Death

=== Cryonics ===
{{Main||Cryonics}}
[[File:Cryo surgery.jpg|thumb|Technicians prepare a body for cryopreservation in 1985.]]

Cryonics (from Greek κρύος 'kryos-' meaning 'icy cold') is the [[cryopreservation|low-temperature preservation]] of animals, including humans, who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and [[wikt:resuscitate|resuscitation]] may be possible in the future.<ref>{{cite news |last=McKie |first=Robin |date=13 July 2002 |title=Cold facts about cryonics |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/jul/14/medicalscience.science |url-status=live |access-date=1 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170708232125/https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/jul/14/medicalscience.science |archive-date=8 July 2017 |quote=Cryonics, which began in the Fifties, is the freezing – usually in liquid nitrogen – of human beings who have been legally declared dead. The aim of this process is to keep such individuals in a state of refrigerated limbo so that it may become possible in the future to resuscitate them, cure them of the condition that killed them, and then restore them to functioning life in an era when medical science has triumphed over the activities of the Banana Reaper}}</ref><ref name="alcor What is Cryonics">{{cite web |title=What is Cryonics? |url=http://alcor.org/AboutCryonics/index.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203002857/http://alcor.org/AboutCryonics/index.html |archive-date=3 December 2013 |access-date=2 December 2013 |website=[[Alcor Foundation]] |quote="Cryonics is an effort to save lives by using temperatures so cold that a person beyond help by today's medicine might be preserved for decades or centuries until a future medical technology can restore that person to full health."}}</ref>

[[Cryopreservation]] of people and other 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.<ref name="InfoDeath" /><ref name="Whetstine L et al. 2005 538–542">{{cite journal |vauthors=Whetstine L, Streat S, Darwin M, Crippen D |year=2005 |title=Pro/con ethics debate: When is dead really dead? |journal=Critical Care |volume=9 |issue=6 |pages=538–42 |doi=10.1186/cc3894 |pmc=1414041 |pmid=16356234 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

Some scientific literature is claimed to support the feasibility of cryonics.<ref name="pmid18321197">{{cite journal |first=Ben |last=Best |author-link=Ben Best |year=2008 |title=Scientific justification of cryonics practice |journal=[[Rejuvenation Research]] |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=493–503 |doi=10.1089/rej.2008.0661 |pmc=4733321 |pmid=18321197}}</ref> Medical science and cryobiologists generally regard cryonics with skepticism.<ref>{{cite news |last=Lovgren |first=Stefan |date=18 March 2005 |title=Corpses Frozen for Future Rebirth by Arizona Company |newspaper=[[National Geographic (magazine)|National Geographic]] |url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0318_050318_cryonics.html |access-date=15 March 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714141729/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0318_050318_cryonics.html |archive-date=14 July 2014 |quote=Many cryobiologists, however, scoff at the idea...}}</ref>