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Cryonics (from Greek κρύος 'kryos-' meaning 'cold') is the low-temperature preservation of animals and humans who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future.〔 〕 Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology. The stated rationale for cryonics is that people who are considered dead by current legal or medical definitions may not necessarily be dead according to the more stringent information-theoretic definition of death. It is proposed that cryopreserved people might someday be recovered by using highly advanced technology. Some scientific literature supports the feasibility of cryonics.〔 An open letter supporting the idea of cryonics has been signed by 63 scientists, including Aubrey de Grey and Marvin Minsky.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 url = http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/scientists-open-letter-on-cryonics/ )〕 However, many other scientists regard cryonics with skepticism. As of 2014, the majority of members of the cryonics organizations are men, but the majority of those who have undergone cryopreservation procedures are women. Cryonics procedures ideally begin within minutes of cardiac arrest, and use cryoprotectants to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation. ==Premises== A central premise of cryonics is that long-term memory, personality, and identity are stored in durable cell structures and patterns within the brain that do not require continuous brain activity to survive. This premise is generally accepted in medicine; it is known that under certain conditions the brain can stop functioning and still later recover with retention of long-term memory. Brain structures encoding personality and long-term memory persist for some time after legal death, these structures are preserved by cryopreservation, and future technologies that could restore encoded memories to functional expression in a healed person are theoretically possible. At present, only cells, tissues, and some small organs can be reversibly cryopreserved. A moral premise of cryonics is that all terminally ill patients should have the right, if they so choose, to be cryopreserved. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cryonics」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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