Direction: Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow
Cryonics
Immortality, a skeptical but powerful word for humankind, is perhaps the most challenging battle to the limitation of human condition. Even though this challenge is still too far from being possible, men still struggle for it and try hard to grasp the longevity as much as they can. However, their dream to the prolonged life is not beyond reality due to an advanced, yet problematic technology called cryonics.
What is cryonics? Cryonics is the process which can preserve a person for a very long time via vitrification (saving tissues with high concentration of cryoprotectants –the substance that can cool the organism below the freezing point with little or no ice formation). This is done so as to sustain human for even decades or centuries. This method is developed through the theory of life that ‘can be stopped and restarted if cell structure and chemistry are preserved sufficiently well’, according to one of the biggest cryonics company, Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
Despite its tremendous benefit for human civilization, this experiment on human to prolong life and prevent death is still problematic in two ways. One way many experts see it as negative is the manner to conduct the experiment. In order that this process can be done, the patient must be approved as ‘dead,’ and this conduct is at risk to being condemned as assisted suicide and murder, which cause moral and legal skepticism to the public. Another problem is under the fundamental premise itself –resuscitation. In spite of the success in this scientific advancement, many more processes in order to completely revive a person is still needed, and there is no guarantee that the person undergoing this experiment can be restored to the point to say as ‘resurrection’, which can turn this attempt to cure to human experimentation, one of the issue under most controversy.
Reference: Alcor Life Extension Foundation: access on www.alcor.org