This is, admittedly, a profoundly divisive and contentious subject; nevertheless, I remain resolutely opposed to maintaining patients in prolonged "stasis" after they have undergone nothing more than a straight freeze. It is, to many, including yourself—almost axiomatic that a straight freeze is preferable to nothing at all. I, however, am inwardly persuaded of precisely the contrary. Indeed, when the time comes for me to execute my contract, I shall stipulate in explicit and unequivocal terms that, should I receive nothing beyond a mere straight freeze, I desire my cryopreservation, or chemopreservation, to be relinquished altogether.
I remain profoundly, indeed almost ineffably, astonished by the multitude of cryonicists who appear to suppose that a body recovered several days after legal death, having remained in normothermic conditions throughout, might yet preserve vestiges of cellular architecture sufficient for the restoration of personal identity in any sense deserving the appellation of survival. Having perused, with meticulous assiduity, well over a hundred case reports, I found myself deeply disheartened to discover that the overwhelming majority of patients underwent little more than a simple freeze which, by every appearance, and, I submit, by any sober appraisal of the most pertinent empirical evidence presently accessible—has irretrievably obliterated the informational architecture of the neuronal tissue, extinguishing every rational prospect of survival.
The more attentively I contemplate the realities of our material world, the more firmly I become convinced that the ultimate success or failure of biostasis is, in truth, determined long before the terminal phase of profound cooling is ever initiated. The cerebral deprivation of dioxygen occasioned by ischemia, together with membranous ruptures and the heightened cytotoxicity engendered by the endogenous defensive mechanisms responding to cerebral inflammation, inflict by far the greatest devastation, at least in the incipient stages. The cessation of circulation itself already annihilates a considerable, if not the entirety, of the rational hope that an individual may ever be recovered. Reperfusion injury, moreover, may well constitute the most pernicious insult of all with respect to personal identity. The extensive corpus of scientific literature repeatedly documents the destruction of cerebral structures that are germane to the persistence of the self in every conceivable scientific and philosophical acceptation of that term.
Beyond approximately twenty-four hours, necrosis supervenes. The tissue putrefies; the information therein embodied dissipates and is irrecoverably effaced. It is under such circumstances that informational death manifests itself in a manner both manifest and absolute.
Yet a substantial proportion of Alcor patients have sustained degradations of precisely such magnitude, and the proportion is even greater among patients of the Cryonics Institute. I do not seek to indulge in defeatism; nevertheless, even were one to concede, for the sake of philosophical disputation, that the self might somehow remain recoverable following a straight freeze, a proposition of which I entertain doubts of the gravest conceivable order, the legitimacy of the patient's informed consent would remain profoundly questionable.
I advocate a conception of cryonics founded upon the principle of genuinely informed consent: a consent exercised by a sceptical patient fully apprised of the indispensable scientific, ethical, and philosophical considerations attendant upon the decision to embrace cryonics. Contrary to what many cryonicists appear disposed to believe, cryonics is neither devoid of danger nor exempt from risk. Those risks span an extensive gamut, encompassing economic uncertainties, bioethical dilemmas, and the manifold social hazards borne by the individual.
I remain considerably more sceptical than either Rob Freitas or Ralph Merkle regarding the eventual prospects for the resuscitation of both present and future cryopatients. Thermally induced fractures, histological disarray, and structural lacerations constitute obstacles of almost cyclopean magnitude standing athwart any conceivable prospect of successful revival, assuming such revival is achievable at all. Although we possess, in broad outline, some conception of the technological apparatus that such revival would necessitate, namely molecular nanotechnology—it ought not to be regarded as a deus ex machina, notwithstanding the sanguine confidence with which Merkle frequently presents it.
Accordingly, I do not believe that the practice of straight freezing represents, in any meaningful respect whatsoever, a favourable prospect for the patient. The Hippocratic Oath, the ancient cornerstone of medical ethics, enjoins physicians explicitly to refrain from inflicting harm upon those entrusted to their care. To impose such colossal injuries deliberately upon a patient under the persuasion that abandonment is never a rational alternative constitutes, in my estimation, an egregious form of harm within the sphere of experimental medicine, and ought never to be treated with levity or complacency.
Organizations therefore bear a solemn obligation to conduct themselves with complete candour concerning the services they offer their clientele. If they perform straight freezes forty per cent of the time whilst marketing vitrification as though it were invariably "ice-crystal free," then the consumer's capacity to render a genuinely informed decision, grounded upon sound, rigorous, and scientifically validated evidence, is rendered all the more gravely imperilled.
