Can we freeze a body and then revive it?

Cryonics has captured the imagination of filmmakers and novelists for decades.
photo: Youtube

In the small town of Holbrook between Sydney and Melbourne lies a frozen body. It will likely remain that way for some time.

The body of an 80-year-old man who died in May is the first to be frozen in Australia under the name of cryonics in the hope that it can one day be revived. The body is placed upside down in a vacuum storage container at a temperature of about -200 degrees Celsius. The facility is reportedly operated by Southern Cryonics, which has been preparing for “Patient No. 1” for more than 14 years. ABC.

Cryonics has captured the imagination of filmmakers and novelists for decades, and has made fortunes for tech billionaires. However, Professor Gary Bryant from RMIT’s School of Science said the idea of ​​successfully freezing the dead and resurrecting them has proven to be little more than a hopeful experiment.

“There is absolutely no scientific evidence that it can work, at least with the technology we have at the moment,” he told RNZ. nightcalling cryonics technology “pseudoscience.”

What is cryonics?

The term is used to describe the idea that we can freeze a human body and revive it later. According to Bryant, people have been trying to preserve the human body through cryonics since the late 20th century.

It should not be confused with cryogenics, which is the study of how materials are affected at low temperatures. Cryobiology is the study of how organisms behave at low temperatures.

Why is cryonics technology not possible?

Freezing a human body in a way that doesn’t harm it isn’t as simple as just dropping it to below freezing.

There are about 250 different types of cells in the human body, and “we can now successfully freeze very small numbers of them as isolated cells,” Bryant said, pointing to sperm, eggs and blood cells as some of the successful examples.

Take blood, for example. In order to freeze blood without damaging it, the red blood cells need to be separated from the white blood cells and frozen through different freezing processes. “They all have different optimal freezing conditions,” Bryant said.

Freezing human tissue is a work in progress. “We can’t successfully freeze tissue at this point.” The brain and other organs are another challenge.

Not only must the body be frozen without causing further damage, Bryant said, “you have to hope that at some point in the future the person can be resurrected. That’s about as unscientific as it gets — we don’t know how to resurrect the dead.”

To do that successfully, he added, science may also have to find a cure for the cause of their death.

How do cryonics companies freeze bodies?

Bryant said the body must first be cooled to just above zero degrees. The body fluids are replaced with a cryoprotectant to help preserve the body. The body is then slowly frozen with liquid nitrogen.

According to ABC, the 80-year-old’s body temperature quickly dropped to 6 degrees Celsius after his death. The body was then taken to a funeral home where it was injected with antifreeze to protect the cells. The body was wrapped in something like a sleeping bag filled with dry ice and cooled to minus 80 degrees.

Once the remains were transferred to the Holbrook facility, they were cooled further using liquid nitrogen and then placed upside down in a vacuum storage container.