Freeze Yourself - The Process of Cryonic Preservation

Image courtesy of Google Images

Imagine this. Your loving pet that you’ve had for many years has passed away and your entire family is devastated. You all are wishing that there would be some way to bring precious fluffy back to life just to have them stay for good this time. You freeze fluffy and bring her back and life seems perfect again! Imagine losing a loved one of old age, a tragic accident, or another cause of death. Why did they have to go? Why can’t we just have them back? After death, put that loved one in a chamber to be frozen, they will be worked on and eventually come alive again. This seems so unreal! With advancements in cryonic preservation this will one day be possible.

What cryonic preservation is exactly, is the freezing of a human or animal in hopes that they can eventually be unfrozen and live again. This process is not available to just anyone. With large amounts of money, someone can be preserved in hopes that technology will advance and one day they will be alive again. The prices for this process range from $20,000 up to $120,000.* That’s a lot of money! If you think that eventually you would like to be frozen, you better start feeding your piggybank your change!  

The procedure of cryonic preservation is described in simple terms to make it easier to understand in the video below:

Click the link! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb07pKsCOjI

As the video explains, there are a few different steps that lead up to the freezing of a person. The human has to be completely dead for the process to begin. The person is then put into an ice bath to cool their body and the movement of blood and oxygen within the body begins. It is very important that blood and oxygen makes its way to the brain. A solution is then put into the body to replace the blood. This makes sure that the cells are in good shape as the body continues to become very cold. It takes 2 hours for the body to receive fifty percent of the solution, and after the 2 hours the body has taken in the full one hundred percent. All of the humans’ blood eventually leaves the body and it is replaced with that solution. In the next step, the body needs to become even cooler than before. It is placed in a chamber where Nitrogen gas is released. If your hand were to touch Nitrogen gas and then be accidentally hit by something it would break into a million pieces like shattering glass. The final step allows the body to be stored in a cooling aluminum chamber for a long period of time until this process becomes achievable.

As of right now this procedure is not possible. In the future, this technology looks like it will continue to grow and become something amazing. Cures for conditions such as AIDS, cancer, diabetes, etc. need to become a reality for this procedure to actually happen.* Children are the future. With a passion to research and discover cures to diseases such as the ones stated above, scientists will be able to successfully preform cryogenic preservation. With that being said, get out there and research, find the cures, make this possible, and be the future we would all love to see!

*Knight, C. (2008). A science without a deadline [cryonics]. Engineering & Technology, 3(19), 28-31. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com/eds/