Sparks Brain Preservation
A Non-profit Organization
Some people would prefer biological revival. This page attempts to answer basic questions about how our process works with that goal.
At Sparks Brain Preservation, we use aldehyde fixation, which is the gold standard in neuroscience for preservation. Any mainstream scientist would immediately appreciate and understand what we are doing and they would agree that the technique that we use is the very best possible.
Unfortunately, there is another preservation technique called cryonics which has already been marketed to customers for about 60 years. The companies and people involved mean well, but their claims are well outside of mainstream science, so cryonics should be disregarded. For a detailed comparison, see Traditional Cryonics. Most cryonics adherents tend to be interested in various Suspended Animation technologies, and it's hard to separate those two concepts. Many people end up at this page having already been exposed to the ideas coming from cryonics. Ignore those claims. Follow mainstream science instead.
Revival has two main potential forms. The first is biological revival, which is the topic of this page. The other is Whole Brain Emulation (WBE) or uploading. Many people are confused by these two different revival scenarios and might have strong feelings about only wanting one or the other. It is absolutely your choice. Any revival process would need to be highly regulated to protect the interests of revived individuals. We expect that revival would involve medical teams operating within a framework of rights for preserved patients. Those rights would include independent oversight from judges, lawyers, ethicists, physicians, and others who would help determine what course of action best served each patient's interests based on their own goals and values. At SBP, we are committed to advocating for our patients throughout this process to ensure that their preferences for revival are respected.
The graphic at the top of the page tries to show how the choice of preservation technology is completely independent from the choice of revival. Regardless of whether traditional cryonics or aldehyde fixation is used, biological revival is equally possible. This is not just our position, but is also publicly stated by all of the scientists involved in cryonics, including Merkle, Drexler, Wowk, Freitas, de Wolf, and others.
Notice how we have highlighted one of the four available paths in red. If biological revival is your revival choice, then fixation must be your preservation choice instead of cryonics. The reason is because the quality is higher. If you choose cryonics, the preservation quality would be lower. With lower quality preservation, you would also end up with lower quality revival.
Biological revival would be extremely complex, although well within the laws of physics and engineering. It must involve moving individual molecules using some form of nanorobotics. This is equally true whether the initial preservation was by cryonics or aldehyde fixation. This sort of technology would be well over 100 years in the future and would be far beyond the purview of any current scientist. The Future Repair Technologies page lays out a variety of specific technologies that would be required for biological revival, and Biological Revival Molecules describes some of the structures that would need to be repaired.
One common question we get is about the fact that aldehyde forms cross-link bonds between molecules. People are concerned that the cells are no longer viable and that the cross-links are some sort of damage. We assure you that this is not damage -- quite the opposite. The cross-links are actually the fundamental mechanism that allows such exquisite preservation of the structure of the cells. Any preservation that does not include cross-links results in significant serious degradation, to the point that the original mind might not even be recoverable. Anyone who suggests preservation without aldehyde is contradicting scientific consensus and they are wrong.