Cryonics does have a basis in science, and I’ve had my own arrangements for cryonic suspension with the Alcor Foundation since 1990, funded by life insurance. Cryonicists want to develop “medical time travel†or an ambulance ride across time to try to benefit from the better medical capabilities of future societies.
Refer to:
1. General but **outdated** background information on the idea, mainly of historical interest now:
<b>The Prospect of Immortality</b> (1964), by Robert Ettinger:
<a href="http://www.cryonics.org/book1.html"></a>
2. “Cryopreservation of rat hippocampal slices by vitrification†(a peer-reviewed scientific paper):
<a href="http://www.21cm.com/pdfs/hippo_published.pdf"></a>
“Microscopic examination showed severe damage in frozen–thawed slices, but generally good to excellent ultrastructural and histological preservation after vitrification. Our results provide the first demonstration that both the viability and the structure of mature organized, complex neural networks can be well preserved by vitrification. These results may assist neuropsychiatric drug evaluation and development and the transplantation of integrated brain regions to correct brain disease or injury.â€
3. Mike Darwin’s Chronosphere blog:
<a href="http://chronopause.com"></a>
Mike goes back nearly to the beginnings of cryonics in the late 1960’s, and his blog offers a metaphorical gold mine of information, including references to a lot of scientific papers, about the field and its current but probably surmountable problems.
4. The X PRIZE Foundation has a concept under consideration for a Cryopreservation X PRIZE:
<a href="http://www.xprize.org/prize/cryopreservation-x-prize"></a>
“This competition offers two benefits to humanity. First, the ability to increase the number and availability of transplantable organs for patients with organ failure; and second, the ability to move forward the science of human cryopreservation which offers the ability to preserve patients with incurable diseases until a time when medical science has sufficiently progressed to be able to treat the disease.â€
5. MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung defends cryonic suspension as a feasible scientific-medical experiment in his book //Connectome//, and he will speak at Alcor’s conference in Scottsdale, AZ, next month:
<a href="http://hebb.mit.edu/people/seung/"></a>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Connectome-How-Brains-Wiring-Makes/dp/0547508182"></a>
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/100220308/Aschwin-de-Wolf-s-review-of-Connectome-by-Sebastian-Seung"></a>
<a href="http://alcor.org/conferences/2012/index.html"></a>