The ultra-wealthy are ready to spend huge amounts of cash to have their brains frozen after their death in the hope of being re-born in the future.
Deep-pocketed citizens are reportedly paying $100,000 for cryogenic preservation of their brains in liquid. The service is being provided by the Arizona-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation.
The company is led by Bristol-born scientist Dr Max More and his team of eight people. Alcor has some 1,000 paying members on the book, with some of them paying more than $250,000 for full-body preservation instead of freezing just the brain. The full-body freezing involves hanging upside down in steel cylinders.
“I know that a lot of people will think I’m daft, but why not give it a try? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I don’t have any children and I’m not married and at my age that’s unlikely to change,” a businessman in his late 60s, who asked to be identified only as ‘David,’ said in an interview with the Daily Star. “I thought I'd invest a bit of money in this and I may wake up in 200 or 2,000 years’ time and be able to experience a whole new life.”
According to Alcor’s website, the company expects surgeons in the future to be able to grow an entire new body around a repaired brain. However, removing a brain from the skull involves unavoidable damage, so the specialists leave the organ protected inside the head during preservation and storage.
The company starts operating only when a client’s death is officially declared. Alcor’s technicians pack the body in ice while attaching a “heart-lung resuscitator” to get the blood circulating. After that, 16 different medications are administered to protect the cells from crystalizing.
Alcors says it currently keeps 149 dead “patients” at its facility, including US baseball legend Ted Williams. The company has also preserved Matheryn Naovaratpong, who died at the age of two and became the youngest person ever to be crystalized.
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