The very first time I ever came across the concept of cryopreservation was about a decade ago in a movie though I can't really remember what movie it was but am guessing it might be fringe a Tv show actually, packed with science fiction. The whole idea was so interesting to me and I tried to find out the possibility that it could work in reality. At the time the whole concept seemed to me like total science fiction but to my surprise when I made findings I discovered that a lot had already been done on the subject but at the time there was a brick wall right before them.
Cryogenics, being a branch of physics which deals with the production and effects of very low temperatures, gives people who cannot be sustained by contemporary medical service or medicine a chance to be frozen with the possibility of resuscitation and restoration to full health in the future when a cure for their condition has been found, quite unbelievable right? Some scientists think so too.
Cryonics in itself is simply a belief that a person isn't really dead until the content of his brain i.e his memory is totally lost. Scientists believe that lowered temperatures can prevent such loss.
The first real case of cryopreservation was in 1967 and it was Dr James Bedford who suffered from kidney cancer which eventually spread to his lungs, at the time there were zero chances of treatment so he offered himself to be cryopreserved and he left a $100,000 for research on cryonics. Dr Bedford remains cryopreserved till date, though his chances of reanimation eventually are very slim because of the procedure employed to preserve him at the time, and doctors fear his brain might not have been preserved properly as we progress we would find out why that is.
I mentioned earlier that when I did watch the Tv show and found out about cryopreservation I discovered they had a brick wall right in front of them.
At the time, the issue they faced with cryopreservation was the fact that when biologically tissues are frozen, they form ice crystal within which eventually damages the cells of the tissue.
For this same reason, it is still uncertain if Dr Bedford would ever be brought back to life as I also mentioned earlier, this is actually due to the fact that at the time of his cryopreservation, VITRIFICATION was not possible. Well before I go into vitrification let's come home a bit. I bet you must have noticed that when you freeze vegetables and most fruits whose water composition is quite high, upon thawing, they usually become softer and totally unusable. I have personally experienced this with watermelon, cucumber, waterleaf and pumpkin. So it's same when humans get cryopreserved without the use vitrification.
Ever wondered how animals in extremely cold conditions manage to survive? I mean, they also have biological tissues which should get frozen and also form ice crystals which should cause damage to them right? but yet they survive in those subzero harsh conditions. Whatever it is that these animals do to survive this harsh conditions it appears that science has been able to employ a similar technique in cryopreserving humans. Stay with me we would find out shortly.
VITRIFICATION
Vitrification is simply a technique employed in the freezing of biological tissue by adding cryoprotectant in order to prevent their water molecules from gathering together to form ice which as stated above causes damage to the cells. Yeah! you heard it right Cryoprotectants. When cryoprotectants are added to biological tissues, at very low temperatures, instead of freezing the cryoprotectants become viscous, causing the molecules to move at a very much slower rate as they get cooled. At temperatures below 100 °C molecules solidify into a glassy state without the formation of ice crystals, this phenomenon is called vitrification.
Most animals that survive in very harsh subzero conditions produce cryoprotectants in other to survive such conditions. Take for instance the Arctic salamanders, they produce glycerols in their livers and use it as a cryo-protectant. Cryoprotectants are divided into two main classes which are the intracellular and extracellular agents. Intracellular cryoprotectant agents penetrate cells and prevent ice crystals forming within the cell e.g Glycerol, Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) and Polyethylene glycols (PEG). While extracellular cryoprotectant agents do not penetrate the cell membrane, they control the osmotic imbalance that happens during freezing.
While this looks all perfect and figured out, there is still a problem staring at the vitrification process which is the high possibility of what is called devitrification. Devitrification is simply the process of liquid reversing from its glassy state which I mentioned earlier back to ice during a gradual thawing process. This is to say that biological tissues that have been frozen by vitrification need to be uniformly thawed and at a very high speed, well this brings us to Nano-warming.
Let me first point out that nanoparticles, when exposed to a magnetic field, begins to vibrate very fast and thus producing heat.
Scientist discovered that they could solve this thawing process by doping the cryoprotectant solution used with a large amount of specialised silica coated iron-oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) and then expose it to a magnetic field say RF fields.
The heat produced upon exposure to the magnetic field ensures that every part of the biological tissue is thawed very fast and at the same time. This totally eliminates the possibility of devitrification occurring.
This method has proven that it's able to do a better job of thawing than the conventional gold standard convection method.
What we've learnt so far a brief recap.............
So far we I have discussed a few concepts that are very important in the cryopreservation humans and they include the concept of
- Cryogenics
- Cryonics
- Vitrification and Devitrification
- Cryoprotectants
- Nanowarming using special silica coated IONPs
Going forward it's very important to keep these few concepts which we have treated closely because you are going to need them as we put them together for the proper understanding of the general concept of cryopreservation and the possibility of success in the future.
over 100 people are cyropresereved at the moment what are their chances?
The stage seems set for the world to witness the first ever thawing and bringing back to full life of a complete human after maybe a decade or more. The concept of cryonics has been referred to as unscientific or to some pseudoscience but I say this is science and I have an open mind.
The process of cryopreserving humans starts immediately after legal death i.e when the heart stops and not later than 15mins. The body is placed in ice and injected with chemicals to reduce blood clotting, then it is immediately transported to a cryonics facility where it is cooled to just above freezing point.
At this point, the blood is removed and replaced with special solutions (MHP2 is used by Alcor Life Extension Foundation) to ensure the organs are preserved. This is exactly why the body was injected to prevent blood clotting at the time of legal death because if that wasn't done, replacing the blood with the solution to preserve the organs would be difficult. IONPs dopped cryoprotectants are injected into the body to ensure proper vitrification, the body is then cooled to -130 °C, placed in a container and then lowered into a tank of liquid nitrogen at -196 °C where it remains until there is a medical breakthrough.
The cost of cryopreservation is around $28,000 that's a lot of money and you can imagine not many people would want to spend that huge on a tech like that knowing that their reanimation remains an uncertainty.
As of today the cryopreservation of human is very possible and has been done several times, as I stated earlier over 150 people have been cryopreserved and about a 1000 people have registered to be cryopreserved immediately they die. So far the issue of thawing for revival isn't there anymore as vitrification has totally taken care of that but what remains an issue is how to reanimate a dead body with a living brain. I was discussing with a friend about this topic and I told him about all the people that have been frozen with hopes of coming back to life in the future and he told me that those people are very dead and there is no coming back hmmm! while it is possible that they are indeed very dead I wouldn't rule out the possibility of them coming back to life in later in the future.
The survival of cryopreserved bodies is totally dependent on advancement in nanotechnology which could repair all sorts of damages to cells and tissues incurred as a result of the cryopreservation. There is also the option of downloading the content of the living human brain onto a robotic body. So far so good only time will tell the fate of all those cryopreserved bodies but I personally trust that science would come through for them if not for anything but at least for the bravery of a certain 14 years old girl, let me tell her story as I wrap this up.
Little JS, aged 14 was diagnosed of incurable cancer and knowing she was still young wished for a chance to live longer and she made her research and found out about cryonics which gave her hope that she could be brought back to life in the future. Her divorced parents disagreed over her wish to be cryopreserved so she took the case more seriously and wrote to a High Court judge to look into the case. In her letter to the court, she said
I have been asked to explain why I want this unusual thing done. I’m only 14 years old and I don’t want to die, but I know I am going to. I think being cryo‐preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even in hundreds of years’ time.
I don’t want to be buried underground. I want to live and live longer and I think that in the future they might find a cure for my cancer and wake me up. I want to have this chance. This is my wish.
Hmmm, that was quite touching and very brave, she asked the court to rule that her mother alone be allowed to make the decision about the disposal of her body, knowing her mother was in support of her wish to get a chance at longer life someday quite smart. Just before her death in a London hospital on the 17th of October 2016, the judge granted her wish and she was cryopreserved. She was said to have told a relative us before her death
I'm dying, but I would be back again in 200 years
Thanks for reading I bet you've learnt a few things......
Refrences
Alcor Life Extension Foundation
Preserving bodies deep freeze 50 years later
Cryonics: the people hoping to give death a cold shoulder
14-year-old girl who died of cancer wins right to be cryogenically frozen
HUMANS COULD BE FROZEN ALIVE AND THAWED TO CONTINUE LIVING, SAYS RUSSIAN COMPANY
Cryonics: does it offer humanity a chance to return from the dead?
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What a educative write up! I have heard about cryonics before now but I really didn't knew much about it until I read this. This is indeed lovely and worth the read.
Thanks a lot am glad you learnt a few things
nice one man