> The 1% success rate is rather pessimistic, too.
Where do you get that? From what little I understand, 1% seems highly optimistic, given how destructive the freezing process is at the moment.
It's my own estimation based on the evidence I've seen. There's plenty of detail when you look at neural tissue using a microscope: http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/braincryopreservation1.htm...
Re:A Personal Statement from Iain Banks
by polyfractal on Wednesday April 03, 2013 @08:03PM
(#5490112)
That is not peer-reviewed research, and therefore I treat it about as seriously as I treat any other comment on the internet: at best incompetent, at worst maliciously deceiving. Considering its published by a company that makes money from freezing people...probably the latter.
You can look it this way: life after rewarming can last for hundreds of years, easily a thousand as medical technology will have advanced at that point. People are currently willing to pay $100k in medical bills to extend their life by about one year with 50% chance, which means that the cost is $200k per year.
Cryopreservation also costs about $100k (slightly more in real life I guess, I'm rounding numbers for simplicity).
If cryopreservation has a 1% of success to extend life by 1000 years for $100k, then they will "buy" 1 year for $10k. Of course, you can change the numbers (in any direction), e.g. 100 years of life would come out to $100k per year, still cheaper than what most people are willing to pay today to live slightly longer. The 1% success rate is rather pessimistic, too.
If you take quality of life into consideration, the argument starts to favour cryonics quite heavily (we can assume that life is a lot better in the future thanks to advancement of technology).