Once upon a time there was a physician who had the help of "death". He was given a magical herb by the death and if the death is seen near patients head he was to give a tiny amount of the herb to the patient and the patient will be cured. If the death is near patients feet it is time to die. His fame spread throughout the country and reached the king as well. Oneday when the king was sick he summoned this physician. Physician saw death at kings feet and he immediately ordered to position king the opposite way and treated king with the herb. Death was not pleased with this cheating and he make the physician promise that he will not do it again. However he did the same for king's daughter which lead to his own death. This is a famous German folk tale by Grimm bothers. The idea of immortality has been fascinating us humans for thousands of years and we are doing everything we can to expand our lifespans to the maximum and yet, even in the 21st century we have a handful amount of incurable diseases. What if the incurable diseases today are curable in hundred years from now? Is there any way for us to time travel into 2120? This idea first sparked in Robert Ettingers head and in 1962 he published "Prospect of Immortality" which introduced the principle of freezing a human to be resuscitated later.
Cryonics is preserving humans at low temperatures with the intention of resuscitating in the future when more advanced medical procedures are available to cure their illnesses as well as the damage done to tissues and cells during the duration of preservation. In 1967 a psychology professor who died of cancer became the first person to try cryonics and his body is still remaining in a good condition at Alcor Life Extension Foundation. There are few companies offering this service worldwide but most famous two are the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona and Cryonics Institute in Michigan. There are more than 250 cryogenically preserved corpses (including the baseball legend Ted Williams) in US and about 1500 have signed up to be preserved once they die.
There are two types of preservation these companies offer; whole body preservation and neuropreservation where only the brain is preserved. Cost of cryonics depends from 80000$ to 200000$ based on the method of preservation you prefer. Following the legal death of a person they first put him in an ice bath to lower down the temperature and slow down the metabolism. To get heart and lungs working again, they administer a process called CPS (Cardiopulmonary support) using a mechanical heart lung resuscitator. And then injects several drugs to prevent blood clotting or rotting. Then using another machine, blood is circulated and heat is drawn out of the body and a proportion of blood is replaced with an organ preservation solution.
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| PC: Alcor Life Extension Foundation |
Cryonics is not just freezing a corpse. If we are to froze a human, then all the liquid water will crystallize and since that causes an expansion in volume it will damage the tissues. Therefore these scientists replace blood with a cryoprotectant solution. This process is called "Vitrification" and recently scientists successfully vitrified a rabbit kidney and once rewarmed and put it back inside a rabbit the kidney worked in a near perfect condition.
Once vitrification is done, the body is then put into long term care in large cylindrical thermos. Bodies are positioned in an upside down manner due to the boiling off of the liquid nitrogen and in case of an emergency head will be the last to expose to the normal temperature. Now the question is, Is it possible to resuscitate after going through all these processes? We still don't know. Are there any people who were resuscitated until now? No. But does that mean it's not possible to resuscitate a once frozen body? No. A couple years back an MIT graduate named Robert Mclntyre successfully froze and revived a mammalian brain (New Zealand white rabbit). So with the advancement of science and medicine, in future there is a chance of actually beating death and slowing down the aging process. People who are supporting the idea of cryonics argue that if this technology is a failure and you are preserved/not preserved you die. If this technology is successful and you are not preserved you die. But if this technology is successful and you are preserved you get to live long and it is worth giving a shot.
In my opinion expanding my lifespan using cryonics is something I will not do because I believe that "Immortality is a fate worse than death."
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