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What is ‘Cryonics Institute Germany’?

Recently an organization appeared in Germany and on the web called ‘Cryonics Institute Germany’. This organization is not affiliated with or connected to the Cryonics Institute in any way whatsoever. Also -- despite the use of the word ‘cryonics’ in their company name -- Cryonics Institute Germany does not offer cryonics suspension services of any sort.

CI contacted the Chairman to Cryonics Institute Germany to find out what that organization does in fact do. What it does is offer to freeze and maintain tissue samples of donors in hopes of one day producing clones. Cryonics Institute Germany also collects and holds biographical materials of the donors – photographs, tape and video recordings, and so on. Apparently they hope that the clone they anticipate eventually producing will somehow absorb this biographical information, and in that way the individual donating the tissue and the material will, they claim, be in a sense ‘reborn’.

Two points need to be immediately understood:

1. A clone is not the same person as the donor of the tissue he or she is cloned from. A clone is a twin, and a twin is not in any sense the same person as the original tissue donor, just as your twin brother or sister would not be you. If at some point after your death, a twin brother or sister you had never met were to sit down and read your memoirs, that twin would know more about you, to be sure. But it would in no sense be you. Cloning, in short, will not preserve your life, or anyone’s. It may produce a new life; it can’t save an existing one. The only feasible method known today that might save your life or the lives of the people you care about, the only method that is publicly supported by prominent and well-established doctors, researchers, and scientists, is cryonic suspension. Period. The Cryonics Institute offers it. Cryonics Institute Germany does not.
2. That does not mean that cloning or having tissue samples frozen is pointless or not worth doing. There are a number of reasons why having tissue samples frozen is reasonable and makes sense – tissue samples have been successfully used in identification of lost or kidnapped children or in court cases to help establish innocence or to uncover and avoid possible health problems that might be passed on to family members. And as for cloning, although it isn’t currently legal to clone a human being, it is clearly possible and very likely inevitable. There are good and valid reasons for cloning, beyond the purely medical. Cloning may give a childless couple unable to adopt the child they always wanted, or an only child the brother or sister he never had, or a particularly gifted or brilliant individual the chance to preserve his intellect and talents for posterity, even though his awareness and memories are not preserved along with them.

That is why the Cryonics Institute – not the one in Germany, but the one founded and run by the father of the cryonics movement, Robert Ettinger, since 1976 – also offers tissue freezing services. CI can and will take and store tissue samples from members, as well as their family or even pets, and moreover they can do so at perhaps the most affordable prices available anywhere in the world. A DNA sample kit is available from CI for a mere $49 and the cost of shipping, handling, preparation and cryogenic preservation costs an additional $49. If you’d like to know more, just read the Cloning and Tissue Storage Services section on our Policies Page.

If you would like to compare Cryonics Institute Germany’s services to this one aspect of our own services, their web site is online (in German language only) at http://www.cryonics.de/cryonics-institute-germany-e-v.html. We are providing this link to them because they have been courteous enough to provide one to us, and because they may very well be a legitimate organization providing – as we do – a desired service.

But we want to stress again: their organization is not connected to the Cryonics Institute in any way, and they do not offer any cryonics services at all. Cryonics and cloning are not the same thing. Cloning produces life; it doesn’t save it. It won’t save your life, or the lives of your loved ones. Only cryonic suspension promises to do that. Read our FAQ page and our Policies and Procedures page, and get the facts. Preserving your DNA may be a smart thing to do, and if you want, we can help you do it at very small cost. But preserving your life is even smarter. And we may just be able to do that too.

Think about it.

Email us at: cryonics@cryonics.org

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