Scientists have power to bring back dead

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Scarlett Hayden

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Hi guys, this is my first post. I was gonna be a lurker but when I posted this on the INTP forum I was a tad skeptical, INTP's not having much sense of morality and all. I figured I'd come and say hi and get your outake on this:

Scientists have the power to bring back the dead by cryogenically freezing them. Obviously this can be used to save many lives, but how would you consider this moralistically speaking? Is it correct to hold such power and bring back the dead to life? And what do you reckon happens to the spirit, if you do at all believe that a living being has a spirit?

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/10/experimental-tr.html
 
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The link doesn't work.
(Unless it's just me..)
 
I couldn't get your link to work either. But please be aware, I am extremely skeptical of this claim that we have the technology to do this. In fact skeptical is putting it nicely, I flat out don't believe it. Remember just because you read something (especially on the internet!) does not make it true in any way shape or form.

But anyway, lets talk about this idea.

Its not practical to bring everybody back to life. Increasing the population by that much would make us go extinct much faster, its simply unsustainable given the earth's resources and the current technology with which we use them.

Ok, so we make a rule that only the people currently alive can benefit from this new technology. We already have a population problem, so that means we now need to stop people from breeding. If somebody gets pregnant, forced abortion! That does not seem moral. In fact, at the current rate of population growth, every square foot on every continent of this planet will have a human in just about 1000 years! This is of course not going to happen since it is entirely unsustainable, so we will kill ourselves off before this.

Of course this would certainly fuel space exploration and science. In order to reproduce, which is encoded in our DNA, we would need to spread out from earth!

Interesting philosophical question! But really is science fiction rather than science. I've certainly left out some points. Interested to see how others feel...
 
Ok, fixed the link =)

I probably don't like you said:
I couldn't get your link to work either. But please be aware, I am extremely skeptical of this claim that we have the technology to do this. In fact skeptical is putting it nicely, I flat out don't believe it. Remember just because you read something (especially on the internet!) does not make it true in any way shape or form.

But anyway, lets talk about this idea.

Its not practical to bring everybody back to life. Increasing the population by that much would make us go extinct much faster, its simply unsustainable given the earth's resources and the current technology with which we use them.

Ok, so we make a rule that only the people currently alive can benefit from this new technology. We already have a population problem, so that means we now need to stop people from breeding. If somebody gets pregnant, forced abortion! That does not seem moral. In fact, at the current rate of population growth, every square foot on every continent of this planet will have a human in just about 1000 years! This is of course not going to happen since it is entirely unsustainable, so we will kill ourselves off before this.*

Of course this would certainly fuel space exploration and science. In order to reproduce, which is encoded in our DNA, we would need to spread out from earth!

Interesting philosophical question! But really is science fiction rather than science. I've certainly left out some points. Interested to see how others feel...
Click to expand...

I never actually thought about it like that. And of course with all these life prolonging technologies added on top it could be a real disaster. Then again the over population could end up forcing them to find more space in order to save more lives, like a sort of symbiotic cycle between life and death. It's probably gonna happen anyway at some point.

And good point about not believing everything you read, or even see, but according to this article it's already benn done to save humans. This man was revived after being dead for twenty-four hours. Personally it sounds a little unnerving. Also, could you imagine the amount of legal issues relating to something like this?

Maybe a better question would be, if we actually had the technology to bring back someone from the dead, then who's to say whether or not they can refuse to resurrect a dead man, say for example if he'd been murdered, when they have the technology to help? (As an extreme example of someone who has supposedly died "before their time")
 
You can freeze people, but good luck thawing them. There is no spirit. There is some consideration for ethics during the whole freezing thing. I think I remember reading somewhere that they must wait until the person is medically dead or whatever (death being a gradual and ambiguous thing, yanno) before they put them on ice.

Scarlett Hayden said:
according to this (one) article it's already benn done to save humans.
Click to expand...

Yer gonna hafta be a little more thorough than that.

Goodness, it's not freezing.

The body temperature, which is normally 98 degrees, is brought down to just 92 degrees. This is not the same as freezing any dead person and bringing them back. Ughhh sensationalism.​
 
Meer said:
You can freeze people, but good luck thawing them. There is no spirit. There is some consideration for ethics during the whole freezing thing. I think I remember reading somewhere that they must wait until the person is medically dead or whatever (death being a gradual and ambiguous thing, yanno) before they put them on ice.



Yer gonna hafta be a little more thorough than that.

Goodness, it's not freezing.

The body temperature, which is normally 98 degrees, is brought down to just 92 degrees. This is not the same as freezing any dead person and bringing them back. Ughhh sensationalism.​
Click to expand...

^^LOL, no kidding. The article even put "frozen" and "dead" in quotation marks. I never would have thought it would be necessary to clarify those particular terms but evidently it is. "Dead" as used in this instance really means "just had cardiac arrest but neurons are still firing" and "frozen" as used in this instance means 92 degrees.
 
I would have thought that the definition of 'dead' would have included the implication that the state is non-reversible. The process described in the article is not without real-life precedent - there have been many cases of children etc falling through ice and being revived long after they should have drowned, because the freezing water has slowed down cell activity enough to avert brain damage. Cryogenic 'cooling' is basically a more controlled (and more extreme) version of that.
 
I feel very conflicted about this. I think death is something natural and not something to be frightened of. I also think the world is probably overpopulated and extend life expectancy would be very dangerous without strict birth control measures. That could be achieved in a highly functional and cooperative society, but it could also be used as population and people control in a more fascist state. I dont know if it would be better for people to live longer than they do now, but then again Im not sure. A big part of what makes life so precious is development and change across the lifespan as well as our inherent mortality. Coping with deaath and loss is an important part of life and learning. Death is an important and valuable part of our existance as a society.

I would rather we all focus on living well and healthy then trying to stop death when it comes.

But then again, if someone's child or loved one was in an accident and one had the chance to potentialy save them...I dont know what I would do in that situation. Id like to think that id accept death gracefully and with maturity but i dont really know.

As @I probably dont like you suggested, overpopulation could potentially fuel the race for space exploration, novel settlements and further evolution. But there is a greater chance that we would simply wipe a lot of oursleves out through lack of resources and war over power. Space exploration is something that requires a lot of investment and no short term gain, potentially no gain for atleast 3 or 4 generations later. This is not something i can see our current selfish instant gratification culture investing into, which is a shame for our childrens children as we continue to destroy this Earth and eat up resources.

This is an excerpt from a short story by Zindell regarding overpopulation http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/shanidar.htm

'If we become too many, we will kill all the mammoth and have to hunt silk belly and shagshay for food. And when they are gone, we will have to cut holes in the ice of the sea so to spear the seals when they come up to breathe. When the seals are gone, we will be forced to murder Kikilia, the whale, who is wiser then we and as strong as God. When the animals are gone, we will dig tangleroot and eat the larvae of furflys and break our teeth as we gnaw the lichen from the rocks. At last we will be so many, we will murder the forests to plant snow apple so that men will come to lust for land, and some men will come to have more land than others. And when there is no land left, the stronger men will get their sustenance from the labor of weaker men, who will have to sell their women and children so that they might have mash to eat. The strongest men will make war on each other so that they might have still more land. Thus we will become hunters of men and be doomed to hell in living and hell on the other side. And then, as it did on Earth in the time before the swarming, fire will rain from the sky, and the Devaki will be no more.'
Click to expand...
 
dead should be the end of it in my opinion. as a matter of fact i have a no resuscitation order if i i go flat line.
my reasons are not of a moral nature but of a personal one. i have lived a very eventful life and if it's time to go i'm ready for what's next.
as for being frozen and brought back at a later date, i guess i don't understand the allure to come back to a place you don't even fit into anymore.
 
[video=youtube;vetaFnJ2TpQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vetaFnJ2TpQ[/video]

Seemed relevant : P
 
JGirl said:
dead should be the end of it in my opinion. as a matter of fact i have a no resuscitation order if i i go flat line.
my reasons are not of a moral nature but of a personal one. i have lived a very eventful life and if it's time to go i'm ready for what's next.
as for being frozen and brought back at a later date, i guess i don't understand the allure to come back to a place you don't even fit into anymore.
Click to expand...

Yes, even if cryogenics did work, why would anyone want to bring back all those old people?
 
Endersgone said:
[video=youtube;vetaFnJ2TpQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vetaFnJ2TpQ[/video]

Seemed relevant : P
Click to expand...

Haha Jack never died, he just changed his name when he washed up on the shore at the beginning of Inception.
 
I would revive people I cared about were the technology available, world be damned.
 
Just because someone has been frozen doesn't mean they can be brought back to life. Unless freezing them is what killed them in the first place, then it may one day be possible to unfreeze them and have them come back to life. You still wouldn't live any longer though you'd just carry on your life span where you left off. Probably with more health conditions than what you started with

However, if you died from having your head chopped off I hardly think freezing then unfreezing will do the trick. Whatever caused your death in the first place would still be present when defrosted so you're screwed.

And bringing everyone back to life if it were possible would be a disaster. Overpopulation and death by boredom from all the "it wasn't like this when I was a lad" speeches would be a chronic problem

Unless, they all came back as zombies. That could be fun

*Brushes dust off shotgun"
 
If one were frozen and could be thawed safely I don't think that would be called 'bringing back the dead', but rather, cryogenic suspended animation.

In any case, what's the point, it would only defer the inevitable... except you could see the world much later in its history than your natural life-span might otherwise allow.
 
That does sound fun! Hand me a spare shotgun would ya?
"you know, it wasn't like this when I was a lad."
*BOOM*
"Da fuck! he wasn't a zombie man!"
"I KNOW, ISN'T IT GREAT!"


...please don't report me
 
But then, I found it more interesting to think forward rather than to think about the.....well, technicalities and spiritualities.

Who gets to be revived and who doesn't? ;)
Who gets to make the decision? Is it the person? The family / relatives / friends / spouses? The government?
Under what basis?

Of course, the technical and spiritual issues also matters; memories, spirit; soul, etc.
 
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