Brain freeze. What is cryonics and is it possible to find immortality in liquid nitrogen?
There is an opinion that someday the main value of humanity will be exclusively knowledge. The new world will need scientists, inventors, or rather, their talents. A non-standard idea was put forward by cryotechnologists, that is, those who freeze biological material at ultra-low temperatures. They proposed collecting the DNA of prominent contemporaries. This way you can create a database and pass it on to your descendants. But today, in principle, anyone can freeze themselves for the future for a relatively adequate amount for the price of a used car. So far, only two and a half hundred people around the world have decided to do this. Thirty of them are .
In our country there is the only storage facility where they offer to freeze not only, but the whole organism as a whole. Cryogenic freezing is a long process and takes weeks. They are immersed in a state of deep freezing very slowly so as not to harm internal organs. First, they are replaced with a special composition that reduces damage to the body during freezing. When it takes on a bronze tint, it is sent to storage.
Before being sent to the general storage, where the temperature is almost minus two hundred degrees Celsius, the patient will be kept in a cryostat warmer, minus seventy-nine degrees Celsius. A few weeks later, the patient is transferred to a special container that looks like a huge cylindrical vessel. Here, a constant temperature is maintained by liquid nitrogen. Patients are positioned vertically in special sleeping bags. They are suspended, tied with a rope that can withstand ultra-low temperatures. In such conditions, a body can lie for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Cryotechnologists say that in the future, in order to bring a person back to life after defrosting, only him will be enough. After all, it is in it that memories and the personality itself are stored. But building a body is a matter of technique or client preference. It’s easy to find out what the person looked like. One cell of brain DNA is taken and analyzed. Then the organs are cloned. All parameters are clearly stated in each of our cells.
For now, everyone who decides to acquire immortality is given a contract for a hundred years. If, by that time, no way has been invented to revive a person after defrosting, then the contract will be automatically extended until new scientific discoveries are made.
The liquid nitrogen that is added to the vessel gradually boils away and has to be replenished to maintain the desired temperature in this refrigerated dormitory. But there are plans to make the process autonomous. The cold generation system will be powered by solar panels, which means it will not stop serving, even if there is no one to monitor it. Cryotechnologists are confident: such storage facilities can become not just an opportunity for a few, but a whole step towards salvation for all humanity. For example, hard times or the end of the world can simply be slept through in them.
Today there is a mass cryonics project in the world, although so far only for animals. Its authors, scientists from the British University of Nottingham, believe that this is the only way to preserve many species. They called the storage facility “The Frozen Ark.” It contains the DNA of rare endangered or already extinct species. Having , it will be possible to clone animals that are no longer found on Earth. Moreover, similar experience There is. In 2009, Spanish geneticists recreated the Pyrenean ibex, which became extinct at the beginning of the century.
Remember the action movie "Demolition Man", where a policeman played by Stallone is cryogenically frozen along with a criminal, and after 36 years they are both thawed? So, cryo-freezing is no longer a fantasy: the bodies of 11 people and two dogs are stored in a cryogenic storage facility near Moscow at minus 200C. But no one knows who and when will be able to revive them.
In the village of Alabushevo, Zelenograd, near Moscow, there is an outwardly unremarkable hangar. This is the only cryogenic storage facility in Russia owned by the KrioRus company. Inside the hangar there is a cryostat - a huge white Dewar flask, where frozen bodies and heads await resurrection under a heavy lid in liquid nitrogen at a temperature of minus 200 degrees Celsius. For a rather illusory hope of future revival, their relatives and friends paid in advance - 30 thousand dollars for the body and 10 thousand dollars for the head. Storing frozen pets costs less - five thousand dollars. Kriorus employees call all of them “patients” - as if they were alive.
An agreement for the storage of expensive bodies can be concluded right there - in a small, shabby village house. General Director of KrioRus Danila Medvedev told photojournalist Sergei Mukhamedov about the prospects for revival and even allowed him to look inside the cryostat.
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— Such a service is associated with huge expenses, but you offer your services for a fixed fee: $10 thousand for preservation of the head or brain and $30 thousand for the whole body. Can this amount cover the maintenance of the body for a long time?
— The fact is that, basically, the costs go not to the costs of maintaining the body in a cool state, but to development. Elementary repairs need to be made, equipment purchased, people trained. And storage costs are relatively low.
- But if we are talking about long-term storage, and this may not be 50 or even 100 years, then this money will still not be enough?
- Everything is simple here. We have calculations and different scenarios. If no one else comes, then we have one algorithm of actions and one cost structure. But there is another scenario in which the number of clients remains the same as now and even grows slightly - for now we stick to exactly this scenario.
- It's not exactly a pyramid. We can pay from our own pockets for a long time<содержание>those patients that we already have. But<их родным необходимо сразу заплатить>a fixed amount, otherwise they can then say at any time: “You know, we’ve run out of money.”
That's why<наша позиция>- you need to take the entire amount and say: “We received the money and assume all responsibility and expenses.” In addition, we have our own relatives cryopreserved here: my grandmother, the director’s mother, as well as friends, relatives of friends. Therefore, we can pay our own nitrogen bills.
—How many frozen bodies do you currently have?
— In Russia, 15 people were cryopreserved - all with our participation, with the exception of two, who were<крионированы до создания>"KrioRusa". Some are kept not by us, but by relatives, but we helped organize storage. We currently have the bodies of four patients, as well as the cryopreserved brains of seven more people. In addition, we store the bodies of two animals.
—What if something happens - a fire or your premises are taken away?
- No guarantees.
— So you might disappear tomorrow?
- Yes, and money just like that - and all the hopes for revival too. We understand this and speak honestly about it: “If you want guarantees, then help us build everything well, invest $100 million in the cryogenic company, and it will become much more reliable.”
— One can also imagine the revival if a living person were cryopreserved, but you freeze corpses?...
- There is no fundamental difference between a living person and a corpse - at least at the initial stage. 15 minutes after death, any person is, in principle, still alive, unless, of course, he was crushed by a roller. With the help of existing technologies, any person can be revived 15 minutes after death.
— But do irreversible changes occur in the brain?
“This is a fairy tale, a very common myth; apparently, this phrase has been repeated too often to the population: “After five minutes, irreversible processes begin in the brain.” I remember this myself, but it is not true. — Here Danila Medvedev begins to explain the theory, using the words “reperfusion shock”, “apoptosis”, “denaturation” and “perfusion”.
— Okay, we've sorted out the body, but why cryopreserve the head separately?
— The brain is responsible for personality; it can be transplanted into the body and, with the help of nanorobots, sewn to everything else. Head transplants and body regrowth are feasible even today. In the most advanced technology, this will be the transfer of consciousness into a computer, the so-called “download”. If we can consider the entire structure human brain and simulate it on a computer, we will get an analogue of a living person who will begin to think like the original. The copy will feel like the same person and will live indefinitely until the computer shuts down.
—Is the decision to cryopreserve more often made by relatives rather than the patient himself?
- About half the time.
“I wouldn’t want to suddenly realize after death that now I’m a living head with tubes in solution or a consciousness running through computer chips...
- There is an expression of will for this civil law, you can come to a notary or even tell someone verbally. If this expression of will is known, then everything should be done in accordance with it.
— What if the person didn’t say anything, and the relatives decided to cut off his head and freeze him?
- They have this right by law. Since he didn’t say anything, it means he didn’t mind. The law on burial and funeral affairs states that this is determined either by the person during his lifetime, or by relatives or other legal representatives.
— Let’s say that in a century or two science will figure out how to revive cryopreserved people. Who will you give the body to, because then it will be difficult to find relatives?
“Our contract says: “The best way is to return a person to functioning as a living organism.”
—And who will you entrust this “living organism” to?
— The decision about who to entrust the revival of the body will most likely be made not by the organization, but by some entity.
—But we can’t know, maybe then shamans will rule or programmers...
- We'll figure it out there.
- TO What does a person frozen in nitrogen look like?
- Like someone who just died. If he died of cancer, it’s bad, if he died of a heart attack at a young age, then it’s normal, just pale. The bodies are kept in sleeping bags and the heads in metal containers.
— The history of life and illness is preserved somewhere; will descendants need it?
- In a good way, this, of course, must be done. If such information is sent to us, we scan it and store it.
— Let’s say, in search of guest workers for summer cottages Riot police will come to you and find a dismembered body with seven heads and four corpses in the hangar...
— We do not break the law, but we act in a legal vacuum - we understand that this is risky. Of course, some arbitrariness is possible, but for the most part people are adequate and dialogue with them is possible. We have documents, acts of acceptance and transfer of bodies for storage, a charter where it is written that we are engaged in scientific work and so on.
— Do the neighbors know what's here?
- Yes, almost everything. They treat this normally, well, maybe we once heard one dissatisfied voice.
— Are clients confused by how it all looks? Hangar, village house...
“You just need to know the history.” Any breakthrough technologies, by definition, are made under the same conditions.
Some people, even on the verge of death, hope to one day return to life. Cryonics helps fuel these hopes. Several amazing cases of human cryopreservation are described below.
1. A two-year-old girl who died of brain cancer became the youngest person to be cryogenically frozen.
In 2015, a two-year-old girl who died of a brain tumor was frozen because her family hoped she would one day be brought back to life thanks to scientific achievements. Mother Naowaratpong from Thailand is believed to be the youngest person ever to be cryogenically frozen.
The girl was diagnosed with a tumor when she couldn’t wake up one morning. She was diagnosed with ependymoblastoma, a rare form of cancer that occurs at a very young age. After many months of intensive treatment, 12 brain surgeries, 20 chemotherapy sessions and 20 radiation treatments, it became clear that doctors could do nothing more.
She died on January 8, 1915, after her parents turned off life support. By the time of her death, the girl had lost about 80% of the left hemisphere of her brain, which led to paralysis of the entire right side bodies.
Currently, her body has been transferred to the cryogenic organization Alcor, located in Arizona. The brain and body were frozen separately at minus 196°C.
The family hopes that one day science will advance enough to bring the girl back to life. In addition, the parents want to preserve her body and brain so that the disease that caused the girl’s death could be studied in the future.
If anyone is interested in the price of this enterprise, then a family pays $700 annually for “membership” in Alcor. The family also footed the bill for $80,000 for “neural procedures” for Mother, and completely freezing the girl’s body cost the family another $200,000.
2. The creator of the financial pyramid stole money to freeze his wife
The alleged financial fraudster used investors' money for personal and rather unusual purposes. Prosecutors say he used the stolen money to freeze his wife.
Vileon Chey told investors that he invested their money in consumer goods, in transactions with foreign currencies and precious metals, but instead spent more than $150,000 on cryogenic treatments for his wife, who died in 2009.
Prosecutors were unable to find out everything about his machinations, since 38-year-old Chey, while under investigation in 2011, was able to escape from New York to Peru, and since then he has not been found.
Chey managed to collect more than $5 million from investors, promising them that he would return about 24% per year of the amount invested, and assuring them that “there is no risk in this activity,” according to prosecutors.
However, he spent more than $2 million of investors' money on personal needs (one investor noted that Chay arrived in a new car every time they met) and on cryogenically freezing his wife's body.
3. A terminally ill woman raised funds for her cryopreservation
Cryonics is something we often see in our favorite science fiction films, but now everything more people choose this path for their own salvation. Of course, if they can afford it.
So when a 23-year-old neuroscience student was diagnosed with brain cancer, she turned to the internet to raise funds and then freeze herself until a cure was found. Her efforts were successful, and Kim Suozzi is currently cryogenically frozen.
After learning that she only had a few months to live, Kim took to Reddit to ask users how she could spend her remaining days. It was there that the topic of cryopreservation came up, after which Kim updated her post and asked financial assistance from users.
Futurists, including the Venturizm society, took up charity work and helped her raise a huge amount of money that was needed for cryopreservation.
Currently, cryopreservation is only used for patients who are considered clinically dead, and Kim Suozzi was declared as such on January 17, 2013.
4. A heartbroken widow who wished to be frozen in order to be reunited with her frozen husband
Bridgetown residents Martha and Helmer Sandberg enjoyed happy life, but when Helmer was dying of a brain tumor in 1994, he did not want his body cremated. He preferred something else.
For approximately $200,000, the former US Marine was placed in a cryogenic chamber. Now he is in Detroit, at the Cryonics Institute, and is waiting for the time to come back to life.
Mrs. Sandberg also made the decision to be cryogenically frozen after death. “I still miss Helmer,” she said. - I still love him. We have been together for over 20 years and they have been years of satisfaction and joy."
Mrs. Sandberg expressed the hope that both she and Helmer could one day be revived together, but this is not a requirement.
5. Three Oxford scientists pay for their cryopreservation
The belief that death is the only certainty in this life is a concept that senior lecturers at Oxford are hoping to disprove by paying the price of being frozen and revived in the future.
Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor, and his colleague Anders Sandberg decided to pay an American company to separate their heads and place them in deep cryopreservation in the event of their unexpected death.
Stuart Armstrong, their colleague, also wants to be frozen, but he opted for full-body cryopreservation.
Bostrom, Sandberg and Armstrong are lead researchers at the Human Futures Institute (FHI), which is part of the prestigious Oxford Martin School, where scientists research global problems, such as climate change on the planet.
And despite this, at the moment there is not a single academic study devoted to cryopreservation. Therefore, the scientists insured their lives and pay 45 euros monthly for insurance, which will become a source of funds in the event of their sudden death.
If one of them turns out to be terminally ill, the cryopreservation team will wait for the arrival of the doctor, who will have to pronounce death. After which the blood in the body of the deceased will be pumped with a special apparatus, and the body itself will be cooled, since special preservatives and antifreeze will be added to the pumped blood to protect the tissues.
If only the head is to be frozen, it will be separated from the body and then placed in nitrogen gas and cooled to minus 124°C. The head will gradually cool down to minus 196 °C, after which it will be placed in a chamber with liquid nitrogen for long-term storage in a cryogenic installation.
6The Legendary Baseball Player Who Was Frozen After a Trial
When baseball player Ted Williams died in July 2002 at age 83, his body was transported from Florida to a cryogenics center in Arizona for cryopreservation.
Although he himself, being alive, asked to be cremated, John-Henry and Claudia, his children, decided to cryo-freeze.
Ted's eldest daughter Bobbi-Jo Ferrell sued her brother and sister to fulfill their father's last wishes, but John-Henry's lawyer persuaded the parties to sign an informal "family pact" in which they agreed to place their father in cryostasis after his death and " revive in the future, if such an opportunity arises.”
However, Bobbi-Jo's lawyer, Spike Fitzpatrick, soon began to claim that the "family pact" that was written on a regular napkin was simply a fake. However, the examination established that the signatures on the napkin were genuine.
John-Henry said that his father always believed in science and would probably try cryonics if he had the opportunity.
7. The first person to be successfully frozen
Although there was one case of freezing that was interrupted, it is now generally accepted that the first person frozen with the intention of returning to life in the future was a 73-year-old psychology teacher named James Bedford. He was frozen under the instructions of the California Society of Cryonics (CSC) on January 12, 1967.
James Bedford The day of his cryopreservation is celebrated in the scientific community as "Bedford Day". At one time, they were even going to release a limited edition of Life magazine with a cover dedicated to this event, but this did not happen, because it was at this time that the magazine had to report the death of three astronauts during the fire on Apollo 1.
Until 1982, Bedford's body was kept in liquid nitrogen. The storage was handled by his family, who lived in Southern California. Then it was transported to the Alcor organization, where it is currently located.
8. Bitcoin pioneer was frozen after losing battle with multiple sclerosis
In 2014, Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney, widely regarded as the second-largest developer of the world's most popular cryptocurrency after Satoshi Nakamoto, died after a five-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 58. In 2008, a year before he was diagnosed, Finney made the world's first Bitcoin transaction.
Before his death, he asked to be frozen and stored in the Alcor Foundation. So now his body, from which all blood and other bodily fluids have been previously removed, is stored in a three-meter chamber filled with 450 liters of liquid nitrogen.
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Among the clients of the Kriorus company are not only Russians, but also patients from countries Western Europe, Japan, India, Australia and the USA. Cryonicists contrast distrust of official science with faith in progress and exaggerated ideas of transhumanism.
“I’m not going to die,” the deputy laughs joyfully general director"Kriorus" Ivan Stepin, meeting us in a medical gown with sleeves rolled up to the elbow and in acid-colored sneakers. Ivan looks like a cheerful popularizer of science, ready to demonstrate a cheerful trick from entertaining physics. However, his activities are not limited to laboratory experiments. In addition to technical work, he performs perfusion and cooling processes for “ready” clients.
“Perfusion is the process of replacing blood in the body with a non-freezing compound - a cryoprotector that prevents cell damage during freezing,” Ivan explains in a knowledge-intensive manner. — Cryoprotectors can be compared to antifreeze for cars, which prevents the formation of ice crystals. The substance is administered to a person immediately after death is recorded, only after this the body is frozen to the temperature of liquid nitrogen - minus 196 ˚ C - and placed for storage in Dewar flasks.”
In the cryogenic storage facility in Sergiev Posad, where we are located, there are three of them - the vessels resemble giant milk cans. Of the 62 patients at Kriorus, more than half are here, and another part is in another storage facility near Moscow.
SUPERFROYD / istockphoto.com
“Are they floating there like corn flakes?” - a stupid question bursts out.
“No,” Ivan is offended. - The bodies are located upside down... Along the circumference of the cylinder, like cartridges in the drum of a revolver. Ivan draws an imaginary circle in the air. “The free space between them is occupied by cryopreserved animals, flasks with DNA samples, as well as supporters of neuropreservation who wish to freeze only the brain. One vessel holds from 8 to 12 people, depending on the size of the people.
In the context of the eye-popping futuristic message of resurrection, the story sounds not so much creepy as fascinating. However, getting into the atmosphere of the future turns out to be not so easy: the cryogenic storage facility is more like a room for technical needs.
The creators of Kriorus assure that all the company’s profits go to pay for current expenses: maintenance of the cryogenic storage facility and salaries to employees. Listening to Ivan, you readily believe this - naked entrepreneurship is unlikely to coexist with the belief that every client is immortal and must be preserved at any cost.
Pros and cons
In a strict sense, cryonics is not a science, but a field of practical activity. It arose from the ideas of cryobiology, which studies the effect of low temperatures on living organisms. Freezing and thawing experiments individual species tissues, cells, organs and embryos made it possible to think about, and subsequently implement, cryopreservation of the human brain and person.
"On modern stage Stem cells, blood, sperm, embryos are frozen, and all this can be stored indefinitely. To preserve cryogenic patients, the same technology is used (with some modifications),” explains Kriorus Science Director Igor Artyukhov. Unlike other cryonicists, who are exalted and hasty, he acts as a peaceful guardian of the truth.
The concept of human cryopreservation was first proposed by the American physicist and mathematician Robert Ettinger, who published the book “Prospects of Immortality” in 1962. In 1976, he created the Cryonics Institute in the USA. This marked the beginning of the cryonics movement spreading throughout the world. However, companies for freezing people have since appeared only in Russia and, more recently, in China (one patient has been frozen there so far). In other countries, cryonicists exist in the form of informal communities and work as support groups for people who help cryonics patients find themselves in America or Russia.
“Yes, there have been attempts to register cryogenic companies in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, but this is a very difficult and nervous matter, they will also be declared a charlatan, so few people decide to do this,” explains Artyukhov.
If everything is relatively clear with the technology of freezing cryopatients ( low temperatures- an ideal way to save anything), then the prospect still looks somewhat doubtful.
In a strict sense, cryonics is not a science, but a field of practical activity
Cryonicists associate their hopes for immortality with the “lifespan” of brain cells. According to some studies, after the biological death of the body, neurons can live up to ten hours or more, and accordingly, timely freezing of the brain will preserve its neural “topology”.
“The brain is our psyche, our entire personality. If we do not cremate, but cryopreserve, then we get a certain degree of probability that after some time it is possible to revive a person - in the broad sense. It doesn’t matter how it will be: like in the science fiction film “Superiority,” where information is loaded into a computer, or it will be an artificially grown body with an animated brain,” Ivan Stepin is convinced.
Most representatives of the scientific mainstream do not share this point of view, agreeing that for the possibility of resurrection it is necessary to freeze not a dead person, but a living person, which would be considered murder by law.
“I doubt that freezing a corpse will lead to anything,” doctor Andrei Zvonkov is perplexed. “Brain cells can live for some time after death, but a person’s personality lies not only in them, but also in the chemical processes that biological death inevitably stops.”
The chairman of the commission to combat pseudoscience, Evgeniy Aleksandrov, has repeatedly spoken out on this issue, noting that death is inevitable, and the activities of cryonicists “have no scientific basis.”
Nevertheless, some scientific infantilism of cryonics did not lead to its complete marginalization. Firstly, the followers do not state anything for sure, using indirect scientific evidence as evidence, for example, the ability of some creatures to suspended animation. Secondly, the ideas of immortality are in a general trend with more realistic ideas of life extension, which adds weight to them.
Opponents of Death
“They simply believe that a person does not have a second chance and everyone must die,” Alexei Samykin, a client and part-time Kriorus volunteer, shouts into the phone. Alexey reproaches scientists who oppose the ideas of cryonics for recognizing death.
Alexey, one of the first clients of Kriorus, cryopreserved his mother, who died of oncology, and also signed a contract for himself.
"Primitive delusion" - biotechnologist Sergei Evfratov, who wished to be cryonized, does not recognize the thesis that a person is either alive or dead.
It seems that adherents of cryonics are driven not by fear of death, but by indignation at it as an unfortunate misunderstanding.
Moreover, almost all clients of cryofirms are in one way or another related to science: doctors, biologists, bioinformaticians, philosophers, mathematicians. " Random people people who are new to the issue rarely contact us,” says Igor Artyukhov. This fact partly testifies in favor of cryonics.
Many who sign contracts for cryopreservation of themselves or loved ones help Kriorus as volunteers, and are also members of the transhumanist movement, of which, they believe, cryonics is a part.
The owners of Kriorus are sometimes called scammers who “exploit people’s hopes for profit.” Although, to be fair, fraudulent scheme involves deception of one party by the other, while the owners of the cryonics company and their clients seem to sincerely profess common values.
And the assertion, circulated by the tabloids, that this service is exclusively “for the rich,” raises doubts after communicating with future patients.
Indeed, cryopreservation services are not cheap. In Russia, body freezing will cost $36,000, neuropreservation (head or brain freezing) is cheaper: $15,000 for Russians, $18,000 for foreigners. The price includes the cryopreservation procedure and the cost of storing the body.
“Someone takes out loans to pay for the contract, and some of the 200 existing this moment contracts were concluded in installments,” explains Stepin. - If we are talking about young man, he can choose an insurance option that will pay $50-$100 monthly until he pays off the full amount.”
In the USA, cryogenic services are much more expensive. At Alcor, Arizona, founded in 1972 and currently employing about 200 people, the minimum fee for body cryopreservation is $200,000 and for brain-only preservation is $80,000. These prices apply to US citizens. and Canada, for foreigners they are several thousand higher.
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“This seems unusual to us, but any American can pay for these services through insurance, and does not have to be a wealthy person,” says Artyukhov. “In America, by the way, as in Russia, these are mostly people of a scientific bent.”
Among American celebrities, a cryopreservation contract sometimes becomes part of their public image. For example, Paris Hilton entered into an agreement with the Cryonics Institute to freeze herself and two dogs. Also among those who want to be frozen after death are Britney Spears and Larry King.
100 year contract
The activities of cryogenic companies, according to the law, are not prohibited in Russia. According to the law, a person can be cryopreserved not only with his consent, but also with the consent of the person who has the right to dispose of the body. Although, as a rule, they still try to get a person’s permission during his lifetime.
However, a personally executed wish does not guarantee the testator that the chances of immortality will be realized.
“A crowd of relatives comes running in, stands like a wall and does not allow anyone to approach the body, but the success of cryopreservation depends on the speed of perfusion,” worries Sergei Evfratov.
According to the law, you can begin the cryopreservation procedure only after receiving a death certificate.
“After the doctor determines the time of death, a certificate must be issued as quickly as possible. In an ideal situation, registration takes 15 minutes,” says Stepin.
anamejia18/istockphoto.com
If a person is in serious condition, Kriorus employees, as a rule, are on duty in hospitals and clinics so as not to “miss the moment.”
The duration of a contract for cryopreservation is a separate legal phenomenon: its validity is extended indefinitely - until technologies are invented that can bring the cryopatient back to life. The starting point from which the main duration of the contract ends is one hundred years later, and the contract is renewed automatically.
It is difficult to imagine what feelings such a period of waiting for what you want can cause. But the visit of “people from the future” - in white overalls - in contrast to the routine grief of morgue and funeral home employees, according to Kriorus clients, brings some relief to the relatives of the deceased.
“Relatives of cryopatients have the opportunity to visit the storage facility, and they do not come to the cemetery, but to a place from which their loved ones can return,” says Alexey Samykin. — Personally, I believe that in the status of cryonics patients, people are not dead, since some of the cells of their body are intact. And the decision to cryopreserve my mother seemed to me the only right one.”
The visit of “people from the future” - in white overalls - according to Kriorus clients, brings some relief to the relatives of the deceased
Prospects
“If humanity does not perish, sooner or later everything that we can imagine will become possible, and even that which we cannot yet,” Igor Artyukhov’s forecast sounds like a lulling prologue to a science fiction film.
Guided either by special scientific optics, or by the desire to operate with categories subject to human consciousness, he devotes no more than a century to the development of this area.
“I’ll be surprised if a breakthrough in cryonics happens in 20 years, and I’ll also be surprised if this doesn’t happen in a hundred years,” says Artyukhov.
Speaking about the possibility of reviving patients, cryonicists rely on the rapid development of nanotechnology, 3D printing of organs and tissues, brain modeling and other modern advances in medicine and biology.
fotografixx/istockphoto.com
In turn, some advances in cryobiology became possible due to the fact that cryobiologists were or are supporters of cryonics. One of the famous cryobiologists, Gregory Fay, put a large number of successful experiments on reversible freezing of organs and tissues, including preservation of a rabbit kidney in liquid nitrogen, after which the kidney did not die. According to the scientist, he was driven not so much by the desire to develop academic science as by the idea of improving the quality of human cryopreservation. Being a cryonics adept, Fei wished to be cryonicized after death.
According to followers, cryonics allows the development of methods that can be useful in other fields. For example, Dewar flasks, used to store bodies, subsequently began to be used in reproductive medicine.
Once in the everyday dictionary of the future along with artificial intelligence, technological singularity and robotization, cryonics, as futurologists believe, will sooner or later have a chance to become a reality. However, if immortality never turns out to be possible, why not dream about it during your lifetime.
