Freezing people just before death in order to resurrect them in the future has long ceased to be the stuff of science fiction. A whole field of research emerged: Cryonics. So does freezing people really work?
Biologist and Nobel Prize winner Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has extensively researched the idea of cryonics and the industry’s potential pitfalls, Live Science writes.
In ancient Egypt, people mummified pharaohs so they could bring them back to life and use their own bodies again. After a few thousand years such an idea seems funny. But in fact it has a modern analogue.
Biologists have long sought ways to freeze samples to preserve them for later use. However, this task was not easy since all life on Earth consists of water. When water freezes, it expands, meaning cells and tissues break down. That is why, for example, thawed strawberries resemble a sticky and unappetizing porridge.
So cryopreservation, a branch of biology, studies how to freeze samples so that they remain alive when thawed. In this way, scientists learned, for example, how to store stem cells and other samples in liquid nitrogen. A safe way to freeze sperm and human embryos for later fertilization was also discovered.
As we can see, cryopreservation works for many types of cells and tissues. Glycerin is often used for this, which can cool to very low temperatures but prevents water from turning into ice.
The term cryonics also refers to the freezing of entire people, which occurs immediately after death, with the aim of “resurrecting” those who have been frozen once the cause of death has been cured. The idea is far from new, but it has become widespread thanks to the scientist and science fiction writer Robert Ettinger. The author imagined how scientists in the future would be able to revive frozen bodies and not only heal these people, but also make them young again.
How does everything work? When a person dies, their blood is completely drained, replaced with a mixture of glycerin, and then placed in liquid nitrogen.
Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute in 1976 and persuaded more than 100 people to pay $28,000 to freeze their bodies in nitrogen. One of the Cryonics Institute’s first clients was Ettinger’s mother, Rhea, who died in 1977. Both wives of the scientist were placed in nitrogen. In 2011, Ettinger died and went to nitrogen as well.
There are many similar facilities in the world today. Another popular fund in Arizona charges about $200,000 to store frozen corpses.
Transhumanists vs cryonics
An extension of this idea are transhumanists, who believe that human minds should not be attached to short-lived bodies. According to them, intelligence and reason may be a unique phenomenon in the Universe. After all, what’s the point of the universe if there’s no intelligence to appreciate it?
Important
That’s why transhumanists advocate preserving only their brains. Just one organ takes up less space and costs less money to preserve. Moreover, injecting an analogue of “antifreeze” directly into the brain will increase the chances of its successful protection.
Adherents of transhumanism believe that at some point their consciousness could be uploaded into a computer or any similar object. Thus, the resulting being will “live” again. He will no longer be limited by the need for food, water, oxygen and will be able to travel to any point in the Universe.
Transhumanists often claim that space travel is humanity’s only chance for survival. One of the supporters of this idea is Elon Musk, president of SpaceX. Probably one of their first goals on Mars will be the construction of a cryonics facility.
frozen forever
- Cryogenics is a branch of low-temperature physics that studies the patterns of change in the properties of various substances under extremely low (cryogenic) temperature conditions.
The bad news is that there isn’t a single piece of reliable evidence that cryogenics will work on humans. The potential problems are numerous, starting over time. Minutes or even hours may pass from the moment of death until the moment the body freezes, and this is provided that the person lives relatively close to the cryogenic center.
Such a delay is quite enough for every cell of the deceased to undergo serious biochemical changes due to lack of oxygen and nutrients. Therefore, the state of a frozen body can no longer correspond to the state of a living person. But supporters of this idea say that the main goal is to preserve the physical structure of the brain and that the rest of the body can be “ignored.” The brain is subject to restructuring as long as it is well preserved so that the billions of cells within it can be seen.
- Connector science is the mapping of all neurons in the brain, a new direction in modern science. Despite amazing advances in this field, scientists are still trying to map the neurons of flies and other small insects. Although science does not have a working method to keep the brain in an ideal state, until connector science recreates it.
Recently, they managed to preserve a mouse’s brain, but this required pouring embalming fluid into the mouse’s heart while it was beating. Obviously, this process itself killed the mouse.
Therefore, so far none of the existing cryo companies have been able to provide evidence that they preserve the deceased’s brains in the state necessary to create a complete map of neural connections.
However, even with such a map, modeling the brain will not be enough. It is extremely naive to imagine each neuron in a computer as a transistor. Professor Ramakrishnan says that in our brains, cells rule the roost.
According to him, constantly changing programs involving thousands of genes and proteins are carried out in each brain cell, and the interaction of one cell with another cell also changes. Mapping the connections in the brain is a huge step forward, but even this is only a static snapshot. It will not allow reconstructing the true state of a frozen brain, let alone predicting how it will “think” from that point on.
Professor Ramakrishnan likens this task to trying to predict the future of a country and its people using a road map.
The truth is that our brains have developed along with our bodies and receive sensory signals from our bodies to interact with them. The human brain is unstable; New connections are added every day and broken at night when we sleep. There are both circadian and seasonal rhythms involving the growth and death of neurons, and this constant restructuring of the brain is not fully understood.
You can’t just disconnect your brain from your body and expect it to work the same way. Our brain is not only controlled by electrical impulses passing through neurons. It also responds to chemicals found both within the brain and other parts of the body.
Moreover, who really needs to marinate an old, worn-out brain instead of the perfectly working “machine” of a 25-year-old man? What is the purpose of saving this brain?
Transhumanists believe that all these problems will be solved in the future. But they base their theory on the fact that the brain is just a computer, a little more complex than what humans have created.
Of course, the brain is a computational organ, but the biological state of its neurons is as important as the connections between them for reconstructing its state at any given time.
Source: Focus
Ashley Fitzgerald is an accomplished journalist in the field of technology. She currently works as a writer at 24 news breaker. With a deep understanding of the latest technology developments, Ashley’s writing provides readers with insightful analysis and unique perspectives on the industry.