Is there a technology to hibernate people? Not necessarily to elongate the life span, but only to deactivate/retard a person's life functions, temporarily. Was this ever tried?
I think the mad nazi doctors might have tried. They use cold in a variety of medical applications, and recently this year they froze a heart for coronary surgury. Nobody's survived being turned into a giant ice cube yet as far as I know.
I guess then the technology is not as advanced as it should be. I thought that somewhere (in the Netherlands?), some plans were sold to rich clients, that when they are old, they would be artificially hibernated for a very long time, until some method is developed to eliminate death. Wouldn't hibernation be a good technology though, for example to ease people's prison sentences?
This does happen, the idea being we figure out how to thaw people out safely in the future. I suppose if you're old and/or terminally ill, there's not much against doing this if you have the money. But it's a longshot, and you may never be thawed out later, so I wouldn't actually give up on any current chance to live for the hope to live in the future.
Hibernation is nothing really special. I went into hibernation for 3½ hours once, and emerged with no real ill effects.
There was an article in Science or Nature a few years back about some researchers using hydrogen sulfide to induce some type of "suspended animation". It was a rather bizarre report because hydrogen sulfide is well known for being an extremely toxic and smelly chemical that is naturally present in crude oil and generated during hydroprocessing. Haven't heard much about that work since the initial reporting.
