The science of cryonics won’t make you immortal but it does offer the chance for your frozen corpse to be reanimated. There are no guarantees that if you choose to have your freshly deceased body frozen that you will ever be brought back to life, but it is an exciting gamble to contemplate and research is moving forward at a fast rate in related fields which may one day make it a possibility.
There is no utter point in being frozen and revived if you pass on from a terminal disease, unless a cure for your disease is found. Scientific strides forward are being made in such areas as cell stem research, nanotechnology, DNA mapping and therapeutic cloning. With the possibility of certain diseases being eradicated within the century, it is a possibility to be reanimated, cured, and restart life.
The actual idea of cryonics has been around for half a century now, and the first person to take the plunge and be cryopreserved was Dr James Bedford back in 1967. His body is still preserved in the company of many others and a number of frozen severed heads. Modern techniques are far more advanced now than they were in 1967.
It is essential for those who choose to hang around in cryonic suspension to be frozen as quickly as possible after death. Unfortunately efforts to arrange to be frozen before death, for those with incurable diseases, were rejected by the courts. As only the legally dead can be frozen then this has opened the door for life insurance being used to fund the cryonics process.
The cryonics team need to be able to deal with the body as quickly as possible, as it is imperative to protect the brain. They immediately put the body onto a mobile advanced life support system and begin to lower the temperature of the body. The body needs to be perfused with cryoprotectant solution whilst glycerol replaces some of the water in the body.
Once wrapped in plastic the body is put into an iced bath of silicone, before being transferred in a dewar, which is essentially a large steel bottle which is filled with liquid nitrogen and vacuum packed. After that it is literally just a case of hanging round in cryonic suspension until the technology ever becomes possible to defrost and revive the corpse.
It may all appear as futuristic science fiction but it is an ongoing reality, with the numbers of people signing up to be cryopreserved on the increase. Research continues into the science of cryonics and has already seen nematode worms successfully cryopreserved and then revived. The concept of cryonics is a fascinating look into a possible future, offering a slight chance that those frozen today may one day be reanimated, cloned and cured. They may even meet their own descendants who are yet to be born.
Sources:
IET
Trans Time
LA Times
