Increasing Number Of People Are Freezing Themselves In Cryogenic Pods To Cheat Death, Touted As ‘Ambulance To The Future’

Metro.UK did a full piece into this growing concept, interviewing and investigating a cryogenic center in Michigan that stores these corpses in icy graves, some of them being there for a number of decades, believing that someday mankind would eventually unlock the key to reanimate their bodies thereby cheat death.

The following is by Metro (excerpts):

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Suspended in a deep freeze, the growing number of ‘patients’ at the world’s biggest cryo-preservation facilities are taking a dice roll at another life. Some have been there for nearly 50 years. Despite the current odds being vanishingly small, they represent an increasing number of people opting for an indefinite existence at -196C after their legal deaths.  

The sleek white vats that stand in rows at the Cryonics Institute (CI) storage facilities in Michigan represent an increasing number of bodies, body parts and pets from around the world – all opting for an indefinite existence at -196°C after their legal deaths.

Frozen in liquid nitrogen, they await possible future technological advances to revive them. Among those ‘living in this ‘living’ in this arctic limbo are chefs, students, secretaries and professors. And it turns out that Brits are the most keen takers outside the US. 

CI president Dennis Kowalksi tells Metro.co.uk that he regards the centres as a place of ‘awe and responsibility’. mBut it’s more of a waiting game than a place worthy of a sci-fi imagining.

The longest-running patient, Rhea Ettinger, has been in her sub-zero waiting room since 1977. Her son Robert C. W. Ettinger, a decorated World War Two veteran regarded as the founding father of cryonics, is also in indefinite storage, along with his first and second wives. Mr. Kowalski conjured the visions of Leonardo da Vinci as he spoke of his conviction that humankind will one day be able to reverse engineer nature, and achieve the CI’s holy grail of reanimating the clinically dead.  He said:

Ironically, while the number of members is growing, I’m only surprised that we’re not more popular.

What we are doing is pretty rational when you think about it. Cryonics is like an ambulance ride to a future hospital that may or may not exist some day. While we give no guarantees, if you are buried or cremated your chances of coming back are zero. We are therefore a Pascal’s wager, or a gamble with little to lose and all to gain.

We don’t know if this will work but we believe life is precious and that there is no greater value than the love of our family and friends who we wish to save.

Inside the main, hangar-like facility, ‘cryostats’ housing around 250 patients stand in neat rows. The 7,000 square foot centre in Clinton Township, otherwise known as a farming community, is now at capacity so newcomers who have paid for full-body preservation at prices starting at $28,000 (£22,000) are being stored at a new facility nearby. Around 10 or 20 places have been taken up so far.

Of the living 1,975 CI members around the world, 128 who are interested in having their bodies, body tissue or pets deep frozen are British. Only the US is better represented, with 1,374 residents signed up, according to figures released in December by the institute.

Once they are declared clinically dead, members’ bodies are placed in ice and transported to the new facility, where a perfusion takes place to replace the body’s blood and water with a special cryo-protection mixture which stops ice forming. The solution acts as a form of anti-freeze for ultra-low temperatures.

The patient is then placed in a computer-controlled unit and cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature at –321F over five and a half days before being carefully lowered into the cryostat.

Scientific advances — particularly in the field of nanotechnology and its potential to work at the level of the human cell structure — are helping to make the case for the journeys.  

Even if the elixir becomes reality, however, the science would, in many cases, also need to reverse the ageing process and the condition which caused a person’s medical death.  

Mr. Kowalksi is clear that his organisation only offers a gamble, albeit with the odds increasing with rapid development in fields also including artificial intelligence and stem cell treatment.  

We offer a chance at the future.

We were founded in 1976 and everything we’ve said is going to happen is starting to come true. Advances in fields such as genetic engineering, stem cell regeneration and artificial intelligence are being used in conventional science and medicine where they didn’t exist before. 

A hundred years ago if I said there was a technique for bringing back the dead I might have been run out of town, even if I had explained how to use CPR or a defibrillator to revive someone.

These days they are recognised techniques. The same thing can be said with heart or liver transplants, which would have been seen as Frankenstein-like in the past. Another example would be Leonard da Vinci and his visions of flying machines, which he produced more than 500 years ago.  

The same thing is starting to happen with cryonics, we just haven’t worked out how to fully reverse-engineer nature yet. Advances are also being made in stem cell treatments that may one day be able to reverse whatever killed you as well as the ageing process.

The ambulance is there, and if technological trends continue, the hospital will be too.

He explained

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

You think that’s cold? Try meeting and standing before the Lord sometime:

[15] He sendeth forth his commandment upon earth: his word runneth very swiftly. [16] He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes. [17] He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold? [18] He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow. [19] He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel. [20] He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the LORD.

Psalms 147:15-20

As we know, those that have sense and those who are saved, understand that there is no such thing as cheating death (unless of course you are born again, that is, which we know and believe and hope for the coming resurrection (Colossians 3:1-4; John 11:23-27); but even so, man is appointed to die and will lay in the grave and turn back to dust; and since evolutionary philosophy teaches there is no such thing as a soul and spirit, and we are only flesh and just a set of memories and experiences, these people think that by freezing themselves they can be one day resurrected. I sure hope the power doesn’t go out.

[18] I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. [19] For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. [20] All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. [21] Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Ecclesiastes 3:18-21, 12:7

But my ‘o my are these folks in for a shock!

[18] He is swift as the waters; their portion is cursed in the earth: he beholdeth not the way of the vineyards. [19] Drought and heat consume the snow waters: so doth the grave those which have sinned. [20] The womb shall forget him; the worm shall feed sweetly on him; he shall be no more remembered; and wickedness shall be broken as a tree.

Job 24:18-20

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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

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