This is a horrible plan for maximizing human survival rates. Downvoted.
Human brains are relatively unique in their size. You can of course do relevant research on other mammals, but higher primates (let alone exotic creatures like dolphins, whales, and elephants) are extremely expensive and attract the negative attention of animal rights activists. Horrible PR, even if you are doing humane (non-revival) experiments. Rodent research is a good idea, but many of the fundamental problems for human cryopreservation do not apply due to the drastic difference in brain size.
Waiting for people to pass through agonal death prior to experimenting on them is a pretty horrible research strategy too, because that adds complicating factors of zero relevance to the actual problem of cryonics damage. It’s better than nothing though, and is both legally and ethically defensible. It should also be possible to do non-revival experiments on terminally ill patients who meet criteria for lethal medication.
All we need is to reduce damage sufficiently for future science to do its job. Revival experiments (except maybe for small critters like C Elegans, or for tissue samples) are a waste of time at this point in the tech tree. Eventually we’ll get there with whole brain revival, but it will be many years before that happens, during which many people will die of old age.
But all other human organs are not unique. Once you can successfully revive other animals that are like humans except for their brains, you can move on to humans for the missing parts. It makes sense to minimize the amount of dangerous testing on actual humans.
On the other hand, if the idea is to focus preservation on the brain only, then revival would be very far beyond our present abilities and we can’t do meaningful tests even on humans today.
Horrible PR, even if you are doing humane (non-revival) experiments.
Surely the PR from failed tests on actual humans would be even worse.
Before we get to dolphins and chimps, it would be nice to know that we can revive a frozen mouse or sheep.
Among other things, it would be very reassuring evidence that we are on the right track for preservation to demonstrate successful revival in non-human mammals.
This is a horrible plan for maximizing human survival rates. Downvoted.
Human brains are relatively unique in their size. You can of course do relevant research on other mammals, but higher primates (let alone exotic creatures like dolphins, whales, and elephants) are extremely expensive and attract the negative attention of animal rights activists. Horrible PR, even if you are doing humane (non-revival) experiments. Rodent research is a good idea, but many of the fundamental problems for human cryopreservation do not apply due to the drastic difference in brain size.
Waiting for people to pass through agonal death prior to experimenting on them is a pretty horrible research strategy too, because that adds complicating factors of zero relevance to the actual problem of cryonics damage. It’s better than nothing though, and is both legally and ethically defensible. It should also be possible to do non-revival experiments on terminally ill patients who meet criteria for lethal medication.
All we need is to reduce damage sufficiently for future science to do its job. Revival experiments (except maybe for small critters like C Elegans, or for tissue samples) are a waste of time at this point in the tech tree. Eventually we’ll get there with whole brain revival, but it will be many years before that happens, during which many people will die of old age.
But all other human organs are not unique. Once you can successfully revive other animals that are like humans except for their brains, you can move on to humans for the missing parts. It makes sense to minimize the amount of dangerous testing on actual humans.
On the other hand, if the idea is to focus preservation on the brain only, then revival would be very far beyond our present abilities and we can’t do meaningful tests even on humans today.
Surely the PR from failed tests on actual humans would be even worse.
Before we get to dolphins and chimps, it would be nice to know that we can revive a frozen mouse or sheep.
Among other things, it would be very reassuring evidence that we are on the right track for preservation to demonstrate successful revival in non-human mammals.