Is Cryonics a wise hedge or a scam?

Question

Is Cryonics on the up and up? It cost alot and I want to know who is getting all the money for freezing people?

Answer 1

Hi. I'm reposting my answer here.

Is Cryonics on the up and up. Right now, today, yes. Both of the primary US Cryonics Organizations are operated in a reasonable manner and for the benefit of patients. They will acquire your body, prepare and freeze you, and keep you in long term storage.

In the past, that wasn't always the case. Some organizations were scams to prey on the dead and dying. Other organizations failed despite the best intentions, because they lacked resources or business skills to make it work. The end result was 100% irrecoverably dead warm patients.

The other half of the question is.. Is Cryonics a scam?
The answer has two parts.
Can they bring you back to life with technology that exists today? - No.
Will they eventually be able to bring you back? - Maybe.

Technology developed just this year allows for some organs to be frozen to liquid nitrogen temperatures, rewarmed, and the tissues returned to life. This is an active area of research, and it is very possible that a future technology may be able to repair the both the freezing damage and the cause of death. To a Cryonics patient and it doesn't matter if this technology takes 50 or 500 years to develop. The extremely low temperature of liquid nitrogen slows decay such that a hundred years can pass and not add up to the decay of one second of being warm and dead.

The two big organizations in the US are Alcor and the Cryonics Institute. These two companies survived the era of Cryonic failures by learning from the mistakes of the organizations that failed. Both maintain patient care trusts in extremely safe investments to ensure long-term funding, and both are extremely open in financial matters. From either you can request financial statements and have them in short order.

So where does the money go? Good Question:
Alcor includes "standby", preparation, transport, perfusion, cooling, and finally transfer into primary storage. In 1990, their cost was roughly $30,000. This cost has increased significantly today with the use of new perfusion and vitrification technology. It will soon likely increase again as they mature the mobile cooling system that will combine the transport, perfusion, and cooling steps. Alcor Currently Charges > $100,000 for cryopreservation, for which most members use life insurance.

The Cryonics Institute charges a lot less for their services, $28,000 or $35,000, depending on your membership. The big difference in the cost is that CI does not provide standby and transport services. They depend on a local mortician or an outside party to handle postmortem medications and shipping.

These standby services reflect a huge portion of the costs. They include travel, medications, logistics, and staff. Further, if a person doesn't die "on schedule", well trained and paid staff "stand by" and wait. CI has partnered with Suspended Animation to provide this service, but still offers the "inexpensive" preservation option, to keep it affordable for as many people as possible.

For both organizations, CI and Alcor, the rest of the money goes to ...
-research (better preservation techniques and eventually reanimation research)
-operating expenses (staff, phones, electricity, office supplies, etc.)
-an investment pool for long term patient care.

I hope this helps.
Ejay Hire, funded member of the Cryonics Institute

If you have other questions, or want a personal opinion, my email address is ejay hire at hotmail dot com

Answer 2

My first guess is that it's a scam. But then I thought about it again. If you've got the money and you're curious, why not go for it? You're going to die any way, why not use some of the money to take a chance and see if in 100 years, they can cure whatever killed you in the first place, so you can come back to annoy your grandkids?

I don't know who gets the money - I assume it goes to the owners of the vessels or containers or whatever where you get stored.