Presentation Title: “Cryopreservation: A Matter of Life and Death?”

Abstract:

Life and death are often considered exclusively dichotomous – one is alive or dead, but never both, nor neither. This binary conception of mortality permeates socio-legal and ethical systems the world over. However, with medical technology’s increasing capacity to reposition and even partially dissolve the perceived boundary between life and death comes an increase in the complications such an ability affords. Gone are the days when the division of the living and the deceased were once, if ever, clear. This presentation highlights this issue, arguing that a reevaluation of how societies and the law delineate life from death may soon, if not already, be necessary. That is, it argues that a new conceptual and legal space, one sitting between the confines of life and death, is potentially required as more and more technologies trouble our intuitions about mortality.

 By way of illustration, this paper draws upon the practice of cryopreservation – the posthumous sub-zero storage of one’s body with the goal of capitalising on speculative technological advances enabling future revival. Despite often being associated with science fiction, the global cryopreservation industry is thriving, with hundreds of people already preserved and thousands more, many of whom are coming to the end of their lives, registered for preservation upon death. The preserved, known as ‘cryons,’ are considered dead according to all socio-legal and medical definitions. Unlike other dead people, however, the cryons are, theoretically, revivable – only a lack of bio-technological knowledge prevents them from being thawed and returned to life (according to cryopreservation enthusiasts). Thus, it seems that the deceased label does not apply to them in the same way it does to those we typically consider dead. After all, one of death’s seemingly necessary qualities is permanence. Moreover, due to this potential for revival, cryons are seemingly vulnerable to specific harms that the traditionally deceased are not (such as having their revival made impossible through professional neglect, technological failure, or criminal intent). However, they do not appear alive either, possessing none of the features typically indicating life, such as a heartbeat or brain activity.

 Thus, as this presentation will argue, there is a case to be made that cryons may be neither alive nor dead but inhabit a space outside this traditional binary – a space whose existence would have seismic and far reaching practical and theoretical ramifications, both within the law, medicine, and beyond.