Dying UK girl convinces judge to let her body be frozen

[Tom Kalbfus]

It's unlikely that freezing a body is going to do a thing. I put it into the same category as Ancient Egyptians mummifying their dead for their faith; I'm sure it makes the girl in question feel better, which I think is the important thing. Will it produce anything in the future? I doubt it.

As other posters have pointed out, the lag between death and freezing is going to remove most of the value of freezing the person in the first place - brain damage, memory loss, and so on.

brain damage can be reversed by growing new brain cells. Besides even damaged brain cells contain information, the information that's important is the positioning of the dead brain cells and what they were connected to. if you can substitute living brain cells of the same type for the damaged ones and put them in the same position, then they would contain the same information.

Another question of reviving someone is ... why?

This primitive from centuries ago is not going to have any relevant job skills / won't be able to support herself, won't speak the language, is going to suffer from extreme culture shock, and basically is not going to be much more than a curiosity or of interest to a certain segment of historians and anthropologists - neither group are known for their large amounts of money to support a person who is essentially an invalid.

Actually she is 14 years old and will have the memories of a 14 year old, much like other 14 year olds, her education is not complete. A 14 year old girl is not expected to get a job, and so there is plenty of time to train her. As to why, that's easy, for the advancement of science. For one thing, she is legally dead, she has no brain activity when frozen, her heart isn't beating, so she is a dead person, there is no risk to using her as a guinea pig in a science experiment, the worst that can happen is that she is not brought back to live and remains a corpse. Lets assume that the experiment is successful, well there would be a lot of historians and anthopologists that would be very interested in talking with her and discovering what she'd seen and witnessed, that too would advance the cause of science. Another possibility, is they could make her a virtual crew member for a starship. Create a simulation of a starship bridge and then simulate her within that simulation, and connect the controls of that simulation to a real starship, then you train her on how to fly the starship if she cooperates.

Assuming there IS some miraculous technology to read information from a dead, then frozen brain - why do you need to revive the person at all? If it is historical information you want, you can read it from the dead brain and get all the information need about conditions.

You could read the information, and you can use it to rebuild her brain, but the information has no meaning and can't be interpreted unless its part of a brain either simulated or real, the brain in turn needs to be part of a body, and that body must be able to talk and explain what she is thinking about and what she remembers, as there is no universal language for brain cell structures, each brain is different, each brain learns differently, so the arrangement of cells within a brain is only meaningful to that particular brain, so that is why you might want to revive her.

Of course, there might be some sort of "sentient millieu" who might revive a person so frozen (assuming there was anything to revive), not as a physical being but as a disembodied intelligence - just like everyone else at that point. Such a being might need little support, so wouldn't be a drain. They might just revive her for ethical reasons or reasons of curiosity. But such a society would honestly be beyond the singularity, I think.

Not necessarily, they might not be able to create reliable artificial intelligences, but they might be able to simulate they physics of a brain, they could simulate, the cells, the respiration, the circulation of the blood in the blood vessels the process of digestion, and within that space, they could simulate a physical girl, they wouldn't be able to read her mind, the computer just simulates the physical processes. The virtual girl can move around in the physical space you simulate around her, she would need simulated food to eat, simulated oxygen to breathe and simulated water to drink. You probably would want to wake her up in a simulated room with objects that are familiar to her, an then through the computer, you could communicate with her. She could talk and the simulated air molecules would vibrate producing simulated sound, which the speakers would then turn into real sound and you could thus hear her words, and the reverse. A simulated video screen in from of her eyes, would simulate for her a view of the real world outside the computer as seen through a video camera. Now just imagine the adventure possibilities if she ended up in the ship's computer of a starship the PCs happened to get their hands on. The software simulating her is a bit nonstandard on a nonstandard ship's computer, she has access to all of the ship's controls, and because the PCs say for instance stole the ship, they don't have the ability to lock her out. Now what is a 14-year old girl from the 21st century locked in a ship's computer going to want to do? She can occupy one ships position, for instance she could pilot the ship, she could fire a gun turrent. A separate program calculates jumps which she has access to, she could see through any of the ships cameras and sensors. Maybe the 14 year old girl would be looking for a "body" Maybe she got tired of being a science experiment and wants to get out into the Universe for instance.

 

[Rick]

brain damage can be reversed by growing new brain cells.

No, it can't. If you lose an area of brain cells, whatever was in there is lost forever. Growing new brain cells will only restore lost capacity NOT repair damage. Again, the fundamental question is not the hardware, but what role the electrical impulses play in the living brain. Consider this - from the very formation of the brain until the moment we die there is an electrical current running through our brain, firing across synapses, shaping thought and emotion within us; it doesn't stop while we live. Some people, who have been revived within a few seconds (or minutes if the body temperature has been lowered sufficiently beforehand) can still live, but often have brain damage. The implication is that this electrical impulse is necessary to brain function and without it, it's just a pile of meat.
Given what Tom has planned for this underage girl when he revives her, I think she'd prefer to stay dead! :?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

brain damage can be reversed by growing new brain cells.

No, it can't. If you lose an area of brain cells, whatever was in there is lost forever. Growing new brain cells will only restore lost capacity NOT repair damage. Again, the fundamental question is not the hardware, but what role the electrical impulses play in the living brain. Consider this - from the very formation of the brain until the moment we die there is an electrical current running through our brain, firing across synapses, shaping thought and emotion within us; it doesn't stop while we live. Some people, who have been revived within a few seconds (or minutes if the body temperature has been lowered sufficiently beforehand) can still live, but often have brain damage. The implication is that this electrical impulse is necessary to brain function and without it, it's just a pile of meat.
Given what Tom has planned for this underage girl when he revives her, I think she'd prefer to stay dead! :?

Well then it is only information loss not brain damage, brain damage represents diminished capacity. Electrical impulses are a means of communication, not a means of information storage, the information stored are the brain cells themselves, those brain cells can create their own electrical impulses and retrieve memories.

 

[Condottiere]

Quantum physics at this point is used to map out the relationships between synapses.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Quantum physics at this point is used to map out the relationships between synapses.

Nothing is exact, it might not be the same girl that was frozen, but she thinks she is. From a role playing perspective, it doesn't matter.

 

[Rick]

brain damage can be reversed by growing new brain cells.

No, it can't. If you lose an area of brain cells, whatever was in there is lost forever. Growing new brain cells will only restore lost capacity NOT repair damage. Again, the fundamental question is not the hardware, but what role the electrical impulses play in the living brain. Consider this - from the very formation of the brain until the moment we die there is an electrical current running through our brain, firing across synapses, shaping thought and emotion within us; it doesn't stop while we live. Some people, who have been revived within a few seconds (or minutes if the body temperature has been lowered sufficiently beforehand) can still live, but often have brain damage. The implication is that this electrical impulse is necessary to brain function and without it, it's just a pile of meat.
Given what Tom has planned for this underage girl when he revives her, I think she'd prefer to stay dead! :?

Well then it is only information loss not brain damage, brain damage represents diminished capacity. Electrical impulses are a means of communication, not a means of information storage, the information stored are the brain cells themselves, those brain cells can create their own electrical impulses and retrieve memories.

Tom, we just don't know - one theory is that there is no information contained in the cells, that the electrical impulses form a type of holographic memory storage. The only facts that we have concern how information is sent, not how it's stored - every living cell has both an electrical charge and chemical emitters/receivers, the best guess so far being that information is stored and received as an electrochemical reaction, lose that and lose the information for good.

 

[Condottiere]

This works neatly in fantasy, since what's really at stake is the soul, not a photocopy.

 

[Rick]

Quantum physics at this point is used to map out the relationships between synapses.

Nothing is exact, it might not be the same girl that was frozen, but she thinks she is. From a role playing perspective, it doesn't matter.

I have yet to see a player who was comfortable with playing a brain dead vegetable. There would be zero brain activity, even if you could rebuild the hardware.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

This works neatly in fantasy, since what's really at stake is the soul, not a photocopy.

Well Rick apparently believes the human body needs a soul in order to have electrical activity in the brain.

 

[Rick]

This works neatly in fantasy, since what's really at stake is the soul, not a photocopy.

Well Rick apparently believes the human body needs a soul in order to have electrical activity in the brain.

No, just a continuous trickle of electricity!

It doesn't really matter too much - if you have a scenario or campaign where the reanimation of a centuries old cryopod is feasible, then go with it; your campaign, your rules. However, when you couch a scenario in absolute (not relative to your game) terms, I'm going to tell you why it won't work in my opinion - in this case it's because we simply don't have the technology (yet) to suspend a person at the point of death; all we're doing is preserving a corpse.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

This works neatly in fantasy, since what's really at stake is the soul, not a photocopy.

Well Rick apparently believes the human body needs a soul in order to have electrical activity in the brain.

No, just a continuous trickle of electricity!

It doesn't really matter too much - if you have a scenario or campaign where the reanimation of a centuries old cryopod is feasible, then go with it; your campaign, your rules. However, when you couch a scenario in absolute (not relative to your game) terms, I'm going to tell you why it won't work in my opinion - in this case it's because we simply don't have the technology (yet) to suspend a person at the point of death; all we're doing is preserving a corpse.

There are various animals that are frozen solid in the winter and then thaw out in the spring time, one example is frogs, there is a caterpillar that lives in the arctic, that takes 14 years to grow large enough to transform into a moth, since the summers are brief, they get frozen solid 14 times an require 14 summers to fully develop into a moth. There are all sorts of animals with antifreeze in their blood that freeze solid as a way of dealing with winter, so there is precedent.

 

[Condottiere]

They hibernate while they're still alive.

Besides that, artificial anti-freeze can't be good for you, and the alternative crystalizing the cells neither.

 

[Rick]

There are various animals that are frozen solid in the winter and then thaw out in the spring time, one example is frogs, there is a caterpillar that lives in the arctic, that takes 14 years to grow large enough to transform into a moth, since the summers are brief, they get frozen solid 14 times and require 14 summers to fully develop into a moth. There are all sorts of animals with antifreeze in their blood that freeze solid as a way of dealing with winter, so there is precedent.

But not in humans.
I'm going to repeat what I said in an earlier post:

We simply don't have the technology (yet) to suspend a person at the point of death; all we're doing is preserving a corpse.

If we develop the technology, at some undefined point in the future, to stop cells from crystallizing, preserve the structure of the body and enable a low level of current to keep brain function just 'ticking over', then yes - at that point it might just work. But we are not there yet, we still have quite a long way to go in developing this technology and, until we do, I think it will be impossible to revive them.
But go ahead, do what feels right for your campaign.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

There are various animals that are frozen solid in the winter and then thaw out in the spring time, one example is frogs, there is a caterpillar that lives in the arctic, that takes 14 years to grow large enough to transform into a moth, since the summers are brief, they get frozen solid 14 times and require 14 summers to fully develop into a moth. There are all sorts of animals with antifreeze in their blood that freeze solid as a way of dealing with winter, so there is precedent.

But not in humans.
I'm going to repeat what I said in an earlier post:

We simply don't have the technology (yet) to suspend a person at the point of death; all we're doing is preserving a corpse.

If we develop the technology, at some undefined point in the future, to stop cells from crystallizing, preserve the structure of the body and enable a low level of current to keep brain function just 'ticking over', then yes - at that point it might just work. But we are not there yet, we still have quite a long way to go in developing this technology and, until we do, I think it will be impossible to revive them.
But go ahead, do what feels right for your campaign.

Neural impulses are the same whether they are caterpillars, frogs, or humans, my point was they didn't need to have continuous neural impulses in order to be revived, and so either do humans. The point is the technology to revive frozen humans does not yet exist, that doesn't mean we couldn't freeze them in the first place. There are all sorts of chemical treatments to prevent ice crystallization in the cells. Those chemicals are toxic to human cells, but they do indeed prevent crystallization of the cells. Dead human cells contain information which can be used to reconstruct dead human. Although they are dead, the dead cells still contain information. New living cells can be cloned from the paitient's DNA and the cloned cells can be arranged to reconstruct the patient with his memories obtained from his dead frozen brain cells. The undeveloped technology to d this doesn't exist yet, but it could. A precise bio printer might do the job. It would have scan the frozen body and form a 3-D model pf the patient with sufficient information to print him out cell by cell.

 

[Rick]

Ok, we're never going to agree on this! I think the technology has to be 'front-loaded' (ie - we have to know how to freeze a living body first, before we can successfully revive them) and you think the technology can be 'back-loaded' (ie - we freeze whatever we can and we will have the technology in the future to sort it out and revive people).
With that in mind, go with what works for your campaign!

 

[Rick]

Neural impulses are the same whether they are caterpillars, frogs, or humans, my point was they didn't need to have continuous neural impulses in order to be revived, and so either do humans.

Actually, they do. You cannot freeze a fish completely and then have it come back to life - fish can survive under ice in a dormant state, in the same way as frogs can lie dormant in mud, for example. If you freeze any fish solid, it will die and cannot be revived. Some animals, with natural anti-freeze can survive temperatures that would freeze other animals solid (hence anti-freeze, clues in the name), but nothing can survive having every cell in its body frozen solid, with no neural impulses.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Ok, we're never going to agree on this! I think the technology has to be 'front-loaded' (ie - we have to know how to freeze a living body first, before we can successfully revive them) and you think the technology can be 'back-loaded' (ie - we freeze whatever we can and we will have the technology in the future to sort it out and revive people).
With that in mind, go with what works for your campaign!

To be honest, we don't know what future technology can do, because it hasn't been invented yet. The main obstacle to reviving the frozen is retrieving the information, if we can model how ice crystalizes, we can run the simulation backwards to obtain the state of the cells before the ice crystalized. We know what healthy cells look like. To make those cells, we need the DNA information. Each cell has the same DNA information, it is just different parts of the DNA sequence that are turned on to make each type of cell. We can perhaps identify each type of cell and determine which cells they were connected to, we just need to replicate that to recreate the person who was frozen. And the person we create will think he was that person if this is done right.