Brain freeze ain’t cheap, says local cryonics firm
Cryogenically freezing oneself has not really caught on in Thailand, or anywhere for that matter, but the service is available for those who want to shell out up to 3 million baht.
The service is built around the idea that if someone is frozen long enough, future technology in 50-100 years will be advanced enough to revive the brain and cure whatever ailment killed the person.
There has only been one recorded case of someone cryogenically freezing themselves in Thailand, but it was the youngest person in the world ever to do so, a two-year-old Thai girl in 2015, whose brain was frozen after dying from brain cancer.
“This service is ideal for younger people with a terminal illness that feel they will lose out on a full lifetime or anyone involved in an accident that may cause a premature death,” said Cliff Brown, chief executive of Cryonics 4 U, a cryogenics consultancy group that arranges cryogenic services at overseas centres.
“Old age too — if people want to a life extension or if they want to consult with us first and then consider an end to life changes.”
The service costs around 1 million baht to freeze a brain and around 3 million baht to freeze a whole body. One can also pay for cryofreezing with a life insurance policy. There are only three facilities around the world, Alcor and Cryonics Institute in US, and KrioRus in Russia.
A common critique of cryogenic freezing is uncertainty around whether these facilities will be operational and still spending money freezing the bodies in 50 to 100 years.
“There is no guarantee these facilities will be here in 100 years, in fact several facilities have already closed in recent decades and the cryotubes containing frozen people have been passed into other more established facilities, some on more than one occasion,” Mr Brown said.
“The two main facilities, Alcor and Cryonics Institute in US, are much more established with a trust fund and board of directors, and have taken many precautionary steps to allow the longevity and survival of their companies.”
The mainstream scientific community is sceptical that cryogenic freezing will ever result in someone being resuscitated in the future. An article in MIT’s Technology Review called cryonics a “false science,” saying the brain would be too damaged from freezing to ever be repaired.
“The world has changed a lot in the last 50 years in terms of medicine and technology and these advances will continue,” Mr Brown said. “If there is a 1% chance of cryonics working it’s still worth it to try, because the alternatives are zero. And if the 1% success chance becomes a 99% success in the future then it’s all the more worth it, and this must only improve as we advance in medicine and technology.”