CRYO-

combining form (Health and Fitness) (Science and Technology) Widely used in compounds relating to extreme cold, especially when this is an artificial means of preserving tissue. Etymology: From the Greek kruos 'frost, icy cold'. History and Usage: Early words formed with this combining form concerned temperatures not much below the freezing point of water. However, as it became possible to create lower and lower temperatures artificially, cryo- came to be associated with the sort of intense cold that could only be achieved with the aid of 'cold-creating' or cryogenic equipment, such as apparatus for liquefying nitrogen or other gases. During the sixties and seventies the creation of such temperatures began to find applications in electronics and surgery: below a certain point some materials become superconductors, that is to say they lose all electrical resistance, which makes them very useful in a wide range of applications (in brilliant pebbles, for example), while cryosurgery uses intense cold to remove or destroy tissue just as effectively as heat. Until the late seventies cryonics (or cryopreservation), the use of extreme cold to preserve living tissue, had remained at an experimental stage because of the tendency of water to expand when frozen--making the formation of ice crystals within living cells lethally damaging. However, study of the few animals which can survive freezing led to the development of substances which circumvent some of the problems (cryoprotectants). During the eighties it became possible to cryopreserve an increasingly wide range of tissues for future use: sperm may be stored in a cryobank, and frozen embryos may now be thawed out for cryobirth. The lack of any reliable means of freezing and thawing the entire human body without severe damage has not prevented cryonicists, mostly on the West coast of the US, from setting up businesses offering cryonic suspension to those willing to pay for it, especially the incurably ill (who may wish to be 'thawed out' when a treatment for their condition arrives). Once a month, she goes to the Southern California Cryobank, a commercial sperm bank in Los Angeles, pays $38 for a syringe of sperm packed in dry ice, which she either takes back to the health center for insemination, or takes home. New York Times 20 July 1980, section 6, p. 23 Still others call for these pre-embryos to be cryopreserved--frozen for months, years and perhaps indefinitely. Once the pre-embryos are thawed out, they can be used as if they were fresh. Washington Post 12 Apr. 1988, section Z, p. 14 Cryonicists...talk...of storing the brains of the frozen hopeful in the bodies of anencephalic babies. Independent 1 Aug. 1988, p. 13 Mr Thomas Donaldson, 46, wants his head cryonically suspended in the anticipation that a way will be found to attach it to a healthy body and cure his brain disorder. Daily Telegraph 3 May 1990, p. 12 A mathematician from Sunnyvale, California, has filed a lawsuit in America for the right to 'cryonic suspension' before death. The Times 27 Oct. 1990, p. 3