Life, won the right to cryogenically freeze her body. The girl had to go to court because her parents could not agree on what to do with her remains after death. The news caused a public outcry not only in Britain, but also in Russia. Meanwhile, in our country, more than five dozen people have already been frozen - without noise in the press. They signed treaties in the hope that medicine would someday reach such a level that they would be revived and cured.
51 people have been frozen, and more than 200 contracts have been frozen for the future,” Valeria Udalova, co-founder and CEO of KrioRus, told Life. - A lot of contracts are made before operations. For example, a client says: "My mother with stage 4 cancer is preparing for surgery, we want to cryonize in case of death." But then my mother survives - and we have had 10 such people in a row since April. So the contracts remain signed for the future.
According to Victoria Udalova, about half of those frozen died of cancer.
I think that in 40 years there will already be drugs in the world that can save these people,” she says.
Among the clients are not only Russians, but also citizens of Australia, Holland, Italy, Ukraine and other countries.
Freezing an adult costs $36,000 in our country. Plus, there may be additional costs, such as the transportation of the body.
We have an endless contract, - says Victoria Udalova. - But we believe that neither such prices nor higher ones will still be able to recoup our costs, so we are developing a parallel business. Now we have an IT business, and not just one. In general, we started all this for a great cause, and not for profit.
About 20 private investors are also ready to support the company.
These are quite small investors, they are ready to allocate 50 thousand dollars each - approximately the same amount, - says Victoria. - Now we think how to work with them. Basically, they themselves want to be cryonized in the future, a very small part of them would like to receive some income from cooperation with us in the future. On the whole, we have been growing almost without investment.
As Victoria said, for future revival, "it is best to store a frozen person at minus 130 degrees." But until recently, people were frozen to minus 196 degrees and below. Freezing is done either with the help of liquid nitrogen vapor, or with the help of other special liquids. Now the tanks where the frozen ones are stored look like "huge thermoses".
In the future, these will be rooms where people enter in space suits, and their beautiful friends and relatives lie there, - said Victoria.
The KrioRus company also freezes pets at the request of their owners: dogs, cats, birds and even chinchillas.
Now about 20 animals have been cryonized, their owners loved them very much, - said Victoria.
According to her, most doctors are skeptical about cryofreezing and the possibility of resuscitation.
Among the skeptics are mostly older doctors, and the younger ones are increasingly treated well, she said.
Evidence that it is possible to revive a person whose body was frozen after an officially recorded death is not yet available. However, there is a letter in support of cryofreezing, signed by 69 scientists. O official medicine in exceptional cases, such a method as a deliberate decrease in body temperature.
As previously reported, KrioRus is one of three companies in the world that provide a full cryofreeze cycle (the other two operate in the USA). According to the SPARK-Interfax database, revenue for 2015 amounted to 2.5 million rubles, net profit - 56 thousand rubles.
Image copyright Thinkstock
Max More ordered to freeze his brain after death, and he is not the only one. The correspondent asked him about why he made such a decision, and tried to figure out how the process of cryopreservation of the human body works.
In 1972, Max Mohr watched the children's science fiction television program Time Slip ("Time shift"), whose characters were frozen in ice. Then he did not pay much attention to this, but remembered the transfer much later, when he began to discuss the technologies of the future at meetings with friends. "They were subscribed to Cryonics magazine and started asking me about it to see how savvy I was as a futurist. And everything fell into place for me."
Mohr is now president and CEO of Alcor, one of the world's largest companies in the cryonics industry. He himself has been a participant in the post-mortem freezing program since 1986, when he chose neuroconservation, in which only the brain is preserved, and not the whole body. "The future, it seems to me, will not be bad, so I would like to be in it. I want to continue to live, enjoy life and create," Mohr explains.
Cryopreservation is one of the futurists' favorite skates. The concept is simple: medicine is constantly improving. In the future, people may learn to cure diseases that are now incurable. Cryonics just makes it possible to overcome the annoying gap between the medical technologies of today and tomorrow.
"We view our activities as a kind of emergency assistance Mor says. - We step in when modern medicine gives up. For example, 50 years ago, if you were walking down the street and someone fell down in front of you and stopped breathing, you would have examined him, decided that he was dead, and that’s it. Now we do not do that - we begin to provide assistance. People who would have been immediately considered dead 50 years ago, as we now know, were in fact still amenable to treatment. The principle of cryonics is somewhat similar. We just need to stop the deteriorating process and allow the problem to be solved with better future technologies."
Of course, the concept of cryonics is essentially impossible to test. No one has yet tried to revive a person frozen using this technology. Researchers working on the study of suspended animation have found that a living being can be cooled almost to the point of death and then successfully revived.
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Futurists like to talk about the fact that in the future it will be possible to cure any disease. And for that, it's worth freezing yourself...But freezing for decades is another matter entirely. Mohr points to studies that have studied the preservation of cells, tissues, and even whole worms, but applying this experience to the human body is not an easy task. However, no matter what stage science is at now, there are already those who want to freeze their bodies in liquid nitrogen in the hope of seeing the distant future.
death plan
Alcor's customers live in the most different corners planets. In the ideal scenario, Mohr explains, the firm has some idea of when the customer will die. Alcor monitors customers whose health is failing, and when it looks like their time is about to come, the company sends out a "waiting group." Her task is clear from the name - to wait at the deathbed. "It could be hours or days. At one point the band was on standby for three weeks," says Max Mohr.
Image copyright Alcor Image caption Surgeons are always ready to start the necessary procedures - you only need to pay (photo - Alcor)As soon as the client is declared dead, cryopreservation can begin - and then the work begins to boil. To begin with, the waiting group moves the body from the bed to the ice bed and covers it with a layer of ice chips. Alcor then applies a "cardiopulmonary resuscitator" that restores blood circulation. After that, 16 different drugs are injected into the body - to prevent the destruction of cells in the body.
The company's website explains: "Because our customers are legally dead, Alcor may use technologies that are not yet approved for use in conventional medicine."
When the body is cooled and all the necessary drugs are administered, it is moved to the operating room. Next, it is necessary to remove blood and other liquids from the client's body as carefully as possible, replacing them with a solution in which crystals do not form when frozen (a similar liquid is used to preserve organs during transplantation).
Image copyright Alcor Image caption Everything happens in such an operating room (photo - Alcor)The surgeon opens the chest to access the main blood vessels, connects them to a flushing system, and the blood is replaced with medical grade antifreeze. Since the client will be kept in a state of deep freezing, it is very important to avoid the formation of ice crystals in the cells of his body.
After filling the vessels with antifreeze, the company begins a gradual, one degree per hour, cooling of the body. In about two weeks, its temperature reaches minus 196 degrees. And finally, the client is placed in his last habitat for the foreseeable future - upside down in a refrigerator, often in the company of three others.
This is the ideal scenario. But sometimes things don't go according to plan - if the client didn't notify Alcor of the illness or died suddenly, the freezing process can be delayed for several hours or days.
Image copyright Alcor Image caption This is where the client is placed - upside down and often in the company of three others (photo - Alcor)Recently, one of the customers committed suicide, and Alcor staff had to arrange access to the body with the police and the coroner. Mohr explains that the more time passes between death and freezing, the more time for the cells to decompose, and the patient will subsequently be more difficult to revive and cure.
It seems that there is a lot of risk in this whole process, and the prospects are vague. Mohr readily admits that cryonics is not a guarantee: "We can't be sure of anything, there may be any overlap."
There is nothing attractive about swimming in a tank of liquid nitrogen when nothing depends on you. But it's better than being worm food Max More
So far, Alcor and similar companies are essentially just storing a lot of dead bodies in liquid nitrogen. But the specialist notes that cryonics has an important difference from other futuristic disciplines. "Tissue repair does not violate the basic laws of physics. This is not a time machine for you," Mohr says.
Tissue repair technologies are constantly improving. But so far, no one knows when it will be possible to reanimate the frozen dead, and whether this is possible in principle. If Mohr is still backed against the wall with the question of when he thinks medicine will be able to revive his clients, then he reluctantly gives an estimate of 50-100 years. With a caveat: "But in fact, it's impossible to guess. We probably don't even imagine now what technology will be used for recovery."
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Want to cheat time? Freeze it?To date, 984 customers have agreed to cryopreservation with Alcor. They pay an annual fee of $770, and when the freeze comes, the price can range from $80,000 for brain cryopreservation to $200,000 for whole body preservation.
Some of that money, Mohr said, goes to a trust fund that pays for the operation of the facility and long-term storage of the bodies. The head of the firm also notes that many clients take out insurance that provides for payment for post-mortem cryopreservation. "This is not a whim for the rich. Anyone who is able to buy an insurance policy can afford it," says Max More.
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption However, there is a risk of staying forever snow queenMost clients don't really want to think about the cryopreservation process, he says, but they see it as a necessary evil. "We don't crave to be kept cold, in fact, the idea makes us sick. There is nothing attractive about swimming in a tank of liquid nitrogen when nothing depends on you. But it's better than becoming worm food or turning into ashes “These alternatives are definitely not good,” Mohr concludes.
Would you volunteer for cryopreservation? Write to us.
Remember the action movie The Destroyer, where a police officer played by Stallone is subjected to cryogenic freezing along with a criminal, and after 36 years they are both thawed? So, cryo-freezing is no longer a fantasy: the bodies of 11 people and two dogs are stored in a cryo-storage near Moscow at minus 200C. But no one knows who and when will be able to revive them.
In the village of Alabushevo, Zelenograd near Moscow, there is an outwardly unremarkable hangar. This is the only cryostorage facility in Russia owned by the KrioRus company. Inside the hangar there is a cryostat - a huge white Dewar flask, where under a heavy lid in liquid nitrogen at a temperature of minus 200 degrees Celsius, frozen bodies and heads await resurrection. For a rather illusory hope for a future revival, their relatives and friends paid in advance - 30 thousand dollars for the body and 10 thousand dollars for the head. Storing frozen pets costs less - five thousand dollars. All of them are called "patients" by Kriorus employees - as if they were alive.
An agreement for the storage of expensive bodies can be concluded right there - in a small shabby village house. General Director of KrioRus Danila Medvedev told photojournalist Sergei Mukhamedov about the prospects for revival and even allowed him to look inside the cryostat.
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- Such a service is associated with huge costs, but you offer your services for a fixed fee: $ 10 thousand for the preservation of the head or brain and $ 30 thousand for the whole body. Will this amount be able to cover the maintenance of the body for a long time?
- The fact is that, basically, the costs are not for the costs of keeping the body in a chilled state, but for development. It is elementary to do repairs, purchase equipment, train people. And storage costs are relatively small.
- But if we are talking about long-term storage, and this may not be 50 or even 100 years, then this money is still not enough?
- Everything is simple here. We have calculations and different scenarios. If no one else comes, then we have one algorithm of actions and one cost structure. But there is another scenario in which the number of customers remains the same as it is now and even grows a little - for now, we stick to just such a scenario.
It's not really a pyramid. We can pay out of our own pocket for a long time<содержание>the patients we already have. But<их родным необходимо сразу заплатить>a fixed amount, otherwise they can then at any time say: “You know, we ran out of money.”
So<наша позиция>- you need to take the entire amount and say: "We received the money and take all the responsibility and expenses." In addition, we have our own relatives cryonized here: I have a grandmother, the director has a mother, as well as friends, relatives of friends. So we can pay our nitrogen bills ourselves.
—How many frozen bodies do you currently have?
- In Russia, 15 people were cryonized - all with our participation, with the exception of two who were<крионированы до создания>KrioRus. Some are stored not with us, but with relatives, but we helped organize storage. We now have the bodies of four patients, as well as the cryonic brains of another seven people. In addition, we store the bodies of two animals.
—And if something happens - a fire or your premises will be taken away?
- No guarantees.
— So tomorrow you can disappear?
- Yes, and money bye-bye - and all hopes for revival too. We understand this and speak honestly about it: “If you want guarantees, then help us build everything well, invest $100 million in a cryogenic company, and it will become much more reliable.”
— You can still imagine a revival if a living person were cryonized, but you freeze corpses?...
- There is no fundamental difference between a living person and a corpse - at least at the initial stage. 15 minutes after death, any person, in principle, is still alive, unless, of course, he was crushed by a skating rink. With the help of existing technologies, any person can be revived 15 minutes after death.
— But after all in a brain there come irreversible changes?
- This is a fairy tale, a very common myth, apparently, this phrase was repeated too often to the population: "In five minutes, irreversible processes begin in the brain." I remember it myself, but it's not true. - Here Danila Medvedev begins to explain the theory, using the words "reperfusion shock", "apoptosis", "denaturation" and "perfusion".
— Okay, we've sorted out the body, but why cryopreserve the head separately?
- The brain is responsible for the personality, it can be transplanted into the body and sewn to everything else with the help of nanorobots. Head transplants and body growing are feasible even today. In the most final technology, this will be the transfer of consciousness into a computer, the so-called "download". If we can read the entire structure of the human brain and simulate it on a computer, we will get an analogue of a living person who will begin to think like the original. The copy will feel like the same person and will live indefinitely until the computer shuts down.
—The decision on cryonics is more often made by relatives, and not by the patient himself?
- About half the time.
“I wouldn’t want to suddenly realize after death that now I’m a living head with tubes in solution or a consciousness running around computer chips ...
- For this there is an expression of will in civil law, you can come to a notary or even say it orally to someone. If this declaration of will is known, then everything must be done according to it.
— And if the person did not say anything, and the relatives decided to cut off their heads and freeze them?
They have this right by law. If he didn't say anything, it means he didn't mind. The law on burial and funeral business says that this is determined either by a person during his lifetime, or by relatives or other legal representatives.
“Suppose, in a century or two, science will figure out how to revive cryopreserved people. To whom will you give the body, because then it will be difficult to find relatives?
- Our contract says: "The best way to return a person to functioning in the form of a living organism."
—And to whom will you entrust this "living organism"?
- The decision on who to entrust the revival of the body will most likely be made not by the organization, but by some entity.
—But we can’t know, maybe then shamans will rule or programmers ...
- We'll figure it out there.
- TO What does a person frozen in nitrogen look like?
- Just like dead. If he died of cancer, it’s bad, if he died of a heart attack at a young age, then it’s normal, only pale. The bodies are kept in sleeping bags and the heads in metal containers.
— The history of life and illness is preserved somewhere, will descendants need it?
- In a good way, this, of course, must be done. If we receive such information, we scan it and store it.
- Suppose, in search of guest workers in summer cottages, riot police come to you and find in the hangar a dismemberment with seven heads and four corpses ...
We do not break the law, but we operate in a legal vacuum - we understand that this is risky. Of course, some arbitrariness is possible, but for the most part people are adequate and a dialogue is possible with them. We have documents, acts of acceptance and transfer of bodies for storage, a charter, where it is written that we are engaged in scientific work etc.
— Do the neighbors know what is here?
— Yes, almost everything. They treat this normally, well, maybe we once heard one dissatisfied voice.
— Clients are not embarrassed by how it all looks? Hangar, village house...
“You just need to know the history. Any breakthrough technologies, by definition, are made in the same conditions.
Elena Poskannaya, portal "Vzglyad" (Ukraine), 11/16/2013.
Many want a chance at another life. So far, this is an unrealizable dream, but scientists assure that in the near future humanity will be able to come close to the implementation of this daring idea.
Biorobot or human
Why live again? Futurologists do not doubt the answer: in order to have more time, to see the world in the future, to fly to other planets. To do this, many different methods have already been invented. For example, cloning. So far, experiments in this area are banned, but in a few decades the situation may change dramatically. To wait for better times, you just need to save the DNA.
There is a more fantastic way - to return to earth in another body. It is predicted that in the next 20-30 years a kind of biomatrix, a universal body that does not have its own characteristics, can be created. This biorobot can be transplanted with a preserved brain or transferred genetic information, or even a neural map of the brain recorded on a computer. Then a person will be able to be reborn in a new, more perfect body and continue his life path.
For almost a century, the minds of scientists have been occupied with the possibility of hibernation and cryonics. In the first case, we are talking about immersing a person in a long suspended animation (a sharp slowdown in all life processes), in the second, about a complete freezing of the body in liquid nitrogen for subsequent rebirth. It is in this form, according to scientists, that it will be easier for a person to travel in space and conquer other planets. But it is important not only to preserve the body, but to create technologies for its resurrection.
Deadly Ice
Interest in cryonics is quite understandable. There are many examples on Earth of how living organisms can survive the cold. Ice survival champions are amphibians. For example, the salamander, which lives in the permafrost zone, hibernates at temperatures below -6. When the temperature drops, the liver of this newt begins to produce glycerol, which prevents the formation of ice crystals that can destroy cells.
The owners of the first prize for survival in extreme conditions are the tiny arctic invertebrates - tardigrades. They are able to completely displace water from their body. The tardigrade decreases in size, curls up, becomes covered with a waxy shell and falls into suspended animation. In this state, it is able to withstand pressure of 6,000 atmospheres, doses of radiation a thousand times higher than lethal, temperatures up to -270 degrees and prolonged heating at a temperature of +100. In fact, this is the only terrestrial creature that can survive in outer space.
And in the human body, low temperatures can also stop all changes for many years, scientists say. But there is a problem: water, which is 60% in the body, when frozen, forms ice crystals with sharp edges that destroy cells. It was partly solved by replacing the blood with a special xenon solution. However, the body consists of many types of cells, and one cryoprotectant cannot save them all. Therefore, not only the body, but even a separate organ has not yet been “resurrected” after freezing. Cryonics has only been successful in freezing and regenerating individual cells.
To the question of ethics
Living people cannot be frozen. Under the law, this is tantamount to murder. Therefore, cryobiologists take on the freshly dead. But if a person died from a serious illness, how can he come back to life after freezing? Is it advisable to revive old people in the same body? There are no answers to these questions. This is the weakest point in the theory of cryonics adherents. None of them can guarantee that in the future the idea will not turn out to be a banal zilch. Everyone who has invested in cryonics today is definitely supporting science. But at the same time, he risks, having paid a lot of money, not to be resurrected.
In order not to lose face, cryonicists assure that in the future there will be special technologies that are still unknown to us. “And then the problems of damage during freezing, which are considered irreversible today, will be easily solved,” said Ben Best, head of the American Cryonics Institute. Interestingly, supporting the hope of resurrection, cryonicists call their dead and frozen clients “cryopatients”, and the stay of the body in freezing is called “cryosleep”.
The ideas of Western scientists at the Kharkov Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine are considered utopian. “Reviving a frozen person in the future is not practical. Who will be the smartest person by today's standards in 100 years, when the whole world will change? Why bring this back to life?" - Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor Georgy Babiychuk doubts.
A person is not a machine, but a set of information: soul, personal characteristics, life experience, psyche, instincts, memory. Even if someday the body is thawed, and it suddenly begins to show signs of life, will the person who was previously in this body suit be resurrected? Cryobiology cannot guarantee this yet.
Nevertheless, about 2,000 people around the world have already ordered the procedure for cryonics of their bodies or brains (as an economical option) after death. The desire to "freeze" was expressed by many celebrities - for example, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. In any case, the chance for immortality is not yet available to everyone because of its high price.
3 facts about cryonics
1 In 2012, 206 frozen bodies were stored in cryoinstitutes (including three Ukrainian citizens, they are in the Russian cryostorage). Officially, about 2,000 people are clients of cryogenic firms.
2 In the US, freezing the body costs $100,000, freezing the brain about $70,000. In Russia, the prices are lower - from $12,000.
3 The first cryopatient, California psychology professor James Bedford, died of cancer. He was frozen in 1967 at the age of 74 and remains in cryostorage to this day. More than a million dollars has already been spent on the maintenance of his body.
How it's done
1 After ascertaining death, doctors inject heparin into a vein - so that the blood does not clot.
2 People are hooked up to a ventilator to keep their brains alive.
3 Body temperature with the help of ice drops to +3 degrees.
4 In a special capsule, blood is pumped out and replaced with a preservation solution.
5 The body gradually cools down to -196 degrees (one degree per hour).
6 The frozen body capsule is placed in liquid nitrogen for permanent storage.
Second life for your beloved cat
The only company involved in freezing bodies and having its own storage facility in the CIS is Russia's KrioRus. You can leave your brain “for safekeeping” here for $12,000, and your entire body for $36,000. You can also freeze your pet in the hope of a subsequent resurrection: five dogs, three cats, and even two birds (a titmouse and goldfinch). Prices depend on the size of the animal: for example, a small cat can be cryopreserved for $9,000. The company's website specifically states that the animal cryopreservation contract includes the resuscitation of your pet in the future.
The Dewar vessel was created to store the bodies of cryopatients in liquid nitrogen. Does not consume electricity, it is only required to maintain the level of nitrogen.
Professor James Bedford became the first cryopatient.
