The Prospect of Immortality through Cryonics

By Dr. Gary L. Deel, Ph.D., J.D. and Dr. Brian Burnes, Ph.D.

Preface: This article is intended as a casual introduction to the scientific theories behind cryonics for the layperson.

Questions of Life and Death

Here’s a question: If you could live forever, would you want to? And if your answer is “yes,” what price would you be willing to pay for immortality?

These are questions over which mankind has pontificated for eons. The idea of “cheating” death intrigues us. Many fear dying. Others look at death as a sad but unavoidable discontinuation of all of the investments we make throughout our lives, including our careers, our families, and our general purpose while we’re alive. Think of all we could accomplish in the aggregate, if we could only continue on without limits.

To date, dreams of immortality have been just that — fantasies that even the very best in medical science cannot yet bring to fruition. We’ve written previously about how something like immortality might one day be possible through an exploitation of Einstein’s time dilation — but if such a thing is possible at all, it certainly isn’t within the reach with today’s technology. Still, what if there was another way — a currently accessible way — to evade death?