Disease. This one word has haunted human civilization for millions of years, ever since we set
foot on this Earth. It inspired an entire field of science: medicine, which is known as one of the
most thriving and respectable industries where millions of lives are saved. But there are always
those we can’t save, those with illnesses without cures. Cancer. Heart disease. Diabetes. These
diseases snatch life away from millions of people. In fact, out of the world's top ten causes of
death, seven of those causes are chronic, or incurable, diseases. But what if there was a way to
change all that? What if the solution to all this death wasn’t injecting a needle into somebody?
What if the remedy we’ve been looking for wasn’t a magical antidote? What if we could save the
lives of those suffering patients? Well, my friends, this is where cryonics comes in, a process
that could change the world, decrease the death rate, and save lives.
Now, I’m expecting that almost none of you know what cryonics even is. Well, that’s what I’m
here for. Cryonics is a phenomenal process in which the body is frozen, essentially making the
body not age. After a person is declared legally dead, research specialists and doctors will be
ready on standby, immediately transport the body to a storage facility, and cover it in ice. To
prevent any organ damage because of the intense cold, various chemicals and cryoprotectants
are injected into the body.
Then the body is stored in a tank of liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of -196 Celsius. Now that is
cold! Now, to put this into perspective you’d frostbite in less than 30 seconds. And this is why
those cryoprotectants are so important. This is all done within one hour, and doctors must be as
precise as possible because one mistake and a life is gone. But, with all the necessary
precautions this process theoretically allows the body to be completely frozen and prevents any
aging of the body or damage to the organs.
You might be wondering, ‘This is amazing, but what does this have to do with incurable
diseases?’ Well, this process is especially useful for people with those incurable diseases,
because cryonically freezing them stops the effects of the disease. Then, when a cure is found,
and this may be after hundreds of years, the person is unfrozen, and given the cure. Think of it
as pausing someone’s life, finding a cure for their ailment, unpausing their life, and giving them
said cure. Sounds simple, but in fact, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. But, if
everything goes right, this allows them to live a new life, in a new world, free from the fear of
disease.
Now, if you were listening, and I hope you were, you might have heard that I said freeze a ‘dead
body’. But what’s the use of that? How are we supposed to bring that body back to life? Well,
scientists are banking on the fact that, in the future, scientists and doctors will be able to bring
frozen bodies that are perfectly preserved, back from the dead. This sounds plain crazy, I know,
but when you think about it you realize that we already have methods to bring people back from
the dead. CPR and defibrillators both can revive a person whose heart has stopped, and before
these were invented we thought this was impossible. Just as we've defied the impossible
before, with innovations like CPR and defibrillators, why not believe in the possibility of reviving
those who've been frozen in the future?
I think, to understand this process, we need to take a step back in history. Believe it or not, this
process was first theorized as early as the 1960s. A brilliant American academic and college
physics teacher, Robert Ettinger, wrote a book called ‘The Prospect of Immortality’ in 1962. This
book advocates for the concept of cryonics, saying that future technology is likely to be able to
revive frozen people, and says that, logically, people who died a hundred years ago, of
supposedly incurable diseases, would be alive today if cryonics had been implemented. The
book carries on to explain every little detail of his research on the process, and how he thought
it could be revolutionary.
He later went on to found the Immortalist Society, a group of people advocating for cryonical
research, and then, in April of 1976, he founded the Cryonics Institute, a center where people
could pay to be cryonically frozen. There are over 100 patients already, including Ettinger
himself, and there are hundreds more people frozen throughout the world, in countries like
Russia and the US. Robert Ettinger’s work in the field of cryonics earned him the name ‘the
father of cryonics’, for his extensive research and devotion, and it was because of him that
cryonics gained a huge following among the scientific community.
But as much as I would like to say this process is a complete success, I morally can’t do that.
There are still a few bugs in the system that need to be addressed. First of all, critics have
stated that the theory part of the research doesn’t add up. They say that the chemicals injected
into the body may not stop aging at all, in fact, the patient may experience rapid aging after they
are woken up again. This brings us to the second criticism: that we have no guarantee that the
people frozen will actually be woken up again. We have no idea when the technology to wake
them up will be developed, and although it is likely to be developed in the near future, it’s still
not a guarantee.
Another significant problem is the imbalance between life and death caused by this process.
Our planet suffers from over population already, and the introduction of cryonics is just another
way to contribute to that. Thirdly, the huge cost of the process, which can come close to
$200000, is another huge hurdle. There are several other issues, like the cryoprotectants not
doing their job, or calculation errors. But the biggest hurdle is the moral aspect of the process.
When signing themselves up for cryonics, psychologists say that this makes it hard for relatives
or significant others of the patient to get over the fact that they will likely never see the person
again, and interpret it as clinging to their memory. The patient also sacrifices being able to go
through a proper burial and cultural customs, spending their last moments with family. When the
person wakes up, they will wake up to a new world where they do not have any friends or
family. To see this for myself, I conducted a survey to see, considering all the risks and
sacrifices, whether people would cryonically freeze themselves, and around 70 percent of the
people I surveyed, from all ages, would not cryonically freeze themselves. They just weren’t
willing to leave the world unnaturally.
While there are challenges to address, every day, scientists are making strides in research,
inching us closer to a future where cryonics is no longer a dream, but a tangible reality. We
have advanced so much in a century, and if we continue advancing at this rate, cryonics will
most certainly become a reality. All the people frozen will eventually wake up again, to a new
world full of wonders they might explore. As any new product or service develops in this new
world, the price will decrease at some point. As for the moral side of things, well, cryonics is a
choice that people can undertake. It’s never an obligation. It’s an alternative that can be
considered by those who are open to the idea of embracing what is yet to come. And as for a
very significant issue, overpopulation, well let’s do some simple math. Currently, around 500
people have been cryopreserved and around 5000 people have signed up for it after their
deaths. That makes 5500 people. Let’s assume over the next 200 years, the amount of people
cryonically frozen increases by *200. That’s just about over 1 million people. Now, compared to
the 8 billion people we already have on the Earth, does that make much of a difference?
Secondly, that could be said for any medical treatment. Suppose we find the cure for cancer.
Are we supposed not to give that cure to anyone just because millions of lives would be saved,
leading to overpopulation?
Now, I think Dennis Kowalski, the President of the Cryonics Institute summarised cryonics in a
very elegant way. He said that cryonics is ‘an ambulance ride to a future hospital that may or
may not exist’. This is exactly the vision of cryonics, to provide a opportunity of a new life to
millions of chronic disease patients around the world. It is a noble cause that must be protected,
developed, and funded because this could create ripples in the world of medicine forever, if it
becomes viable. In fact, we may enter a new era, the Era of Immortality, because anyone close
to death may be able to teleport themselves into the future for a chance at a future life. And as
many problems as there are, well, problems are made to be solved, just like in math class, and I
think that these problems are mere stepping stones for humanity to ascend to a greater future.
Thank you.