What greater gift is there than life! It is a joy to be alive- to feel the cool breeze and the mildly warm early morning sun on your skin as you walk on a deserted beach, to taste the subtle sweetness and substance of Swiss chocolate-coated macadamia nuts, to dare walk under a pouring rain, to drink wine, to listen to a plaintive love song in the middle of the night, to write a book, to drive alone for hours along the countryside and feast your senses upon nature's wildest attractions, to smell a baby's breath and hold his tiny hands, to be needed by a special child, to dare look without shyness into a man's eyes and read thoughts he would never put into words, to experience God's presence during your darkest night of the soul and feel as if His hand has touched your shoulder and your eyes come to be filled with tears until your entire body quivers as you sob with the realization that indeed, He loves you…

There may be a million and one pleasurable reasons to keep wanting to live indefinitely. But there is one most valid reason-God meant it to be that we should have everlasting life. Those who have died will rise again on Judgement Day. Some people who are opting for cryonic suspension (frozen state of clinically dead persons who hope to be revived in some future time when medical science will have found cure for their illness) believe they may rather opt to stay alive when God comes on Judgement Day, when it does not really matter if you are alive, dead, or frozen.

Cryonics
Cryonics is popularly known as freezing the dead. Actually it is not dead storage. Patients who are terminally ill are preserved at liquid nitrogen temperature to stabilize their condition, so that after some 100 to 200 years when nanomedicine (an offspring of nanotechnology, the science of atoms and molecules) is perfected, their preserved brain will be attached to a rebuilt body with organs made of the same DNA they had at death. Cryonics is extending and preserving life rather than reversing death.

This concept may be shocking to many people. What happens to the souls of these people during cryonic suspension? Will they be at peace? In God's view and perhaps in the spiritual consciousness of these suspended humans, 300 years are only the blink of an eyelash and present no more difficulty than two and a half hours. God does not punish people for trying to stay alive. If cryonics technology is someday perfected, God meant it to be. It is God who decides when He wants people to die.

The life sciences have made great strides in preserving and extending human existence. People whose hearts have stopped are revived with cardioversion (electric shock for the heart). Hearts, kidneys, and corneas are transplanted, giving individuals second chances to life. Researchers in cryobiology, the science of life at low temperature, has made possible the freezing and storing of blood, sperms, corneas, and other human organs, tissues, and cells for future use.

Patients in coma undergo brain surgery for aneurysms. Doctors lower the body temperature to 50 degrees F, shut the blood out of the patient's brain, and perform bloodless surgery on the brain for 50 to 60 minutes. There is no brainwave during this period. Afterwards, they warm up the patient and restart cerebral blood flow. Usually, the patient survives with memory and personality and soul intact.

Fertility researchers have proven that human embryos can be frozen, thawed, and transplanted, brought to full term, and produce normal healthy children (first in 1984, now thousands worldwide). The Church' position is that, these fertilized embryos have souls, are humans, and that their destruction will be murder. Liquid nitrogen is not inimical to "soul storage."

If a Christian patient in a hospital rejects the life saving device available to him, that is suicide. God does not want people to die. God is giving mankind a means to survive through medical science. Life is an adventure. It is man's duty to explore possibilities that lead to life and thus give glory to God, the author of life.

Death
Is a person dead when his heartbeat and breathing stop? At a time before cardioversion, medical science considered a human being dead when his heart stopped. This state is called clinical death. A person may be clinically dead but not brain dead. The death of a person does not happen until many hours after his clinical death. The reason for this is that brain structures, down to the structure of the individual brain cells, are known to stay reasonably intact for at least several hours. Thus, the critical structural information which determines personal identity continues to be preserved for a relatively long time.

Neurons, the electrically active brain cells, are sometimes said to "die" within a handful of minutes of being without oxygen. But this is not exactly true. What happens is that a few minutes without oxygen only selectively damages the circulatory system of the brain, so that neurons are doomed to disintegrate and be destroyed many hours later. A person is dead when his brain cells no longer function.

Humans are information beings. The true death of a person corresponds with the loss of the information in his brain, which specifies who he is. Physically, death comes to a person with irretrievable destruction of whatever brain structures that specify memory, intelligence, and personality.

To illustrate, let's take the example from computer technology. If a computer is fully functional then its memory and "personality" are completely intact. If it fell out the seventh floor window to the concrete below, it would cease to function. However, its memory and "personality" will still be present in the pattern of magnetizations on the disk. With sufficient effort, the technician can still repair the computer with its memory and "personality" intact.

In similar fashion, as long as the structures that encode the memory and personality of a human being have not been "erased," then restoration is feasible. This is very important.

Suppose my head and body are totally broken and mangled in a car accident. I have become brain dead. Some plastic surgeon and an AI (artificial intelligence) engineer attempt to reconstruct my face and body. I am revived as a walking and talking individual, capable of thinking too- but with an artificial brain. Certainly I can be considered living. But I am no longer the person I used to be because my pattern-identity has been lost. In fact, I have become a mere intelligent machine, a robot. It is the pattern-identity (information recorded by the arrangement of atoms in the human being's body) that defines the essence of a person, say, myself as the pattern and process going on in my head and body, not the machinery supporting the process. If the process is preserved, I am preserved. If not, the head, face and body are mere jelly. My materials (atoms) change every day but I still remain myself. I am the information, not the material.

Immortality
In the early 1960s Robert Ettinger, a physics instructor in Michigan, argued that "dead" neurons may one day be repairable and revivable given the proper science, just as a badly damaged car, unfixable in an ordinary home garage, may still be repairable if taken to a master mechanic. Thus, Ettinger noted, a "dead" person with reasonably intact neurons (personal identity information still present) might only be "dead" as the technology of his society is ignorant of the means to preserve and extend his life. He published a book called The Prospect of Immortality, where he seriously suggested the option of freezing terminally ill people so they can be transported to the medical care and facilities that will be available in the late 21st or 22nd century, and thus be restored to their living condition.

Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a non-profit cryonics organization established in 1972 at Scottsdale, Arizona have at the moment 30 patients in cryonic suspension and several hundred living members who have expressed desire to avail of cryonic suspension if current medicine gives up on them. There are a few other similar cryonic organizations in the US. If you want to see photos of the storage tanks containing cryonic patients, visit http://www.alcor.org. Click on "Photo Tour" from the menu.

Profile of a Cryonic Patient
Just recently, a futurist and a philosopher, FM Esfandiary died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 69 years. He changed his name into FM2030. One of the most well known non-confidential patients at Alcor, he had his brain cryonically frozen at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation located at the airpark. His was a sudden death. He was packed in ice and sent to Alcor for the preservation process. Computers controlled his cooling down.

If all goes well, his preserved brain will one day be attached to a rebuilt body with organs made of the same DNA he had at death.

FM2030 made the decision to be frozen in 1990. The process costs US$ 50,000. A teacher, author, and corporate consultant who lived in Miami, Florida in the US, FM2030 was born in Belgium to an Iranian diplomat. He lived in 17 countries, had proclaimed himself citizen of the universe. "There are no illegal immigrants, only irrelevant borders," he said.

In 1977, he anticipated the correction of genetic flaws and fertilization and gestation outside the body. In 1980 he wrote about teleconferencing, telemedicine and teleshopping. He envisioned a future of limitless energy and human immortality. His books included Telespheres and Are You Transhuman? He was revising his Countdown to Immortality when he was diagnosed with cancer. FM2030 taught futurist philosophy at UCLA, was a guest lecturer at the Smithsonian Institute, and wrote opinion pieces for The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Why live forever
The human soul is immortal. Christian faith teaches us that the physical body dies but on the day of Resurrection, the human body will be transfigured, meaning, it will have become perfect as the image of God, the creator of human beings, is perfect. If cryonics succeeds (when nanotechnology and nanomedicine succeed; please refer to HomeLife August 2001, "The Science of Extremely Small Things"), then such things are meant to be. We do not know yet now. We do not know so many things. Life is an adventure. It is our duty to explore and discover things, and in the process, also come to the full knowledge of God.

A conservative Christian family in the US believes God wants them to stay alive as long as possible to spread His Word. They are opting for cryonics. Here in the Philippines, cryonics is still beyond our reach. We are not ready intellectually and emotionally, as well as financially. A third world country claiming to be a developing country, beset with poverty and terrorist problems, the Philippines has social consciousness yet for this kind of thing.

A typical working mother, harassed by oppressive, gender-insensitive office rules, may, in sudden fit of emotional depression, scream "I wish I am dead!" But she can look forward to the future for solutions. Our President urges us not to give up on this country. All working mothers, let us be courageous and choose life rather than death. We have our children to nurture… for our country, for humanity, for God.

Why should we want to live for a long, long time? There are many reasons. For me, it's because there is so much to learn and experience and explore. There are still many opportunities to examine and define human existence, the nature of creation, relevance of religion, and the presence of God. I would like to keep on looking at my husband in the eyes and read thoughts he would never dare put in words… Life is an adventure.