Here is an accusation worth taking seriously rather than swatting away: that choosing cryopreservation is selfish. The charge comes in a few forms. That it is a narcissistic refusal to accept natural limits. That the money could relieve present suffering instead. That clinging to your own existence reveals an immature relationship with mortality. These deserve examination, not a defensive reflex, because the only way to know whether they hold is to take the word selfish literally and check.
So start there. Selfishness means an excessive concern with your own welfare at the expense of others. A selfish act prioritizes personal benefit while ignoring or actively harming other people's interests. By that definition, whether cryopreservation is selfish turns on a real question: does it genuinely harm anyone, or does it simply pursue personal interest in a way that happens to be unconventional? Those are not the same thing, and most of the argument lives in the gap between them.
The resource argument proves too much
The strongest version is about allocation. Money spent on your possible future revival is money not spent on malaria nets, clean water, or direct poverty relief. Money spent on your possible future revival, at member rates €200,000 for whole body and €75,000 for brain only, is money not spent on malaria nets, clean water, or direct poverty relief. From a strict utilitarian view, preservation can look indefensible.
The argument has real force. The trouble is that it does not stop at cryonics. The same logic condemns the holiday abroad, the good coffee, the larger apartment, the art on the wall, the concert tickets. If choosing preservation over charity is selfish, then so is choosing a restaurant over a donation. Almost nobody actually lives by the principle that every euro beyond bare necessity must go to whoever is suffering most. We balance self-interest against concern for others, all of us, constantly. Cryopreservation sits inside that ordinary pattern rather than outside it.
Pushed further, preservation looks less like indulgence and more like a category we already accept: spending on your own continued existence. We do not call life insurance, retirement savings, a gym membership, or preventive medicine selfish. Each invests present resources in your own future vitality. Funded sensibly, often through term or whole life insurance that pays out at death regardless, the choice is frequently not between preservation and an inheritance at all. It is between preservation and a policy that simply expires unused. In that framing the resource objection nearly dissolves.
Your continuation has value to other people too
There is a side of this the accusation tends to skip. Your continued existence is not worth something only to you. Children benefit from a parent staying in their lives. A partner wants more time. Friends value your presence. Choosing preservation is, among other things, an attempt to extend those relationships rather than end them on schedule.
From that angle the charge can even invert. If the people who love you want you to continue, and you have a means of raising that probability above zero, then accepting an avoidable ending starts to look like the more self-regarding move, prioritizing your own comfort with convention over their wish for your presence. This does not mean you owe anyone your continuation; your life remains yours to direct. But it complicates the easy claim that preservation is purely solipsistic. For many people it is the opposite, an act of love, which is also why signing up a family together is so common.
Where the charge actually lands
None of this means preservation can never be selfish. There is a version that genuinely is: impoverishing your family to fund it, ignoring the needs of dependent children, treating your own life as infinitely more valuable than anyone else's, refusing all reciprocity while demanding maximal extension for yourself. Those patterns are real selfishness, and they deserve the name. The point is that they are about how a person pursues preservation, not about preservation as such. Most people weighing it are doing the ordinary thing: balancing personal values against family needs, spending discretionary income within reason, wanting to continue while still caring about everyone else. That is unusual, not immoral.
It is worth noticing what the accusation sometimes protects. Calling preservation selfish can be a way to settle one's own acceptance of death without examining alternatives. If preservation is narcissism, then accepting death is wisdom, and no harder questions need asking. The charge can be a shield against discomfort rather than an argument from ethics, which is the broader territory of whether cryonics is ethical at all.
The deepest version of the objection is not practical but existential: that fighting death betrays a failure to accept the limits that give life meaning. That deserves respect, but not automatic agreement. The claim that mortality is what makes life meaningful is contestable, not a settled fact. Plenty of people locate meaning precisely in continuation, growth, and more experience. Which relationship with death counts as mature is a cultural judgment, and no single tradition holds the monopoly on it.
Held to the real meaning of the word, choosing preservation within normal bounds of self-interest is unconventional, not selfish; discomfort with novelty is not an ethical argument.
So the honest test is a self-examination, not a slogan. Am I pursuing this in a way that genuinely harms others? Am I putting it above real responsibilities to people who depend on me? Does it reflect a healthy valuing of my existence or an unhealthy absorption in it? If the honest answers keep you inside the ordinary bounds of self-regard, the selfishness charge loses its grip. Choose preservation if it fits your values and harms no one; reject it if it does not. Just do not reject it only because someone reached for the word selfish before checking whether it applied. If you want the case against laid out fully, we keep the arguments against cryonics in print, and the whole thing remains an intrinsically personal decision.