144
Medical Time Travel
existing technology, more research needs to be published sup-
porting this claim. Copious technical information is critical to 
the evaluation of a highly speculative field that will not have 
clinical feedback for decades or centuries. Cryonics without 
feedback is a recipe for mischief. [37]
Somewhere between freezing, morphological vitrification, 
reversible  vitrification  of  the  central  nervous  system,  and 
reversible vitrification of whole people, there is technology 
that will lead medicine to take the idea of medical time travel 
seriously within this century. Whether what is now called cry-
onics will eventually become that technology remains to be 
seen. It will depend on whether cryonicists can manage to 
outgrow the stigma attached to their field, and develop meth-
ods that are validated by more biological feedback and less 
hand waving. It may also depend on whether critics of cry-
onics can manage to engage in more substantive discussion 
and less name-calling. The ultimate feasibility of medical time 
travel is a question of science, not rhetoric.
References 
1) Aebert H & Brawanski A & Philipp A & Behr R & 
Ullrich OW & Keyl C & Birnbaum DE; Deep hypother-
mia and circulatory arrest for surgery of complex intracranial 
aneurysms in: European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery 
(1998, Vol. 13); pg. 223229
2) Ehrlich M & Grabenwoger M & Simon P & Laufer G & 
Wolner E & Havel M; Surgical treatment of type A aortic 
dissections. Results with profound hypothermia and circula-
tory arrest in: Texas Heart Institute Journal (1995, Vol. 22); 
pg. 250253