Teddy & Friends

Ted Williams is obviously not alone in his quest for immortality, as a Russian company offers "on ice" services for the brains or bodies of prospective clients (perhaps they could preserve simply the head as well, somewhere between just the brain or the entire body; I'm not sure):



From the article:

Osadchy and other clients of Russian cryonics company KrioRus believe the brain operates like a computer hard-drive and its contents can be frozen and stored for the future.

"We know that the personality is stored in the brain. So when a person's body is old, there's no reason to keep it," said Danila Medvedev, who runs KrioRus, the first cryonics outfit outside the United States.

"We tell our clients it's cheaper, safer and probably better preservation just to freeze the brain," said Medvedev, a smart executive sporting a suit and an iPad.

Freezing just the brain does raise other questions in my mind, as the brain needs to be compatible with a central nervous system in a hypothetical transplantation, and I'm not sure we're that close to a successful procedure (I'd venture to say we're not, unless we combine this with cloning services, which raises another moral dilemma).

Not surprisingly, the theory is not without skeptics:

"They are cheating people, taking a lot of money: It's fraud," said Valentin Grishenko, director of the Ukraine-based institute.

"If you freeze a body today -- even one alive and healthy -- after it is defrosted, it won't be alive and whole. We can't even freeze and preserve organs today -- only cells."

Another quandry seems to be "force-freezing" against the will of the deceased, although one might think that laws can easily be implemented to ensure this doesn't occur:

Cryonics backers may also freeze their relatives against their will.

While Osadchy's mother is a church-going Russian Orthodox, opposed to cryonics, he said he would not hesistate to remove her brain for keeping: "After death that person can't refuse."

Having similar beliefs, I'd be hard-pressed to complain centuries later in the event that the technology eventually came through and I were brought back to life, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm also reminded of a moral quandary in the comments section of a Mormon blog post, where the Mormons tactfully argued that souls could refuse benefits from "baptizing of the dead" in the afterlife if it was against their express wishes (hard to trump). In short, the Mormons argued that the act was superfluous at worst, and provided eternal benefits at best, which out-weighed cultural sensitivities in our temporal world.

Never the less, the Catholic Church exercises Her right to deny baptismal records for the purpose of proxy baptisms for the dead performed in LDS temples, thereby protecting the dignity of the sacrament. Perhaps She'd be justified as well in forbiding members from "deep freezing", as well as resurrectees being allowed an opt out clause if they'd didn't wish to initially be frozen, or would it be considered suicide at that point? Many conflicting principles here!

Another question that seems worth visiting is economic aspects, factoring inflation, possible bankruptcy, etc. According to the BioEdge article,"there's an annual $500 storage fee for keeping the body parts in liquid nitrogen." So what if descendants are unable or unwilling to keep payments going due to a recession or layoff? What if too many default and the company goes under? Do they file for Chapter 11? If so, what happens to the braincicles? So many questions pop up it's hard to know where to begin!