Freezing Life, Escaping Death? Cryonics as a Meeting Point of Transhumanist Visions (original) (raw)

DEATH POSTPONED: CRYONICS AND A TRANSHUMAN FUTURE

Messages, Sages and Ages, Vol. 6, No. 1 (2019):66-76, 2019

This essay reflects on the concept of cryonics as a technology that will in the future enable cryopreserved people to be returned to life when the cure for the disease that killed them is found. The longstanding dream of prolonging human existence, mainly with recourse to cryonics, will be examined through the lens of Don DeLillo's Zero K (2016), Robert Begam's courtroom thriller Long Life (2008) and Clifford D. Simak's Why Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967). The fantasy of cryonics is becoming increasingly visible in contemporary culture, with recent books and films addressing this subject. The utopian, transhumanist vision of a future where much longer life spans will be achievable is a dream that only the wealthy elites can afford, with megacorporations usually exploiting those with less funds but who also wish to undergo cryosuspension for later resurrection. Recent work by a number of bioethicists such as Francesca Minerva (2018), Ole Martin Moen (2015) and David Shaw (2009) on the case for and against cryonics from a bioethical point of view will help shed light on the main thematic concerns these works of speculative fiction engage with, pointing the way to future scenarios that the rapid advancement of biotechnologies will make possible.

Freezing Lives, Preserving Humanism: Cryonics and the Promise of Dezoefication

Distinktion: Journal for Social Theory, 2019

Cryonics denotes research into and the practice of deep-freezing dead bodies for resuscitation in a technologically advanced future. This article discusses the technoscientific practice and rationality of cryonics, focusing on two aspects in particular: the ways in which conceptions of life and death and their relation are being reconfigured, and the cryonic understanding of personality and its relation to the body. It complements the range of topics discussed in the literature on cryonics by adopting a feminist perspective and placing particular emphasis on the importance of taking into consideration the materiality, processuality and relationality of life and death in the cryonic imaginary. The analysis draws on Rosi Braidotti's adaptation of the conceptual pair of bios and zoe in order to demonstrate that cryonics is premised on the humanist separation of the human as a purely cultural being from 'Nature' as his materially determined other(s). The article argues that cryonics seeks to preserve not only individual lives, but also the increasingly challenged humanist conception of human life as exceptional, self-contained and independent of Nature. The notion of dezoefication is introduced to encapsulate the desire to disentangle the human from (his) nature. Finally, the analysis is complemented with Donna Haraway's approach to a relational ontology, which emphasizes the vulnerability that is associated with relationality. It thus accounts for the humanist bias against relationality and the fear of death as 'becoming other', which are considered to be constitutive of techno-utopian projects such as cryonics.

Frozen Bodies and Future Imaginaries: Assisted Dying, Cryonics, and a Good Death

Religions, 2020

In October of 2018, Norman Hardy became the first individual to be cryopreserved after successful recourse to California's then recently passed End of Life Options Act. This was a right not afforded to Thomas Donaldson, who in 1993 was legally denied the ability to end his own life before a tumor irreversibly destroyed his brain tissue. The cases of Norman Hardy and Thomas Donaldson reflect ethical and moral issues common to the practice of assisted dying, but unique to cryonics. In this essay, I explore the intersections between ideologies of immortality and assisted dying among two social movements with seemingly opposing epistemologies: cryonicists and medical aid in dying (MAiD) advocates. How is MAiD understood among cryonicists, and how has it been deployed by cryonicists in the United States? What are the historical and cultural circumstances that have made access to euthanasia a moral necessity for proponents of cryonics and MAiD? In this comparative essay, I examine the similarities between the biotechnological and future imaginaries of cryonics and MAiD. I aim to show that proponents of both practices are in search of a good death, and how both conceptualize dying as an ethical good. Cryonics members and terminal patients constitute unique biosocial worlds, which can intersect in unconventional ways. As temporalizing practices, both cryonics and MAiD reflect a will to master the time and manner of death.

Beyond Life and Death Investigating Cryopreservation Practices in Contemporary Societies

Soziologie, 2019

In the past twenty years, science and technology studies (STS), anthropology and sociology have investigated how contemporary biosciences have shaped and transformed human and non-human life. This line of research has produced important insights into the »new biology« and the epistemological and structural reconfigurations it brought about in the study of life in the second half of the 20 th century. So far, the work has focused on genetic and reproductive technologies, analyzing how they have enacted what historian of science Lily Kay once called a »molecular vision of life« (Kay 1993; see also de Chadarevian, Kamminga 1998). The study of the impact of molecular biology and biotechnologies such as organ transplantation, cloning, tissue engineering and artificial insemination has attracted substantial interest This is not the final manuscript-it is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Soziologie.

The Future of Death: Cryonics and the Telos of Liberal Individualism

Journal of Evolution and Technology, 2001

This paper addresses five questions: First, what is trajectory of Western liberal ethics and politics in defining life, rights and citizenship? Second, how will neuro-remediation and other technologies change the definition of death for the brain injured and the cryonically suspended? Third, will people always have to be dead to be cryonically suspended? Fourth, how will changing technologies and definitions of identity affect the status of people revived from brain injury and cryonic suspension? I propose that Western liberal thought is working towards a natural end, a “telos.” In response to a variety of biotechnologies, law and public opinion in liberal democracies will be forced to make explicit that the rights of a living thing are determined by its level of consciousness. I discuss the way that technology will force three clarifications about the value of consciousness, at the beginning, the end and boundaries of human life. Sentience and personhood will become the basis of moral concern, regardless of its media. Just as human rights have become independent of race, gender and property, rights will become independent of being a breathing human being. But even as we make this transition, the cryonically preserved are still likely to be considered dead for pragmatic reasons, albeit with gradually increasing rights as technology makes their reanimation increasingly probable. I suggest that it could be acceptable to cryonicists that the frozen continue to be defined as dead if assisted suicide can be legalized. Under a liberal assisted suicide policy cryonicists might be allowed to carry out suspension before a declaration of death, preserving the maximum amount of neural information. The gradual redefinition of life and personal identity in terms of psychological continuity will also have consequences for the legal status of the reanimated. If, due to information loss, the reanimated do not meet a threshold of psychological continuity, they may be considered new persons. Cryonicists may therefore wish to specify ahead of time whether they are still interested in being reanimated if pre-animation assessment suggests that the result will not meet the necessary threshold of continuity. Finally, I touch on the way that neural technology will fundamentally problematize the separate, autonomous self on which liberal democratic values are based, leading to a legal and political Singularity. It is this looming neural Singularity that makes the proposed liberal democratic telos a final stage in humanistic thought, before it is superceded by something radically different.

Cryonics: Technological Fictionalization of Death

Eidos , 2018

The article focuses on a change in the understanding of death. Transhumanism is here understood as a reaction to the technicization of culture. One of the areas which are declared to be transcended by technology is human mortality. Analysis of such a change is conducted to show that one does not need a working technology that abolishes death, but that the change could be cultural and have significant impact on human life. This process of transcending death with the usage of technology is understood as a fictionalization of death. The philosophical and cultural outcomes are analyzed for human existence.

Transhumanism and the issue of death

Ethics & Bioethics

The human issue with the concept of finality constitutes a fundamental platform for the philosophical concept of transhumanism. This paper addresses the historical-philosophical perspective of transhumanism with emphasis put on the 18th and 19th centuries, whereby possible anticipatory actions with respect to transhumanist thought are analyzed. In this sense, the need for a philosophical reflection on transhumanism is justified. The main part of this paper is aimed at philosophical and ethical questions related to cryonics as being one of the most dominant and feasible transhumanist practices. The characteristics and critical analysis of cryonics focuses on the problem of understanding death from a philosophical standpoint.

Making Futures by Freezing Life: Ambivalent Temporalities of Cryopreservation Practices

Science, Technology, & Human Values, 2023

The preservation of biological matter at extremely low temperatures has gained increasing importance in a broad range of life science fields in recent years. Social and cultural studies of cryotechnologies have often likened the freezing of life to a stillstand of time. This special issue explores the argument that cryotechnologies require us to rethink time and temporality more broadly: freezing does not simply equate to an interruption of the "natural" course of time. Covering diverse types of freezing practices and biological materials-egg cells, cord blood, lab mice, and breast milk-the articles in this issue inquire empirically and theoretically into different ways in which cryotechnologies contribute in making particular pasts, presents, and futures. In engaging with cryopreservation, we have to take into account the complex, sometimes contradictory, pathways in which life, death, and time are made and remade through freezing.