Cryonics, or wake me up when I can live forever

Some people choose cryopreservation after death, hoping future technology will revive them for eternal life

Countless individuals have yearned for more time on Earth, only to have their hopes cut short by the limitations of medical science. But what if we could wait until technology and medicine catch up with the dreams of living forever?

This is the underlying concept behind cryonics - the practice of cryogenically preserving human bodies or brains with the hope that future advancements in technology and medicine will enable their revival, cure the ailments that caused their demise, and perhaps even grant them immortality.

The idea of cryonics originated from Robert Ettinger, who drew inspiration from a science fiction story. In 1931, Neil R. Jones published a tale called "The Jameson Satellite," in which Professor Jameson sends his frozen body into space to indefinitely preserve it after death. In this story, Jameson's body is discovered by aliens 40 million years later, who then transferred his brain into a robotic body, granting him immortality.

Inspired by this story, Ettinger published "The Prospect of Immortality" in 1962, outlining the concept of freezing humans so that science and technology may eventually catch up and give them immortality. The idea has been vetted as scientifically plausible by none other than Isaac Asimov which added credibility to Ettinger’s proposal. This is the point where the cryonics began.

On January 12th, 1965, James Bedford became the first person to be cryogenically preserved with hopes to be revived in the future. Bedford's body remains cryopreserved to this day. Since then, hundreds more people were put into a cryogenic tank after their death hoping to wake up one day in the future.

James Bedford’s cryopreserved body

The idea of freezing living tissues to preserve them has a solid scientific background. An entire field of cryogenics has been established to study the effects of ultra-low temperatures and their applications. One of its subfields, cryobiology, is solely focusing on how low temperatures affect living organisms and biological materials.

In the 1950s, James Lovelock (who later in his life created the Gaia Hypothesis) was experimenting with cryopreservation by freezing hamsters to -79 °C (Lovelock also built one of the first microwaves along the way to thaw frozen rats) and was able to successfully reanimate them.

Cryogenics also plays a crucial role in the research of organ preservation for transplantation.

Today, many people freeze their sperm or eggs to use them sometime in the future. Freezing human embryos for in vitro fertilization (IVF) is nothing special these days. The first person born from a frozen embryo arrived in 1984, and numerous individuals alive today owe their lives to this technique. There is even a girl alive today who was born after being a frozen embryo for 25 years.

Cryonauts (that’s what cryonics enthusiasts like to call themselves) trust that their frozen bodies will be looked after with utmost care during their deep sleep. But that is not guaranteed. Some early adopters of cryonics had their journey into the future cut short due to the mishandling of their bodies. There have also been instances where family members disregarded the deceased's wishes, removing them from cryogenic tanks and burying them instead.

Cryogenic tanks at The Cryonics Institute

To my knowledge, there have been no reported studies successfully reviving cryogenically frozen mammals. The closest study I found was describing an experiment where a cryogenically frozen rabbit kidney has been successfully thawed and then successfully transplanted into a living rabbit.

We do not know in what state the cryogenically frozen bodies and brains will be after thawing. There will definitely be damage caused by either the vitrification process, the decay after death, or by the process of thawing. The damage needs to be repaired. Cryonauts believe that something like advanced nanotechnology will be able to repair their bodies. If only the brain has been preserved, then the only hope for a second life is for mind uploading to become a reality.

It is also unclear if the revived individual would retain their original identity. Experiments conducted on nematodes investigated whether memories persisted after cryopreservation, and the results were positive. In 2015, a cryogenically frozen rabbit brain was successfully thawed, with subsequent examination revealing no structural damage to the brain.

Despite these unknowns, there are companies that offer cryopreservation and proper long-term storage of frozen bodies. The most notable are The Alcor Life Extension Foundation and The Cryonics Institute, both based in the US. Other companies include Tomorrow Biostatis in Europe, Southern Cryonics in Australia, KrioRus (the first cryonics company outside the US) in Russia and Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute in China.

Instructions from a medicalert bracelet tattooed on one of Alcor customer’s torso

Many people have signed up to be frozen and hopefully wake up in the future. Alcor alone has 1400 people who want to be cryopreserved. For them, the journey begins when they die. Ideally, they die peacefully with their bodies intact. As euthanasia is illegal in many countries, cryopreservation can only begin once they have been pronounced dead. Time is critical and it is crucial to begin the process of preservation as soon as possible.

The cryonics team transports the body to a facility where it will be prepared for cryopreservation. The blood is replaced with cryoprotectants to prevent the formation of ice crystals (which can damage cells) and the body is cooled down. This is when the process of vitrification takes place which turns organs into a solid glass-like state.

Finally, the frozen body is placed into a steel container cooled with liquid nitrogen, reaching a temperature of −196 °C.

And then they wait and hope their frozen bodies are stored properly while people work on technology that will bring them back to life.

Critics call cryonics pseudoscience at best and fraud at worst. The Society for Cryobiology distances itself from cryonics, even going as far as expelling members who practice it. Others argue the whole concept is based on untested ideas and wishful thinking, and charging money for the procedure (Alcor charges $80,000 for brain cryopreservation and $200,000 for full body cryopreservation, covered by insurance and paid at the time of the death) is very close to being a scam.

But for those who choose to be cryopreserved and bet on cryonics, it is better to keep their bodies or brains as long as possible than to let them decay after death. If the cryonics experiment fails, then what is there to lose? You are dead after all. But if it succeeds, then you’ll get to live again in, hopefully, a better future.

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