The cryonic refugee: appropriate analogy or confusing rhetoric?

Area of Science:

• Bioethics
• Legal Philosophy
• Future Studies

Background:

• Cryopreservation offers a theoretical means to circumvent irreversible death through extreme cooling and storage.
• Post-revival individuals, termed 'cryons,' face uncertain economic and social integration, likely requiring state assistance.
• The ethical and societal obligations owed to revived individuals remain undefined.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the ethical and legal framework for supporting individuals revived through cryopreservation.
• To assess the applicability of the 'cryonic refugee' analogy by comparing temporal displacement to spatial displacement.
• To determine the basis for societal obligations towards post-cryopreserved individuals.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its four defining characteristics of refugeehood.
• Comparative analysis of the conditions for refugee status and the circumstances of temporal displacement.
• Examination of the limitations of the refugee analogy concerning the nature of persecution and repatriation.

Main Results:

• While temporal displacement shares some superficial similarities with spatial displacement, the analogy is ultimately inadequate.
• The 1951 Refugee Convention's criteria, particularly regarding the type of persecution and impossibility of return, do not fully align with cryopreservation scenarios.
• The comparison fails because cryopreservation does not involve fleeing persecution in the conventional sense, and repatriation is not a relevant concept.

Conclusions:

• The 'cryonic refugee' model is inappropriate for establishing the rights and support systems for revived individuals.
• Existing international refugee law cannot be directly applied to individuals revived from cryopreservation.
• Societal obligations towards post-cryopreserved individuals must be derived from alternative ethical or legal frameworks.