A Second Chance at Life? Inside the Bold World of Cryonics

• Germany’s Tomorrow. Bio, a start-up in the business of cryonics, is offering to freeze and revive human post-mortem services for £165,000, despite the pessimistic stance of science on the revival of organisms as complex as humans. 
• This process locks the bodies in low temperatures to be preserved cryopreservatively, in hopes that future medical advances will allow for a cure or reverse whatever originally caused death.

Cryonics, where a person entering the afterlife can be preserved in a frozen state, is the best hope ever, over-exciting yet unbelievable people. The German start-up, Tomorrow. Bio is the first attempt to make the extraordinary possible. It can give a person a fresh start. It all costs a sum of $200,000 (£165,000)—almost equal to the price of a luxury sports car.

The Process of Cryonics: A Glimpse into Tomorrow

Europe’s first cryonics laboratory, Tomorrow. Bio, in Berlin, is used by their staff to freeze people who have died with the hope that they can be resuscitated in the future. It all starts after the patient is legally declared dead. He is brought up to an open ambulance where the conditioning begins. Afterwards, a patient awaits the trip to an ambush cryonics procedure. The dead are cooled down to temperatures lower than weathering conditions and consequently are coupled with cryoprotective fluid to avoid ice crystal formation, which could damage the tissues.

Using rapid cooling to a base temperature of -125°C for a short period, after which the rate of cooling is lowered to -196°C, the body is moved to storage in Switzerland. Even that is not half of the hope yet because it is believed that medicine will progress to repair the other flaws that contributed to one death and then reverse the cryopreservative process.

The Science and Skepticism Driving Cryonics.

While the prospect of cryonics is alluring in the future, everything is still under the clouds of doubt since no human being has been revived after they have been rewarmed. People such as bright neuroscientists criticise that line of practice because the science behind it is only speculative and there is no empirical evidence, at least at this moment.

The main problem is the potential for brain damage in the process. Cryonics could be a major failure even if it can bring someone back. Far from the least significant problem is the problem of bringing somebody back without major damage to their cognitive abilities. The future of cryonics lies in the evolution of combined nanotechnology and neuroscience, both quite young in their infancy in terms of such applications.

Ethical and Financial Considerations

Last but not least, cryonics represents a major ethical challenge. To the future responsibilities and allocation of resources, the freezing of a body forever poses questions about resources. The very high costs form a barrier to many people and lead to the criticism that they lower the resources of resources: they are an unfounded speculation.

Supporters, however, mostly like Emil Kendziorra, one of the co-founders of Tomorrow.Bio, see the potential of cryonics in being used like any normal medical practice. Kendziorra wonders whether long after he left the future, today’s concept of organ transplants would have been as unlikely and somewhat science fiction-like in the field of medicine approximately 50 years ago or so.

Increased Interest and Reticence Over Tomorrow

But under the scepticism, interest in cryonics spreads. Nowadays, more dead people and pets are kept at a low temperature with Tomorrow. Bio, who has a long waiting list totalling in the hundreds already. The COVID-19 era also added death awareness that could have possibly contributed to the growing interest.

The company targets expansion to the US and has set an ambitious vision for the near future, including the conservation of neural structure and cell structures systematically explaining memory and identity.

What does the future hold?

Cryonics has been engulfed in controversial feelings as a whole because most therapeutic techniques of cryotechnology are still experimental. While exciting to consider a “second life,” this new endeavour faces a lot of serious scientific, ethical, and financial challenges. Today, cryonics projects a lot of hope and curiosity along with unproven technology—a chance at everything in maximum exultation towards a probable life-encoded future—but is just like the startling bad news reminding us how much life or death we know.