£80k for ‘second life’
SUPER-RICH Brits are having their brains frozen after they die in a bid to be reborn in the future.
They are paying a fortune to have them cryogenically preserved in liquid nitrogen in the hope of a new life.
But it doesn’t come cheap – having your grey matter frozen for up to 200 years will set you back £80,000.
The service is being offered by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation based in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The company is headed up by Bristol-born scientist Dr Max More, inset, and his team of eight people. It has 1,100 paying members on its books.
The terminally ill, the elderly and people in their 50s have all signed up in the hope that one day they can be thawed out and their medical problems or diseases cured.
Some are paying £200,000 for full body preservation, where they are hung upside down in steel cylinders.
One businessman convinced that he will wake up in the future after his brain has been placed inside another body spoke exclusively to the Daily Star Sunday.
The man, in his late 60s, asked to be identified only as David. He said: “I know that a lot of people will think I’m daft, but why not give it a try? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
“I don’t have any children and I’m not married and at my age that’s unlikely to change.
“I thought I’d invest a bit of money in this and I may wake up in 200 or 2,000 years’ time and be able to experience a whole new life. I can’t think of anything more exciting. “Only my close family know I am doing this and most are very supportive. Their attitude is, ‘It’s your money so spend it how you like’.”
The company states on its website alcor.org that it expects future surgeons to be able to grow a new body around a repaired brain.
But removing a brain from the skull today would cause unnecessary damage, so Alcor leaves the organ protected within the head during preservation and storage. When a person who has signed up to Alcor’s scheme is approaching the end of their life a specialist team is put on standby ready to prepare them for preservation. Only when death has been legally declared can technicians start packing the body in ice while attaching a “heart-lung resuscitator” to get the blood circulating.
They then administer 16 different medications meant to protect the cells from crystallising. Currently there are 149 dead “patients” at Alcor’s facility, including US baseball legend Ted Williams and the youngest person to ever be cryopreserved, Matheryn Naovaratpong, aged two, from Thailand. Cryonicists accept restoring life from such a low temperature and using toxic chemicals can damage the corpse.
But they hope future scientific discoveries will overcome such side effects, as well as the disease or ailment that led to a patient’s death.