The American Cryonics Society (ACS), also known as the Cryonics Society of America, is a member-run, California-based, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization that supports and promotes research and education into cryonics and cryobiology. Cryonics is the preservation through cold storage, usually with liquid nitrogen, of humans (and sometimes non-human animals) after legal death. This procedure is done in the hopes of eventual "reanimation." Any such reanimation depends upon future technological advances that are hoped for, but by no means assured or promised.
The American Cryonics Society is the oldest cryonics organization. Since 1972 ACS has offered a program where members who enroll, are placed into cryonic suspension upon their deaths and then maintained in liquid nitrogen. This program provides for continuous funding so that the relatives of the subject are not required to pay for the initial freezing, yearly maintenance in liquid nitrogen, or eventual reanimation (should the latter prove possible). Members often provide such funding through the purchase of a life insurance policy.
Read more about American Cryonics Society: History, Policies, Scope, Perspective
Famous quotes containing the words american and/or society:
“What a prodigious growth this English race, especially the American branch of it, is having! How soon will it subdue and occupy all the wild parts of this continent and of the islands adjacent. No prophecy, however seemingly extravagant, as to future achievements in this way [is] likely to equal the reality.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would be pale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)