2024-07-18 22:04:24
Boom by those who wish for the center by hibernation in Zurich, mostly from men on average age
More than 400 people from Europe are on the list of those wishing to be frozen after death at the newly opened hibernation center in Zurich. All potential clients are clearly warned that there is no guarantee that if in 100 years a cure is found for their now incurable disease and their bodies are warmed, they will resurrect and be cured.
And yet there are many candidates for hibernation post mortem, or a state of regulated hypothermia after death, and they are mostly scientific researchers and engineers.
It is an experiment or rather a challenge of future biotechnologies. If it is now possible to freeze eggs and sperm and preserve them for the future, many believe that a similar approach can be taken with the dead bodies of terminally ill patients. A similar alternative, but without guarantees, is offered by the startup Tomorrow Biostasis of the 38-year-old Berlin doctor Emil Kendziora. It recently opened its center in Zurich, Switzerland.
How exactly does it work?
The service is intended for people on the verge of death, suffering from an incurable disease. As soon as legal death is established, the center’s specially equipped ambulances arrive at the scene. This should be within 1 hour of death. The ambulances themselves are getting cold. At the same time, they are also
chest compressions basket and oxygen administration
through oxygen masks. The goal is not to resurrect the corpse, but to delay cell death, which begins immediately. That is bodies remain as they were at the hour of death. Then they are cooled, put in ice and transported as quickly as possible to Switzerland – in Rafz, in the canton of Zurich, where the company’s warehouses are located. The place was not chosen by chance – crime here is almost zero, as well as the risks of floods or earthquakes.
After that
drains the blood from the corpse and in her place injects a mixture of antifreeze
and various chemical ingredients for body preservation. This process is called vitrification. Only after that, the body is immersed in a 3 m high steel vessel with liquid nitrogen at a negative temperature – 196 degrees below zero. No electric current is used.
Thus begins the long wait for the eventual awakening in the future, if it happens at all – after 100, 200, 500 years. The hope is that after centuries they will “resurrect”, heal and rejuvenate the human organisms frozen in the present.
So far, not many results have been registered and the doctors do not hide it. The only step forward was marked in 2016, when a team of scientists managed to thaw the brain of a rabbit without damage after 5 years of experiments. However, this does not mean that the same can be done with the human brain. However, Tomorrow Biostasis promises that it can keep the body frozen for over 100 years. For this, 200,000 euros are needed, which should cover the long-term costs of cryopreservation (the preservation of tissues and cells by freezing). However, there is also a service offering to freeze only the brain – this costs 60 thousand euros.
There are requests for a freeze from dozens of European cities. Applicants are mostly men aged 25-45 – researchers, computer specialists, engineers. Currently, nearly 400 bodies are cryopreserved, 15 of them Italian, and 4 are in the new facilities next to Zurich.
Cryogenics (working at low temperatures) is practiced today mostly in the United States and China. The two most important suppliers in this field are the American Cryonics Institute in Detroit and the Alcor company in Arizona. However, the Russian KrioRus has also been operating in this sector since 2006. There are hundreds of companies in the world that offer the service related to transportation to these seats.
A total of 500 bodies have been cryopreserved worldwide since 1967, but there are 5,000 people on the waiting list.
The German company offering the “service” to freeze the human body makes no guarantees. Many scientists are skeptical because the process of vitrification
can inflict brain damage
while cryopreservation is already used in modern medicine in the freezing of sperm, eggs and embryos. Among other things, there are still no answers to the question of what will happen to the patient’s cognitive abilities, memory and personality, and whether they will be changed by the freezing and by the eventual awakening – of course, if it comes to it at all.
The hibernation technique dates back to the 1960s. On January 12, 1967, the procedure was completed for the world’s first patient – University of California psychology professor James Bedford. He died of a tumor at the age of 73. His body is still in a steel container in Arizona, where it has been cryogenically placed – waiting to one day be brought back to life.
According to experts on hibernation, if there are any results from it at all, then they could possibly be expected only if the human body is cryopreserved while alive. Thus, the development of a terminal disease can be stopped and the day when new therapies are discovered. Today, however, nowhere in the world is cryopreservation allowed to be applied to living people, even in the cases of terminally ill and suffering physical and mental patients.