They cost millions to freeze themselves, although no one has yet been able to resurrect themselves from freezing
The following article is from the CC Intelligence Agency, written by the CC Intelligence Agency
The earth is a miracle
Science and technology|United States
Li Zehou's family confirmed that after Li's death, his family had frozen's "head" in a company in the United States in accordance with his will
After Du Hong, the female editor of "The Three-Body Problem", froze her head in a liquid nitrogen tank at -196 °C in an American company in 2015, expecting to be resurrected, Li Zehou also froze his head after his death.
On February 3, scholar Ma Qunlin wrote that Li Zehou died of illness at Boulder's home on November 2, 2021, at the age of 91. Li Zehou once left a "frozen head" will before his death, which was left for posterity to study. However, the "separation of corpses" is undoubtedly not in line with traditional Chinese customs, and is the will executed?
Recently, Li Zehou's friends confirmed from his family that on the day of Lee's death, his son Li Ai notified the AlcorLife Extension Foundation (Alcor Life Extension Fund is the most influential non-profit organization providing cryonics technology in the United States and the largest provider of cryonics services in the United States) to fulfill Li Zehou's will on freezing the skull before his death in order to verify the "accumulation theory" in the future. The body was cremated and buried in Colorado, USA.
This news was on December 6 last year, when Ma Chunlin met with Li Zehou's wife, Mr. Ma Wenjun, who had returned from the United States, and his son Li Ai in Beijing, his son Li Ai confirmed that Li Zehou's "frozen head testament" had been faithfully executed and had been carried out for about two years.
Why did Li Zehou choose to freeze his head after his death?
On his 80th birthday, Li Zehou disclosed his "frozen skull testament" for the first time in an interview with "Southern People Weekly", saying: I will not have an epitaph. But I'm going to keep my head in the future, freeze it, and take it out again in 300 years, or 500 years. I have explained this matter to my wife and children, some people want to be resurrected, and I think resurrection is impossible. I want to prove whether culture has influenced the brain, and whether it is possible to find the remnants of Chinese culture in my brain after a few hundred years to prove my theory of accumulation. If it turns out to have an impact (culture affects the brain), I think it's more than all my books combined. ”
On his 90th birthday, a year before his death, in another interview, Li Zehou said: I have contacted the cryogenic organization (Alcor Life Extension Fund), and I have donated 80,000 US dollars, and I have to pay a few hundred US dollars a year in membership fees. ”
"Of course, if it can't be done or can't be done, the $80,000 will be returned, and now they are using it for the institution's investment and other purposes. Many people contact this organization because they want to be resurrected, and they hope to be resurrected soon after they die. I think the resurrection is impossible. ”
"I don't ask for resurrection, so I ask for it to be preserved as long as possible, until the brain science is developed enough to be studied, but I don't know if I can do it. I've done that, and I'm not just talking about it, but I now estimate that 95% of the time I can't do it. ”
In the list of post-death cryonics released by Alcor, in 2021, there are five, and Mr. Li Zehou ranks fourth.
As for why the head is frozen, Li Zehou has made it very clear in two interviews. Ma Qunlin believes that Li Zehou's "frozen skull testament" "can be said to be practicing his own 'philosophical' concept, 'scientific' concept, and 'life and death' concept." This is the last shocking exclamation mark in Li Zehou's life!"
Dr. Jerry Lemler, former president and CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, stands in front of a tank of liquid nitrogen that freezes people.
The female editor of the three-body problem spent 750,000 yuan to carry out brain freezing in the United States nine years ago, and the first frozen person has been sleeping for 57 years.
Unlike Li Zehou's "philosophical" frozen skull testament, Du Hong, another writer who died nine years ago and was transported by his family from Chongqing to the United States, hopes to become the first Chinese to be resurrected.
The first person in China to volunteer to participate in the "frozen man" experiment was the Chongqing female writer Du Hong, who is also one of the editors and reviewers of the science fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem".
After reading "The Three-Body Problem", she once mentioned to her daughter that she also wanted to be frozen after death, and her daughter contacted the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in the United States through online volunteers and classmates in the United States.
Du Hong's picture hangs on Alcor's wall of life.
In the list of deceased people frozen by Alco Frozen, in 2015, writer Du Hong ranked fourth.
Du Hong's family chose to spend $120,000 (about 750,000 yuan) on brain freezing, and according to Du Hong's daughter, a large part of the cost was used for thawing and resurrection after several years.
On May 30, 2015, after Du Hong was pronounced dead, two surgeons from the United States who had been waiting for the scene immediately injected anticoagulants, antibacterial drugs, and antithrombotic drugs into Du Hong's body to prevent blood clotting.
Subsequently, Du Hong's body was placed in a wooden coffin filled with ice cubes, and after reprocessing, it was transported to the headquarters of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in the United States in a frozen state, where the head of the body was separated and stored in a special container in a liquid nitrogen environment at -196°C.
When the writer prepared to freeze her brain before her death, she still had a glimmer of hope that she would be resurrected in 50 years.
But will this mysterious frozen agency make her wish come true?
In fact, the world's first frozen person has been sleeping in a cryocapsule for 57 years.
James Hiram Bedford became the first person to cryopreserve his body in 1967 because of kidney cancer, which was a cancer that could not be solved at the time, and Robert Nelson (founder of the Alcor Life Extension Fund), who performed the first cryonics surgery, announced in 2017 that James would be resurrected that year, but there is no news since then, and many believe that the experiment should have failed.
The United States was the first country to have a "frozen man", but it has been the subject of controversy, both because of the questioning of the scientific rigor of its advocates and on the other hand by religious people, who believe that souls cannot be frozen and that resurrection means disobedience to God's will.
The concept of "cryonics" appeared very early, and the real rise was in the early 60s of the 20th century, by Robert Erdinger, known as the "father of cryonics", in his book "The Prospect of Eternal Life", which cites the fact that a large number of plants and lower animals have gone through low temperature dormancy and then awakened.
He believes that death is only a gradual process, and that as long as the body is frozen fast enough, there must be a chance to reverse it.
After the publication of the book, a group of enthusiastic supporters of "cryonics" appeared. However, looking at it now, there are some problems with Egding's statement, medical scientists believe that freezing is different from low-temperature dormancy, freezing is to completely freeze the body, basically to stop life in the original state, is completely passive, and hibernation also has basic metabolism, with a certain degree of initiative.
In any case, Erdinger's vision was realized by January 1967. Robert Nelson, a former electrician, founded the first Life Extension Foundation: the AlcorLife Extension Foundation.
The first frozen human experimenter at Electrician Nelson was James Bedford, a professor emeritus at the University of California. A supporter of cryonics and the first person to sign a cryotrial agreement, Bedford died of cancer, and within hours of Robert Nelson and his medical team freezing James out.
At that time, cryonics seemed imperfect, unorganized, and even chaotic today. Bedford's blood was not completely drained, but was simply injected with antifreeze and Bedford's body was placed in an insulated container filled with dry ice. A few days later, the vessel was placed in a large dewar filled with liquid nitrogen.
Fifteen years later, his body was tossed and turned several more times due to the bankruptcy of the cryonics company that housed Bedford, and finally found a place to rest at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scotts, Arizona. According to a visual evaluation of Bedford's body in 1991, his body remained frozen and his appearance did not deteriorate.
But since that test, there has been no second test for Bedford. Although the freezing process was completed, there was no news of the resurrection plan that had been promised 50 years later. In 2017, Nielsen announced to the world that Bedford might soon be resurrected, but then it was silent, and the outcome of the experiment failed or did not start at all, which is even more doubtful.
It is reported that as of October 31, 2023, the bodies of 222 people and 116 heads have been frozen in Alcor's liquid nitrogen tank at minus 196 degrees Celsius. There were 1,927 volunteers who signed up to freeze themselves after their deaths. Alcor also applies its freezing process to pets' bodies. Regrettably, in half a century, not a single frozen person has been resurrected.
This new technology, which entrusts the good wishes of human beings to "live a long life and never grow old", did not wake up the frozen man 57 years ago as scheduled. And scientists who have been skeptical believe that science may never be able to wake up a frozen man who has long since died.
The Alcor website publishes the so-called basic procedures for handling frozen people.
Medical trials or a new form of funeral? Revealing China's first cryonics institution
In fact, Drake, who worked at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, said that while more than 300 dead people were frozen here, it did not have a license to practice medicine in the United States, but only to operate a funeral business. "It's just a storage facility. It's like people are frozen up and kept in cemeteries. ”
Technology and ethics aside, business is another important component of cryonics, and the controversy has not affected the motivation of applicants who sign up for posthumous cryonics.
Some celebrities such as PayPal founder Peter Trier and TV host Larry King are said to have booked frozen slots. Although the concept of frozen resurrection did not gain popularity on a large scale, in the 70s of the 20th century, about six companies were established to use the technology.
But most people could not afford the fixed cost of keeping the body and went bankrupt, and the number of people who chose to sign up has steadily increased year by year. Alcor even has more than 30 pets waiting to be frozen.
According to sources, more than 500 people are currently stored in cryogenic equipment around the world, and no one knows the exact number, because generally speaking, the institutions that provide such services have signed confidentiality agreements with customers.
At the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, prices vary depending on whether the head is stored alone or the whole body. The minimum storage fee is $28,000.
In addition to Arko in the United States, Kriorus in Russia is another institution with a cryonics facility. Their fees are relatively low, starting at about $12,000 just to preserve the head, but the storage conditions are different from Alcor's separate storage in the United States, where Kriorus offers containers that can coexist several human bodies, and even public containers for frozen capsules where people and pet carcasses coexist.
Regarding the technology of freezing people, there are also institutions in China that have begun to try cryonics technology.
In May 2017, Ms. Zhan Wenlian became the first experimenter to develop cryonics on her own in China. In the terminal stage of cancer, Ms. Zhan, who had planned to donate her body, accidentally learned of this choice, she and her lover did not go through too many secular ethical struggles, agreed to accept cryopreservation, her lover Gui Junmin also said that he asked the research institute to cryopreserve with Ms. Zhan after his death, in case one day his wife is really resurrected, so that he will not be too lonely.
The person who carried out cryosurgery for Zhan Wenlian was Shandong Jinan Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute. The people in the research institute said that although the current technology is not enough to resurrect Zhan Wenlian, in the case of cryopreservation, maybe the future technology can resurrect her.
Since Zhan Wenlian's frozen storage is mainly for experimental research purposes, most of the costs are borne by the research institute, and how much the family bears is not disclosed to the outside world.
According to the media, the Jinan Yinfeng Institute of Life Sciences is the only cryonics research center in China and one of only four such research institutions in the world. In addition to providing cryo suspension for volunteer "frozen people", i.e., keeping bodies at extremely low temperatures to be "resurrected", like the other three institutions, it has a much broader scope of research and "has the potential to revolutionize organ transplantation, refitting body organs, and other medical therapies."
The second case in China was also in Yinfeng, Shandong, which was completed at 14:30 pm on June 19, 2018, and the test subject was named Liu Aihui, female, 72 years old, a lung cancer patient.
Previously, Liu Aihui's wife, Zhou Changyou, had asked Aaron Drake, director of the Clinical Response Center of the Yinfeng Research Institute, three or four times: "How long will it take for a person who is frozen to wake up?" Drake's answer was: "According to the current technical conditions, it will take at least 50 years." Drake joined Yinfeng in 2016 and has been working at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in the United States in the past, exhibiting Wenlian's cryotherapy experiments, and he is also a major participant.
The Alcor website publishes the so-called basic procedures for handling frozen people.
It is said that 10 bodies of Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute have been frozen in their huge containers. The South China Morning Post is even somewhat optimistic: "There are no religious barriers in China – which hinders Western acceptance of 'resurrection' – and China can quickly catch up and lead in cryonics." ”
According to media sources, nearly 200 people have consulted how to become cryonics volunteers, and 30 of them have undergone a disease assessment, which shows the attractiveness of human cryopreservation.
However, the huge technical hurdles make it impossible for this brave idea to become a reality in the foreseeable future, and even the possibility of a leapfrog breakthrough in the freezing and resuscitation preservation of some organs is extremely low.
Drake believes that although wake-up technology is not yet available, the life science institute in Jinan has made significant progress on some projects.
He revealed that one of the biggest hurdles that continues to plague organ transplant surgery at the moment is the short window of opportunity to obtain a transplantable organ from the deceased and implant it in the patient's body, "In the case of a human heart, the available time is about six hours. After six hours, the tissue will begin to die. Consider that if you can store your organs in an ultra-cold environment and perfuse them continuously, i.e., extend the time it takes for blood to circulate through from six hours to six days, then you will have enough time to complete the transplant. China was the first country to adopt this approach, and Yinfeng is leading the way in this research field. China may outperform everyone else because they take a new approach. ”
Drake says that each organ requires a different technique for cryopreservation, and "the bigger the organ, the harder it becomes." The equipment you have to use will also get bigger", but once you find a solution to save all the organs, the prospects of being able to recover the entire human body from a frozen state will be high, "just like if you solve the problem by breaking it down, first the individual parts, and then a very complex mathematical problem." Then put the pieces together and you will come up with the answer."
Logically, Drake's argument makes sense, but in practice, there are too many technical difficulties in the "frozen man" technology that cannot be overcome at present.
The late Hua Zezhao, a retired professor at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and one of the first batch of doctoral supervisors in China's "refrigeration and cryogenic engineering", once pointed out that it is "an impossible task" to realize the resurrection of the deceased through cryonics experiments.
The reason is that in his paper "Cryopreservation and Freeze-drying of Human Cells" published more than 10 years ago, it has been clarified that organisms are divided into cells, tissues, organs, and human bodies according to the degree of complexity.
Sun Wenyu, a surgical expert who has participated in Zhan Wenlian and Liu Aihui's experiments, also believes that the current cryonics experiment is still in its infancy. He and Hua Zezhao put forward almost the same conservative view on the "resurrection" hypothesis: "The tissues, organs, and cells of the human body need different conditions for cryoprolysis experiments, and it is difficult to achieve an instantaneous uniform vitrification state. ”
But these difficulties may become more and more like a "business" for the frozen human body that is being commercialized.
Russia's Kriorus has said that they want to set up multiple offices around the world, and they are also advocating for the whole family to sign a post-death preservation agreement, so that the family can be kept intact when they wake up, and there can be a discount on the preservation fee between relatives. It can be seen that whether it is selling hope or believing in science, the realization of immortality requires a fairly strong market demand.
At present, it may be almost impossible to resurrect after 50 years of cryonics, but resurrecting some organs is a possible future.
Author: Yu Mengqi, special expert of the CC Intelligence Bureau of Phoenix.com
Editor: Uncle Box
Typography: Conch
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