You're thinking of Egyptian ones. The general term does apply, and they are certainly not the exact opposite
Any and all mummies are
infotheoretically dead as no neurosynaptic preservation was achieved, whereas electron microscopy taken from the biopsy of a human brain
vitrified (not frozen) under ideal conditions immediately after clinical death and placed in
intermediate temperature storage shows preservation of fine cellular detail, as shown and explained in the video above. So, yes, cryonauts certainly are the exact opposite of mummies.
A Few Scientific Arguments in Favor of the Technical Feasibility of Reanimation
To whom it may concern,
Cryonics is a legitimate science-based endeavor that seeks to preserve human beings, especially the human brain, by the best technology available. Future technologies for resuscitation can be envisioned that involve molecular repair by nanomedicine, highly advanced computation, detailed control of cell growth, and tissue regeneration.
With a view toward these developments, there is a credible possibility that cryonics performed under the best conditions achievable today can preserve sufficient neurological information to permit eventual restoration of a person to full health.
The rights of people who choose cryonics are important, and should be respected.
Sincerely (78 Signatories)
~ The
Scientists' Open Letter on Cryonics
Medical biostasis is an experimental procedure that induces metabolic arrest at cryogenic temperatures to allow terminally ill patients to benefit from future medical advances and restore them to good health. Practiced as a hospital-based, elective medical procedure, medical biostasis consists of three distinct procedures: induction of hypothermic circulatory arrest, cryoprotection, and long-term care at intermediate temperatures (between -120℃ and -130℃). This document sets out a detailed protocol for medical biostasis, outlines a variation of this protocol for out-of-hospital emergency cases, and outlines research directions to further optimize this protocol.
Medical biostasis is an experimental medical procedure to stabilize terminally ill patients in a state of low-temperature biostasis in order to transport them to a time where their condition can be treated and any adverse effects of the biostasis procedure itself can be reversed. The concept of medical biostasis is an extension of existing mainstream medical procedures in which the temperature of a patient is lowered sufficiently to stop the heart to conduct advanced surgical procedures on the brain (i.e., deep hypothermic circulatory arrest). The premise of medical biostasis is that modern vitrification technologies can lower the temperature of the patient sufficiently enough to induce complete metabolic arrest. Placing a patient in medical biostasis prevents any kind of critical condition from advancing and allows science and medicine to catch up to the point where matter can be manipulated at the molecular level and restoration of the patient to good health is feasible.
~
The Medical Biostasis Protocol (
Aschwin de Wolf, MSc and Dr. Ville Salmensuu, MD)
Freezing human bodies in the hope of future revival is something people always ask me about. There are companies that do this, they mimic what we’re doing in cryobiology and attempt to preserve people who have recently passed away. Hundreds of bodies are currently cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen tanks even though there’s no rewarming method now that would ensure their survival after thawing.
If you had asked me the question 20 years ago, I would’ve told you it’s pure science fiction. But now I have to tell you, in the future I think anything is possible. Cryopreservation and biobanking have already become indispensable in modern medicine and across industries like healthcare, agriculture, environmental conservation and biotech. In our labs we’re developing new technology to meet urgent needs in cellular and gene therapy, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, stem cell and organ transplantation, new vaccine and drug development, disease screening, and fertility treatments. Plus, this is the biological information age – the preservation of genes, seed banks, the gametes of endangered species, and so on. When you think about all of these things taken together it’s very exciting.
~ Dr.
Dayong Gao, PhD, ORIGINCELL Endowed Professor of the University of Washington Department of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Center for Cryobiomedical Engineering and Artificial Organs
Let's assume we can get cryonics to work—and one day, it will. There will be one of these things that's kind of like ChatGPT. One day, somebody will figure out how to get water from zero degrees centigrade down to minus forty-four or something without it expanding, and cryonics will be solved, and then you'll be able to put a pause in, so to speak, and reappear a hundred years later.
~ Dr.
Stephen Wolfram, PhD
First you die, but you get yourself frozen in liquid nitrogen immediately after death. Liquid nitrogen will keep you unchanged at roughly 200 degrees below zero centigrade, or 320 below zero Fahrenheit. Once you're that cold you will deteriorate no further, and your body will keep indefinitely. Then, there comes a time when whatever it was that killed you becomes curable. It may be 100 years hence, 500 years hence, but the doctors bring you back to life and give you the cure. You can then go right on living.
What have you got to lose? You won't have to live tediously through the waiting. However long it may be, it will seem to you to have passed in a flash. You will close your eyes in death and open them in life in the space of a wink. In fact, the longer the wait, the more interesting the future you enter.
~ Dr.
Isaac Asimov, PhD,
"See You in the Hereafter" (1972)
The statements (a) cryonics has no chance of working and (b) cryonics does not advance scientific or medical knowledge, are both obviously wrong, as is amply proved by expert testimony. Although no one can quantify the probability of cryonics working, I estimate it as at least 90% — and certainly nobody can say it is zero! The statement that it does not advance scientific knowledge is absolutely ridiculous, because whether it will work or not, research in this area will obviously be of great medical value. I would go so far as to say that anyone who maintains positions (a) and (b) is not only incompetent but guilty of doing grave damage to society — like the doctors who opposed anesthetics, and even asceptics, in the last century, because they were "against Nature!"
~ Sir
Arthur C. Clarke, personal correspondence with Dr. Greg Fahy (1989)
The first-ever evaluation of an actual Alcor case showed no detectable fracturing, no ice crystal formation or damage, acceptable preservation of histology, good preservation of ultrastructure, and very likely connectome preservation.
~ Dr.
Greg Fahy, PhD,
"Examination of a Cryopreserved Brain" (2022)
The restorative methods presented in Cryostasis Revival generally involve three phases of work: (1) collecting information from preserved structure, (2) computing how to fix damaged structure, and (3) implementing the repair procedure. The first and last of these phases employ sophisticated nanorobots small enough to pass through blood vessels and other microscopic tissue corridors, as well as a nanorobotic support infrastructure called the “vasculoid” that temporarily coats the inner surface of these spaces with atomically precise machinery. The activity in the second phase is primarily computational and takes place outside of the body using an external high-performance computer and specialized software.
Ultimately, it all depends on nanotechnology.
If a mature nanotechnology is the key to revival, how can we be sure it will exist when we need it, and will actually work when we use it? We know that molecular machines such as nanoscale bearings, ratchets, pumps, motors, conveyors, and the like exist in various forms in biological systems. And they work! Additionally, these basic molecular machines have been assembled into complex micron-scale biological devices called cells, which have many capabilities analogous to those envisioned for medical nanorobots. In turn, these molecular machines and micron-scale biological devices have been assembled into highly-differentiated macroscale systems including large organisms such as human beings. Human beings can manufacture more of themselves, thus increasing total biological productive capacity, much as is envisioned for nanofactories that will someday manufacture more nanofactories, along with medical nanorobots. Because these molecular machines already exist in biological systems, they clearly violate no fundamental physical laws.
It is also important to note that the emergence of biological systems required a continuous chain of incremental evolutionary steps that imposed very stringent design limitations on these systems (e.g., must forage for their own food, defend themselves from predators, not differ markedly from parental systems, carry their own instructions for replication, etc.). Medical nanorobots, on the other hand, can be designed de novo at any easier-to-build point in the design space and will have far less stringent design limitations (e.g., can use optimal feedstock materials and energy conveniently supplied externally, can utilize a wider range of building materials, need no defense from predators during fabrication, has no need to self-replicate, etc.), hence can be much simpler systems than biological organisms.
As a result, we have high confidence that medical nanorobots can exist and can be simpler to design and operate than biological systems. How long might it take human technology to fabricate such complex nanosystems? Natural evolution required ~750 million years to evolve the first simple replicating cells via a ponderously slow incremental random walk through a very large design space. In contrast, human scientists can apply intelligence, creativity, selectivity, computer simulations, the physical tools of engineering, and the inspiration of a worked example (i.e., biology) to inform and vastly speed the development process. Human engineers built the first mechanical self-replicating systems in less than 750 years of effort. That’s a million times faster than nature required to blindly evolve the first self-replicating cells. So, how long until we have molecular manufacturing? Perhaps centuries? Possibly decades? Opinions on timing differ widely, and the development speed obviously depends on how well the effort is funded, but there are no fundamental scientific or technical reasons why it cannot be done.
~
Robert A. Freitas, Jr., JD,
Cryostasis Revival (2022)
No, they clearly did not mean that the old technology was supplanted by better technology, but rather that in the primitive past (our present) "people feared dying (it terrified them!)," but that as humanity evolved, we overcame our "fear" of death and stopped trying to meddle with nature or live past our time.
