National Post (National Edition)
The strange world of cryonics
British teen with cancer was among believers
On a bright Sunday afternoon, in a colourfully decorated scout hut on the outskirts of Sheffield, a northern city in Britain once key to the Industrial Revolution, a dozen or so people are clustered around a table, on which lies a plastic human torso. It looks like the kind of prop that might be used by trainee doctors, the chest cut away to reveal its white ribcage and pink intestines.
But these are not doctors — they are members of Cryonics UK, the charity that cryogenically froze a 14-yearold girl who won the right to have her body preserved after her death from cancer, and whose heartbreaking landmark court case was reported this week.
Cryonics UK claims to be the only group in Britain working in the legal but unregulated field of cryonic preservation — where a person is “frozen in time” after their death, and then “woken up” at a point when scientific advances allow them to be revived and cured of whatever caused them to die. The not-for-profit organization charges £15,000 ($25,000) to freeze and transport a body to storage facilities in America or Russia.
Today, members of the group, many of whom have themselves paid to be frozen after death, are rehearsing the preservation process. They watch closely as a clear solution is pumped through plastic tubes snaking around the torso — a biological version of antifreeze which prevents the body’s cells from shattering when its core temperature is lowered.
The 14-year-old, known only as “J.S.,” was the 10th Briton to undergo the procedure, and the first British child. Her mother had supported her wish to be cryogenically frozen, but her father had opposed it, and so the girl had asked a High Court judge to intervene. In a letter to Justice Peter Jackson, she wrote: “I don’t want to die but I know I am going to .... I want to live and live longer .... I want to have this chance.” She learned that the judge had granted her wish shortly before her death in a London hospital on Oct. 17. With money raised by her maternal grandparents, the girl made arrangements with the Cryonics Institute, a cryopreservation company based in Michigan; Cryonics UK prepared her body and arranged for it to be flown there.
Across the world, around 2,000 people are thought to have signed up for cryonic preservation, with about 200 already frozen after death.
A majority are from the scientific community, says Marji Klima, of Alcor, another cryopreservation company in the U.S. “Many people understand the direction science is heading.”
In Sheffield, I meet Mike Carter, a 71-year-old retired geotechnical engineer who has paid US$90,000 from his savings to have his head preserved after he dies. (Many cryonicists choose this option, the idea being that the brain contains all the vital matter, and in the future can be attached to a new body or robot.)
“I decided that, despite what was drummed into me at school, there was no evidence for either a god or an immortal soul. My conclusion was therefore that ... death was followed by oblivion.”
In 2008, after reading about cryogenics in a science fiction novel, he looked online, “almost on a whim,” to see whether it was actually possible, and discovered the existence of storage facilities abroad and the Cryonics UK community.
While accepting that the idea of reanimation was something of a long shot, he says, “My mantra was, and still is, what have I got to lose?”
David Farlow, a thoughtful 34-year-old property manager from west London, is also at the rehearsal.
Having come across the concept as a computer science student, Farlow went to his first training session in 2008, which became the first of many. His family does not share his interest, but he wishes they did. “If I was going to live longer, then I’d like my family members to be there,” he says.
Critics of cryopreservation say, variously, that it offers false hope in a process not backed by science, that it is unethical to live longer than one’s “natural” lifespan, and even, perhaps prematurely, that it could exacerbate the world’s overpopulation problem.
Aside from the many scientific hurdles that would need to be overcome to resurrect frozen humans, the cost of preservation is prohibitively high, with the most expensive packages at US$200,000.
In the U.S., Alcor and the Cryonics Institute employ trained personnel to carry out the urgent preparatory work on a body before it is placed in storage. In the U.K., this is done by volunteers who undergo training in sessions like the one I have come to in Sheffield.
Their first job is to administer chest compressions, as soon as is feasible from the moment of death, to supply blood and oxygen to the brain to prevent the cells from deteriorating. The body is then packed in ice and transported to a cryonics facility where an embalmer makes an incision in the corpse’s neck and gradually replaces the blood with a cryoprotectant solution.
Finally, sealed in a well-insulated box packed with dry ice, the body is flown to the storage facility where it is preserved in liquid nitrogen at -196 C.
Scientists remain skeptical of the practice of cryonics. This week, it was revealed that doctors at the hospital where J.S. was cared for felt “deep unease” about her decision and accused Cryonics UK of being “underequipped and disorganized” in its handling of her body after she died last month.
In a statement, Cryonics UK said: “We always seek to negotiate before acting and our protocols were carried out with the permission of the hospital. A successful outcome was achieved as a result of the determination of the family and their legal representation and the resourcefulness of Cryonics UK.”
It said that better regulations of cryopreservation would be likely to lead to more people signing up.
For many, the notion of bringing humans back to life remains very much the stuff of science fiction. But the extraordinary case of J.S. sheds light on the small, but growing handful of people willing to take a leap of faith.
“It’s like being on a plane, and they announce that it’s going to crash, and there’s nothing you can do,” says Farlow. “They offer you a parachute, and there’s only a small chance of it working, but would you take it?”
I WANT TO LIVE AND LIVE LONGER ... I WANT TO HAVE THIS CHANCE.