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Cryonics companies cryogenically freeze people after death, in the hope that they will one day be revived.
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Critics say it’s great. Proponents say the possibility is better than accepting death.
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The idea of bringing people back to life raises many scientific, legal and ethical questions.
Being cryogenically frozen after death and one day being brought back to life sounds like something out of a science fiction movie. But there are a handful of companies around the world selling the dream that death is not final.
Max More spent 12 years working at Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the world’s oldest cryonics company, first as CEO and then as ambassador and president emeritus, before leaving earlier this year.
“It was just an obvious thing for me, just an extension of the idea of not wanting to die,” he told BI.
Alcor has cryopreserved 224 patients at its state-of-the-art facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, and 1,418 members have signed up to be preserved after death.
Although the technology to freeze, or cryopreserve, a body after death has improved over many years of refinement, there is currently no way to revive people.
“To me, it’s an illusion. It’s a promise,” Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, told BI. “Legit science doesn’t think we know what we’re doing.”
“I hate that even though people look into the future and say, well, in the future, they’ll be able to solve anything – if you create a bunch of mush when you freeze using today’s techniques, it’s not anyone will be able to solve it. even a thousand years from now.”
More is more optimistic. He points out that a hundred years ago people would not have believed that it was possible to land on the moon or that we could have technology like FaceTime that would allow people around the world to see and talk to each other in real time.
The first person to be cryogenically frozen was psychology professor James Bedford in 1966, and an urban legend has long circulated that Walt Disney chose to be frozen after death – although there is no evidence of this.
As technology has advanced, it now seems that the same idea is not so outdated. Many billionaires are more interested in technology ways to extend lifeand billionaire Peter Thiel has said yes signed to be cryogenically frozen after dying to make an “ideological statement” although he says he doesn’t expect it to work.
224 members are preserved in liquid nitrogen at a facility in Scottsdale
A small number of cryonics companies operate around the world, the oldest and best known being the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
Among those preserved is a two-year-old Thai girl who died of brain cancer, the youngest person to be cryogenically frozen.
Full body preservation costs $220,000, while the option to preserve your brain costs just $80,000. Most members pay using life insurance. Some even choose freeze their pets.
The other big company, Institute of Cryonics, it has 2,180 members worldwide, with smaller companies in Europe, China and Russia.
Other companies offer cheaper prices than Alcor, but their packages usually do not include the services of the medical backup teams that come to start the process immediately after death.
How it works
When a member dies, a medical team on standby goes into action. Alcor has affiliated hospices in Arizona where patients can be moved when they are in critical condition, but usually, the staff goes into the field to wherever the member died.
The blood of the deceased is replaced with a cryoprotectant, which reduces the risk of ice crystal formation after death, in a process known as vitrification.
The body is then gradually cooled down and stored at -196°C, or around -321°F, in specialized containers filled with liquid nitrogen, which prevents the body from decomposing.
The bodies will then remain in preservation indefinitely until science advances to the point where they can be revived.
More said that science is progressing in the right direction, but not at the speed he would like. Earlier this year, scientists at the University of Minnesota successfully thawed rat organs and transplanted them historically.
The cryonics industry relies on the assumption that one day, death will be reversible. Not only do we need to be able to bring people back to life, but we also need to be able to cure the cause of death — be it cancer, old age, or anything in between.
Critics say this feels way too great. Caplan believes that the process of freezing people is even a little wrong, let alone banking on the ability to one day bring them back.
“Speaking for myself, it’s still something I want to do rather than let myself die,” said More.
‘You’ll be a freak’
The concept of bringing people back to life raises all sorts of legal, ethical and philosophical questions.
On a practical level – when a person returns to life, would they have the same ID and Social Security number? If Queen Elizabeth II had been cryogenically preserved and had come back to life, would she be monarch again? Would people have a claim on goods and assets passed on to their heirs?
Skeptics note that even if revival were possible, it would be extremely difficult to awaken people hundreds or thousands of years in the future and then try to integrate into a new world they do not understand.
“Even if it worked, if you woke up a thousand years later, you won’t know what’s going on. You’re going to be a freak,” Caplan said.
More believes that this is just another challenge to overcome. He compared the situation to people waking up after years in a coma or moving to another country and learning how to assimilate to a new culture.
Besides putting a lot of faith in the possibilities of science, members of cryonics companies also rely on the fact that those companies will still be around hundreds of years into the future.
Alcor secures its future through the nonprofit Patient Care Trust, which acts as a separate entity to manage and protect the funding for frozen patients, More said.
There are very strict rules on managing the money, including not allowing more than 2% to be withdrawn per year.
Despite the aspirations of those in the field, there are many moments, ifs, and buts when it comes to cryonics.
In his experience, the common trait among those who sign up is a deep “sense of adventure” combined with a fearlessness to be non-confrontational, More said.
“People are afraid of the unknown, and they would rather die. It’s hard for me to do that. But that’s their choice,” said More.
“I’d rather be there for the big event and see how this all works out,” he said.
Read the original article on Business Insider
