Can you make wealth immortal? The rich and the powerful are signing up for the programme being offered by a US-based company leading in cryopreservation — having the bodies preserved at extremely low temperatures in the hope they can be revived one day.
The latest to join the unique cryonics model is PayPal Co-founder Peter Thiel, who in a podcast last week, had said, “I think of it more as an ideological statement”. “I’m not convinced it works. It’s more, I think we need to be trying these things. It’s not there yet,” he added.
Reports suggest that the company, Alcor Life Extension Foundation, has already frozen 233 patients in the hopes of reviving them years later.
What is the Process of Freezing Bodies?
The cryonics process involves cooling the body to cryogenic temperatures to halt all biological activity, including decay.
To keep the bodies intact until future medical advancements can revive them, vitrification is applied, which involves replacing the body’s blood with a special solution to prevent ice crystal formation, which can damage cells and tissues.
Once vitrification is complete, the body is gradually cooled to -196 degrees Celsius and stored in a vacuum-insulated metal container filled with liquid nitrogen.
Can the Bodies be Revived?
It is difficult to say that someone who has undergone cryopreservation can be revived. Currently, medical science does not have the technology to reverse the process or repair the cellular damage that may occur, reports MSN. However, cryonics supporters believe that future breakthroughs in nanotechnology and regenerative medicine could make revival possible.
According to the Department of Anatomy at AIIMS Rajkot, the hope is that future medical technology will advance to a point where it is possible to repair the damage caused by the preservation process and the underlying causes of death. Alcor and its supporters are banking on future breakthroughs in nanotechnology and regenerative medicine to make revival possible.
Why are People Opting for This Despite No Guarantee?
There is hope that terminal illnesses and ageing might one day be cured with the help of cryonics. The wealthy are more interested since it can buy them immortality.
Steve LeBel, a 76-year-old retired hospital executive from Michigan, wants to join the 500 people already frozen through cryonics, Bloomberg reported. He has spent a year searching for a trust model that will last centuries. He plans to put $100,000 into his revival trust, with the rest going to his family and foundation. He wants to ensure that there’s enough money to pay for the resurrection process in the future.
How will Payments be Made After Death?
Alcor uses a trust fund system to make sure there is enough money to care for cryopreserved bodies for many decades, even indefinitely.
When you sign up for cryopreservation, a significant portion of your funding is allocated to the Alcor Patient Care Trust. For whole body preservation, $115,000 is put into this trust. For neuro preservation (just the head), $25,000 is allocated. The company also offers membership. First, there are monthly membership dues ranging from $17 to $100, depending on your age. If you want to include a child, it costs an additional $60 per year for each child.
Can This Even Fructify?
Critics argue that cryonics is giving false hopes to people on revival. The Department of Anatomy at AIIMS Rajkot highlights several critical questions: how to ensure that frozen tissues do not deteriorate over time, how to reverse the freezing process without causing further harm, and how to restore the personality, memories, and identity of revived individuals.
McGill University neuroscientist Michael Hendricks wrote in MIT Technology Review. “[R]eanimation…is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the ‘cryonics’ industry.”
Bioethicist Arthur Caplan told the National Post it is “next to impossible to believe that anybody, no matter how advanced the science, could create much out of a bunch of — and I’m sorry to put it this way — damaged mush.” “Any damage to a brain from freezing and defrosting is going to create something horrible for the person that experiences that.”
The Origin of Cryogenic Freezing
Science cryogenics was invented by French biologist Jean Rostand during the 1940s. The concept of cryogenic freezing was first proposed by Robert Ettinger in 1962 in a work called The Prospect Of Immortality. He was also a physics teacher and war veteran, and inspired by Rostand.
In 1967, professor James Hiram Bedford became the first person to be frozen. As per QZ, Bedford was an ex-psychology professor at the University of California-Berkeley. Bedford had died of renal cancer in January 1967.
In 1980s, people’s heads were first frozen. The idea was that the deceased’s brain could be hooked up to computers and thus “brought back to life” in the distance future.
As per BBC, Bedford’s body was taken out of storage in 1991. The frozen blood was coming out of his mouth and nose.
The first baby from frozen eggs was born in 1999 and the first complete organ was frozen, thawed and then reinserted into a rabbit, as per Science Focus.