[extropy-chat] Biochemistry text challenges students to find biological fallacy in cryonics

[Brett Paatsch]

I just stumbled across this question and the answer to it
in a text _Biochemistry_ 3rd Edition by Voet and Voet
published 2004. 

I found it interesting that a standard university biochemistry
text was aware of cryonics and addressing students minds
to it in this way. 


Chap 22, no. 14.


"Certain unscrupulous operators offer, for a fee, to freeze 
recently deceased individuals in liquid nitrogen until medical
science can cure the disease from which they died. What 
is the biological fallacy of this procedure?"


The answer given:


"Death is essentially an irreversible loss of order. On dying, 
cells loose their order on the molecular level by loosing their
ion gradients, enzymatically digesting their macromolecular
components, breaking down their membranes, etc. Thus, 
although cells and the organisms they comprise appear to
change little on dying, the microscopic changes which occur
are profound and cannot be reversed by simply "curing" the
condition that caused death".


Brett Paatsch






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