Monday, March 24, 2025

Mom told me not to get life insurance because cryogenic storage of our bodies "will get cheaper when (I'm) older like how cellphones got cheaper." Will it ever trend that way as cryotech continues to advance?

 

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Mom told me not to get life insurance because cryogenic storage of our bodies "will get cheaper when (I'm) older like how cellphones got cheaper." Will it ever trend that way as cryotech continues to advance?

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So it takes $200k to cryopreserve my body at Alcor today. She believes it'll become $10k when I'm old enough to die of old age. She believes that after decades of putting my money towards a diversified mutual fund investment portfolio (which will start after I'm out of debt) and making that my passive income, I can pay $10,000 with my investments to reserve a cryonic storage vat for if I pass away.

She doesn't like that I'd be paying $75/month for a $250k 30-year term life policy when I have 3 debts left to pay off first (2 student loans and an auto loan). She also states that since USAA and Liberty Mutual already denied my life insurance (for, respectively, Schizotypal Personality Disorder and Delusional Disorder), State Farm will likely deny my life insurance application as well.

She also claims that since I already have an Auto policy at State Farm, what their underwriters will find in my medical and mental health records will also influence my auto insurance rates - as in they will jack up or even drop my auto policy. She claims that State Farm's office employees will say they won't let my medical and mental health records change my auto premiums but that they still will.

She understands that cryonically preserving the head is $80,000, and cryonically preserving the whole body is $200,000 but believes that like how cellphones got cheaper, cryopreserving ourselves will get cheaper too.

After all, the 1984 Motorola DynaTac cellphone cost $3,995 in 1984's dollars, about $13,000 today, and it couldn't even provide text messaging. Not to mention the battery only lasted 30 minutes from a full charge, and to charge from 0-100% took 10 hours. And now, over 40 years later, smartphones have far more features, functionalities, battery life and capabilities and the most expensive kinds might not even break $2,000.

So like how cellphones got cheaper, she believes we can cryonically preserve our bodies cheaper someday too, for only $10,000.

Are the costs of cryonic preservation going to trend downward as Mom believes they will, like how cellphones did as their technology improves? Or will they only trend upwards? (Either way, how come?)

And what other relevant advice do you have for this situation?

 

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[–]V01d3d_f13nd 4 points  

Let's assume these things are possible within your lifetime.. are you extremely wealthy? If not, do you see societal trends that suggest immortality would be offered to the working class? Society seems more interesting and focused on killing itself rather than saving it? I think your mom may be spending too much time reading Qanon posts.

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

Most cryopatients are working class. We pay for our procedures with life insurance.

[–]V01d3d_f13nd 1 point  

How does this pertain to my comment?

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

You asked if OP was wealthy, and expressed doubt that this technology is available to the working class. I clarified that most of us aren't rich.

[–]Express-Cartoonist39immortalist 1 point  

I dont think you understand cryo is injecting a solution in ur blood so it doesnt crystalize so it can be thawed.

[–]DigitalArbitrage 0 points  

Can you provide a link to a video or other source showing this works with an otherwise healthy mammal?

[–]Express-Cartoonist39immortalist 0 points  

Dude, how lazy can you be. Google/ChatGpt it. Also i never said full mammal cause there is no point in that, thats a waste of resources. You only need the brain tissue to prove it works. But yes its been done successfuly in pigs, rabbits, full hearts and god only knows how many mice. Its plentlyful on youtube im not gonna do ur work for you. Hit up youtube and actually watch more then one video and not just the first 5 minutes if it..🙄

[–]DigitalArbitrage 0 points  

I have asked ChatGPT and don't think it is plausible. 

Can you show an example of a healthy brain being transplanted?

If the technology can't be shown to work on a healthy animal or brain, then freezing a body in the hopes of living later seems not that different from a bizarre religion. It's not science based. 

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

Here's a rabbit kidney being reversibly cryopreserved and transplanted: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20046680/

If its not science based, that study is proof of miracles. Which seems more likely to you?

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

If we could revive a cryopatient today, there would be no reason to cryopreserve them in the first place. You're missing the point of the practice. To transport someone across time and space from a place without help to a place with help. The cryopotectant does not require gene modification on a living person to work.

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[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

https://www.cryonicsarchive.org/library/selected-journal-articles-supporting-the-scientific-basis-of-cryonics/

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[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

Your question is flawed because you don't understand the purpose of the practice. If we could revive humans today, cryonics would be pointless. We would just repair the warm humans instead of putting them into storage. The only reason it exists and is practical is because we don't have that technology right now, but the future might. Cryonics doesn't need to demonstrate that revival is possible now because that's not the premise on which it relies. It rests on a foundation of future, not current day medicine. The important thing for us to recognize now is that nothing about revival from cryonics violates the laws of physics.

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[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

My question isn't flawed. Go back to the original comment I was responding to.

Yes, it is. You asked: "You're the one who needs to provide a source that humans can be frozen like this and then revived."

The question is framed in such a way that for you to consider cryonics viable, human revival needs to be demonstrable NOW. What you don't get is that if it were demonstrable now, the preservation process would be rendered useless. You don't need to use cold to transport someone to a time and place with better medicine if they're already there!

Someone made the comment that OP wasn't going to be brought back to life.

They expressed an opinion that is directly contradicted by science: "there's no way they could thaw you out and reverse your death. (The act of freezing alone damages/destroys all of the cells in your body.)"

Freezing does not damage/destroy all of the cells in your body, and even if it did, most cryopatients are vitrified, not frozen.

So if you said persons comment is flawed, because cryogenics is all about hope, then I would get that.

Revolutions are built on hope. Its either try an experimental procedure and hope it will work, or die forever. The choice seems obvious to me.

Also, Cryogenics is the study of cold things. You mean Cryonics.

But OP responded to that comment asking for sources? Which made no sense.

They were asking for sources on the notion that freezing destroys all cells in the body, and the notion that cryonic revival is impossible, despite not being precluded by the laws of physics.

[–]AnAttemptReason 8 points  

Good news, they found the cure for what killed you. 

Bad news, they still don't know how to cure freezing.

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

Cryopatients are vitrified not frozen (unless something goes horribly wrong during the surgery). We do know how to reverse vitrification.

[–]AnAttemptReason 1 point  

We can do it for individual cells or cell cultures, but not organs or tissues. 

Correction: 

Once they cure what killed you, they just need to figure out the cure for having all your blood removed and being pumped full of toxic chemicals and frozen for decades or centuries.

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

We can do it for individual cells or cell cultures, but not organs or tissues.

That's incorrect. We do it on embryos all the time, c elegans has been reversibly cryopreserved: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4620520/ and whole mammalian organs such as a rabbit kidney: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20046680/

The techniques to scale it to even larger organs are known: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38824-8

Once they cure what killed you, they just need to figure out the cure for having all your blood removed

Huh? Having your blood removed isn't fatal. Organs being transported for transplant often have their blood removed. You simply pump it back in, there's nothing to "cure".

and being pumped full of toxic chemicals

The rabbit kidney survived the toxicity of existing cryoprotectants. And the brains don't appear to suffer from severe damage from them based on images of vitrified tissue: https://www.cryonicsarchive.org/library/micrographs-of-vitrified-brain/

and frozen for decades or centuries.

  1. Cryopatients are vitrified, not frozen.

  2. Being cryopreserved for a day, a decade, a century, or a thousand years results in an identical body.

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

There are a lot of dead gerontologists. Too many for me to think that's viable. Anti aging also wont save you from getting hit by a bus.

[–]energy-seeker 2 points  

I say do your own self-examining and make your own decisions.

[–]Monarc73 2 points  

Cryogenics is just an expensive funeral. Save your loot.

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

Cryogenics is the study of cold things.

[–]Responsible_Sea78 1 point  

They cannot cryogenically freeze a dog and rejuvenate it. That rejuvenate part is the problem.

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

If we had the rejuvenation technology now, we wouldn't practice cryonics. It would be useless. Its sole function is to transport someone from a time without that technology to a time with it.

[–][deleted] 1 point  

I don't think the cost is what you should be worrying about.

What I would be worrying about is being left in the fridge out of money I could have used. OR being part of some experiment with nothing to show for it on my end.

Still, it's probably worth considering that smartphones dropped in price likely as a matter of demand and government subsidy/public investment in technology that became privatized. I don't know if we can necessarily say there will be the same demand for human cryogenics (for the purposes of life extension), especially considering it has long been a staple of fiction.

[–]Helldiver_of_Mars -2 points  

That's just moronic most of those companies go out of business. It's a money up front hope for the best later. You just end up thawing like a popsicle in a refrigerator.

Not only that but neither of these have anything to do with each other.

Life insurance is for if you die. Cyro is for if you might die or have something wrong with you that can be cured.

If people think they can be cured of death they're just the "mark" you know the suckers.

[–]alexnoyle 1 point  

They're not unrelated. Most cryonics procedures are funded via life insurance payouts. Nobody has thawed out in decades. Alcor and CI have been caring for their patients continuously for 50 years, losing nobody who made it past their doors.

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