Can You Cryogenically Freeze Your Body and Come Back to Life?

When you die, there are a lot of things you can do with your dead body--embalm it, cremate it, donate it to science (the list goes on…), but some people will choose to have their dead bodies, or body parts, frozen until the technology of the future has (hopefully) advanced enough to bring them back to life. This week on Reactions, we break down the chemistry of cryogenic freezing and if it’s realistic to think we could ever reanimate a frozen corpse.

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Credits:

Producer: Elaine Seward

Writer: Samantha Jones, Ph.D.

Scientific Consultants: Leila Duman, Ph.D. Michelle Boucher, Ph.D., Joe Schwarcz, Ph.D., Michael Swain, Ph.D., David H. Gorski, M.D./Ph.D., João Pedro de Magalhaes, Ph.D., David Sherwood, Ph.D.

Executive Producer: George Zaidan
Executive Producer: Hilary Hudson

Music:
Sonoton Vanguard - Crawling Speed
Sonton Vanguard - Components A
AXS - Dark Alley
Sonton Vanguard - Let's Think Big
William Tell Overture

Sources:
General cryopreservation principles

Corpse cryopreservation and forensics

The church of cryopreservation

The false science of cryonics

The case for cryonics

Euthanasia and cryothanasia

Cryopreservation: An emerging paradigm change

Fish antifreeze protein and the freezing and recrystallization of ice.

Antifreeze and ice nucleator proteins in terrestrial arthropods.

Cryoprotectant Toxicity: Facts, Issues, and Questions

Scientific justification for cryonics

Cryopreserving mammalian cells

Persistence of Long-Term Memory in Vitrified and Revived Caenorhabditis elegans

An Interneuronal Chemoreceptor Required for Olfactory Imprinting in C. elegans

Maintenance of C. elegans

Expression of Ice-Binding Proteins in Caenorhabditis elegans Improves the Survival Rate upon Cold Shock and during Freezing

Ever wonder why dogs sniff each others' butts? Or how Adderall works? Or whether it's OK to pee in the pool? We've got you covered: Reactions a web series about the chemistry that surrounds you every day.

Freezing frogs

[ACSReactions]

Did you know that some species of frog can survive freezing? When the wood frog, found in North America, begins to freeze it releases sugar--from its liver--into its bloodstream. That sugar travels to its tissues where it helps keep cells from dehydrating and shrinking. Cool, right? Sadly, we humans don’t have this adaptation and with cryonics we’d be frozen AFTER we’re already dead (these incredible frogs are still alive!). So, no dice.

[PeXis]

If this actually worked. Imagine basically going to sleep and instantly (from your perspective) wake up hundreds of years into the future.

[bigghoss]

So I can't get frozen for 1, 000 years and get thawed out and have a robot best friend and get married to a mutant cyclops?

[Laff]

I think preserving the connections between neurons is more important than keeping the cells alive. It's possible that the cells could be repaired after dying in the future.

[salvatorecolosimo]

If anyone is watching this from the future please revive me lol

[easemailboxes]

I am up for it. The less people who are interested at this point the better it is for me and other time travelers.

[tibbsshaleen]

There’s a Netflix documentary about this. An Asian family did this with their little girl who had the world’s deadliest brain tumor. 😔

[shush]

I would be frozen alive just makes more sense than dying and then being frozen

[dali]

Am I the only one who reads these comments and thinks about someone reading them and laughing at them 200 years later?
btw if you are from the future feel free to revive me somehow, we can have a fun conversation :D

[liamb.]

Imagine being the one guy that drops the dead body after its frozen so it just shatters, that would be a fun trip to the boss's office

[tubewithtrev]

If we had the technology to properly store someone indefinitely, we'd have the technology to keep them from dying in the first place

[gus]

Interesting story, but I wish I hadn't watched it over breakfast, with our Thanksgiving turkey thawing in the refrigerator....! 🙊

[yeoss]

Why not just freeze a pig or something?
Say... 6 months? A year?
Then take it out.


Also have 2 tests, one with Cryoprotectants, one without.

[Antitheist]

The whole point of cryonics is a bet on technologies of the FUTURE, not the capabilities of the past or present, which is why most of this video isn't relevant. As long as the neurons can be successfully preserved, that's all that's important for now. If advanced molecular nanotechnology comes to pass within the next couple of decades (as predicted), we should have a pathway for either repairing all the damage and reviving the "corpsicle, " or copying the brain pattern to reconstruct it in a computer architecture (which could "live" in a virtual world or be downloaded to an advanced robotic form that is perhaps indistinguishable from humans). So what are the odds of this occurring and people being revived? 50%? 10%? 1%? Well, if you DON'T get cryogenically frozen, the odds of being revived are exactly 0%. So if you have the money, what do you have to lose? You can't take it with you....

[wnordelus]

Imagine how much therapy you'll need to wrap your head around living, dying, & returning...

[RavenWolf]

How I see it. It doesn't matter how damaged the body is now when you freeze it. It only matters how advanced technology we have to resurrect these people. I think that most even damaged people can be resurrected in perfect condition given time. It might take 1000 years to get that point, but it doesn't matter. For me if I got money and I was close to death I would choose to freeze myself. It is risks but better than to be dead for sure.

[XCCCUnknown]

You know, people are wondering about the success of this thing. What I'm wondering is how long will they live after being "reborn".

[andomneraio]

4:29 This is where she essentially says no, no you can not.

[lfuucex]

I’m terrified of death just nearly had a panic attack thinking about it

[gerlsey]

Imagine fooling someone they time traveled with this