Science & Technology

Russian firm will freeze your brain when you die

By T.K. Randall
January 16, 2020 ·  10 comments

Would you have your body frozen upon death if given the opportunity ? Image Credit: US Navy Known as KrioRus, the company, which is situated just outside the Russian capital Moscow, currently has around 71 'patients' who have volunteered to have either their brain or their whole body frozen in the hope that science will eventually discover a way to bring them back to life.

To prevent the bodies from deteriorating, they are stored at a cool -196 degrees Celsius.

One customer - Alexei Voronenkov - has already had his 70-year-old mother's remains frozen upon her death and plans to become a resident at the facility when he eventually dies as well.

"I did this because we were very close and I think it is the only chance for us to meet in the future," he said. "I hope one day it reaches a level when we can produce artificial bodies and organs to create an artificial body where my mother's brain can be integrated."It currently costs Russian customers $36,000 to freeze a body and $15,000 to preserve just the brain, however the firm's services are also available to foreign customers at a slightly increased cost.

But is there really a chance that a frozen brain could one day be brought back to life ?

Some scientists have heavily criticized KrioRus and other company's like it for taking people's money despite there being no evidence to suggest that it will ever be possible to revive them.

Evgeny Alexandrov, who is head of the Russian Academy of Sciences's Pseudoscience Commission, described the cryonics industry as "an exclusively commercial undertaking that does not have any scientific basis" and said that the whole premise "is a fantasy speculating on people's hopes of resurrection from the dead and dreams of eternal life."

With many more people queuing up to be frozen however, it seems that - fantasy or not - the possibility of being brought back to life far in the future is too tantalizing to pass up.

Source: New York Post | Comments (10)

Tags: Cryonics