There are no guarantees
A man has had his body frozen and flown over 3,750 miles to the US in the hope that he will wake up in the future.
The British man had signed up to a cryonics scheme before he died which promised its members the chance of a ‘second life’.
The process involved his body being packed in dry ice at a funeral home in London before he was flown to the Cryonics Institute (CI) in the US where he will be stored in the hopes of one day waking up.
Once at the facility, the patients are placed in a sub-zero environment known as a cryostat and are frozen in liquid nitrogen at -320.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
The unnamed man is the institute’s 254th patient.
The first patient was Rhea Ettinger who has been in her cryostat since 1977.
Dennis Kowalski who is the president of CI is surprised the scheme is not more popular.
He told the Metro: “Ironically, while the number of members is growing, I’m only surprised that we’re not more popular. What we are doing is pretty rational when you think about it.
“Cryonics is like an ambulance ride to a future hospital that may or may not exist some day.
“While we give no guarantees, if you are buried or cremated your chances of coming back are zero.
“We are therefore a Pascal’s wager, or a gamble with little to lose and all to gain.”
Critics have hit back at the practice arguing that it ‘robs the dying of their dignity’ and that it is impossible due to the complexity of the brain.
Kowalski counters that it could one day be possible as he compared it to the progress made over the years in conducting heart transplants.
Over the years, many people have attempted to cheat death. One of the most famous cases was biohacker Bryan Johnson who went to extreme lengths to preserve his youth including having a blood transfusion using blood plasma from his son.
