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Cryonics and Biostasis
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# Cryonics and Biostasis Portal: Biohacking & Risk Stage: Speculative Evidence: Speculative Template: Practice framework Risk: Unknown Reversibility: Irreversible Last reviewed: Feb 2026 == Summary == Preserving a legally dead body at very low temperature in hope of future revival is unproven, cannot be tested on current timelines, and depends on assumptions about technologies that do not exist. == Key takeaways == * Cryonics preserves the body after legal death; it is not a treatment and revival has never occurred. * Cryoprotectants reduce ice damage but cause their own injury, and reversal is unproven. * Its premise rests on future technology that may never arrive. == What is actually done == After legal death, the body is cooled and perfused with cryoprotectants intended to limit ice formation, then stored at very low temperature. The bet is that future medicine could repair the damage and revive the person. This is a preservation procedure, not a therapy: nothing about it treats the cause of death, and no preserved human or large animal has been revived. == Why it sits at the speculative edge == Cryoprotection trades ice damage for chemical toxicity, and current methods cannot reliably preserve a whole brain without injury. Whether the relevant information survives is unknown and, for now, untestable. The claim is effectively unfalsifiable on human timescales, which places it firmly in the speculative column and raises questions about consent, cost, and expectation. == Open questions == * Is the information that defines a person preserved by current methods? * How should an unfalsifiable, long-horizon service be regulated and communicated? == Watchlist == * Reversible organ cryopreservation * Brain-preservation quality metrics * Consumer-protection standards == References == * Cryonics: a scientific and ethical appraisal — de Wolf & Platt review literature. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5588901/. Overview of cryopreservation injury and the unproven basis of revival. == Categories == [[Category:Biohacking & Risk]] [[Category:cryopreservation]] [[Category:biostasis]] [[Category:ethics]]