What If You Were Cryogenically Frozen? | Unveiled

What If You Were Cryogenically Frozen?

We know that freezing food helps to preserve it for longer periods of time, saving it from spoiling by slowing down the movement of the molecules at work inside of it. But could the same thing ever work with human beings? More than a popular theme for science fiction, is there really a way to use the power of cold to our advantage?

This is Unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What if you were cryogenically frozen?

Strictly speaking, the term “cryogenics” really has nothing to do with specifically freezing bodies. It’s actually a broader science working with the lowest possible temperatures, down to absolute zero. The cold storing of a body in particular is actually called “cryonics”, yet both similar-sounding terms are often used to mean the same thing. Regardless, anyone undergoing the procedure has to have been declared dead beforehand; it’s illegal to cryonically freeze a living person.

The extreme temperatures required for the process have to be induced slowly and methodically; it isn’t as simple as just submerging a corpse in liquid nitrogen. Generally speaking, though, those who undergo cryonic treatment do so in the belief that one day in the future (when the technology becomes available) they’ll be “brought back to life”; that they’ll awake in a different era, but with the minds and bodies that they had always had. Theoretically, their “resurrection” could come at a future time when a cure becomes available for whatever they died of in the first place. But, it’s by no means a guaranteed route to “rising again”, and cryonics is generally regarded as speculative or as a pseudoscience at present.

Nevertheless, a number of people have already undergone cryonics in the hopes of preserving their lives. Psychologist James Bedford was the first person to ever be frozen post-death, and January 12th - the date his body was cryopreserved - is referred to as “Bedford Day” in the cryonics community. Perhaps the most famous figure to opt for preservation is the 1940s and ‘50s Major League Baseball star Ted Williams, whose son later followed suit in the hope that he’d be reunited with his father in the future. Despite widespread reports that the animation icon Walt Disney was also frozen, there’s no real evidence to suggest that that’s what actually happened… but rather that Disney was cremated in California after his death.

There are various grades of cryopreservation, too, with some choosing to freeze just their heads, rather than their entire body. The reasoning here generally being that by the time we have the technology to revive people out of their frozen hibernation, we’ll also have perfected artificial, robotic bodies that function better than our own organic ones… and the un-frozen heads could be attached to one of those.

In either case, say you wanted to go ahead with cryonics after death; How does the procedure itself unfold? Before the extreme temperatures of liquid nitrogen are induced, the body has to be prepped for the experience - ideally as quickly as possible, after death has been declared. Without this preparation, the cells that make up the body would almost instantly shatter, deeming the attempt at preservation a total disaster.

First, the blood and water in the body and brain is drained and replaced with a cryoprotectant substance in a process called perfusion. The cryoprotectant prevents ice from forming so that organs aren’t severely damaged by the low temperatures they’ll be subjected to. The body is then slowly frozen over a number of days - until a temperature below minus-130 degrees Celsius is reached. Only now is it ready to be suspended in liquid nitrogen, similar to what’s sometimes seen in science fiction. Since the body is now drained of water, the organs and tissues are preserved by the extreme temperatures, rather than damaged by them; the cryopreserved person is in stasis and won’t decompose… ready for if science ever discovers how to safely “bring them back”.

Indeed, surviving cryonics is still the great unknown… and no one has successfully been “brought back” after being frozen. The solution, though, could lie with frogs. Wood frogs, found in North America, have an incredible ability to freeze themselves, to the point where they show no vital signs for weeks, before thawing out and continuing with their lives. Scientists think that they’re able to do this by giving themselves large doses of glucose (which acts as a cryoprotectant) during their hibernation. There’s still a long way to go from us understanding this particular adaptive trait to replicating it ourselves, though. There have been some cases where individual animal organs are frozen and thawed back to functionality with some success… but we’ve never seen anything like it for an entire body.

Until science and technology does find a way to revive a cryonically frozen anything, anyone undergoing the procedure is effectively “stored” indefinitely in large containers, sometimes communally alongside other frozen corpses. In many ways it’s a bleak and dystopic vision, but if you were frozen and you ever were reawakened, then it could well feel to you like no time had passed at all. Your last memory would be the one right before your death… only now you’d exist in what could be a completely different, future world. You might be one of the “first of your kind”; an early example of someone successfully brought back. Or you could arrive at a time when reanimating corpses is common practice. But equally, there’s the risk that you’d end up being an unsuccessful case study; an example of an attempted revival that didn’t work out.

In fact, that risk (made worse by the toxicity of current cryoprotectants) is one of the many reasons why cryonics is at best doubted and at worst discounted completely by mainstream science. But there are major ethical concerns, as well. For one, as cryonics is only legal after you’re pronounced dead, how can you really be dead if there’s still the hope that one day in the future you’d be alive again? But, also, there’s the problem that anyone undergoing cryonics is placing their hopes in the hands of an unknown future society - one which would have the power to pick and choose who to resurrect, and when to do it. But even before then, they’re banking on whichever cryonics company they opt for still being in business whenever the revival technology is developed. Today, the vast majority of cryonics facilities from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, for example, have closed down, and were forced to thaw and dispose of the preserved bodies that they had kept.

Sure, if cryonics was ever proven to truly work, then it could afford all of us new and exciting opportunities. We’d see people living in different centuries in order to avoid death; we’d have future cures available to earlier generations; and anyone wishing to walk Earth in one thousand years’ time, could perhaps even “book themselves in” to be revived during a certain year. We would be closer than ever to becoming immortal. For now, though, we’re waiting on the technology to make any of that possible. And we could be waiting a very long time… But that’s what would happen if you were cryogenically frozen.