Arizona cryonics facility preserves our bodies to revive later By Reuters

By Liliana Salgado

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Reuters) – Time and dying are “on pause” for some individuals in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Inside tanks stuffed with liquid nitrogen are the our bodies and heads of 199 people who opted to be cryopreserved in hopes of being revived sooner or later when science has superior past what it’s able to right this moment. Lots of the “sufferers,” as Alcor Life Extension Basis calls them, have been terminally in poor health with most cancers, ALS or different ailments with no present-day treatment.

Matheryn Naovaratpong, a Thai woman with mind most cancers, is the youngest particular person to be cryopreserved, on the age of two in 2015.

“Each her mother and father have been medical doctors and he or she had a number of mind surgical procedures and nothing labored, sadly. So that they contacted us,” stated Max Extra, chief govt of Alcor, a nonprofit which claims to be the world chief in cryonics.

pioneer Hal Finney, one other Alcor affected person, had his physique cryopreserved after dying from ALS in 2014.

The cryopreservation course of begins after an individual is said legally useless. Blood and different fluids are faraway from the affected person’s physique and changed with chemical compounds designed to forestall the formation of damaging ice crystals. Vitrified at extraordinarily chilly temperatures, Alcor sufferers are then positioned in tanks on the Arizona facility “for so long as it takes for know-how to catch up,” Extra stated.

The minimal value is $200,000 for a physique and $80,000 for the mind alone. Most of Alcor’s nearly 1,400 residing “members” pay by making the corporate the beneficiary of life insurance coverage insurance policies equal to the associated fee, Extra stated.

Extra’s spouse Natasha Vita-Extra likens the method to taking a visit to the long run.

“The illness or harm cured or mounted, and the particular person has a brand new physique cloned or a complete physique prosthetic or their physique reanimated and (can) meet up with their pals once more,” she stated.

Many medical professionals disagree, stated Arthur Caplan, who heads the medical ethics division at New York College’s Grossman College of Medication.

“This notion of freezing ourselves into the long run is fairly science fiction and it is naive,” he stated. “The one group… getting excited concerning the risk are individuals who concentrate on finding out the distant future or individuals who have a stake in wanting you to pay the cash to do it.”