I'm not quite happy with calling it suspension.

I'm happy calling the stuff done for delicate brain surgery 'suspension,' but I'm not very careful with my medical vocabulary. Is there some distinguishing feature you think it lacks?

I don't think it has anything to do with more speculative longer term things like cryonics.

The people who are doing this are quick to disassociate themselves from scifi things- if they don't even like the name suspended animation, then they're surely not going to like a comparison to cryonics. But this becoming a routine response to extreme trauma will make cryonics seem a more sensible option to more people, and hopefully the things learned in doing this will lead to better cryonics practice (and, as I stated before, hopefully this will legitimize suspending people whose blood vessels we know are clear, rather than corpses whose blood vessels are in an unknown state).

It seems V_V and others might be having a communications gap. I'll take a guess at the problem, please tell me if I'm wrong.

V_V is saying cryonics isn't proven, and has trouble advancing because we're not planning to revive cryogenically preserved corpses anytime soon and so won't get feedback. In particular, that on top of a fatal injury, you're adding trauma from freezing/chemicals, and that molecular damage will continue to accumulate.

Others are saying that cryonics is not intended as research nor as something in the same category as most medical procedures; rather it gives you better odds of survival than rotting in a cemetery. They expect the effectiveness of cryonics to depend not on current cryonics or medical technology, but on future development of technology. The question is, can we slow the rate of degradation enough that future technology can fix what killed us, any freezing damage, and any ongoing damage before our "soul" is irrevocably lost?

Currently, cryonics is finding use in the transplant of organs. Currently as animal research, mammalian organs such as blood vessels, ovaries, kidneys, and livers can be reduced to sub-zero temperatures and successfully transplanted. The combination of short term whole-body cooling, and longer term organ preservation, should provide some research and evidence for cryonics, in addition to making it seem like the logical course of action as people become used to the use of lower temperatures to preserve human tissue. Whether it works now is still in question, but if you know of better alternatives, please let us know.

It looks to me more like building mock airstrips and antennas made of bamboo in hope that they will attract American aeroplanes full of goods: an attempt to replicate superficial features of something you don't really understand assuming that these features are sufficient to make it work as intended.

Cryonicists observe that freezing is used to preserve food, and that certain animals can undergo reversible hibernation, hence they think that if freezing works for a sandwich, it may also work for people. Throw in a few more of misleading analogies (e.g. the hard drive analogy) and you get non-experts freezing corpses. Ok, EY is not actually an authority on cryonics, and people who practice this stuff are a bit more sophisticated, with cryoprotectants and stuff, but I think these are their typical thought processes.