Can A Human Be Frozen And Brought Back To Life?
We see it all the time in movies. A person gets frozen or put in “suspended animation” and then unfrozen at a later date with no aging taking place, or ill effects. Sometimes this happens on purpose, like to someone with an incurable disease hoping a cure exists in the future, or sometimes by accident, like someone getting frozen in a glacier.
Is there any science behind “cryogenics”?
The science behind it does exist and the application of the practice is called ‘cryonics’. It’s a technique used to store a persons body at an extremely low temperature with the hope of one day reviving them. This technique is being performed today, but the technology behind it is still in its infancy.
Someone preserved this way is said to be in cryonic suspension. The hope is that, if someone has died from a disease or condition that is currently incurable, they can be “frozen” and then revived in the future when a cure has been discovered.
Why wait until you’re dead to be frozen? Won’t it be too late then?
It’s currently illegal to perform cryonic suspension on someone who is still alive. Those who wish to be cryogenically frozen must first be pronounced legally dead – which means their heart has stopped beating. Though, If they’re dead, how can they ever be revived? According to companies who perform the procedure, ‘legally dead’ is not the same as ‘totally dead.’ Total death, they claim, is the point at which all brain function ceases. They claim that the difference is based on the fact that some cellular brain function remains even after the heart has stopped beating. Cryonics preserves some of that cell function so that, at least theoretically, the person can be brought back to life at a later date.
How is Cryonics Performed?
After your heart stops beating and you are pronounced legally dead, the company you signed with takes over. An emergency response team from the facility immediately gets to work. They stabilize your body by supplying your brain with enough oxygen and blood to preserve minimal function until you can be transported to the suspension facility. Your body is packed in ice and injected with an anticoagulant to prevent your blood from clotting during the trip. A medical team is on standby awaiting the arrival of your body at the cryonics facility.
After you reach the cryonics facility, the actual freezing can begin.
Don’t they just drop you in a huge pot of liquid nitrogen?
They could, and while you’d certainly be frozen, most of the cells in your body would shatter and die. As water freezes, it expands. Since cells are made up of mostly water, freezing expands the “stuff” inside which destroys their cell walls and they die. The cryonics companies need to remove and/or replace this water. They replace it with something called a cryoprotectant. Much like the antifreeze in an automobile. This glycerol based mixture stops and protects against your organs and tissues by hindering the formation of ice crystals. This process is called “vitrification” and allows cells to live in a sort of suspended animation.
After the vitrification, your body is cooled with dry ice until it reaches -202 Fahrenheit. After this pre-cooling, it’s finally time to insert your body into the individual container that will be placed into a metal tank filled with liquid nitrogen. This will cool the body down to a temperature of around -320 degrees Fahrenheit.
The procedure isn’t cheap. It can cost up to $200,000 to have your whole body preserved. For the more frugal optimist, a mere $60,000 will preserve your brain with an option known as neurosuspension. They hope the technology in the future will allow them to clone or regenerate the rest of the body.
So does it work?
Many critics say the companies that perform cryonics are simply ripping off customers with the dream of immortality and they won’t deliver. It doesn’t help that the scientists who perform cryonics say they haven’t successfully revived anyone, and don’t expect to be able to do so anytime soon. The largest hurdle is that, if the warming process isn’t done at exactly the right speed and temperature, the cells could form ice crystals and shatter.
Despite the fact that no human placed in a cryonic suspension has yet been revived, some living organisms can be, and have been, brought back from a dead or near-dead state. CPR and Defibrillators can bring accident and heart attack victims back from the dead daily. Neurosurgeons often cool patients’ bodies so they can operate on aneurysms without damaging or rupturing the nearby blood vessels. Human embryos that are frozen in fertility clinics, defrosted and implanted in a mother’s uterus grow into perfectly normal human beings. Some frogs and other amphibians have a protein manufactured by their cells that act as a natural antifreeze which can protect them if they’re frozen completely solid.
Cryobiologists are hopeful that nanotechnology will make revival possible someday. Nanotechnology can use microscopic machines to manipulate single atoms to build or repair virtually anything, including human cells and tissues. They hope one day, nanotechnology will repair not only the cellular damage caused by the freezing process, but also the damage caused by aging and disease. Some cryobiologists have predicted that the first cryonic revival might occur as early as year 2045.
I heard that liquid nitrogen can freeze someone up to a point where you can actually break a part of their body.
Ummm, just putting this out there, I know that it would be a huge breakthrough if scientists created a way to bring the dead back to life, but wouldn’t that not be such a good idea to do it a lot? I know it won’t happen any time soon, but if at sometime it does become a regular thing, then Humans would loose the reason to be careful at some point. And what if someone wants to die? They might be revived without wanting to be. Then that would just be a waste, even though if it was depression and they could be treated…… And the last and biggest of problems, IF this becomes regular, IF all of that has happened, then after a long time, the world would be too full. There would be no room for more, and then what? People that were old and ready to use the thing wouldn’t be able to, because the world would be to cramped. Just something to think about, -Ava
Well, we aren’t freezing criminals. We are freezing people that are voluntarily giving their body to cryogenics labs for the purpose of being revived later on. It’s their personal choice, you cannot deny someone life if they wish to live. As for those who kill themselves, they cannot be revived as they would have caused so much damage to their body in order to kill themselves that reviving by any means would be time consuming and ridiculous. Life isn’t something meaningless, even if it becomes widely available. There is only so much damage someone can do to their body before it becomes beyond repair. Plus, it’s near impossible to ever think that a body left dead and already rotting could be revived, not that scientists don’t have the technology but because repairing EVERY single cell is a waste of time and if the person did not pay to be revived in case of death when they were living, then they would be left as dead. To answer your question of population troubles> as of now, the rate of babies being born won’t double our population. So although we have hit the 7billion mark (or is it 8?), the world’s population will be slowly decreasing. There is currently no over population crisis (unless you speak of over population per area, places like india, china, etc.). Under population is a new issue we will face in the next century, but not drastic, the population will just stay on a steady rate of decrease, which is more than enough to cause concern. So in the future, the world can use as many people as it can get. There will always be people who would rather be dead than live forever. And although revival of humans will undoubtedly become as normal to future people as touchscreens are to us today, there are many moral issues. Such as reviving those who do not wish to be revived. It will never become common medical practice for the average person. Family members may request revivals for their loved ones, people currently sign onto the cryogenic freezing so that when they die, they will be frozen. I really see no issues in revival of humans or any other animals. but, you wont be seeing any 500 year dead corpses coming back, not with life memories of course.
I know how you feel about this, and I understand why u would want this to stop.
But this is something that I very much desire, I would love to go way way way into the future. The world wouldn’t be cramped because hopefully by then they would have been able to discover the right technology and the right energy source to be able to travel far distances in short amounts of time, to find more habitable planets like ours and to transport people to them. We can free up space.
All very good points, but there are ways to solve each of these problems. Knowing that life is precious and can be indefinite people will be more determined to live life in a more perfect way having respect for their health and that of others. Things that cause harm to the body will be eliminated. No more pollution, cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs and no violence. No dangerous circumstances like cars or planes or even ladders as they exist today. Population will be controlled on this planet to less than a half a billion which has been thought of as the maximum sustainable for its resources and population density to overcome disease from underdeveloped nations which would then become developed by way of an ever growing knowledge and technological advance.
Society itself would not think that it reached a utopia of perfection, that would just exist in a world where a higher conscience was found and it was normal for people to live in harmony with nature and each other on this planet less they find themselves expelled which after the first century it would be nearly impossible to find someone of that caliber because genetically they would be all but extinct. When the safety of all persons is felt on the earth, great advances will become realities. There will be nothing to fight about, only time to experience things that count. Cryogenics could be accomplished right now just as it was for rockets to carry astronauts into space, only the compatibility factor and survival of the traveler is at risk at this time. As far as the theory and science are concerned there are risks and side effects that are present. But I would gamble my life to prove it because I believe that not only does it out weigh the negative, but that if done properly to the right person it will instill the confidence that nearly everyone will want this done.
Not everyone in this world is filthy rich, so not everybody could afford to be brought back to life.
Here’s the thing, if you are old you will die. Your cells cant just stay the same the whole time. Even if so, they charge lots of money for this and if they make one mistake, you are gone forever. The world won’t overcrowd. The elderly with be unfrozen and will die. They most likely wont have family and cant pay for the cost to do it again.
You are right, there are moral issues as well. If you believe in a God, you would not want to freeze yourself to be revived if you believe you are going into another life. This is followed by questions like “what if you are revived but the spirit is no longer there”? For those that are atheists etc are things that are positive, like imagine if Einstein could have been revived and what he would contribute to science… or Bach to music etc… Civilization, art and technology could possibly have grown in ways too big to contemplate. Then again, maybe the idea could have been with us longer. It’s really open to interpretation in a million different ways.
Finally, you might be revived to find out the world was destroyed by a super meteor many years ago, or world war 3 happened, or the sun has spent its fuel and engulfed the earth… Brrrr, I don’t want to think of that one.
Well said, but if there’s meteors and the sun is running outta fuel, you probably wouldn’t have woken up.
That’s a really good point. And if you believe in reincarnation your soul could be in another body by then since I doubt it would wanna stick around and wait. Especially when presented with a total new adventure and body and life and life mission. Perhaps you are dead because you experienced what you were supposed to and it was time to move on to the next experience. Perhaps we choose the life, and the people in it close to you. Anyways, having the spiritual part addressed is a good conversation and worth considering. I think that cryogenics are very interesting… and perhaps if we genetically modify humans with the cells in frogs and certain types of fish that allow them to freeze, then you can do the cryogenics successfully in a shorter period of time. That would be very scary and I hope that doesn’t happen though I bet in some countries GMO humans as well as cloning humans are being experimented with illegally.
I wonder if keeping just the brain would be more realistic since it is less to unfreeze and the matter would me all fairly consistant. Then you have the moral issue of cloning someone and raising them till their brain is the same size and then killing them for a brain transplant. Interesting stuff I gotta say. If you are a couple that doesn’t have much to talk about, this would be a good conversation piece. Like that Month Python scene :)
this will happen and there are a lot of chances for this to happen soon
,the chances for this to happen soon are very evident from the pace at which science is progressing.
If human can be brought back to life. That means there will be no room for human habitation on earth since human only have 29percent space to live out of which 5 to 8 percent are deserted area. It is a good idea lets try make it work on or before 2045. Chimaobi
Since human can be revive back to life if legally dead. Then can a Stamara stop stamaring through medical way. Thomas.
Are you high?????
I believe there is a catapillar called the Wooly Bear, gets completely frozen in the arctic winter and gets thawed the next spring, for many years until its ready to form a cocoon.
Hi, is it true that you have to freeze yourself the moment before you die in order to be bought back to life?
You get frozen immediately after you’re declared legally dead, which is the point at which doctors stop working on you anyway. Legal death means your heart has stopped but your brain can be preserved, which would be necessary to retain personality and memory if cryogenics works.
I thought you could be frozen. Hmm, weird…
Bad idea. Over-population will happen with this because of how easily accessible this will become. Linda like how iPads and mobile phones become cheaper over time. Before you know it, everyone will be wanting the extra 20 years or so of life and we will go into a depression but eventually come through. I do not want my descendants suffering from the likes of anothers selfish ways. Scientists should spend more time and money on the problems of today and not tomorrow.
Even if one was able to be brought back to life, without the soul, which departed to their ultimate reward or punishment, would they be the same people they were in life? I’m not so sure. Does anyone have the answer to that? If so, I’d like to know.