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Two Thought Experiments

Cryonics is an attempt to save lives by not only minimizing bodily damage after normal functioning ceases, but also by completely arresting decay. Rather than accepting failure to save a life and allowing decay to occur, doctors could immediately begin cryonic procedures to secure as much of the personË˙s physical structure as possible. Cryonics could be an elective, advanced medical procedure for those who would otherwise certainly be lost. Cryonics can give hope for those who have none, offering the chance to live again sometime in the future. Eventually we will all face death and cryonics could make that time less terrifying.

Imagine a situation where you are involved in an accident which renders you comatose and unresponsive. Your body can continue to exist with life-support, but your self is just a memory to others. You cannot consciously act, communicate, reason, or think, but you still live in a basic way and there is a chance that medical science will be able to revive you and help you live well again as a complete person. The chances are unclear and a matter of speculation among your peers and the scientific community because no one can predict the future. People currently exist in vegetative states like this with uncertain lives ahead.

Either life-support affords you a chance for a healthy life again at some point in the future, or the machines go off and the living await your physical death and decay. Perhaps you think that this is fine because you do not want the indignity of lying comatose in bed, cared for by others. But how is your dignity damaged if you are unaware of your situation? Such considerations are informed by the cultural sensitivities of the living; the comatose and the cryopreserved cease to have such concerns. Will past indignity really matter on the day you wake up and realize that you are conscious again? Or perhaps you do not want to use resources "better spent" on those with much fuller lives, and prefer that the money and energy of your life-support go to others? This is a generous and selfless view; perhaps too selfless considering that you are sacrificing your life! How does the effort and financial commitment needed for cryopreservation compare with the chance for saving your life? Medical resources are not being abused by your decision to have a chance to live again by staying on life-support; after all, the Hippocratic oath enjoins the medical practitioner to "first, do no harm". An individual on life-support can feel no indignity, and the practice is not very costly for the living: this situation serves as a fine analogy to cryonics.

Imagine another unpleasant situation in which you are dying and a doctor tells you that an experimental procedure may save your life. If you don't try it, it is certain you will die; however, if the procedure is successful a much better quality of life is possible for you and those that may follow you. Such scenarios do occur under current medical practice. Patients routinely volunteer to become test subjects of medical experiments which could save their lives, despite there being no guarantee. As with so many past medical experiments, we will not know until some future time whether the cryonics experiment will be successful - though there is good reason to believe that this could be the case. Furthermore, such considerations do not and will not matter to patients during their cryostasis, because they are not and will not be aware of the passage of time.

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