Talk:Cryonics

1. Semen cryopreservation (1954)
2. Embryo cryopreservation (1984)
3. Oocyte cryopreservation (1986)
4. Ovarian tissue cryopreservation (2004 to now)
5. Organ cryopreservation for animals (Still under research)
6. Organ cryopreservation for human
7. Brain cryopreservation for animals
8. Brain cryopreservation for human
9. Small animal whole body cryopreservation (e.g. mouse)
10. Larger animal whole body cryopreservation (e.g. monkeys, dogs, cats, pigs)
11. Cryonics for Human
12. Repeat and repeat the experiment for Cryonics for humans
13. Commercial Deployment of Cryonics for humans
14. Massive Deployment of Cryonics for humans

Cloud29371 (talk) 03:52, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Does this section have a purpose or are you just expressing your love for the subject? WP:NOTFORUM 2A02:C7E:205B:3D00:2129:CE12:37EB:8A1C (talk) 17:59, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

Cryonics is a pseudoscience because it present as science but do not offer falsifiability. If cryonics success, of course it proved success. But if cryonics fail forever, you still cannot prove it fail, and you cannot falsified cryonics claims. Currently no way to revival any cryopreserved brain and body, but you still difficult to falsified it. So it is not just speculative but is an unfalsified theory, and that is why it is a pseudoscience. Cloud29371 (talk) 06:23, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

You may be right to describe cryotransport as pseudoscience from a philosophical standpoint, but in reality, it is not pseudoscience in the sense of being a cult or a scam offering false hope. Cryonics is practiced by serious and intelligent people who genuinely believe it can work—and ultimately, that’s what matters. Their work may one day save lives. It is counterproductive to devote massive efforts to obstruct or hinder cryonics, as it is a noble and ethically sound endeavor. Syd Lonreiro (talk) 18:53, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

Most Pseudosciences are practiced by people who truly believe in them, but Wikipedia is still required to follow the mainstream views of such things. MrOllie (talk) 18:59, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

Mainstream views don’t seem to be anti-cryonics; rather, I get the impression that mainstream media is more anti-biostasis. The strong scientific consensus is actually supportive. I’m thinking, for example, of Ralph Merkle, Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, and Aubrey de Grey. Syd Lonreiro (talk) 19:03, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

See WP:FRINGE. Bon courage (talk) 19:04, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

At least Aubrey de Grey was focused on increasing an uninterrupted lifespan, not freezing people solid. These figures nonetheless don't automatically justify a subject by expressing their opinion and being namedropped like this, and they aren't the scientific consensus. They are however leading figures of TESCREAL, a movement with cult undertones. 2A02:C7E:205B:3D00:2129:CE12:37EB:8A1C (talk) 18:18, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm afraid pseudoscience can only offer false hope by definition. No matter how many "serious and intelligent" people offer it as a path to immortality (the prize at the end of the grift) there is no credible reason to assume that a person's mind can be connected between the moment of death and the construction of a new brain some arbitrary time in the future. The same goes for thawing out the old lifeless brain. It isn't a matter of future technology, if you concede the field is pseudoscientific you confess it is making claims without merit and any hope predicated on it must therefore be false. 2A02:C7E:205B:3D00:2129:CE12:37EB:8A1C (talk) 18:13, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Quoting from the lead to the current WP “cryonics” article (referencing omitted):

“Cryonics is regarded with skepticism by the mainstream scientific community. It is generally viewed as a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery.”

This sets the tone for what follows. The justification for the “pseudoscience” label is given in the “Reception” section, where over a dozen sources are cited, all of which are more or less scientifically grounded and fairly uniformly dismiss cryonics as something highly dubious and suspect, in defense of calling it “pseudoscience.” None of these sources, however, reports or refers to an actual survey of any sizable number people in a related scientific field. There is such an article, however, Zeleznikow-Johnson, Ariel; Kendziorra, Emil F.; McKenzie, Andrew T. (24 June 2025). "What are memories made of? A". PLOS One. Quoting from the abstract:

“… We surveyed 312 neuroscientists, comprising one cohort of experts on engram research and another of general neuroscientists, to assess this community’s views on how memories are stored. While 70.5% of participants agreed that long-term memories are primarily maintained by neuronal connectivity patterns and synaptic strengths, there was no clear consensus on which specific neurophysiological features or scales are critical for memory storage. Despite this, the median probability estimate that any long-term memories could potentially be extracted from a static snapshot of brain structure was around 40%, which was also the estimate for whether a successful whole brain emulation could theoretically be created from the structure of a preserved brain. When predicting the future feasibility of whole brain emulation, the median participant estimated this would be achieved for C. elegans around 2045, mice around 2065, and humans around 2125. Notably, neither research background nor expertise level significantly influenced views on whether memories could be extracted from brain structure alone. … These findings have important implications for both theoretical neuroscience and the development of technologies aimed at preserving or extracting memory-related information.”

So it would seem that, among this population of neuroscientists, there is something less than a monolithic rejection of the whole cryonics premise and dismissal of cryonics as “pseudoscience.” Instead there is clearly substantial support for the idea that cryonic revival in some form (say, involving brain emulation) might prove feasible.Mkper9 (talk) 02:18, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

The authors of that paper have a very strong conflict of interest. We cannot use it as a basis to change the article. - MrOllie (talk) 02:38, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

The results of this survey are not equivalent to scientific support for the feasibility of cryonics. If you read the actual survey you can see that the questions are significantly limited in scope. In order for us to make a statement based on this survey about scientific opinions on the feasibility of cryonics, we would need an independent, reliable secondary source to interpret the findings of the survey for us. As another editor already noted, this survey's authors are employed by cryonics organizations and so we certainly cannot rely on their interpretation. Luckily there are plenty of reliable sources already cited in the article which tell us what the scientific consensus on cryonics is. Elestrophe (talk) 06:13, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarifications of the WP position, and that of the other editor. A question for you: What if someone wrote an article that is published in a respectable scientific journal. The author or authors do not have conflicting or competing interests, unlike those of the survey. However, the article uses the survey as a reference (along with maybe other sources like this or maybe self-published, say). Would such an article be acceptable to WP as a source (a primary source I think) and maybe indeed as a basis to change the WP article? Mkper9 (talk) 17:57, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

You seriously want us to evaluate a fictitious source? Come on!!! - Roxy the dog 18:16, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

All I want is to just get an indicatuon of what rules you would go by, for a hypothetical source like this. Or maybe it would be "case by case"? Mkper9 (talk) 16:39, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

The devil is always in the details, so debating hypotheticals is not productive. MrOllie (talk) 16:50, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

... and the rules we would go by are WP:RS and WP:MEDRS. - Roxy the dog 16:58, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Memories may be reconstructable, what's in contention is the resumption of consciousness after an arbitrary amount of time has passed for what is, for all intents and purposes, lifeless and inert matter. In my opinion it should not be more difficult to see that this cannot be done than it should be to sum two 1s together. Intuition is more than enough for everything except pseudoscience. 2A02:C7E:205B:3D00:2129:CE12:37EB:8A1C (talk) 18:24, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

I think a lot of computer scientists (in the scientific mainstream) would disagree with you. Not everybody accepts an analogy between the brain and a computer, but a lot of them do. With a computer, you might first have it running, say running a (very good) chatbot, that shows personality, etc, and seems to be conscious. (Is it really? How do you prove or disprove this?) Then you shut it down, I mean the computer. It's "lifeless and inert." For how long? Might be quite a while. Then you power it up. The chatbot "wakes up" also, and takes up where it left off, as "conscious" as it was before. Mkper9 (talk) 17:28, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

Robert A. Freitas Jr. (an expert in nanomedicine known for authoring the Nanomedicine book series, as well as the theoretical designs of respirocytes, microbivores, and others) recently (in 2022) wrote the first comprehensive conceptual protocol for the revival of cryonics patients. The protocol deserves thorough analysis and detailed critique. Although the two proposed plans are purely science fiction at this stage and rely on molecular nanotechnology that currently does not exist and remains unproven, the book is extremely solid and, for the first time, explains in detail how to recover even the most severely damaged patients (through Plan B). The monetary, energy, and ecological costs are simply immense, making any revival to a healthy state clearly impossible for several centuries—assuming the existence of a highly advanced post-human society whose ethics allow for the persistence of the cryonics movement (which seems rather unlikely after some Bayesian calculations). Nevertheless, the book is serious and credible, and it appears to offer genuine hope for revival, which in my view is more than enough to justify becoming a member of a cryonics organization and spending a few dozen dollars per month. Syd Lonreiro (talk) 18:47, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

Yes, we've discussed it on this talk page before. But there is nothing we can do with a self published book on Wikipedia. (yes, being published by Alcor Life Extension Foundation still counts as self published). MrOllie (talk) 19:01, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

There is a book something like the Freitas book. It does not go into as much detail, and is not equation-heavy, but it does make the case that nanotechnology could be used for revival of cryopreserved humans. The nanotechnology in question has yet to be developed, which invites the question of how could we ever think it could be developed. The answer given, in part, is that nature has already accomplished amazing things with its own version of nanotechnology, in what we call the biosphere. For example there is a mechanism it has "developed" (without knowing what it was doing or knowing anything as we understand it) for transforming dirt, water, air and sunlight into ripe strawberries. If nature can do all it has done, well, we should be able to do some amazing things ourselves also, and the book goes into details covering hundreds of pages. The book is Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler, publihed by Anchor-Doubleday, 1986, certainly a "mainstream" publishing house. The book doesn't seem to be referred to in the "Cryonics" article and I would say it ought to be. In particular it could serve as a counterweight to a claim like that cited by Ken Storey, that cryonics proponents are proposing to "overturn the laws of physics, chemistry, and molecular science." The thrust of Drexler's arguments is that nothing of the sort is being proposed, but cryonics revivals (and many other things nanotechnology would accomplish) would happen within the confines of presently-understood physics and other sciences that depend on it. Mkper9 (talk) 17:57, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

If something is purely science fiction then it is not serious or credible. Your use of "post-human" and "Bayesian calculations" are a tell that you put spiritual significance in speculative technologies like this. People cannot revive from death without an immortal soul (as in they don't technically die in the first place). The cost of normalizing the killing of patients in a society, each one justified by the clone that walks out of the clinic 100 years later, is far more harmful than failing to invest in saving those patients in the present. 2A02:C7E:205B:3D00:2129:CE12:37EB:8A1C (talk) 18:34, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

"Even if the resurrection promised by cryonics were possible, economic considerations make it unlikely cryonics corporations could remain in business long enough to deliver. The "patients", being dead, cannot continue to pay for their own preservation" is a strange thing to put on the cover of such a page. The use of "Even if...were" seems to push objectivity on something very subjective and fuzzy.

With permission, I would like to remove it. JeremyKalfus (talk) 15:44, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

It is a very, very common criticism of this concept. Some form of it ought to be in the lead. MrOllie (talk) 15:54, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. I will update the wording slightly and keep it in the lead. JeremyKalfus (talk) 15:56, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

We can't just modify to personal taste, we still need to match what's in the citations. MrOllie (talk) 16:00, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

Got it. Apologies for going out of bounds.

However, the "even if" part of the sentence from before directly contradicts the source, which itself states "Revival with a regenerated body is seen as possible, assuming technology has become sufficiently advanced" JeremyKalfus (talk) 16:08, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

'Even if' is just a paraphrase of 'assuming'. They hold the same meaning. MrOllie (talk) 16:11, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

Semantically, I see "even if X were" as indicating a counterfactual. Are you OK with changing "Even if the resurrection...were" to "Assuming the resurrection...is"? JeremyKalfus (talk) 16:14, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

It follows the preceeding paragraph, so I somewhat prefer 'Even if'. This page has other interested editors, perhaps they have an opinion. MrOllie (talk) 16:17, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

I think the thought should stay. It's an important part of the summary. But I understand the point about it being written like an argument rather than a summary.

Perhaps "Additionally, economic considerations [...] long enough to deliver if that ever becomes possible."

ApLundell (talk) 16:55, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

That sounds good to me! JeremyKalfus (talk) 17:21, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

Right now, the history section characterizes Nectome's preservation method as follows, based on a 2018 article:

In 2018, a Y-Combinator startup called Nectome was recognized for developing a method of preserving brains with chemicals rather than by freezing. The method is fatal, performed as euthanasia under general anesthesia, but the hope is that future technology will allow the brain to be physically scanned into a computer simulation, neuron by neuron.

I'm a Nectome employee and the article in question was inaccurate at the time, and there's more recent information available. https://nectome.com/our-process addresses this question:

Nectome’s human preservation is an exclusively post-mortem procedure and has never been fatal or performed in conjunction with euthanasia.

Obviously it's appropriate for Wikipedia to report on the 2018 article, but I'd propose mentioning both sides of the topic here, perhaps as follows:

Reporters described the method as fatal, performed as euthanasia under general anesthesia. Nectome claims that their procedure is exclusively post-mortem and does not involve euthanasia. — Moriwen (talk) 18:15, 19 August 2026 (UTC)

 Not done No reliable independent source offered. Bon courage (talk) 18:43, 19 August 2026 (UTC)