With the country’s first cryogenic freezer to retain bodies until science can revive them, an Australian firm is offering the wealthy a chance to come back from the dead.
Southern Cryonics has opened a hi-tech facility in rural Holbrook, NSW, 500 kilometers south of the company’s Sydney headquarters.
To be imprisoned in liquid nitrogen at temperatures close to -200C in the steel chambers, participants must pay a hefty $150,000.
If the chamber leaks, their bodies will be submerged head first, feet up, to give the brain the best chance of survival.
The non-profit organization has already filled 40 places in stage one of their project, with the majority reserved for its founders, but hopes to add 600 more spots once new warehouses are created.
Cryonics is the preservation of human bodies in extremely freezing temperatures inside chambers in the hopes that medical science may be able to bring them back to life in the future.
It promotes the notion that death is a gradual process that can be halted if a body is frozen quickly enough.
Participants may be able to be resuscitated as soon as specific medical advances are made in the future, according to the Southern Cryonics website.
It is hoped that future medical technology will be able to repair the molecular damage caused by aging and disease, restoring the patient’s health.
However, there are no promises or returns for anyone who choose to try their luck at living longer with this endeavor.
Previous participants got lucky in the late 1970s when Robert Nelson, the president of the Cryonics Society of California, walked away from a facility after money ran short.
Nine bodies, which should have been preserved, were left to decompose, with families later filing a successful lawsuit against Mr Nelson.
The idea of a life able to be revived after being frozen for a length of time has largely been relegated to science fiction in scientific circles.
Dennis Kowalski, the president of the Cryonics Institute in the U.S. told Discover Magazine there are three challenges for future technology advancements to overcome.
Repairing the damage done by freezing, curing whatever ailment that killed the subject and reversing the ageing process will all be required so the person has a healthy body to enjoy their second chance at life.
Shannon Tessier, a cryobiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. said the freezing process alone is a permanent death sentence.
‘There is absolutely no current way, no proven scientific way, to actually freeze a whole human down to that temperature without completely destroying — and I mean obliterating — the tissue,’ Ms Tessier said.
