularity is coming, it is INEVITABLE, and all they have to do is to sit back and wait for it to arrive – presumably wrapped up in in pretty paper and with bows on.

Young people anticipating practical immortality look at me like some kind of raving mad Luddite when I try to convince them that if they are to have any meaningful chance at truly long term survival, they are going to have to act, work very hard, and have a hell of a lot of luck in the bargain....

Kurzweil has been, without doubt or argument, THE great enabler of this madness by providing a scenario and a narrative that is far more credible than Santa Claus, and orders of magnitude more appealing.

I wonder how people on Less Wrong would respond to that poll?

Edit: (Tried to) fix formatting and typo in title.

First, Darwin describes Jobs's (far mode) stance towards death: 

As Aschwin points out Jobs is on record (his Stanford Commencement Speech) as saying that death is the best thing that ever happened to life - that it clears out the old, and makes way for the new.

But these are Jobs's actual (near mode) actions regarding his own death: 

The really big story, so far largely unexploited by the media, is that Jobs got a liver transplant and got it here in the US. This just does not happen in patients with his Dx and prognosis - not since Mickey Mantle, anyway. And his outcome was exactly as was predicted. This infuriates those 'in the know' in the transplant community, because you have only to look to guys like Jim Neighbors, Larry Hagman, or even Larry Kramer who got livers many years or even a decade or two ago, and who continue not only to survive, but to do well. To put the liver of a 25-year old into a ~54 year old man with metastatic neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer violates the established protocols of just about every transplant center in the US.

The conclusion:

I find it more than a little hypocritical that Jobs, who spoke so glowingly of the utility of death for others, used every bit of medical technology AND his considerable wealth and influence, to postpone it for it himself, including the expedient of taking a GIFT, given with the sole intention of its being used to provide genuinely life saving benefit (not a futile exercise in medical care) and squandering it on a doomed attempt to save his own life. If you have the temerity to stand before the entire population of this planet and proclaim the goodness of death, then you should have the balls to accept it - especially when your own warped, erroneous and IRRATIONAL decision making was the proximate cause of your own dying. Instead, Jobs chose to grasp at straws, take a gift from a dead man and his family, given in good faith, and squander it on his own lust for more of the very thing (life) that he has publicly proclaimed it is a second best to "Death (which) is very likely the single best invention of life." 

Interesting recent article from Ben-Nun et al. (doi:10.1038/nmeth.1706) in the high-impact journal Nature Methods.

As I understand it, they express reprogramming factors in the adult cells (e.g., fibroblasts) of two endangered species (here and here) to convert them into induced pluripotent stem cells.

They then cryopreserve these pluripotent stem cells, in the hopes that they can eventually be used to increase the number and genetic diversity of these two species. 

However, this will require two additional technologies which, crucially, are still in development: 

1) the generation of germ cells from pluripotent stem cells, and 

2) the development of assisted reproductive technologies for related monkeys and rhinos. 

In the meantime, these pluripotent stem cells will simply remain in cryopreservation. 

What does this remind you of? In what ways is it different, such that it can be published in a high status journal? Are those differences informative in any way?