Some scientists have taken the above mentioned 18th-century French lawyer and politician’s quote a bit too seriously and are trying to take it to its fruitful conclusion. So how to make somebody again alive after a person is dead? Well, ancient myths do give certain ideas, but here we are not talking about myths or legends.
This discussion is with a much more scientific inclination pertaining to health needs of certain group of people, who may not have had got the chance, to enjoy their life & were snatched away by death in an inopportune period of their life, because of an incurable disease. These people rightly deserve a second opportunity to be alive, but do we have the science to do this impossible task?
For all practical purpose, Cryonics can be defined as an experimental procedure, where a freshly died person’s body is frozen in a very low temperature (usually at -196-degree centigrade), with the aim to bring him/her back to life, in distant future when technology would have become more evolved to reverse death. The procedures currently undertaken in the present are done with the aim to preserve the person’s whole body after death.
Cryonics is expected to be just an extension of the process of Cryopreservation, where biological cells are preserved for an extended period of time by cooling them to extremely low temperatures. Care is taken so that the cells are in no way damaged. In contrast to Cryonics, which is an experimental attempt to preserve a person’s total body after his biological death, cryopreservation of small amount of human tissues, like – blood cells, bone marrow cells, germ cells, and embryos is successfully used for many medical procedures. However, cryopreservation of humans i.e. the total body (as a whole) is a totally different matter.
A lot of this experimental procedure is actually inspired by animals, who can withstand extremely cold temperatures. It may vary from rather simple methods like hibernation – where the animal concerned may opt for an extended sleep, to methods that are more complex & adapted for more extreme temperatures. These include Arctic ground squirrel (found in Alaska) which has the ability to stay frozen up to a period of 9 months (thereby avoiding the chilly winter). Another animal – wood frog also has an ability to survive like this for several months in subarctic temperature.
Unfortunately, the survival techniques of animals mentioned above can’t be directly replicated in humans, in the same way. The main hurdle is the physiological adaptation in animals, which is a bit different than that of humans. In humans extreme cold will cause, the water in cells to freeze, causing the rupture of cells. The animals can, however, survive extreme cold because of some special proteins that they produce, which keeps the interior of cells unfrozen & thereby prevents the destruction of cells, which occurs in humans. Here the question naturally arises is that, can humans survive like animals, if they have antifreeze compound present in their body like animals? It is here that cryonics comes in.
The procedures involved for cryopreservation begins soon after death to reduce cell damage to a minimal. For this purpose, the body is brought to a state of hypothermia (it is placed in an ice bath for this purpose). Cardiopulmonary support is artificially applied, so circulation & oxygen supply to vital organs, like the brain is maintained. For access to the circulatory system, intravenous & intraarterial lines are inserted. This would help in help in the administration of anticoagulants like heparin & vasodilators like nimodipine. Body temperature is gradually reduced.
Next, in the cryonics plant, blood is removed from the body and replaced by an organ preservation solution followed by cryoprotectant solution. Compounds like – ethylene glycol or dimethyl sulfoxide is usually used as a cryoprotectant solution, which allows the vitrification of cells (glass-like solidification) without associated cell damage. After the cryoprotectant has replaced the blood, (the exchange is completed) gradual cooling of the body to below 0 degrees is done. This can be easily done by exposure of the body (which is kept in a protective bag) in a cooling box to liquid nitrogen, by which temperature of -196-degree centigrade is easily reached over a few days.
After the process is completed, the person is placed inside a Cryostat (containing liquid nitrogen), where with a -196-degree centigrade temperature, the body can be preserved indefinitely, till a method is found in future to bring back these bodies back to life. This hopefully would give a second chance in life to all those people, who have died untimely due to diseases, which do not have any treatment now, but in the future, hopefully, will have a satisfactory treatment to reverse the pathological changes caused by the disease process.
Neuropreservation is a special kind of cryopreservation of humans where only the person’s head (the main target of preservation is brain) is preserved. This is done with the belief that it would be possible to get a new body for the head (with the person’s functioning brain and intact consciousness), in the future, either by cloning or by regenerative procedures devised in the future. Baseball player – Ted Williams, who expired in the year 2002 has had his head cryogenically preserved (as a neuropreservation strategy), so when the opportune moment arrives, it can be reattached to a new body and revived to give the sportsman a new life.
The cryopreservation of humans started in 1967 when a psychology professor at the University of California – Dr. James Hiram Bedford was cryopreserved. The professor had died of kidney cancer on 12th January 1967. He was 73 at the time of his death and became the first person to be cryogenically frozen in the world.
Dr. James Hiram Bedford’s body is in Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA; which is one of the best institutes involved with cryopreservation of humans. However, when Dr. Bedford died at a California nursing home, cryonics was still at its infancy. So, the preservation of his body was done by a much more relatively simpler method. After death, he was injected with dimethyl sulfoxide (to prevent tissue damage), shifted to a box of dry ice & finally submerged in liquid nitrogen.
His body was moved from one place to another, due to multiple different problems. After his wife’s death in 1982, Dr. Bedford’s body has been with a company that later became Alcor. In 1991 his body was moved to a new storage tank. The company remains optimistic about his return to life in the future.
Cryopreservation of humans is a costly affair and not everybody can afford it. There are only a handful of companies, which offer these complicated procedures as of now. Getting their technicians and facilities to the person who has already taken a previous membership with the company providing the cryonic services is a challenging affair. These can alter the cost factor to a great extent. However, the cost of the procedure usually varies between $28,000 to $200,000. In spite of spending so much money, there is not an absolute guarantee, that the procedure may work in the future.
At present, there are around three hundred and fifty people all over the world frozen in cryostats in cryonics facilities of cryonics companies providing the services. These three Cryonics companies providing the facilities are – Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA; Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township in Michigan (USA); and KrioRus near Moscow, Russia.
An estimated three thousand people all over the world have also decided to get their bodies cryopreserved after their death and are waiting for their turn to undergo the procedure and get into the Cryonics chamber. Here it would be important to add that Robert Ettinger, who is considered as the father of cryonics and who founded Cryonics Institute in 1976, has chosen to follow the path that he himself believed in. His body along with the body of his mother, his first and second wife is preserved in the same institute.
One of the most common cases, quoted by advocates of the experimental cryonics procedure, in support of the procedure is the incidence of a 14-year-old girl, known only by her initials JS. JS died of a rare form of cancer, but before her death she fought a rather famous court battle (which became a piece of very famous news in 2016), where she successfully got the permission of the court, to allow her to preserve her body after her death. Hopefully, cryonics would give many such unfortunate individuals a second opportunity to be alive.
Many believe that the process of cryopreservation of humans will always remain optimistic self-delusion at best and waste of resources at worst. Brain and nervous system and its connections are very complicated and bringing them back to a functional form after centuries of cryonic freezing won’t be easy. The same goes for the heart & circulatory system or kidney & excretory system.
Cryopreservation of humans should be initiated within a few minutes of a patient’s death. However, this is certainly not easy to achieve, as the cryonics team entrusted for the job may not always be at the patient’s bedside at the time of his/her death. This may compromise the whole procedure, involved in cryopreservation of humans, as without blood circulation, the heart and brain cells would soon suffer irreversible damage.
Skeptics have also expressed doubts about the efficiency of cryoprotectant solutions used. They believe that it does not prevent freezing damage, as they do not penetrate the cells. So, the tissues, in this case, can’t recover their original function ever. Besides the technology to revive these people is not available at present & is certainly doubtful, that they will be ever invented.
Besides the scientific challenges anticipated, there are other human factors too, that can’t be overlooked. Even in the best-case scenarios, if the cryonics procedure becomes successful and the individual is successfully revived, would he/she be successful in adapting to the changing world? How are they going to survive without any family, friends or financial support? Who would take the responsibility of rehabilitating these people to the rapidly changing different world? And this is the best-case scenario. At the worst, the cryopreserved humans may also suffer some major organ/functional damage while they are brought back to life, which can critically impair their lifestyle.
Obviously, the cryopreservation of humans is a controversial issue. Not all countries in the world have laws to approve the disposal of a dead body by Cryonics experimental procedure. While some people believe that cryonics is an impossible dream that would never materialize and even selling people the hope should be illegal. Many experts, even in the healthcare profession, believe that Cryonics is only pseudoscience, with no real-life prospects.
On the other side, there are those who would do anything to get a second chance in life, even if that comes after death. Unfortunately, in the current scenario, the cryonic companies are just hoping that they have a good chance of success but offer no guarantees to the people, that they would be successfully resuscitated in future without any adverse effect to the body and mind.
Finally, it has to be understood, that every successful scientific advancement, which is accepted as a part of daily life in the current world, was made possible by the audacity of a handful of individuals. If a dying person wants to hope for a better future, who are others to take that hope away from them. Let only time decide the fate of those, who have decided to challenge the constraints of time.
