問題詳情
Cryonics is the preservation of humans and animals in sub zero temperaturesafter clinical death. By freezing a recently deceased person, the process of decayis stopped and the body can be preserved perpetually until advances in medicinein the future allow for the resuscitation and treatment of the patient’s cause ofdeath. Memory and personality are thought to be stored in the cellular structure ofthe body and as long as the structure remains intact. First proposed by BenjaminFranklin in 1773, cryonics would first come into use in the mid 20th century whentechnology was advanced enough to freeze subjects without severely damagingbody tissue. _______26______ Aside from being expensive, the process has yetto be fully understood and many of those frozen in the beginning thawed or hadbrain tissue destroyed inadvertently. The modern era of cryonics began when Robert Ettinger proposed the idea ina privately published book. He reasoned that though the process of freezing aperson is fatal, it may be a curable condition in the future. Later Ettinger wouldargue for the feasibility of cryonics by saying that death was not an event but infact a process. He would reason that if the brain were not fully incapacitated by acatastrophic event, a patient was not in fact dead. ____27___ Legal death wasactually a legal pronouncement by a qualified person stating that further medicalcare was not appropriate for a patient. Ettinger further iterated that cells in thehuman body do not die until many hours after the point at which a person isconsidered legally dead. During that golden period of time a person can becryogenically preserved and later treated once an effective treatment wasavailable. The first patients were preserved in the 1960s and it was initially termed asuccess by those in the cryonics community. However, due to errors in freezingand the absence of cryoprotectors in the first generation of preserved patients, allbut one person preserved before 1973 have been lost. Cryogenics is oftenmistakenly thought of as the freezing of a patient’s body, but it is actually anextremely low temperature preservation process of legally dead individuals.While individuals can be frozen, there are several problems that arise out of theprocess. ____28___Also others balk at the seemingly outrageous cost ofpreserving a person. The total cost of freezing and perpetual maintenance usuallyexceeds 50,000 dollars. Yet, others realize that having their body frozen may givethem the opportunity to lengthen their life by hundreds or even thousands ofyears in the future. While cryonics was risky before, many in the cryonicscommunity view the process as being quite safe and would not hesitate to becryogenically frozen. Revival for patients preserved using current technology is impossible as anydamage done to cells through the lack of oxygen, cryoprotectant toxicity, andthermal stress is unfixable. Successful cryonics at this point is impossible butmay be in the future. ____29_____Hypothetical scenarios include microscopicrobots doing repairs to the cell structure at a molecular level. Currently severalprototypes have been made of robot hands one millimeter across designed to helpperform surgery and defuse bombs. Other ideas include the possibility of merelypreserving a person’s head so that in the future mind transfer can be implemented.With mind transfer, memories and personality are downloaded much likeprograms can be downloaded onto a computer and then uploaded into alaboratory grown body or a body from a person in a persistent vegetative state. ____30___ Those that feel the body has a soul dismiss cryonics because of thethought that it does not allow the soul to properly rise into heaven. Cryonicsproponents fire back that the people being preserved are not dead and that whilethere is still hope for a recovery, the soul will not leave the body. Though thesepeople appear to be dead, they are, according to cryonics proponents, only in along term coma. Theological arguments assume that the body has no chance ofbeing revived and even if possible, it would be a way to cheat death and would goagainst the rules of the Bible.
(A) Before patients can be revived, the issue of tissue regeneration must beaddressed as a preserved person will have extensive damage to their bodytissue.
(B) Ettinger went on to found the Cryonics Institute in Michigan where he, hismother and his first and second wives all now reside in metal flasks kept at−196 °C.
(C) Mainly, people question the ability for the body to be preserved well enoughto keep tissue intact.
(D) While the concept has never become mainstream, the number of peoplechoosing to sign up is steadily increasing year on year.
(E) Cryonics faces ethical questions too from people who feel that the process ofcryonics conflicts with common beliefs of death and the afterlife. (AB) Cryonics is still a controversial topic with many doubting its feasibility. (AC) Clinical death was actually the cessation of blood circulation and breathing.[!--empirenews.page--]
【題組】26
參考答案
答案：A,B
難度：困難0.2
統計：A(2),B(3),C(1),D(1),E(0)