To date, 377 people around the world have had themselves cryopreserved, hoping to wake up in the future. Human hibernation in Italy and across the world following the case of the British girl who was frozen.
The case in question is that of the 14-year-old British girl who was frozen following a ruling by the High Court in London, which granted her request despite having the consent of only her mother, while her father would have preferred a normal burial. She wanted to have "the chance to be treated and woken up, perhaps in a few hundred years' time," the girl wrote in a letter to Judge Peter Jackson.
The girl's body was frozen by means of cryogenics after her death, in the hope that she could be revived and cured in the future, perhaps with the aid of new treatments. The verdict had been issued shortly before her death in October, as the BBC reports, but was made public only now, after the body — taken to the United States — was frozen. The body was transported from London to the United States at a cost of £37,000, and frozen by a specialist private company.
The three companies active in the field worldwide currently have 377 bodies in a state of hibernation. Alcor, in Arizona — a foundation — is the cryonics organisation with the highest number of members. The Cryonics Institute, also in the United States, near Detroit and founded by Robert Ettinger, the "father" of cryonics; and KryoRus, established in 2006 in Russia. Around the world there are agencies that offer transport services to these three centres. Among those in hibernation are at least eight Italians.
In addition to the patients already cryopreserved, a further 2,000 have signed a contract to be frozen after death, among whom at least eight are Italian. Costs range from $36,000 to $200,000 for the whole body. Lower rates apply for preserving the brain alone.
In Italy — nor indeed in Europe — there are no companies working in cryogenics, but human hibernation is neither prohibited nor permitted. The law does, however, require an observation period of 24 hours from cardiac arrest before the body can be disposed of; yet to prevent decomposition it is necessary to bring the body to –90°C within half an hour of death in order to prepare it for hibernation. Italians who have chosen to have themselves frozen will therefore need to travel to the United States or Russia before they die.
The first man ever to be hibernated was American James Bedford, a professor of psychology at the University of California, who has been frozen since 1967 and remains in sub-zero storage. Among the frozen patients are also baseball legend Ted Williams and Italian professor Giovanni Ranzo.
Cryonics is a set of practices and technologies whose aim is to make it possible, in the future, to bring such people back to life and potentially treat them using advanced scientific procedures. It consists of the gradual but rapid, staged lowering of the body temperature of people who have been declared legally dead, until the temperature of liquid nitrogen is reached. If this is done within half an hour of death, decomposition is halted.
The hibernation procedure begins as soon as the heart stops beating and before brain death is declared. Before the body is brought to –196°C, the temperature of liquid nitrogen, the blood is replaced by a substance that protects against the main drawback of the technique: the freezing of water inside the cells. During cryopreservation, special substances known as "cryoprotectants" are used, which prevent the formation of ice during the cooling process — ice that would otherwise rupture cell walls. Preservation takes place upside down in Dewar vessels, insulating tanks containing liquid nitrogen that prevent the conduction of heat.
The most expensive service is that of Alcor, which charges $200,000 (approximately €186,000) for the whole body and $80,000 for the brain alone. Cryonics Institute, by contrast, has variable rates, all below $100,000. The company's website does, however, recommend taking out a life insurance policy at a minimum of $30 per month, which will cover the cost of cryopreservation at the time of death. In Russia, KryoRus charges $36,000 for the whole body and $18,000 for the brain.
One can also choose to preserve only the head: in this case the procedure is referred to as neuro preservation. It is based on the hope that in the future it will be possible not only to revive cryopreserved bodies, but also to grow or clone new bodies in which the hibernated brains can be placed. The brain is kept in its natural location, the skull: the head is severed at the level of the seventh cervical vertebra. Here too, after a gradual lowering of temperature, the head is placed in a small container and immersed at –196°C for long-term preservation.
Current techniques do not make it possible to bring cryopreserved bodies back to life. Those who choose to have themselves frozen after death hope to be "revived" in the future and cured of the illness that cost them their life, thanks to the advanced medical knowledge that will supposedly have been acquired after years of research. The technical obstacles are unimaginable, but on the other hand, predicting what may happen in 40–50 years' time in terms of scientific research is impossible. It is also unknown whether information relating to memory and personality can be retained for a long time within brain structures.
Some biological samples have already been cryopreserved — that is, brought to and maintained at the temperature of liquid nitrogen (halting their decomposition) — and subsequently brought back to life. These include whole insects, certain types of eels, many types of human tissue (including brain tissue), human embryos and some mammalian organs. The capabilities of molecular biology and nanotechnology point towards a future in which, who knows, we may have technologies capable of repairing the damage caused by ageing, disease and freezing.