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[Levi]

.... But freezing completely destroys the cells if done wrong and why would we do something that we have very little proof of being able to work on human beings?

Well, they've definitely proven that you can freeze them.   

Yeah, its all in hopes of there being better technology later.  Its entirely possible that these people(and me if I get frozen) will never be brought back. 

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Alternately, aliens invade and think you're ice lollies.

"What satisfying snacks they've left for us, obviously an offer of peace and subservience"

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Levi]

I'm pretty sure they've at least figured out how to freeze people in a way that doesn't destroy the cells.

Yeah, they pump you full of cyroprotectants to prevent ice crystals from forming, but its not perfect and the chemicals are fairly toxic. 

There is a lot of hope that nanobots will be able to repair a lot of damage that happens.  Also even if the brain needs repair, a slightly "wrong" brain might be "Good enough".

-----
Another possibility is to not unfreeze you at all, but instead scan your frozen head into a computer and recreate you there.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[i2amroy]

Has anyone ever sucessfully brought back a cryogenicaly frozen person?

Actually the Massachusetts General Hospital have successfully revived pigs that the "killed" through up to 90% blood loss (leading to a total lack of brain activity and heart beat) by bringing them down to extremely low temperatures for about three hours or so, then restoring their blood and starting their heart beat up again. According to them they managed to perform this procedure over 200 times, with about a 90% success rate of revival. Before them a University of Pittsburgh Research lab performed a similar thing on dogs. (DARPA is also doing current research into similar topics, but haven't released any results that I know of yet). It's only a matter of time until we have the technology that could successfully a person.

Of course even assuming we had the technology to successfully revive people you run into all sorts of other problems, notably:
1) Most cryogenically preserved people have bigger problems that caused their death, such as old age failure, disease, etc. that we can't cure right now.
2) You can't exactly test things on human subjects, even volunteers, since voluntary anesthesia is still illegal.
3) In addition to making testing difficult, this also means that those who are dying of disease are forced to the point of critical failure before we can freeze them. Even if we developed a cure for something like cancer, it's going to be much more difficult to "save" a patent who's body consists of basically one massive tumor than it would be if they were frozen in the early (but still untreatable at the time) stages.
4) If you attempt to revive someone and it fails, is that murder? What about the contract that you sign with them, would it be a form of contract breach? How safe does the method have to be before it's "worth the risk" for the patient? 50%? 90%? 99.9999%?

[Levi]

You know, this whole conversation has sent me off on a train of thought that sent me into a minor existential crisis.

Scratch that, my brain's going full out 'OH GOD!' mode due to it.

Hey if you want to sign up, I can send you a card that gets you a bit of a discount.   

[hops]

.... But freezing completely destroys the cells if done wrong and why would we do something that we have very little proof of being able to work on human beings?

Most of the cryogenically frozen people are gonna die anyways, so I think in their perspective they've got nothing to lose. They either wake up almost instantaneously in their perspective with a really bad hangover and no cancer, or they just die in which case they'd be too dead to know it, assuming that the afterlife doesn't exist.

[scrdest]

Has anyone ever sucessfully brought back a cryogenicaly frozen person?

Cryogenically - no, but there's a number of modern-day recorded cases where people were brought back from being frozen with zero damage. One example I remember for its sheer comedy is parents finding their daughter frozen - so badly that they had to just place her in the car diagonally like an overly long flesh-plank.

[Levi]

.... But freezing completely destroys the cells if done wrong and why would we do something that we have very little proof of being able to work on human beings?

Most of the cryogenically frozen people are gonna die anyways, so I think in their perspective they've got nothing to lose. They either wake up almost instantaneously in their perspective with a really bad hangover and no cancer, or they just die in which case they'd be too dead to know it, assuming that the afterlife doesn't exist.

That is pretty much my feelings on the matter. 

We haven't proven that we'll never have technology to bring people back from a frozen state and there is a fair bit of evidence that we might be able too, so why not sign up to be frozen?  If you are brought back, then awesome.  If you aren't brought back, well you aren't any worse off.

[Osmosis Jones]

Can you prove that? Which way is the ansible moving relative to me, away or towards? Either way they wouldn't reply to the message until I sent it, and I wouldn't get theirs until they sent it regardless of their movement? It just makes the simultaneity confusing; there exist reference frames in which the signal looks like its received and sent to me before I send the initial one, but that certainly isn't MY reference frame. Right? Wrong?

As much as one can prove anything that starts with FTL as an assumption...

Anyway, this site has some decent diagrams that help. Long story short is that because of Special Relativity, the perspective of one object will always see the object in another inertial frame as moving slower. THAT means, anything you see as transmitting instantly, another reference frame will see as moving backwards in time. What is vitally important here, is that as there are no special frames of reference, the receiving person can do the exact same thing. Net result is you can bounce messages back through time.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Has anyone ever sucessfully brought back a cryogenicaly frozen person?

Actually the Massachusetts General Hospital have successfully revived pigs that the "killed" through up to 90% blood loss (leading to a total lack of brain activity and heart beat) by bringing them down to extremely low temperatures for about three hours or so, then restoring their blood and starting their heart beat up again. According to them they managed to perform this procedure over 200 times, with about a 90% success rate of revival. Before them a University of Pittsburgh Research lab performed a similar thing on dogs. (DARPA is also doing current research into similar topics, but haven't released any results that I know of yet). It's only a matter of time until we have the technology that could successfully a person.

Of course even assuming we had the technology to successfully revive people you run into all sorts of other problems, notably:
1) Most cryogenically preserved people have bigger problems that caused their death, such as old age failure, disease, etc. that we can't cure right now.
2) You can't exactly test things on human subjects, even volunteers, since voluntary anesthesia is still illegal.
3) In addition to making testing difficult, this also means that those who are dying of disease are forced to the point of critical failure before we can freeze them. Even if we developed a cure for something like cancer, it's going to be much more difficult to "save" a patent who's body consists of basically one massive tumor than it would be if they were frozen in the early (but still untreatable at the time) stages.
4) If you attempt to revive someone and it fails, is that murder? What about the contract that you sign with them, would it be a form of contract breach? How safe does the method have to be before it's "worth the risk" for the patient? 50%? 90%? 99.9999%?

I was just curious
Also to the last question they should probably wait till animal testing has 100% or 99% with outliers till they try it on people and the first ones attpred on people should probably be those who were critically ill or less likely to be able to be brought back for, if nothing else, to ensure the thawing works on people without killing them again but maybe not resurrecting them. I don't think it's a breach of contract if they fail in attempting only if they get you back and then kill you ((if your heart beats again and you have other signs of life then they mess up that's probably murder)) but if thawing doesn't work and you're still dead well you can charge someone for killing a dead person :p

[redwallzyl]

if you are actually legitimately frozen you are dead. the freezing water will have formed crystals that puncture all you cells. that's why cryogenics as commonly thought of wont work.

[Levi]

A bit about the cell-puncturing ripped from Alcor's website:  http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html

Q: How do cryoprotectants protect cells?

A: When tissue is slowly cooled, ice first forms between cells. The growing ice crystals increase the concentration of solutes in the remaining liquid around them, causing osmotic dehydration of cells. If cryoprotectants are present, the freezing point of the unfrozen solution drops sooner and faster, limiting the total amount of ice that forms. As the temperature drops below -40°C, the cryoprotectant concentration becomes so high in the remaining unfrozen solution that ice stops growing. Cells survive suspended in the residual unfrozen liquid between ice crystals. As the temperature drops below about -100°C, this unfrozen solution containing the cells becomes a glassy solid.

[Tylui]

Can you prove that? Which way is the ansible moving relative to me, away or towards? Either way they wouldn't reply to the message until I sent it, and I wouldn't get theirs until they sent it regardless of their movement? It just makes the simultaneity confusing; there exist reference frames in which the signal looks like its received and sent to me before I send the initial one, but that certainly isn't MY reference frame. Right? Wrong?

As much as one can prove anything that starts with FTL as an assumption...

Anyway, this site has some decent diagrams that help. Long story short is that because of Special Relativity, the perspective of one object will always see the object in another inertial frame as moving slower. THAT means, anything you see as transmitting instantly, another reference frame will see as moving backwards in time. What is vitally important here, is that as there are no special frames of reference, the receiving person can do the exact same thing. Net result is you can bounce messages back through time.

Well that's pretty much how things are proven in relativity is with pictures. Although in this case I think I'm suggesting those are the wrong pictures to be drawing in the ftl signal case. I know the video I posted is really long but it's p awesome!