From cryopreservation to transhumanism

IN AN OTHERWISE unremarkable building in Scottsdale, Arizona, is a room of gleaming silos containing cryogenically preserved heads and bodies of more than 140 people. These individuals hoped science will discover the secret to immortality.

Current laws require that an individual is declared dead before the cryogenic preservation process – called vitrification – can begin. This has the disadvantage of preserving that individual with whatever disease killed them in the first place. However, some more, dedicated cryogenic advocates have been pushing for laws that allow people to be preserved while still healthy.

Cryopreservation is one facet of a much broader movement, called transhumanism, which aspires to human beings transcending physical limitations using reason and science.

Transhumanism embraces ideas such as those of futurist and computer scientist Ray Kurzweil. These suggest we will one day be able to upload our consciousness into artificial brains, or integrate nanotechnology with our neural networks, so we aren’t limited or constrained by failing organic matter. For the moment, it’s the stuff of science fiction, but a more tangible face of transhumanism can be seen in organisations such as Aubrey de Grey’s SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Research Foundation. The foundation is conducting research into mechanisms of ageing in the hope that we may one day “reimagine aging, opening up lives of vigor and health set free from the gravitational pull of time”.

Science fiction is fast becoming science fact.

This custom-designed insulated container, used by the US-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation, can store at least four ‘wholebody’ patients in liquid nitrogen.