The Ethics of Cryonic Preservation

In his book Singularity Rising, James. D. Miller ends with a ringing endorsement of cryonic preservation, the freezing of the human body in hopes that medical science will one day be able to revive that body. There are already companies such as Alcor that will do such cryonic preservation. This reminds me of my favorite cryonics joke, referring to a brand name of frozen treats:

Man: Did you hear that the son of Ted Williams had his father's head cryonically preserved?

Woman: Really? So what do you call that, when you have your Dad's head frozen?

Man: You call it a Popsicle. 

Cryonics may be the subject of jokes, but Miller is dead serious about it. He says that his thinking has evolved to the point where he now believes “underuse of cryonics is the greatest evil of our time.” Miller's reasoning is along the lines that if we have some means of freezing people, and we fail to use such means, it is almost like murder. Miller asks:

How will the future judge us if cryonics works and future historians come to believe that we should have known that it would work? Will our descendants think us monsters for letting so many die unnecessarily?

Let us look for a minute at the ethics of cryonic preservation. Imagine you are about to die, and you have $150,000 in your bank account. Is it moral for you to use that money to have your body cryonically preserved? I doubt that it would be a good moral choice.

There are two reasons why it seems that it would not be moral to do such a thing. The first reason has to do with energy use and carbon footprints. According to the web site of the cryonic preservation company Alcor, “Alcor patients are stored under liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196°C.” (Talk about a euphemism, using the term “patient” rather than the word “corpse.”)

Preserving a body at such a super-low temperature uses up a huge amount of energy every year. The problem is that in today's world, energy use usually requires fossil fuels to be burnt by things such as coal plants. The more fossil fuels that are burnt, the more quickly we heat the planet, and the more we put the environment at risk, making many species extinct, putting many humans (and perhaps even the survival of our species) at risk. Can we imagine how much worse global warming would get if we burned up a lot more coal so that every dead person could be cryonically preserved?

The second reason why it would apparently not be moral to have yourself cryonically preserved is that you could use the same funds in an alternate way, and save quite a few lives. You could donate that $150,000 to some charity which fights hunger around the world, or pays for vaccinations. A donation of about $150,000 would save multiple lives, given that there are poor countries where people subsist on only a few hundred dollars a year. By using the money to cryonically preserve yourself rather than donating to a life-saving charity, you are spending the money on a project that merely has a small chance of saving one life rather than making a contribution that will probably save several or many lives. That's not morally sound.

This argument is based on the claim that there would be only a very low chance of you being revived from cryonic preservation, but is that assumption correct? Let's look at the odds. In order for you to be successfully revived after you were frozen, each of the following eight conditions would have to be met:

Condition 1: You would have to be successfully frozen soon after death. It would not do for you to die  1000 miles from your cryonic preservation company. In such a case, your brain would undergo too much damage before they put you under the deep freeze. You would have to die relatively near your cryonic preservation company, and your body would have to be quickly transported to them.

Condition 2: You would have to be successfully frozen in the right way. Your cryonic preservation company would have to take great care to preserve your body in the right way. This would be a dicey proposition, because they might be freezing people for 50 years or 100 years before anyone got around to reviving a body; so no one would know exactly what was the right way to preserve the body (for example, no one would know whether it was some particular chemical that should be injected into the brain, or some other chemical). Also, the staff working for your cryonic preservation company would have to work very carefully, which might be unlikely (since some of them might be thinking to themselves: who cares, the guy's dead).

Condition 3: Your cryonic preservation company would have to stay in business until science advanced far enough to allow resuscitation of frozen bodies. This might be unlikely, because it might take many decades until such a time. During such a time there might be all kinds of social and economic upheavals that might lead to the collapse of your cryonic preservation company, plus the possibilities of nuclear war or the banning of cryonics by some conservative administration.

Condition 4: The funds you had supplied to the company would have to last until science advanced far enough to allow resuscitation of frozen bodies. Given inflation and escalating energy costs, that might be very unlikely. Once your account balance fell to zero, your cryonics company would probably incinerate or bury your body. 
 
Condition 5: Consciousness and memory would have to be based purely on physical brain states, and not on delicate energy states that would be lost during freezing. Your memory and consciousness might depend purely on physical arrangements of neurons, or it might also depend on very delicate electrical and quantum state conditions in your brain. If the latter case is true, your memory and personality is likely to get completely wiped out by decades of low-temperature cryonic preservation.

Condition 6: There would have to be no soul that survives death. Based on things such as near-death experiences, apparition sightings, and children who report reincarnation memories, many people believe there is something like a soul that survives death. If that is true, it will not work to try to revive a frozen body. If, for example, your soul has gone on to some heavenly realm, then it will not reappear in your body when someone tries to unfreeze it.

Condition 7: Science would have to figure out a way to resuscitate frozen bodies. This part is very unlikely. We have no promising approach here, other than warming a body up, zapping it with electricity and hoping for the best.

Condition 8: When they revived your body, the resulting personality would have to be you, rather than a new person. An additional uncertainty is that when they revived your body, you might find that your memory was entirely wiped out. So the resulting personality might not really be you, but some new “blank slate” mind that might really be a whole new person.

The probability of all of these conditions occurring would be very low. This is why from a moral standpoint it is far better for you to have your will leave your money to charity than for you to make an arrangement with a cryonic preservation company. Much better to save lives for certain with a charitable donation than to start down some chilly high-tech road that will very probably not save even one life.

The Cryonic Investor: A Science Fiction Story

Al Kent had developed the strangest plan ever created for getting rich.

Al had got his idea while doing medical research on cryonics, which is the science that deals with preserving humans and animals at low temperatures. Al had worked for a large bioengineering company that was trying to develop medical techniques that could be used to put very sick patients into a deep cold sleep, until their condition had stabilized and a plan could be developed for treating them. Part of Al's job had been developing experimental techniques that could put animals into a deep, cold, cryonic sleep. The company had hoped that these techniques could one day be used to help save sick humans.

After a month of making particularly good progress on this task, one day Al had come home and thought to himself: what would it be like for a human patient to go into a cold, deep sleep for thirty years, and then wake up? After considering various ramifications, it had occurred to Al that this type of long deep sleep would be a great thing for the person financially. Because of what is called “the magic of compound interest,” Al calculated that if a person had $100,000 in an investment account earning 6%, and left the account untouched for thirty years, at the end of the thirty year period the investment would be worth about $574,000.

Then Al had thought to himself: wait a second, what if I did that myself? The scheme had then hatched in his mind: he could use his company's cryonic technology to put himself into a long, deep, cold, cryonic sleep. He could sleep for thirty years, and when he woke up, he would be rich. His investment portfolio would grow to a level of wealth about six times greater than when he started.

At first Al just kept this idea in his mind as a pleasant fantasy. But then he started to think about it more and more seriously. When Al had experimented with inducing cryonic sleep in animals, he had found that the long, deep sleep seemed to slow down their aging process by about 70%. Al concluded that if he went into a thirty year cold, deep sleep, he would wake up looking only about ten years older. Being only 33 years old, Al figured that he could go into a cryonic sleep for thirty years, and wake up looking only only about 43 years old.

One day Al was watching a television show called Revels of the Filthy Rich, and he looked with envy at the big, beautiful houses and shiny cars and exotic vacations of the people on TV. He decided right there and then to put his radical plan into effect.

Al bought some land in a remote area of the woods. He arranged for contractors to build an underground house there. He arranged for other contractors to install a fence around the house, and to install solar panels that would provide an uninterrupted power supply.

Then one day Al took a bunch of equipment and experimental drugs from his company, the same things he had been using to put animals into a long, cold, cryonic sleep. Al left a stack of fifty dollar bills to pay for the things he had taken. He took the equipment and experimental drugs to his underground home.

Using a combination of items he had taken from his company and items he had developed at home, Al set up a cryonic sleep chamber designed to keep him in a cold, deep sleep for thirty years. The chamber would be powered for 30 years by the solar panels connected to his house. Al set up a mechanism designed to slowly feed an experimental drug into his body by means of an IV drip. The drug would help slow his metabolic processes, so that he would not need food. Al set up another mechanism designed to occasionally supply a tiny amount of water to his body. In preparation for his cryonic sleep, Al had gained seventy pounds. He calculated that given the extremely low rate of metabolism he would have during his cold, cryonic sleep, his extra seventy pounds would be enough to last him for the next thirty years.

Just before sliding into the cryonic chamber, Al took a look at his investment portfolio. He was worth about $170,000. He figured that when he awoke thirty years later, he would be a millionaire.

Then Al pressed some buttons on his chamber, and went into a long, deep, cold, cryonic sleep.

___________________________________________________

Thirty years later, the chamber's timer went off, and Al awoke. He slowly climbed out of his cryonic chamber. He looked at his body. He had lost about 90 pounds. But since he had gained 70 pounds before entering into the chamber, he looked pleasantly thin.

Al immediately thought: what is my portfolio worth now? He grabbed his cell phone and tried to call his investment bank. But the phone was dead. Of course, thought Al; the phone bill hadn't been paid in thirty years.

Al then decided to go visit his investment bank face to face. He jumped into his car, and held his breath when turning the key. He was surprised to find that he was able to start the car.

Al drove into the nearby city, and parked his car on the street. He marveled at all the strange looking futuristic cars he saw on the street. He then walked to his investment bank, and asked to see an investment specialist.

“My name's Al Kent, and I need to check on the value of my portfolio,” Al said. The investment specialist complained that the company had not heard any word from Al in thirty years, and demanded some proof of his identity. Al produced the proof.

“Well, looking at our records, I see here that your investment portfolio is now worth $1,156,234,” said the investment specialist.

Al stood up. “I'm rich!” he exulted. “I'm filthy, stinking rich!”

Al walked out of the bank, and decided to get some food. He hadn't eaten in thirty years, and now that his metabolism was back to normal, he had regained a healthy appetite. Al walked into a small convenience store to buy something to eat.

Al picked up a sandwich, and looked at the price: $347.

Al thought to himself: what kind of a joke is this? Some computer must have goofed when printing the price tag, he thought.

Then Al checked other items at the store: a cup of coffee cost $115, and a can of beans cost $120.

Al thought to himself: what kind of a psycho store is this? He left the little store, and went to a large supermarket across the street.

Al checked the prices. A head of lettuce cost $95. A loaf of bread cost $249. A gallon of milk cost $429. Nowhere in the supermarket could Al find anything that didn't seem to be a hundred times more expensive than he expected.

Al walked out of the food supermarket, stunned. He sat down on the street curb, and asked himself: how could this have happened?

Then finally he figured it out.

INFLATION!

During his thirty-year cold, deep, cryonic sleep, Al's portfolio had grown at an annual rate of about 6%. But during that time the average inflation rate had apparently been much higher than 6%. So now Al was a millionaire, but his million dollars wasn't worth the same as a million dollars in 2013. It was worth something much, much less.

Using the prices he had seen, Al did some math in his head to estimate how much his million dollar portfolio was worth in 2013 dollars. He calculated that his portfolio was now worth about $10,000 in 2013 dollars.

Al was a millionaire, but his net worth had really dropped more than 90%. Instead of getting six times richer, he had gotten ten times poorer. With everything being a hundred times more expensive, Al would be lucky if his money lasted him another six months.

After figuring this out, Al was so sad that he bought himself a six-pack of beer to drown his sorrows.

The six-pack cost him $835.