The husband and wife preserving their son at low temperatures for more advanced medical treatment in the future their son who can no longer be kept alive by today's medical capabilities, appears a scene in the movie "A.I.". This isn't a strange subject any longer.
In the movie, it has been successfully applied to ova, spermatozoa and fertile embryos. Also, currently(as of June) there are 49 corpsicles in cryonic suspension at Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Alcor is the only cryonics organization offering vitrification for human patients, using medical personnel and technologies rather than mortuary practices. With exceptions of human embryos, no human has ever been thawed out and revived. In other words, current technology cannot conclusively prove a frozen person can be revived and repaired.
However, the future technologies will eventually advance, so the limits of future resuscitation technology may be overcome. The reason for why people pay attention to cryonics is that it is able to cure an incurable disease which is hopeless in the present age, that is, if technology advances in the future, the incurable disease would be cured. In addition, people's desire to continue living is anxious to lengthen their life until more advanced technology is made available.
Then what is cryonics? Cryonics is the use of cryogenic temperatures to preserve recently deceased human beings with hopes they may be revived at some later date. How is corpsicle made? Firstly, more than 60% of water inside cells are replaced by a mixture of cryoprotectant (anti-freeze) compounds so that tissue dose not freeze during cooling stage as soon as possible after corpsicle draws blood from the body. Upon completing the exchange of body fluids, the next procedure is immersion in liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees Celsius. Likewise, the process of thawing just its reversal. After corpsicle is warmed in liquid nitrogen tank, cryoprotectant compounds are replaced by body fluids. The heart, through the next procedure, which is given electric shock to the patients, is able to resuscitate. Of course, no human being in cryonic suspension has been revived so far. However, death in the future medicine would not be a question of whether a patient can be awakened or not.
It is a question of how much amnesia they exhibit after they are awakened. This is because memories and intelligence are influenced by changes of freezing and thawing, and even they might be lost if the brain electrical activity stops. Fortunately, nanotechnology which is the manipulation of individual atoms or molecules to build or repair virtually any physical object including human cells and biological tissue, will play a large role in the success of a cryonic revival.
Advanced nanotechnology will include feasibility for repairing and regenerating tissues after almost arbitrary degrees of injury provided that certain basic information remains intact. In other words, nanotechnology would be required to manufacture the microscopic devices capable of performing repairs. However, how quickly development will proceed is difficult to predict.
Then up to now, how much cryobiology which will play an integral role in cryonic became accomplishment? Preserving of cryogenic temperatures and operation of low temperatures is now on their way. Preserving of cryogenic is made to give normal children for people who have the possibilities of destroying progenitive cell owing to a test tube baby operation or radiotherapy. Also, operation of low temperatures is technology which is to make a low temperature to patients artificially under the knife. This method is capable of carrying out an operation without bleeding.
Cryonic suspension itself cures nothing. It buys time for the patient, keeping the body virtually unchanged until the future in which a suspended state may be considered merely an extremely deep coma. In addition, cryonic destroys the provision of nature in which the old generation transfers space and resources for the rising generation. However, as people find out about the secret of freezing and thawing and if people who are reluctant to die have increased, they would grow them eager desire for corpsicles. Of course, nothing could be assured yet whether corpsicles could resuscitate and maintain memories as before and cope with cultural shock or not.