Cryonics | 11 Jun 2024
Recently, Southern Cryonics (a company in Australia) announced that it has successfully frozen its first client, with the hope of bringing him back to life in the future.
- The first patient was an 80-year-old man, who died in May 2024 at a hospital in Sydney.
- Cryonics involves keeping the human body at cryogenic temperatures (-196°C) in the hopes that one day, medical science will be able to repair the molecular damage caused by ageing and disease and bring the patient back to full health.
- The process involves initially cooling the man's body to 6 degrees Celsius with ice, using a heart-lung bypass machine to circulate a preserving solution and lower the temperature.
- Further, the body is wrapped in a special sleeping bag and packed in dry ice to reach -80 degrees Celsius, and then gradually lowering the temperature to -200 degrees Celsius in a cooling chamber before placing in a pod and storing it upside down in a specialised tank.
- However, the concern lies in the scientific and ethical aspects of reviving a whole human body, along with the extended timeframe required for such advancements.
