Image copyright Thinkstock
Max More ordered to freeze his brain after death, and he is not alone. The correspondent asked him why he made such a decision and tried to figure out how the process of cryopreservation of the human body works.
In 1972, Max More watched the children's science fiction television show Time Slip, in which the characters were frozen in ice. Then he did not pay much attention to this, and remembered about the transfer much later, when he began to discuss the technologies of the future at meetings with friends. "They were subscribed to Cryonics magazine and started asking me about this to assess how savvy I was as a futurist. And for me everything immediately fell into place."
Mohr is now President and CEO of Alcor, one of the world's largest cryonics companies. He himself has been a participant in the posthumous freezing program since 1986, when he chose neuroconservation, in which only the brain is preserved, and not the whole body. "The future, it seems to me, will be good, so I would like to be in it. I want to continue to live, enjoy life and create," explains More.
Cryopreservation is one of the favorite skates of futurists. The concept is simple: medicine is constantly improving. In the future, people may learn to cure diseases that are now incurable. Cryonics is exactly what allows you to overcome the annoying gap between the medical technologies of today and tomorrow.
"We see our work as a kind of emergency aid," says Mor. "We step in when modern medicine gives up. For example, 50 years ago, if you were walking down the street and someone fell in front of you and stopped breathing, you they would examine him, decide that he is dead, and that's all. Now we do not do that - we begin to provide assistance. People who would have been immediately considered dead 50 years ago, as we now know, were actually still amenable to treatment. cryonics is somewhat similar. We just need to stop the deterioration process and allow the problem to be solved with the help of more advanced technologies of the future.
Of course, the concept of cryonics is essentially impossible to test. No one has ever tried to revive a person frozen with this technology. Researchers working on the study of suspended animation have found that a living creature can be cooled to almost death and then successfully revived.
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Futurists love to talk about how any disease can be cured in the future. And for this it's worth freezing yourself ...But freezing for decades is another matter entirely. More points to research that has examined the preservation of cells, tissues, and even whole worms, but applying this experience to the human body is not an easy task. Nevertheless, no matter what stage science is at now, there are already people who want to freeze their bodies in liquid nitrogen in the hope of seeing the distant future.
Death plan
Alcor's customers live all over the world. In an ideal scenario, Mohr explains, the firm has some idea of \u200b\u200bwhen the customer will die. Alcor monitors customers who are in poor health and when it looks like their time is about to come, the company sends out a waiting team. Its task is clear from the name - to wait at the deathbed. “Hours or days may pass. Once the group was on standby for three weeks,” says Max More.
Image copyright Alcor Image caption Surgeons are always ready to proceed with the necessary procedures - you only need to pay (photo - Alcor)As soon as the client is declared dead, cryopreservation can begin - and then the work begins to boil. To begin with, the waiting group moves the body from the bed to the ice bed and covers it with a layer of ice crumbs. Alcor then uses a "cardiopulmonary resuscitator" that restores blood circulation. After that, 16 different drugs are injected into the body to prevent the destruction of cells in the body.
The company's website explains: "Since our clients are legally dead, Alcor can use technologies that are not yet approved for use in traditional medicine."
When the body is cooled and all the necessary drugs have been injected, it is moved to the operating room. Next, it is necessary to remove blood and other liquids from the client's body as thoroughly as possible, replacing them with a solution in which crystals do not form during freezing (such a liquid is used to preserve organs during transplantation).
Image copyright Alcor Image caption In such an operating room, everything happens (photo - Alcor)The surgeon opens the chest to gain access to the main blood vessels, connects them to a flushing system - and the blood is replaced with medical antifreeze. Since the client will be stored in a deep-frozen state, it is very important to avoid the formation of ice crystals in their cells.
After filling the vessels with antifreeze, the company begins to gradually, by degrees per hour, cooling the body. After about two weeks, his temperature reaches minus 196 degrees. Finally, the client is placed in his last habitat for the foreseeable future - upside down in the refrigerator, often in the company of three others.
This is the perfect scenario. But sometimes everything does not go according to plan - if the client did not inform Alcor about the illness or died suddenly, then the freezing process can be postponed for several hours or days.
Image copyright Alcor Image caption This is where the client is placed - upside down and often in the company of three others (photo - Alcor)A customer recently committed suicide and Alcor personnel had to negotiate access to the body with the police and the coroner. Mor explains: the more time passes between death and freezing, the more the cells will have time to decompose and the patient will subsequently be more difficult to revive and cure.
It looks like there is a lot of risk in this whole process, and the prospects are dim. Mor readily admits that cryonics does not give guarantees: "We cannot be sure of anything, any overlaps are possible."
There is nothing attractive about swimming in a tank of liquid nitrogen when nothing depends on you. But it's better than becoming food for worms Max More
Alcor and other companies like it are basically just storing a lot of dead bodies in liquid nitrogen. But the specialist notes that cryonics has an important difference from other futuristic disciplines. "Tissue repair does not contradict the basic laws of physics. This is not a time machine for you," says More.
Tissue repair technologies are constantly being improved. But so far no one knows when it will be possible to revive the frozen dead, and whether this is possible in principle. If Mora is nevertheless backed up with the question of when, in his opinion, medicine will be able to revive his clients, then he reluctantly gives an estimate of 50-100 years. With a proviso: "But in fact, you can't guess. We probably don't even imagine now what technology will be used for recovery."
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Want to cheat time? Freeze it?To date, 984 clients have agreed to cryopreservation with Alcor. They pay an annual fee of $ 770, and when freezing time comes, the price can range from $ 80,000 for brain cryopreservation to $ 200,000 for whole body preservation.
Some of that money, Moore said, goes into a trust fund that pays for the operation of the enterprise and the long-term storage of bodies. The head of the firm also notes that many clients take insurance, which includes payment for posthumous cryopreservation. "This is not a whim for the rich. Anyone who can buy an insurance policy can afford it," says Max More.
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption However, there is a risk to stay forever snow queenAccording to him, most clients do not really want to think about the cryopreservation process itself, but they consider it an inevitable evil. "We don't want to be kept in the cold, in fact, this idea turns us around. There is nothing attractive about swimming in a tank of liquid nitrogen when nothing depends on you. But it is better than being food of worms or turning to ash - such alternatives are certainly no good, "concludes Mor.
Would you voluntarily go for cryopreservation? Write to us.
Elena Poskannaya, portal "Look" (Ukraine), 16.11.2013.
Many want a chance for another life. While this is a pipe dream, but scientists assure that in the near future humanity will be able to come close to the implementation of this daring idea.
Biorobot or human
Why live again? Futurologists do not doubt the answer: to do more, see the world in the future, fly to other planets. For this, many different ways have already been invented. For example, cloning. So far, experiments in this area are prohibited, but in a few decades the situation may change dramatically. To wait for better times, you just need to preserve the DNA.
There is also a more fantastic way - to return to earth in another body. It is predicted that in the next 20-30 years a kind of biomatrix may be created, a universal body that does not have its own characteristics. This biorobot can be transplanted with a stored brain or transferred genetic information, or even a neural map of the brain recorded on a computer. Then a person can be reborn in a new, more perfect body and continue his life path.
For almost a century, scientists have been thinking about the possibility of hibernation and cryonics. In the first case, we are talking about the immersion of a person in prolonged suspended animation (a sharp slowdown in all life processes), in the second, about the complete freezing of the body in liquid nitrogen for subsequent revival. It is in this form, according to scientists, that it will be easier for a person to travel in space and conquer other planets. But it is important not only to preserve the body, but to create technologies for its resurrection.
Destructive ice
The interest in cryonics is understandable. There are many examples on Earth of how living organisms can survive the cold. Ice survival champions are amphibians. For example, a salamander living in the zone permafrost, at temperatures below –6 hibernates. When the temperature drops, the liver of this newt begins to produce glycerin, which prevents the formation of ice crystals that can destroy cells.
The first prize for survival in extreme conditions is considered to be tiny Arctic invertebrates - tardigrades. They know how to completely displace water from their body. The tardigrade decreases in size, curls up, becomes covered with a waxy shell and goes into hibernation. In this state, it is able to withstand a pressure of 6 thousand atmospheres, radiation doses, a thousand times higher than the lethal, temperatures up to –270 degrees and prolonged heating at a temperature of +100. In fact, it is the only terrestrial creature that can survive in outer space.
And in the human body, low temperatures are also able to stop all changes for many years, scientists say. But there is a problem: water, which is 60% in the body, freezing, forms ice crystals with sharp edges that destroy cells. It was partly solved by replacing the blood with a special xenon solution. However, the body consists of many types of cells, and one cryoprotectant cannot save all of them. Therefore, until now, not only the body, but even a separate organ has not yet been "resurrected" after freezing. Cryonics has only succeeded in freezing and restoring individual cells.
On the issue of ethics
Living people cannot be frozen. By law, this amounts to murder. Therefore, cryobiologists take on those who have just died. But if a person died from a serious illness, how can he come to life after being frozen? Is it advisable to revive old people in their old bodies? There is no answer to these questions. This is the weakest point in cryonics theory. None of them can guarantee that in the future the idea will not turn out to be a trivial zilch. Anyone who has invested in cryonics today certainly supports science. But at the same time, having paid a lot of money, he risks not being resurrected.
In order not to lose face, cryonicists assure that in the future there will be special technologies that are still unknown to us. "And then the problems of damage during freezing, which are considered irreversible today, will be easily solved," said Ben Best, head of the American Cryonics Institute. Interestingly, while maintaining the hope of resurrection, cryonicists call their dead and frozen clients "cryopatients", and the stay of the body in freeze - "cryosomal".
The ideas of Western scientists at the Kharkov Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine are considered utopian. “It is not advisable to revive a frozen person in the future. Who will be the smartest person by today's standards in 100 years, when the whole world changes? Why bring this back to life? " - the doctor of biological sciences, professor Georgy Babiychuk doubts.
A person is not a machine, but a set of information: soul, personality characteristics, life experience, psyche, instincts, memory. Even if someday the body is thawed, and it suddenly begins to show signs of life, will the person who was previously in this bodily spacesuit resurrect? Cryobiologists cannot yet guarantee this.
Nevertheless, about 2,000 people around the world have already ordered the procedure for cryopreservation of their bodies or brain (as an economy option) after death. The desire to "freeze" was expressed by many celebrities - for example, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. In any case, the chance for immortality is not yet available to everyone due to its high price.
3 facts about cryonics
1 For 2012, 206 frozen bodies were stored in cryo-institutes (including three - Ukrainian citizens, they are in a Russian cryostorage). About 2 thousand people are officially clients of cryo companies.
2 In the United States, freezing the body costs $ 100 thousand, the brain - about $ 70 thousand.In Russia, prices are lower - from $ 12 thousand.
3 The first cryopatient is a professor of psychology from California, James Bedford, who died of cancer. It was frozen in 1967 at the age of 74 and remains in cryo storage to this day. More than a million dollars have already been spent on the maintenance of his body.
How it's done
1 After death, doctors inject heparin into a vein to prevent blood from clotting.
2 A person is hooked up to a ventilator to keep the brain alive.
3 Body temperature with ice is reduced to +3 degrees.
4 Blood is pumped out in a special capsule and replaced with a preservation solution.
5 The body gradually cools down to –196 degrees (one degree per hour).
6 The frozen body capsule is placed permanently in liquid nitrogen.
Second life for a beloved cat
The only company that freezes bodies and has its own storage facility in the CIS is the Russian KrioRus. You can leave your brain "for safekeeping" here for $ 12,000, the whole body - for $ 36,000. goldfinch). Prices depend on the size of the animal: for example, a small cat can be cryopreserved for $ 9,000. The company's website specifically states that the contract for the cryopreservation of an animal includes the revitalization of your pet in the future.
The Dewar vessel was designed to store the bodies of cryopatients in liquid nitrogen. Does not consume electricity, only needs to maintain nitrogen levels.
Professor James Bedford became the first cryopatient.
Among the clients of the company "Kriorus" are not only Russians, but also patients from countries Western Europe, Japan, India, Australia and the USA. Cryonicists oppose the mistrust of official science with a belief in progress and exaggerated ideas of transhumanism.
"I'm not going to die," the deputy laughs happily general director "Cryorus" Ivan Stepin, who meets us in a medical gown with sleeves rolled up to the elbows and acid-colored sneakers. Ivan is like a cheerful science popularizer, ready to demonstrate a hilarious trick of entertaining physics. However, his activities are not limited to laboratory experiments. In addition to technical work, he performs perfusion and cooling to ready-made clients.
“Perfusion is the process of replacing blood in the body with an anti-freeze compound - a cryoprotectant that prevents cell damage during freezing,” Ivan explains in a high-tech manner. - Cryoprotectants can be compared to antifreeze for cars, which prevents the formation of ice crystals. The substance is injected to a person immediately after death is fixed, only after that the body is frozen to the temperature of liquid nitrogen - minus 196 ˚ C - and stored in Dewar vessels.
In the cryostorage in Sergiev Posad, where we are, there are three of them - the vessels resemble giant milk cans. More than half of the 62 patients of "Kriorus" are here, another part - in another storage facility near Moscow.
SUPERFROYD / istockphoto.com
"Are they there, like cornflakes floating?" - a stupid question bursts out.
“No,” Ivan takes offense. - The bodies are placed upside down ... Around the circumference of the cylinder, like cartridges in a revolver drum. - Ivan draws an imaginary circle in the air. - The free space between them is occupied by cryopreserved animals, flasks with DNA samples, as well as supporters of neurosaving who wished to freeze only the brain. One vessel can hold from 8 to 12 people, depending on the build of people. "
In the context of a stunning futuristic message about resurrection, the story sounds not so much creepy as bewitching. However, it is not so easy to feel the atmosphere of the future: the cryostorage is more like a room for technical needs.
The creators of "Kriorus" assure that all the company's profits are used to pay current expenses: maintenance of the cryo-storage and salaries of employees. Listening to Ivan, you readily believe in this - bare entrepreneurship is unlikely to get along with the belief that every client is immortal and must be preserved at any cost.
Pros and cons
In a strict sense, cryonics is not a science, but an area of \u200b\u200bpractical activity. It arose from the ideas of cryobiology, which studies the effect of low temperatures on living organisms. Experiments with freezing and thawing of certain types of tissues, cells, organs and embryos made it possible to think, and in the future, to carry out the cryopreservation of the human brain and man.
"On the present stage stem cells, blood, sperm, embryos are frozen, and all this can be stored indefinitely. The same technology is used to preserve cryopatients (with the use of some modifications), ”explains Igor Artyukhov, director of science at Kriorus. Unlike other cryonicists, exalted and hasty, he acts as a peaceful guardian of truth.
For the first time, the concept of human cryopreservation was proposed by american physicist and the mathematician Robert Ettinger, who published Perspectives of Immortality in 1962. He also created the Cryonics Institute in the USA in 1976. This marked the beginning of the spread of the cryonics movement around the world. However, companies for freezing people have since appeared only in Russia and not so long ago in China (one patient is still frozen there). In other countries, cryonicists exist in the form of informal communities and work as support groups for people who help cryonics patients find themselves in America or Russia.
“Yes, there have been attempts to register cryofirms in Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, but this is a very difficult and nervous affair, and they will also be declared a charlatan, so few people decide to do this,” explains Artyukhov.
If everything is relatively clear with the technology of freezing cryopatients (low temperatures are an ideal way to preserve anything), then the prospect still looks somewhat dubious.
In a strict sense, cryonics is not a science, but an area of \u200b\u200bpractical activity
Cryonicists associate hopes for immortality with the "lifespan" of brain cells. According to some studies, after the biological death of an organism, neurons can live up to ten hours or more, and accordingly, timely freezing of the brain will preserve its neural "topology".
“The brain is our psyche, our whole personality. If we do not cremate, but cryopreserved, then we get a certain degree of probability that after some time it is possible to revive a person - in a broad sense. It doesn't matter how it will be: like in the fantastic film "Superiority", where information is loaded into a computer, or it will be an artificially grown body for a revitalized brain, "Ivan Stepin is convinced.
Most representatives of the scientific mainstream do not share this point of view, agreeing in the opinion that for the probability of resurrection it is necessary to freeze not a dead, but a living person, which by law will be considered murder.
“I doubt that freezing a corpse will lead to anything,” says doctor Andrei Zvonkov. “The cells of the brain can live for some time after death, but the human personality is contained not only in them, but also in the chemical processes that biological death inevitably stops.”
Yevgeny Aleksandrov, chairman of the commission for combating pseudoscience, has repeatedly expressed his opinion on this issue, noting that death is inevitable, and the activity of cryonicists "does not have any scientific basis."
Nevertheless, some scientific infantilism of cryonics did not lead to its complete marginalization. First, the followers do not state anything for sure, using indirect scientific evidence, such as the ability of some creatures to be suspended, as evidence. Secondly, the ideas of immortality are in general trend with more realistic ideas of life extension, which adds weight to them.
Opponents of death
“They just think that a person has no second chance and everyone should die,” Alexei Samykin, a client and part-time volunteer of Kriorus, shouts into the phone. Alexey reproaches scientists who oppose the ideas of cryonics for admitting death.
Aleksey, one of the first clients of Kriorus, cryopreserved his mother who died of oncology, and also signed a contract for himself.
“A primitive delusion,” biotechnologist Sergei Evfratov, who wished to be cryopreserved, does not admit the thesis that a person is either alive or dead.
It seems that cryonics adherents are driven not by fear of death, but by outrage at it as an annoying misunderstanding.
At the same time, almost all clients of cryofirms are somehow related to science: doctors, biologists, bioinformatics, philosophers, mathematicians. “Random people who are not familiar with the question rarely contact us,” says Igor Artyukhov. This fact partly supports cryonics.
Many who conclude contracts for cryopreservation of themselves or loved ones help Kriorus as volunteers, and are also part of the transhumanist movement, of which, they believe, cryonics is.
The owners of Kriorus are sometimes called fraudsters who “exploit people's hopes for profit”. Although, in fairness, a fraudulent scheme involves deceiving one side of the other, while the owners of the cryo company and their clients seem to sincerely share common values.
And the statement circulated by the tabloids that this service is exclusively “for the rich” raises doubts after communicating with future patients.
Indeed, cryopreservation services are not cheap. In Russia, freezing a body will cost $ 36,000, neuropreservation (freezing the head or brain) is cheaper: $ 15,000 for Russians, $ 18,000 for foreigners. The price includes the cryopreservation procedure and the cost of storing the body.
“Someone takes loans to pay off the contract, and some of the 200 existing contracts are signed in installments,” explains Stepin. "If we are talking about a young man, he can choose an insurance option, according to which he will pay $ 50-100 monthly until he pays the full amount."
In the USA, the services of a cryonics company are much more expensive. At Alcor, Arizona, founded in 1972 and currently about 200 people are "preserved", the minimum fee for cryopreservation of the body is $ 200,000, and for the preservation of the brain alone is $ 80,000. These prices are valid for US citizens. and Canada, for foreigners they are several thousand higher.
dra_schwartz / istockphoto.com
“It seems unusual to us, but any American can pay for these services through insurance, and it is not necessary to be a wealthy person,” says Artyukhov. “In America, by the way, as in Russia, they are mostly people of a scientific nature.”
Among American celebrities, the cryopreservation contract sometimes becomes part of the public image. For example, Paris Hilton signed a contract with the Cryonics Institute to freeze herself and two dogs. Britney Spears and Larry King are also named among those who want to be frozen after death.
100 year contract
The activities of cryofirms, according to the legislation, are not prohibited in Russia. According to the law, a person can be cryopreserved not only with his consent, but also with the consent of the person who has the right to dispose of the body. Although, as a rule, people still try to get permission during their lifetime.
However, a desire made with his own hand does not guarantee the testator that the chances of immortality will be realized.
“A crowd of relatives rushes in, they stand up like a wall and do not allow them to approach the body, and the success of cryopreservation depends on the speed of perfusion,” says Sergei Evfratov.
According to the law, it is possible to start the cryopreservation procedure only after receiving a death certificate.
“After the doctor ascertains the time of death, the certificate should be issued as quickly as possible. In an ideal situation, registration takes 15 minutes, ”says Stepin.
anamejia18 / istockphoto.com
If a person is in a serious condition, Kriorus employees, as a rule, are on duty in hospitals and clinics in order to “not miss the moment”.
The term of the contract for cryopreservation is a separate legal phenomenon: its validity is prolonged indefinitely - until technologies are invented that can bring a cryopatient back to life. The starting point from which the main duration of the contract ends, comes in a hundred years, and the contract is automatically renewed.
It is difficult to imagine what feelings such a waiting time can cause. But the visit of “people from the future” - in white overalls - in contrast to the grief of the morgue and ritual offices on duty, according to the clients of “Kriorus”, brings some relief to the deceased's relatives.
“The relatives of cryopatients have the opportunity to visit the storage facility, and they do not come to the cemetery, but to a place from which their loved ones can return,” says Aleksey Samykin. - Personally, I believe that people in the status of cryopatients are not dead, since some of the cells of their body are intact. And the decision to cryonize my mother seemed to me the only correct one. "
The visit of “people from the future” - in white overalls - according to Kriorus clients, brings some relief to the loved ones of the deceased
Perspectives
"If humanity does not die, sooner or later everything that we can imagine, and even that which we cannot yet, will become possible," Igor Artyukhov's forecast sounds like a lulling prologue to a science fiction film.
Guided either by special scientific optics, or by the desire to operate subject human consciousness categories, he devotes no more than a century to the development of this area.
“I’ll be surprised if a breakthrough in cryonics happens in 20 years, and I’ll also be surprised if this doesn’t happen in a hundred years,” says Artyukhov.
Speaking about the possibility of reviving patients, cryonicists are betting on the rapid development of nanotechnology, 3D printing of organs and tissues, brain modeling and other modern advances in medicine and biology.
fotografixx / istockphoto.com
In turn, some advances in cryobiology became possible due to the fact that cryobiologists were or are advocates of cryonics. One of the famous cryobiologists, Gregory Fay, set up a large number of successful experiments on the reversible freezing of organs and tissues, including the conservation of a rabbit kidney in liquid nitrogen, after which the kidney did not die. According to the scientist, he was guided not so much by the desire to develop academic science as by the idea to improve the quality of cryopreservation of people. As a cryonics adept, Fay wished to be cryopreserved after death.
Cryonics is enabling the development of techniques that could be useful in other areas, according to followers. For example, Dewar vessels used to store bodies were later used in reproductive medicine.
Once in the everyday vocabulary of the future, along with artificial intelligence, technological singularity and robotization, cryonics, as futurologists believe, will sooner or later have a chance to become a reality. However, if immortality is still not possible, why not dream about it during life.
Some people, even on the verge of death, hope to return to life one day. Cryonics helps fuel these hopes. A few surprising cases of human cryopreservation are described below.
1. Two-year-old girl who died of brain cancer became the youngest person frozen in a cryogenic chamber
In 2015, a two-year-old girl who died of a brain tumor was frozen as her family hoped that someday she would come back to life thanks to scientific advances. Mother Naowaratpong from Thailand is considered the youngest person ever to have been cryogenically frozen.
The girl was diagnosed with a tumor when she was unable to wake up in the morning. She was diagnosed with ependymoblastoma, a rare form of cancer that occurs at a very young age. After many months of intensive treatment, after 12 brain surgeries, 20 chemotherapy sessions, and 20 radiation therapy sessions, it became clear that there was nothing more doctors could do.
She died on January 8, 1915, after her parents turned off her life support. By the time of her death, the girl had lost about 80% of her left brain hemisphere, which led to paralysis of the entire right side of her body.
Her body is currently being transferred to the cryogenic organization Alcor, based in Arizona. The brain and body were frozen separately at -196 ° C.
The family hopes that one day science will advance enough to bring the girl back to life. In addition, the parents want to preserve her body and brain so that the disease that caused the death of the girl can be studied in the future.
If anyone is interested in the price of this enterprise, the family pays $ 700 annually for "membership" in "Alkor". The family also paid a $ 80,000 bill for the "neuroprocedures" for the Mothers, and the complete freezing of the girl's body cost the family another $ 200,000.
2. The creator of the pyramid scheme stole money to freeze his wife
The alleged financial fraudster used the depositors' money for personal, and, moreover, very unusual, purposes. Prosecutors claim that he used the stolen money to freeze his wife.
Vileon Chey told depositors that he invested their money in commodities, foreign currencies and precious metals, but instead spent more than $ 150,000 on cryogenic procedures for his wife, who died in 2009.
Prosecutors were unable to find out everything about his machinations, since 38-year-old Whose, while under investigation in 2011, was able to escape from New York to Peru, and since then they have not been able to find him.
Chey managed to collect more than $ 5 million from depositors, he promised them that he would return about 24% a year of the invested amount, and assured that "there is no risk in this activity," according to the prosecutor's office.
Nevertheless, he spent more than 2 million dollars of the depositors' money on personal needs (one of the depositors noticed that Whose arrived in a new car every time they met) and on cryogenic freezing of his wife's body.
3. A terminally ill woman raised funds for her cryopreservation
Cryonics is what we often see in our favorite science fiction films, but now more and more people are choosing this path for their own salvation. Of course, if they can afford it.
So when a 23-year-old neurology student was diagnosed with brain cancer, she turned to the Internet for help to raise the necessary funds and then freeze herself until a cure was found. Her efforts were crowned with success, and at the moment, Kim Suozzi is in cryogenic freezing.
After learning that she had only a few months left to live, Kim went to Reddit to ask users how to spend the remaining days. It was there that the topic of cryopreservation surfaced, after which Kim updated her post and asked financial aid from users.
Futurists, including the Venturizm Society, took up charity and helped her raise the huge amount of money that was required for cryopreservation.
Currently, cryopreservation only applies to patients who are presumed to be clinically dead, and Kim Suozzi was declared as such on January 17, 2013.
4. A grief-stricken widow who wished to freeze in order to reunite with her frozen spouse
Bridgetown residents Martha and Helmer Sandberg enjoyed a happy life, but when Helmer died of a brain tumor in 1994, he did not want his body to be cremated. He preferred something else.
For about $ 200,000, the former US Marine was placed in a cryogenic chamber. Now he is in Detroit, at the Cryonics Institute, waiting for the time to come back to life.
Mrs. Sandberg also made the decision to cryogenic freeze after death. “I still miss Helmer,” she said. - I still love him. We've been together for over 20 years and those have been years of satisfaction and joy. "
Mrs. Sandberg expressed the hope that both she and Helmer could one day be revived together, but this is not foreseen as a prerequisite.
5. Three scientists from Oxford pay for their cryopreservation
The belief that death is the only thing you can be sure of in this life is a concept that Oxford senior lecturers hope to disprove, at the price of being frozen and revitalized in the future.
Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor and colleague Anders Sandberg, decided to pay an American company to separate their heads in the event of their unexpected death and place them in deep cryopreservation.
Stuart Armstrong, their colleague, also wants to be frozen, but he opted for full-body cryopreservation.
Bostrom, Sandberg and Armstrong are lead researchers at the Future Human Institute (FHI), which is part of the prestigious Oxford Martin School, in which scientists research global problemssuch as climate change on the planet.
Despite this, at the moment there is not a single academic study on cryopreservation. Therefore, the scientists insured their lives and pay 45 euros monthly for insurance, which will become a source of funds in the event of their sudden death.
If one of them turns out to be terminally ill, the cryopreservation team will wait for the arrival of a doctor, who will have to pronounce death. After that, the blood in the body of the deceased will be pumped by a special apparatus, and the body itself will be cooled, since special preservatives and antifreeze will be added to the pumped blood to protect tissues.
If it is planned to freeze only the head, then it will be separated from the body, and then it will be placed in nitrogen gas and cooled to minus 124 ° C. Gradually, the head will cool down to minus 196 ° C, after which it will be placed in a chamber with liquid nitrogen for long-term storage in a cryogenic installation.
6. The legendary baseball player who was frozen after the trial
When baseball player Ted Williams died in July 2002 at the age of 83, his body was transported from Florida to a cryogenic center in Arizona for cryopreservation.
Although he himself, being alive, asked to be cremated, John-Henry and Claudia, his children, decided to freeze them.
Ted's eldest daughter Bobby-Joe Ferrell filed a lawsuit against her brother and sister demanding to fulfill her father's last wish, but John-Henry's lawyer persuaded the parties to sign an informal "family pact", in which they nevertheless agreed to place their father in cryostasis after his death and " revive in the future, if there is such an opportunity. "
However, Bobby-Joe's lawyer, Spike Fitzpatrick, soon began to claim that the "family pact", which was written on a regular napkin, was just a fake. Nevertheless, the examination established that the signatures on the napkin were genuine.
John-Henry stated that his father had always believed in science and would probably try to turn to cryonics if he had the opportunity.
7. The first person to be successfully frozen
Although there was one case of a freeze that was interrupted, it is now generally accepted that the first person to be frozen with the intention of returning to life in the future was a 73-year-old psychology professor named James Bedford. It was frozen in compliance with California Cryonics Society (CSC) guidelines on January 12, 1967.
James Bedford In the scientific community, the day of his cryopreservation is celebrated as "Bedford Day". At one time, they were even going to release a limited edition of Life magazine with a cover dedicated to this event, but this did not happen, since it was at this time that the magazine had to report the death of three astronauts during the fire on Apollo 1.
Until 1982, Bedford's body was stored in liquid nitrogen. The storage was handled by his family, who lived in Southern California. Then he was transported to the "Alkor" organization, where it is currently located.
8. Bitcoin pioneer was frozen after defeat in battle with sclerosis
In 2014, Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney, widely known as the second most popular cryptocurrency developer after Satoshi Nakamoto, passed away after a five-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at the age of 58. In 2008, a year before he was diagnosed with this diagnosis, Finney made the world's first Bitcoin transaction.
Before his death, he asked to be frozen and stored in the Alcor Foundation. So now his body, from which all blood and other bodily fluids were previously removed, is stored in a three-meter chamber filled with 450 liters of liquid nitrogen.
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Cryonics is a low odds game with a colossal jackpot. By canning their bodies in liquid nitrogen, the cryonauts hope to be resurrected by technology from the distant future. However, high-quality conservation with an eye to the future requires the use of very advanced technologies of the present, which were told to us by the specialists of the KrioRus company.
Sergey Apresov
Journalistic ethics requires that more than one point of view is always present in articles on controversial topics. Cryonics is one of the most controversial areas of practice, in which many flatly refuse to recognize science. Therefore, in order to fulfill our professional duty, let's start with the skeptical part.
The ability to revive a frozen person with the technology of the future cannot be 100% guaranteed. Not a single self-respecting cryo company will sign a promise to revive a patient after a certain number of years. Both cryonics research and the cryonics body preservation business rely on the belief that today's most promising technologies will be well developed. We are talking about growing organs and creating their artificial analogs, nanotechnology in medicine, and modeling consciousness. This position gives enough scope for skepticism, so it will not be difficult to find criticism about cryonics.
The cryoprotectant solution is pumped into the carotid artery and exits through the jugular vein. The perfusion process during neuroconservation takes about two hours. At the same time, the patient's body is cooled and hypothermic. The photo shows a demo mannequin.
However, not all skeptics know how difficult it is to preserve the body without damaging it, and what advanced technologies are behind this process. These methods are associated with quite tangible achievements of today, such as storing sperm with the possibility of fertilization 20 years after conservation or freezing human embryos ranging in size from several tens to several hundred cells with subsequent return to life.
1. The medical roller perfusion pump can accurately control the flow rate of the solution. Exceeding the permissible pressure can damage the vessels.
These successes alone make us take the prospects of cryobiology seriously. Danila Medvedev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of KrioRus, told us about them.
Process, not result
In order to think about the temporary suspension and subsequent restoration of life, a deep understanding of death is necessary. The understanding that dying is not a one-time event, but a process extended over time, consisting of several stages, has enabled many patients to return to life after clinical death as a result of resuscitation procedures.
2. A pressure gauge helps professionals to constantly monitor the pressure in the bloodstream. A sudden surge in pressure indicates a blood clot or other damage that can be quickly repaired.
Clinical death itself is characterized by cardiac arrest, cessation of breathing, and the disappearance of external signs of life. In the absence of blood circulation, oxygen ceases to flow to the cells of tissues and organs. Unfortunately, the cells of the central nervous system, in particular the cerebral cortex and subcortical structures, are most sensitive to anoxia (lack of oxygen).
When diagnosing clinical death, doctors, as a rule, have a few minutes left in order to carry out resuscitation measures. However, in some cases, the duration of clinical death can increase up to several tens of minutes. One of these cases is hypothermia, a decrease in body temperature (usually up to 20-25 ° C), which slows down biological processes. Hypothermia is used in surgery for some operations that require cardiac arrest.
3. Using a syringe, samples of the solution are taken from the jugular vein. When the concentration of the sample coincides with the concentration of the supplied solution, it is considered that the cells are saturated with the cryoprotectant.
When the bioelectrical activity of the brain ceases, brain death is ascertained. Resuscitation measures are stopped, and the person is declared dead, including from a legal point of view. What happens in the cells of organs, tissues and brain at this moment?
Different tissues show varying degrees of resistance to anoxia. The heart can last up to two hours after biological death, the kidneys and liver - up to four hours, muscles and skin - up to six, and bones - up to several days. The brain has the smallest safety margin, but its cells do not die at the same time, all at once.
4. The cryoprotectant solution is prepared in several concentrations. First, the least concentrated solution is fed, then, as it becomes saturated, a more concentrated one.
The cell is a biological mechanism that constantly expends energy produced by oxidative processes. With the cessation of the supply of energy, the cell ceases to recover and to respond to external stimuli. The permeability of the plasma membrane is gradually disrupted, the concentration of ions changes, the organelles swell and rupture of their membranes.
It turns out that for some time after biological death, many brain cells remain alive, and some die, but retain most of their structural elements... In fact, all cryonics is based on the assumption that the most careful preservation of the physical structure of the brain will allow the patient's personality to be transferred into the future.
5. A refractometer is optical instrument, which measures the refractive index of the solution. The refractive index can be used to judge the concentration of the solution. Using the device, the concentration is measured when preparing a solution and when taking samples from the jugular vein.
It is quite logical to believe that a person's personality is determined by his memories - more precisely, the contents of long-term memory. It is known that the processes of thinking and memorization are determined by connections between individual neurons, sometimes very far from each other. In 2009 The National Institute In the United States, the Human Connectome Project (similar to the genome) was launched to map neuronal connections.
The mainstream theories of memory in one way or another imply that the formation of these connections depends on changes in the physical structures of the brain. The synaptic theory suggests that memorization changes the conductivity of the synapse (contact between two neurons). This is due to the activation of additional protein receptors, changes in the chemical characteristics of the synaptic membrane, and even an increase in the synapse diameter. Biochemical theories state that proteins, peptides, DNA or RNA can be carriers of long-term memory.
1. The cryodepository near Sergiev Posad is not the only storage facility of KrioRus. Two dewars contain 13 full-body cryopatients and a dozen or so neuroreservation clients.
Cryonicists do not promise to keep the brain intact, without the slightest damage. But medical practice suggests that traumatic brain damage does not always lead to memory loss. In addition, there is hope that in the future, nanomedicine will allow the restoration of slightly damaged cells, bringing them back to life.
Glazed memory
Among the scientists experimenting with freezing organisms in order to prolong life, there are many famous names: which are only Anthony van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Boyle. However, until the first half of the last century, these attempts remained unsuccessful. Unfortunately, the cold destroys cells.
The main danger arises at the moment of freezing of extracellular water, which leads to dehydration of cells. With the formation of ice, the amount of free water decreases, so the concentration of substances dissolved in this water increases. Osmotic pressure is formed, which removes water from the cells through the membrane, ultimately leading to a violation of the structure of proteins.
2. The flags hanging from the ceiling represent some of the countries whose patients entrusted their fate to KrioRus. Among them are the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, USA, Israel, Estonia, Ukraine.
The formation of intracellular ice is also possible. In the water contained inside the cell, salts are dissolved, which prevent the complete transformation of water into ice up to temperatures close to -40 ° C. Thanks to this protective property, the cytoplasm remains liquid even in severe frosts. However, when approaching the critical temperature, water still crystallizes, destroying the cell.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Swede Lindforss and the Russian botanist Maksimov conducted successful experiments on freezing living tissue fragments using glycerin. Cryoprotectants were discovered - substances that prevent the formation of ice and protect the cell from destruction upon cooling. Penetrating cryoprotectants capable of passing through the cell membrane include glycerol, dimethyl sulfoxide, ethylene glycol, and a number of other substances. Modern formulations include additional components that allow them to penetrate the blood-brain barrier that separates the blood and central nervous system and prevents the entry of toxins from the blood into the brain.
3. A container filled with dry ice serves as a temporary shelter for cryopatients before being placed in the dewar.
Cryoprotectants replace intracellular water, and also bind the remaining water, preventing the formation of crystallization centers. At temperatures below -130 ° C, vitrification, or glass formation, occurs: the transition of a solution to an amorphous state. In this "glass" the spatial structures of protein macromolecules freeze, which is important for the preservation of memory.
A matter of technology
When determining biological death, it is important to cool the cryopatient as soon as possible to a state of deep hypothermia (several degrees above zero) in order to slow down biochemical processes, including cell necrosis. At the same time, they start perfusion - saturation of cells with a cryoprotectant solution through the circulatory system.
4. The vacuum system of the Dewar vessels is practically sealed. To maintain the required pressure between the walls, the pump turns on at intervals of about two times a month.
The solution in several stages, with a gradual increase in concentration, is pumped through the carotid artery, replacing the blood. Experts monitor the pressure of the solution: exceeding the permissible level will damage blood vessels, and a sharp jump in pressure will indicate a thrombus that can be eliminated. After filling the vasculature, the solution exits through the jugular vein. The concentration of the solution at the outlet indicates the degree of completion of the process: if it is the same as at the inlet, then saturation has already occurred.
Head perfusion takes about two hours; body saturation can take four to six hours. “Most patients already now understand that the most promising technology of neuropreservation, that is, the preservation of only the head,” says a convinced transhumanist Danila Medvedev. - On the one hand, this procedure proceeds much faster and therefore gives more chances to preserve the structure of the brain, memory, personality. On the other hand, the current level of technology development allows us to judge that the medicine of the future will allow creating a new body for the patient, instead of restoring the old and sick. "
The concept of death has changed more than once over time. According to the expectations of cryonicists, it will change in the future: “information death” will be considered final, after which it will be impossible to restore data about the characteristics of the organism in order to partially or completely recreate it. One of the most striking experiments was conducted by resuscitators from the University of Pittsburgh in 2005. They immersed the dogs in a state of near death for three full hours, after which they returned them to full life. Subjects were completely drained of blood, replacing it with refrigerated saline solution saturated with oxygen and glucose. The dogs had cardiac arrest and lost electrical activity in the brain. Three hours later, the scientists returned the animals' blood, warmed them, and started their hearts with a defibrillator. Some dogs died, but most returned to full life. Research in this area attracted close attention, and then funding from DARPA. In the future, life-limiting technology will help rescue people, such as critically ill patients who are away from the clinic and need long transportation, or soldiers on the battlefield dying of blood loss.
Upon completion of the perfusion, the cryopatient is transported to the storage facility in a container with dry ice and immersed in liquid nitrogen for long-term storage at a temperature of -196 ° C. Today it is the most reliable way of conservation, which does not require constant attention and the availability of electricity.
Dewars of the Cryo-Rus cryodepository are two-layer composite tanks. The space between the outer and inner walls of the dewar (20-30 cm) is filled with perlite (volcanic rock), air is evacuated from it. The vacuum between the walls is maintained by a pump that turns on about once every two weeks. About once a month liquid nitrogen is added to the dewar (about a centimeter in level). In the future, it is planned to create a closed system, including a machine for liquefying evaporated nitrogen and an independent solar-powered power plant. “There are reasons why it is better to store patients at -130 ° C rather than -196 ° C. We are already developing an apparatus for storage in a gaseous environment (like in a refrigerator) with a computer control system and a dosed supply of liquid nitrogen, ”says Danila Medvedev.
In addition to the Russian company KrioRus, there are two companies in the world that have their own cryostorage facilities. These are the Alcor Life Extention Foundation (USA, Arizona) and the "Cryonics Institute" (USA, Michigan). Storage facilities are expected to open in Switzerland and China in the near future.
Quantity to quality
Today there are three cryofirms in the world with their own storage facilities: two in the USA and one in Russia. The number of cryopatients is approaching 300 people, of which 41 are preserved in our country.
If we recognize the chances of “resurrection” as non-zero, then their increase directly depends on the spread of the idea of \u200b\u200bcryonics, its integration into the scientific process, cultural context, and legal norms. For example, the introduction of cryopreservation into clinical practice will allow the patient to be immersed in hypothermia and begin perfusion immediately after biological death, which will significantly increase the chances of preserving the brain structure. Development legislative framework, in particular, the introduction of responsibility for the disruption of the cryodepository, will help patients survive to the long-awaited breakthrough in medicine. Finally, basic education will help to avoid situations where relatives interfere with the will of people who want to cryopreserved.
At present, the Cryo-Rus company is assisting the construction of a cryodepository in Switzerland, and is also participating in the development of a giant storage facility in China with the direct assistance of the state. Coupled with an unquenchable interest in related scientific and practical fields such as transplantology, embryology, resuscitation and nanotechnology, this gives rise to hope that the first cryopatients, if they do not gain eternal life, will at least serve science.