Intrinsic Preservation
It all started with an idea. Somebody pose a conjecture that death may not be an end in itself. What if death is a disease? This question was asked during the decade of the first successful kidney transplant. It is also the decade when healthcare has its ally: penicillin. The time was 1960, and the word cryonics has its inception.” This American Life,” a podcast hosted by Ira Glass, featured Cryonics. It is the concept of where an organism is subjected to low temperatures, to preserve an organism that is termed clinically dead, until further immortality booster can be available in the future.
One might say that people would turn into cryonics. For instance, a person is afflicted with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis ALS. It is a disease where motor neurons degenerate. The last stage of this disease is that the person would lose all voluntary controls. Patient may not be able to stand or walk, or chew and swallow food. Wetting bed sheets and soiling linens are some of the vivid examples, and the person has no control. Most patients afflicted with ALS dies of respiratory failure. The worst part about this disease is that the person is aware of all of this. His cognition is spared. One imagine how painful the clinical manifestations of this disease. The reason that ALS patients might turn into cryonics is that self-preservation. If a doctor has ALS, he surely would not want to leave a legacy of wetting bed sheets or soiling linens, and yet he is fully aware that he has no control over the situation. How ironic it might have been, that a doctor was once has been the instrument of medicine, and he can not even perform a simplest function such as chewing.
It is human nature that humans want control. However, Oscar Wilde asserts: “A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.” People have control over their cognition. Back to rudimentary question: what if death is a disease? Cryonics may only be one of the answers. On the example above, one may consider a life with very low quality of life (ALS patients) as dying. Cryonics still has the long to be its prime. People afflicted with diseases has none.
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