Immortal life frozen, how come? : procedures, safety, side effects, and benefits

Familiar with the character Mr. Freeze, Batman's arch enemy who froze his wife and himself so they can reunite in the future? As it turns out, this isn't just fiction!

In 2015, a two-year-old Thai girl became the youngest person in the world to have her body frozen as a way to "preserve" her brain immediately after death from a rare brain cancer. This method was taken by both parents in the hope that their baby will one day be brought back to life. This idea of ​​cooling the body is done through a technology known as cryonics.

What is cryonics?

Cryonics is the latest technology in medical science whose goal is to save lives by involving cooling the bodies of "dead" people using liquid nitrogen where physical decay will stop, in the hope that future scientific procedures will one day bring people back to life. this and return them to good health.

Cryonic preservation is sometimes described as postponed death, or “postponed death,” because the cryonics patient's state does not change at all until revival time - like a time machine.

In countries where the practice of cryonics is legally enforceable, those responsible for this process can only do so on the dead - until recently, doing cryonics on people who were alive and well was considered illegal.

What is even more interesting is that cryonics technology does not only provide cooling services for the human body. Neurocryopreservation is one feature of the cryonics service that refers to the removal of the head - yes, just the head! - from someone who has been declared legally dead. In theory, the brain stores immeasurably important information, however trivial it may be, and that a new body could be created by cloning or that the original body could be regenerated in the future. In some cases, this cooling process is also used to ensure the future sustainability of species by freezing the sperm and eggs of endangered species.

The process of cooling the body through cryonics means being frozen, like ice?

Cooling the body through cryonics is very different from what most people think of as freezing, such as placing meat in your freezer at home. The main difference is a process called vitrification, in which more than 60% of the water in the body's cells is replaced with protective chemicals that prevent freezing and ice crystal formation even at cryonic temperatures (approx. -124 ° C). The purpose of cooling the body is to slow down molecular movements so that they are in a static state, effectively preserving cells and tissues indefinitely in their original state.

The main problem with the notion of “freezing the body” is the damage associated with freezing, in which the formation of ice crystals can damage body tissues, particularly the sensitive brain and nervous system tissues. Vitrification attempts to prevent freezing during deep cooling. Vitrification combined with a tightly controlled body cooling system has been shown to dramatically reduce and even eliminate the structural damage that would occur with regular freezing processes. Scientists have succeeded in restoring blood vessels that were once preserved by vitrification, and intact kidneys have also been rescued and transplanted using vitrification.

Cryonics uses medical life support equipment to keep blood circulating and oxygen flowing to the lungs to maintain the survival of tissues and organs during the initial cooling process. The cryonics process is very similar to standard emergency cardiac procedures, including breathing aids and cardiac compression equipment, such as an AED.

Has anyone been through this sophisticated body cooling process?

Yes. In addition to the latest examples of Thai girls above and laboratory animals, there are 300 people in the world who are still in a "frozen" state since the first time they undergo body cooling. Who are among them?

• Dr. James Bredford, a University of California psychology professor was the first person in history to have been cryonically frozen. Died in 19867, until now his body is still frozen and recent reports state that his condition is still the same as before.
  
• Dick Clair Jones, a producer, actor, and writer. He died from complications of AIDS. Jones is also a member of the Cryonics Society of California.
  
• Thomas K. Donaldson, mathematician. He believes that even after death, the brain continues to function actively and humans do not currently have the technology to access it.
  
• FM-2030, the “new” name for Fereidoun M. Esfandiary when his request to be revived in 2030 was successfully granted. Esfandiary died in 2000 of pancreatic cancer and hopes that future science will be able to replace natural organs with synthetic ones.
  
• Dora Kent, is the mother of Saul, a member of the board of directors of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation (59 people have been frozen by Alcor and kept in their facilities). Her 1987 "death" was controversial, as Saul believed that his mother was still alive when he was frozen - which led to an assassination attempt.
• Jerry Leaf, was vice president of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation who died of a heart attack in 1991.
• Ted Williams and John-Henry Williams, is a father and son who undergo cryonics on the basis of personal and voluntary decisions. Ted wants himself to be frozen through cryonics and asks his family to follow his will in order to be reunited as a whole family in the future. John-Henry then followed his father to undergo a body cooling in 2004.

Has anyone succeeded in being brought back to life after being frozen?

In the comics, Mr. Freeze manages to come back to life to take revenge on terrorizing Gotham city. Unfortunately, in the real world, nothing was actually brought back to life. The technology to cancel out the cooling effect of the body is still missing.

Scientists who perform cryonics say they haven't succeeded in bringing anyone back to life - and don't expect to be able to do so anytime soon. One of the problems is that if the heating process is not carried out at the right speed, the cells in the body can turn to ice and disintegrate.

Although there is still no evidence of successful resurrection in humans, living organisms can - and have been successful - to be revived from a dead or near death state. Defibrillators and CPR return accident and heart attack victims back from the dead on an almost daily basis. Neurosurgeons often cool the patient's body so they can dissect the aneurysm - an enlarged blood vessel in the brain - without damaging or rupturing the vessel. Human embryos that are frozen in a fertility clinic, thawed and implanted in the uterus of a mother grow up to become a normal human.

Cryobiologists hope that a new technology called nanotechnology will make "rising from the dead" a reality someday. Nanotechnology uses microscopic machines to manipulate a single atom - the smallest unit of an organism - to build or repair nearly everything, including human cells and body tissues. The hope is that, someday, nanotechnology will not only repair cell damage caused by freezing processes, but also damage caused by aging and disease.

What might happen if a person is successfully raised from the dead?

If revival was possible, this reincarnation was more than just opening their eyes and declaring a happy ending to those who were successful. They will soon face the challenge of rebuilding their lives as strangers in a world that is foreign to them. How they adapt successfully will depend on a number of factors, including how long they "froze", what society was like when they returned, whether they knew someone from the past when they were brought back to life, and in what form they came back. Answering these questions is a matter of assumption.

Some optimists predict that in the next 30 to 40 years humans will be able to develop medical technology that can improve biological systems, prevent disease, and even cancel the aging process. If it really works, then there is a chance that those who are frozen now will actually be welcomed back by the people they knew in their first life - their now grown grandchildren, for example.

However, it is possible that currencies and payment methods will no longer be effective in the future, and people will no longer have to work to live. A society that has achieved the medical breakthroughs necessary to cure disease and end aging may also be able to eradicate worldly poverty and greed at the same time. In a scenario like this, clothes, food and homes - perhaps made with a 3D printer or some other super-sophisticated means - would be abundant and freely available.

On the other hand, the imbalance between the past life and the time after it has risen again will affect the mental person with a serious disadvantage. Confused about time, alienated from society, and knowing that everyone and everything they ever knew is now gone, they are likely to suffer the symptoms of intense trauma. And, not to mention that some people may have to confront the reality of adapting to a new body because only their heads are preserved - giving rise to another new problem speculation: a crisis of identity. Trauma, like depression, can come in many forms, so trauma cryonics can trigger a person in forms and symptoms that we may never have seen before.

Even though there was much to be risked, some would still be willing to resist the bullet of death at all costs, if given the opportunity. Are you one of them?