Editing Cryonics (section)

==Reception==
Cryonics is generally regarded as a fringe pseudoscience.<ref name=jk>{{cite news |title=Mainstream science is frosty over keeping the dead on ice |author=Steinbeck RL |newspaper=[[Chicago Tribune]] |date=29 September 2002 |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-09-29-0209290429-story.html |access-date=2019-07-17 |archive-date=2019-07-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190717153237/https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-09-29-0209290429-story.html |url-status=live}}</ref> Between 1982<ref>{{cite magazine|magazine=Cryonics|date=November 1982|author=Jerry D. Leaf|access-date=2024-12-03|title=Cryo-82, The Big Freeze|pages=5–11,24|publisher= Alcor Life Extension Foundation|url=https://www.cryonicsarchive.org/docs/cryonics-magazine-1982-11.pdf|quote=There are other members of the Society for Cryobiology that are involved in cryonics, but have been told they would be excluded from their chosen profession, cryobiology, if this became public knowledge.}}</ref> and November 2018, the [[Society for Cryobiology]] rejected members who practiced cryonics,<ref name="2022-mit-dream">{{cite web|date=2022-10-14|access-date=2024-12-03|website=MIT Technology Review|title=Why the sci-fi dream of cryonics never died|url=https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/14/1060951/cryonics-sci-fi-freezing-bodies|last=Clarke|first=Laurie|url-status=live|quote=The Society for Cryobiology has even dropped its past cryonics-related restrictions.|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221014210354/https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/14/1060951/cryonics-sci-fi-freezing-bodies/|archive-date=2022-10-14}}</ref><ref name="2018-statement" /> and issued a public statement saying that cryonics "is an act of speculation or hope, not science", and as such outside the scope of the Society.<ref name="2018-statement">{{cite web |url=https://www.societyforcryobiology.org/assets/documents/Position_Statement_Cryonics_Nov_18.pdf |title=Position Statement - Cryonics |website=Society for Cryobiology |date=November 2018 |access-date=2019-07-18 |archive-date=2019-04-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190401172118/https://www.societyforcryobiology.org/assets/documents/Position_Statement_Cryonics_Nov_18.pdf |url-status=live|quote=The Society recognizes and respects the freedom of individuals to hold and express their own opinions and to act, within lawful limits, according to their beliefs. Preferences regarding disposition of postmortem human bodies or brains are clearly a matter of personal choice and, therefore, inappropriate subjects of Society policy. The Society does, however, take the position that the knowledge necessary for the revival of live or dead whole mammals following cryopreservation does not currently exist and can come only from conscientious and patient research in cryobiology and medicine. In short, the act of preserving a body, head or brain after clinical death and storing it indefinitely on the chance that some future generation may restore it to life is an act of speculation or hope, not science, and as such is outside the purview of the Society for Cryobiology.}}</ref>

Russian company [[KrioRus]] is the first non-U.S. vendor of cryonics services. Yevgeny Alexandrov, chair of the [[Russian Academy of Sciences]] commission against pseudoscience, said there was "no scientific basis" for cryonics, and that the company was based on "unfounded speculation".<ref name=rus>{{cite news |newspaper=Daily Telegraph |title='Insurance' against death: Russian cryonics firm plans Swiss lab for people in pursuit of eternal life |first=Alex |last=Luhn |date=11 November 2017 |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/11/insurance-against-death-russian-cryonics-firm-plans-swiss |url-access=subscription |access-date=28 July 2019 |archive-date=28 July 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190728135525/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/11/insurance-against-death-russian-cryonics-firm-plans-swiss/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

Scientists have expressed skepticism about cryonics in media sources,<ref name="ft" /> and the Norwegian philosopher [[Ole Martin Moen]] has written that the topic receives a "minuscule" amount of attention in academia.<ref name=moen/>

While some neuroscientists contend that all the subtleties of a human mind are contained in its anatomical structure,<ref>{{cite news|author1=Jerry Adler|title=The Quest to Upload Your Mind into the Digital Space|url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/quest-upload-mind-into-digital-space-180954946/|access-date=21 February 2016|work=[[Smithsonian Magazine]]|date=May 2015|archive-date=3 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303055411/http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/quest-upload-mind-into-digital-space-180954946/|url-status=live}}</ref> few will comment directly on cryonics due to its speculative nature. People who intend to be frozen are often "looked at as a bunch of kooks".<ref>{{cite news|title=Brain Freeze: Can putting faith in cryonics deliver life after death?|url=http://www.torontosun.com/2015/10/06/brain-freeze-can-putting-faith-in-cryonics-deliver-life-after-death|newspaper=[[Toronto Sun]]|access-date=21 February 2016|date=6 October 2015|archive-date=12 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160312064530/http://www.torontosun.com/2015/10/06/brain-freeze-can-putting-faith-in-cryonics-deliver-life-after-death|url-status=live}}</ref> Cryobiologist [[Kenneth B. Storey]] said in 2004 that cryonics is impossible and will never be possible, as cryonics proponents are proposing to "overturn the laws of physics, chemistry, and molecular science".<ref name=popsicle>{{cite journal |author=Miller K |title=Cryonics redux: is vitrification a viable alternative to immortality as a popsicle? |journal=Skeptic |volume=11 |issue=1 |year=2004 |page=24}}</ref> Neurobiologist Michael Hendricks has said, "Reanimation or simulation is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the 'cryonics' industry".<ref name=ft/>

Anthropologist [[Simon Dein]] writes that cryonics is a typical pseudoscience because of its lack of [[falsifiability]] and testability. In his view, cryonics is not science, but religion: it places faith in nonexistent technology and promises to overcome death.<ref name=sd>{{cite journal |title=Cryonics: Science or Religion |vauthors=Dein S |journal=Journal of Religion & Health |year=2022 |volume=61 |issue=4 |pages=3164–3176 |pmid=33523374 |s2cid=231745500 |doi=10.1007/s10943-020-01166-6}}</ref>

[[William T. Jarvis]] has written, "Cryonics might be a suitable subject for scientific research, but marketing an unproven method to the public is quackery".<ref name=butler>{{cite book |author=Butler K |title=A Consumer's Guide to "Alternative" Medicine |publisher=Prometheus Books |year=1992 |page=173}}</ref><ref name=q>{{cite web |website=The Skeptics Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions |last=Carroll |first=Robert Todd|date =5 December 2013|title=Cryonics |authorlink=Robert Todd Carroll|quote=A business based on little more than hope for developments that can be imagined by science is quackery. There is little reason to believe that the promises of cryonics will ever be fulfilled |url=https://www.skepdic.com/cryonics.html}}</ref>

According to cryonicist Aschwin de Wolf and others, cryonics can often produce intense hostility from spouses who are not cryonicists. James Hughes, the executive director of the pro-life-extension [[Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies]], has not personally signed up for cryonics, calling it a worthy experiment but saying, "I value my relationship with my wife."<ref name="nytimes do us part" />

[[Cryobiologist]] Dayong Gao has said, "People can always have hope that things will change in the future, but there is no scientific foundation supporting cryonics at this time."<ref name="bbc frozen">{{cite news|title=Frozen body: Can we return from the dead?|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/23695785|access-date=21 February 2016|publisher=BBC News|date=15 August 2013|archive-date=12 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160312083619/http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/23695785|url-status=live}}</ref> While it is universally agreed that [[personal identity]] is uninterrupted when brain activity temporarily ceases during incidents of accidental drowning (where people have been restored to normal functioning after being completely submerged in cold water for up to 66 minutes), one argument against cryonics is that a centuries-long absence from life might interrupt personal identity, such that the revived person would "not be themself".<ref name="moen" />

[[Maastricht University]] bioethicist David Shaw raises the argument that there would be no point in being revived in the far future if one's friends and families are dead, leaving them all alone, but he notes that family and friends can also be frozen, that there is "nothing to prevent the thawed-out freezee from making new friends", and that a lonely existence may be preferable to none at all.<ref name="shaw cryoethics" />