Cryogenics are the future, with the power to freeze ourselves we can sleep and not age one bit, we can also wake up thousands of years into the future, we won't have to listen to loud noises and stuff and we can dream for as long we like. Think about it, the power to sleep for as long as you like. You have an incurable virus so freeze yourself and wait for scientists to find a cure. you're living on a cargo ship and it takes 10 years to get to Earth but you don't want to be old and wrinkly by the time you get there so freeze yourself Be an ice sculpture for a while, you won't have to change your bedsheets ever again. Stuck in suspended animation.
All of you may think cryogenics only exist in Sci-Fi movies like Alien.

Yes, actually. Cryonics may seem like a great "heal-all" salve for the society. After all, anyone with cancer or AIDS could simply sleep well into the future and wake up at a time when their illness is perfectly curable. However, I think the drawbacks are equal to, if not far greater than, the purported advantages of cryonic systems.

Imagine waking up to a world you do not understand. Actually, we live everyday with people who can hardly adapt to changes in a normal pace. We see traditionalists regarding computers with utter suspicion or conservatives who simply cannot understand that some people just can't be heterosexual. Suppose we wake up in a future with morals, values, cultures or ethics entirely different from our own? Imagine sleeping in a democratic era and waking up hundreds of years later under the militaristic rule of a singular fuhrer? Far be it from me to invoke Godwin's law but imagine waking up to a world where you are not allowed to speak your mind, where the welfares of the state come before the rights of its individual citizens and where it is perfectly normal to exterminate the remaining Jewish and homosexual population? Would you care to live in such a world?

Also, to undergo cryonic treatment is to place your trust in other people. Now, these may very well be professionals who know what they're doing but these are also humans who are not that infallible. Think about it, would anyone motivated by greed really care about the welfare of a body from 70 or so years ago? Would you have enough money to pay the future generations indefinitely, just so someone would check ever and anon that your personal freezer has the right temperature?

It would also mean that anyone who believes in the merits of cryonics also believes in a future discovery of a cure. What if cancer really is incurable? Or AIDS mutated into a much more contagious form? Or the world was besieged by a global cataclysm and the scientists of the future prioritized researching more efficient ways to combat more severe illnesses brought about by the radiation in the wake of a nuclear war instead of researching a cure for your, say, breast cancer? In fact, what's to assure you that the people of the future won't just dispose your body and claim, "It was really his/her time; it was too late when he/she undertook the cryonic treatment."

Actually, who would want to wake up in the future and be regarded as the village "noob"?

This post has been edited by salamangkero: Mar 6 2008, 10:04 AM

i think cryonics is a great idea but i think will be difficult. freezing a living thing and "defrosting" always leads to death. they are relying in future advancement in science that will solve the problem.

but relying in the future is often disastrous. their method in cryo today, make you sleep and freeze you. Which in the future necessary steps must first be done before they make you sleep and freeze you will make todays freezed humans destroyed/killed forever. ( yes some people today have been cryoed before they died)

i think the scientist should first understand how to make us hibernate, that's an easier task because your just adding genes than freezing your whole body with uncertainty about the future

I think this whole thing is a terrible idea. I definitely wouldn't do this because the risk is greater than the reward. I mean, what if they can't wake you up? What if you somehow die in your sleep? What if your brain no longer functions normally? And if that happened, would the cancer or aids cure really be beneficial to you? That and accompanied with the stuff in Salamangkero's post, is any of it worth it? Let's say everything worked out perfectly, on your end, are you ready for that kind of a culture shock? It would be Back to the Future or the second Austin Powers movie only crazier. I mean, c'mon. What's the point of ending up in that era of time if there's no flying cars?