---
title: "Cryonics"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:51:15.099798+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Revival ===
Revival would require repairing damage from lack of oxygen, cryoprotectant toxicity, thermal stress (fracturing), and freezing in tissues that do not successfully vitrify, followed by reversing the cause of death. In many cases, extensive tissue regeneration would be necessary. This revival technology remains speculative.

=== Legal issues ===
Historically, people had little control over how their bodies were treated after death, as religion held jurisdiction over the matter. Later, secular courts began to exercise jurisdiction over corpses and use discretion in carrying out deceased people's wishes. Most countries legally treat preserved bodies as deceased persons because of laws that forbid vitrifying someone who is medically alive. In France, cryonics is not considered a legal mode of body disposal; only burial, cremation, and formal body donation to science are allowed, though bodies may legally be shipped to other countries for cryonic freezing. As of 2015, British Columbia prohibits the sale of arrangements for cryonic body preservation. In Russia, cryonics falls outside both the medical industry and the funeral services industry, making it easier than in the U.S. to get hospitals and morgues to release cryonics candidates.
In 2016, the English High Court ruled in favor of a mother's right to seek cryopreservation of her terminally ill 14-year-old daughter, as the girl wanted, contrary to the father's wishes. The decision was made on the basis that the case represented a conventional dispute over the disposal of the girl's body, although the judge urged ministers to seek "proper regulation" for the future of cryonic preservation after the hospital raised concerns about the competence and professionalism of the team that conducted the preservation procedures. In Alcor Life Extension Foundation v. Richardson, the Iowa Court of Appeals ordered the disinterment of Richardson, who was buried against his wishes, for cryopreservation.
A detailed legal examination by Jochen Taupitz concludes that cryonic storage is legal in Germany for an indefinite period.

== Ethics ==
Writing in Bioethics in 2009, David Shaw examined cryonics. The arguments he cited against it included changing the concept of death, the expense of preservation and revival, lack of scientific advancement to permit revival, temptation to use premature euthanasia, and failure due to catastrophe. Arguments in favor of cryonics include the potential benefit to society, the prospect of immortality, and the benefits associated with avoiding death. Shaw explores the expense and the potential payoff, and applies an adapted version of Pascal's Wager to the question. He argues that someone who bets on cryonic preservation risks losing "a bit of money" but potentially gains a longer life and perhaps immortality. Shaun Pattinson responds that Shaw's calculation is incomplete because "being revived only equates to winning the wager if the revived life is worth living. A longer life of unremitting suffering, perhaps due to irreparable nerve damage or even the actions of an evil reviver, is unlikely to be considered preferable to non-revival". 
In 2016, Charles Tandy wrote in support of cryonics, arguing that honoring someone's last wishes is seen as a benevolent duty in American and many other cultures.

== History ==

Cryopreservation was applied to human cells beginning in 1954 with frozen sperm, which was thawed and used to inseminate three women. The freezing of humans was first scientifically proposed by Michigan professor Robert Ettinger in The Prospect of Immortality (1962). In 1966, the first human body was frozen—though it had been embalmed for two months—by being placed in liquid nitrogen and stored at just above freezing. The middle-aged woman from Los Angeles, whose name is unknown, was soon thawed and buried by relatives.
The first body to be cryopreserved and then frozen in hope of future revival was that of James Bedford. Alcor's Mike Darwin says Bedford's body was cryopreserved around two hours after his death by cardiorespiratory arrest (secondary to metastasized kidney cancer) on January 12, 1967. Bedford's corpse is the only one frozen before 1974 still preserved today. In 1976, Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute; his corpse was cryopreserved in 2011. In 1981, Robert Nelson, "a former TV repairman with no scientific background" who led the Cryonics Society of California, was sued for allowing nine bodies to thaw and decompose in the 1970s; in his defense, he claimed that the Cryonics Society had run out of money. This lowered the reputation of cryonics in the U.S.
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.

== Demographics ==
According to The New York Times, cryonicists are predominantly non-religious white men, outnumbering women by about three to one. According to The Guardian, as of 2008, while most cryonicists used to be young, male, and "geeky", recent demographics have shifted slightly toward whole families.
In 2015, Du Hong, a 61-year-old female writer of children's literature, became the first known Chinese national to have her head cryopreserved.