In the early 1960s, a group of enthusiasts introduced the concept of freezing people immediately after death. 60 years later, the idea of cryofreezing is still relevant, although science is still not able to revive frozen corpses. However, the number of firms, as well as clients, who believe in cryotechnology is growing. Hightech explains how cryonics works and how much it costs to freeze a body after death.
The idea of waking up in the future sounds like a great plot for a sci-fi movie or novel, but some organizations have made it a reality. One such company is Alcor. Max Moore, a futurist and former CEO of Alcor, believes that people can be saved from death. “It’s wrong to call someone dead. In fact, these people just need help, ”he said in an interview with NBC.
More than 70 cryogenically frozen dead people are stored at a clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona. During their lifetime, Alcor customers hoped that perhaps someday science would be advanced enough to bring them back to life. Many people, including famous personalities such as PayPal co-founder Peter Tail, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep their bodies here after they die. How it works?
What is cryonics?
Cryonics is a technology of low-temperature preservation of a newly deceased body or a head separated from it. Under cryonics conditions, the body is stored at temperatures below –130 ° C. To protect body parts from any damage during freezing and storage, specialists use cryoprotective agents and cryopreservation. Similar technologies are used to prevent the decomposition of donor organs.
How is it going?
When a client decides to freeze, he makes a payment and concludes an agreement with the cryoclinic. After death is confirmed, the cryonics emergency team takes over all the worries about working with the body. For several hours after death, staff members pack the body in ice and inject heparin to prevent blood clotting while the body is transported to the cryonics center.
In the clinic, the body is placed in a machine that circulates blood and maintains oxygenation. Then a solution for vitrification is pumped into the body. It is a cryoprotectant that acts as an antifreeze to prevent crystallization of body tissue during freezing. This process can rupture cells and damage tissues and organs.
The body is then slowly cooled to about –195 ° C using a liquid nitrogen vapor chamber. Once it is cold enough, the body is transferred to a tank of liquid nitrogen, where it will be stored upside down. Cryonicists claim that as long as the body is stored in containers of liquid nitrogen, the cells remain dormant.
How much is it?
It is better to make a decision about what will happen to the body after death in advance, rather than informing about your will in the will. Depending on which clinic the patient chooses, the cost of freezing can vary. For example, in the Alcor company – about $ 200,000 for cryopreservation of the whole body and $ 80,000 for neuropreservation (freezing of the head or brain). In Russia, freezing a body will cost $ 36,000, and neuroconservation is cheaper: $ 15,000 for Russians, $ 18,000 for foreigners. The price includes the cryopreservation procedure and the cost of storing the body. Only one company is engaged in this procedure.
By the way, in Russia, from a legal point of view, cryopreservation is a scientific experiment. By law, any person has the right to determine the conditions for his storage after death. This means that the body and brain of the deceased can be frozen for scientific purposes. Domestic companies have the status of research organizations. The procedure itself is still considered experimental. In general, cryonics is allowed only in the United States, China and Russia. Now in Russia 72 deceased have been cryopreserved.
Is cryonics the path to immortality?
While some celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Peter Thiel, Steve Aoki, Robert Miller and many others are eagerly awaiting the cryopreservation of their bodies, this is a highly controversial topic in the scientific community. Cryonics advocates see technology as a way to defeat death. On the other hand, most scientists argue that cryonics is a pseudoscience.
Dennis Kowalski, president of the Institute of Cryogenics in Michigan, believes cryonics is an optimistic technology. “You still have nothing to lose,” he says. Of course, if the body is frozen, the person’s family loses the amount for life insurance, and the service itself is not cheap. Kowalski himself, his wife and his children also signed up for cryopreservation after their death.
Prominent cryobiologist Ramon Risco told The Guardian that while cryonics is still an incredible concept, much like test-tube babies or space travel, “it shouldn’t be considered impossible.” But even if we consider this technology as real at least in the long term, there are still many ethical issues that are worth noting. For example, Clive Cohen, professor of neuroscience at King’s College London, is one of those who actively opposed cryonics and demanded a complete ban on advertising of these services.
Renowned cosmologist Martin Rees has also expressed concern about the practical and ethical issues of cryonics. He believes that her enthusiasts cannot be trusted. Even some cryonics experts admit that there is a chance that companies could take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities. For example, to instill in them false hopes of immortality and to illegally use the property of clients.
There is currently no scientific evidence to support or explain the possibility of new life in the future using cryonics. No one has ever tried to revive a person frozen with this technology. Researchers working on the study of suspended animation have found that a living creature can be cooled to almost death and then successfully revived. But freezing for decades is a completely different matter. The concept cannot be verified. For now, anyway.
Cryonics attracts disproportionately few women, but in my experience the ones who do sign up for it on their own initiative tend to be “trainwrecks.” I know of only a couple female cryonicists who strike me as wholesome mom types, and that is because their children orient their minds towards an outside reality and help to stabilize their emotions.
Seriously, it’s a bad sign when a female cryonicist is older than 30, she has no children, and she then she starts to cryopreserve her cats when they die. (No, I am NOT making this up! I’ve seen childless female cryonicists do this.) This shows that the woman has failed to form organic relationships with the husband, children & grandchildren she would have had in a healthier, more patriarchal society. I don’t see what these female cryonicists have to live for now, much less what they expect to get out of the possibility of “living forever” via cryotransport.
In fairness there are some male trainwrecks in the cryonics scene, like the gay sex tourists and the guy I knew slightly who died from a heroin overdose a few years ago. But on average the male cryonicists tend to run their lives better than the female ones.