Cryonics : Practice Of Freezing An Individual Who Has Died
A cryonics company has frozen its first client in Australia in the hope of bringing him back to life in the future.
- Cryonics, the practice of freezing an individual who has died, with the object of reviving the individual sometime in the future.
- The word cryonics is derived from the Greek krýos, meaning “icy cold.”
- It is an effort to save lives by using temperatures so cold that a person beyond help by today’s medicine can be preserved for decades or centuries until a future medical technology can restore that person to full health.
- A person that is held in such a state is called a “cryopreserved patient”, because Cryonicists (the advocates of cryonics) do not regard the cryopreserved person as really dead.
- Cryonic preservation can be performed only after an individual has been declared legally dead.
- The process is initiated shortly after death, with the body being packed in iceand shipped to a cryonics facility.
- There, the blood is drained from the body and replaced with antifreeze and organ-preserving compounds known as cryoprotective agents.
- In this vitrified state, the body is placed in a chamber filled with liquid nitrogen, where it will theoretically stay preserved at -196 °C until scientists are able to find a way to resuscitate the body in the future.
- Currently, there are a few hundred bodies that have been frozen through cryonics.
