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FROZEN FOR THE FUTURE
Hundreds Gamble Up to $200,000 on the Hope of Waking Up in Another Century
By 222 News
Imagine dying today — only to have your body placed into a giant tank of liquid nitrogen at around −196°C, with the hope that people hundreds of years from now will possess the technology to bring you back.
This is the controversial idea behind cryonics: preserving a legally deceased person at extremely low temperatures in the hope that future medicine could repair the damage that caused death, reverse the damage associated with preservation and restore life.
Cryonics organisations already have hundreds of people in long-term preservation. For example, Alcor in the United States says it has more than 250 cryopreserved patients, while its current whole-body preservation price is $220,000.
The price varies considerably between organisations, but whole-body preservation can cost around $200,000 or more.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS?
Cryonics begins after legal death, rather than freezing a living person.
The body is rapidly cooled and treated with chemicals known as cryoprotectants. These are intended to reduce the formation of damaging ice crystals. In some procedures, a process called vitrification attempts to turn bodily fluids into a glass-like state rather than allowing conventional ice formation.
The preserved body can then be stored in liquid nitrogen for an indefinite period.
But there is a crucial distinction: cryopreservation of cells, embryos and certain tissues is established medical technology; successfully freezing and later reviving an entire human being is not.
THE BIG QUESTION: WILL THEY EVER WAKE UP?
At present, no cryonically preserved human has been successfully revived.
That means nobody can currently demonstrate that a person preserved after death can later be restored to normal biological life.
A recent report from Australia highlighted the uncertainty surrounding the technology. Southern Cryonics, which stores people at −196°C, reportedly has seven people in preservation. Its chairman estimated the chance of eventual revival at around 10% — an estimate from the organisation, not an established scientific probability. Scientists interviewed for the report said current science cannot revive a cryopreserved human.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
There are several enormous scientific obstacles.
1. Cellular damage
Cooling and preservation can damage cells and tissues. Ice formation, dehydration, chemical toxicity and physical stresses can all cause injury. Large organs are particularly difficult to preserve because different parts of the body can cool and respond differently.
2. The brain
Perhaps the greatest challenge is the brain.
A future revival would need to restore not merely a beating heart, but the extraordinarily complicated structures responsible for memory, personality and consciousness.
Even if the physical structure of the brain were preserved sufficiently, science does not currently know how to restore a legally deceased human brain to functioning consciousness.
3. The original cause of death
Freezing does not cure the disease that caused someone to die.
If a person died from cancer, heart disease, infection or another condition, a future revival technology would have to address that underlying problem as well as the damage caused by death and cryopreservation.
4. Damage caused before preservation
Cryonics normally begins after death. During the period between the heart stopping and preservation, tissues can be deprived of oxygen.
That creates another potential source of irreversible damage.
WOULD THE BODY FUNCTION NORMALLY IF IT WAS REVIVED?
There is no scientific evidence that a whole human body could currently be revived at all, let alone revived with normal brain function.
Future technology could theoretically be very different from today’s medicine, and some researchers and cryonics advocates argue that future techniques might eventually repair cellular and molecular damage.
However, this remains speculative.
A 2025 forecasting study involving people working in biostasis found that respondents considered provably reversible human cryopreservation to be a technology expected much later — if it can be achieved at all.
So a person waking up centuries later is not something modern medicine can currently promise.
WHAT WOULD LIFE LOOK LIKE IF IT DID WORK?
Even assuming the extraordinary technical problems were solved, another set of questions would remain.
Would the revived person remember their previous life?
Would their brain function exactly as before?
Would their personality remain unchanged?
Would they recognise their family?
What country would they legally belong to?
Would they have money, property or legal identity?
And perhaps the most profound question:
What would it feel like to wake up in a world where everyone you once knew had been dead for hundreds of years?
Cryonics therefore raises questions extending beyond medicine into law, ethics and philosophy. Researchers have already identified unresolved legal issues surrounding the status of cryopreserved people, contracts and the interests of families.
IS PAYING $200,000 WORTH THE RISK?
That ultimately depends on what someone believes they are purchasing.
They are not buying a guaranteed return to life.
They are paying for a preservation procedure based on the possibility that future generations might develop technologies capable of achieving something that is currently impossible.
For some people, the possibility of a future revival may be worth the financial cost. For others, the absence of demonstrated human revival makes the gamble unacceptable.
What is scientifically clear today is that human cryonic revival has not been demonstrated.
222 NEWS VERDICT: THE SCIENCE IS STILL UNWRITTEN
Cryonics sits on the boundary between established preservation science and a highly uncertain vision of future medicine.
Human cells and some tissues can be successfully preserved. Entire human beings cannot currently be frozen, thawed and returned to normal life.
The people stored in cryogenic facilities therefore remain dependent on discoveries that may take decades or centuries — and there is no guarantee those discoveries will ever arrive.
For the people who choose cryonics, the philosophy is essentially simple:
Preserve today. Hope for tomorrow.
But whether tomorrow’s scientists will actually be able to open the tanks and bring their occupants back to life remains one of the biggest unanswered questions in modern science.
Attached is a news article regarding people being frozen paying $200,000 dollars for the treatment hoping to wake up in the future
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250115-cryonics-the-start-up-that-wants-to-freeze-you-in-suspended-animation
Article written and configured by Christopher Stanley
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