The cryonic refugee: appropriate analogy or confusing rhetoric?

Abstract

Cryopreservation presents the possibility of circumventing irreversible death through the body’s extreme cooling. Once cooled, this ‘cryon’ is then stored at sub-zero temperatures until medical knowledge enables curative revival. However, the possibility of the post-cryopreserved supporting themselves, both economically and socially, is dubious; they will likely need state assistance. What a future society owes the post-cryopreserved, and why, remains unclear. One potential solution is to consider revivals as comparable to refugees, with the latter fleeing spatially and the former fleeing temporally. But, the appropriateness of the ‘cryonic refugee’ remains unconsidered. This paper uses the 1951 Refugee Convention to clarify refugeehood’s four necessary characteristics before exploring whether these qualities apply to the temporally displaced. It concludes that while similarities exist, the comparison fails due to the limitations placed on the form of persecution that one flees and why repatriation is impossible. Thus, any assistive obligation must come from an alternative source.