When I first heard about today’s story, I couldn’t help but think of two things.
The first was from my childhood. One of Batman’s enemies, Mister Freeze. Here’s how it went for him. His real name was Dr. Art Schivel, and he had been experimenting in his secret lab. Accidents will happen. And so it went with Dr. Schivel. He got covered in an experimental chemical he had been working with. Good old Batman tried to save him, but darn it. He’d already suffered the damage. It turned him into the dark and evil Mister Freeze. He could no longer survive in any temperature higher than fifty degrees below zero. He had to wear a cooling suit whenever he left his icy lair.
The second thing I think of is Han Solo. In The Empire Strikes Back, Han is frozen solid, his hands reaching out of his slab of pseudo-death. Yes, Darth Vader caught Han Solo and froze him in carbonite. Then Darth gave Han to the bounty hunter Boba Fett. Then Jabba the Hutt got a hold of him. A trail of ice cubes.
Of course, as you might have guessed, both things have to do with frozen. And so comes this story from the hot desert of Scottsdale, Arizona.
Some people there are frozen solid. It’s true. To date, 199 people have had their heads and bodies cryopreserved at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale. Cryogenics. Cryonics. The Big Chill.
These people have gone there after dying. They had help getting there, I should add. They were all frozen solid in hopes of being revived later.
Alco preserves bodies at below-freezing temperatures, and their goal is “restoring good health with medical technology in the future,” according to the non-profit organization’s website.
The “patients,” as they call them, shall remain nameless. Well. Maybe. They are stored in cylindrical tanks filled with liquid nitrogen. All these cylinders are lined up, side by side, at Alco. The patients aren’t only heads and bodies of humans but also animals. There are about an additional 100 pets stored there.
Some of the patients had terminal illnesses that lack a present-day cure, such as cancer or ALS. Current “modern” medicine couldn’t cure them.
Here’s how it goes if you are interested. The cryopreservation process begins as soon as a person is declared legally dead. At that moment, Alcor jumps in while the organs are still fresh. Immediately, the dead person goes into an ice bath. Then Alcor replaces their blood with an organ-preserving solution. Once they get to the Arizona facility, they do more chemical preservation. Alcor cools the body to minus 320.8 degrees Fahrenheit and stores it in a tank filled with liquid nitrogen.
But here is the thing. No cryonics people know how to bring life back to its preserved patients. But Alcor says they are confident it can be done.
Alcor was founded in 1972, but they weren’t the first. The first dead cryonics person went solid a decade earlier.
Certain medical and legal professionals are skeptical. Some are even hostile. They regard it as a hopeless aspiration. They say it goes against science.
Personally, I can’t say one way or the other. I’m not smart enough to know. But two things about this. For instance, no one thought a heart transplant would ever be possible two hundred years ago. Or a thousand other medical miracles that happen today. And the other thing? You can’t take your money with you. So if you have enough cashola? Why not freeze yourself? I mean. What could it hurt?
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How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge.
— Alan Turing
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Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
— Unknown
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