Why can someone rise from the dead?

The art of human resurrection by freezing first appeared in science fiction.In 1931, a story published in the American magazine Stranger Things wrote that when a man named James died, his remains were launched into space, where the cold and the vacuum preserved his remains indefinitely. Millions of years later, with mankind long extinct, some sort of alien mechanical nation discovered the frozen body. They resurrected James' head and transplanted it into a cyborg, and later, James lived forever. Robert Ettinger, who is known as the father of human cryonics, saw this story and wrote the book The Prospect of Immortality in 1962. In his book, he listed a large number of facts that proved the possibility of resurrection by freezing. 73-year-old Jameis Bedford, a physics professor in the United States, had lived an unexceptional life. But when he died of cancer in 1967, he chose an unusual way to "dispose" of himself - by freezing himself. In doing so, he became the first person in human history to be frozen.

Today, he is stored at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the world's largest provider of human cryopreservation services. Inside the Alcor storage room, there is a set of stainless steel tank cabinets, which are kept at a temperature of minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit all year round. Inside these huge metal containers, the remains of volunteers participating in human freezing experiments are suspended in a liquid nitrogen solution, cryogenically "frozen".

"Our youngest patient is 21 years old, the oldest is 99 and a half years old, and some of them are TV repairmen, some of them are students, some of them are librarians, some of them are engineers, some of them are science fiction writers."

Today, Alcor has 781 members, 71 of whom have been frozen. Each volunteer signed a contract with Alcor to freeze his or her body during his or her lifetime. Generally speaking, if you freeze the whole body, you have to pay a fee of 150,000 U.S. dollars (about 1.2 million yuan), but if you only freeze the head, the fee is only 80,000 U.S. dollars (about 640,000 yuan). In the case of Chinese guests, other related services are involved and the fee will be higher than 150,000 U.S. dollars.

How to "come back from the dead" before freezing through the "three hurdles"

In the "Alcor" Web site, the reporter saw the organization firmly believed in the "Human cryonics" can work on three bases:

1, if the basic structure of the human body can be preserved intact, the person can be stopped, but also can be "re-started";

2, vitrification, rather than simply frozen, can be a very good preservation of the human body;

3, the human body can be frozen, and the human body can be frozen, and the human body can be frozen. Vitrification, rather than simple freezing, preserves the human body very well;

3. Techniques for repairing physiological structures at a molecular level are foreseeable.

Based on these three points, "Alcor" believes that "although the method of freezing the human body sounds almost like science fiction, there is a basis for it in real science, and it is completely feasible."

Tanya Jones, director of operations for Alcor, describes the process of human freezing: "When an Alcor member dies, a cryo-transportation team is set up to take care of him or her. When an Alcor member dies, a cryo-transportation team is waiting nearby. As soon as the member is declared dead by the hospital, the transportation team goes into action and immediately takes the body to a fully equipped location. There, the protocols of the patient's life will be formalized - he will be 'frozen'."

"One of the first things that will be done is to cool his surface with ice water." Tanya Jones said, "The second thing is that we will be putting him on cardiopulmonary support, which of course is not to bring him back to life, but just to keep his blood circulating and also have oxygen support. Only then can we administer a series of drugs to minimize the destruction of the body caused by the cardiac arrest. Thirdly, the patient will be taken to a nearby crematorium for a blood flush where the blood will be replaced by an organ preservation fluid. This protects the organs for 24-48 hours, giving us enough time to cryoprotect the body, so this is critical."

Members of the Alcor organization believe that someday, when science and technology mature, they will be able to "wake up" again after being "frozen".

Questioning 'resurrection from the dead' experts say it's exploratory

"I think the likelihood of resuscitation being successful is questionable, after all, there are no examples or evidence that it will work." Although Professor Jiang Jiyao, head of neurosurgery at Renji Hospital, has brought a monkey back from the dead after it was declared "brain dead" in cryogenic experiments, he is still skeptical about "resurrecting humans from the dead after freezing".

"Although 'human freezing' and my research are somewhat consistent in principle, i.e., after the heart stops beating, before the brain is irreversibly dead, it is frozen and then 'resuscitated'. But the success of our experiment was a monkey that was frozen for an hour. As for a human being frozen for that long, months or even years, it is still a question whether the cells are intact." Prof. Jiang Kiyao said that this kind of "human freezing" can only be regarded as an exploratory work, and "it is doubtful whether recovery can really be realized in the end."

At the same time, Professor Jiang Jiyao introduced, there is currently no such domestic institutions to provide "human body freezing" services, "after all, it is unknown whether it is effective, so in the absence of scientific research to prove the basis of a wide range of promotions is not possible." Yesterday, Shanghai, several tertiary hospitals responsible for scientific research vice president have pointed out that the freezing technology in Shanghai has been very mature, but applied to the whole person is not any medical value. At present, there is no large medical research institutions and hospitals in Shanghai to carry out this technology, and therefore will not consider the method of freezing to extend life. Medical experts say that human cryonics is a new business opportunity, not medicine, and its emergence caters more to people's desire to live forever.

Ning Guang, vice president of Ruijin Hospital affiliated with Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, revealed that umbilical cord blood transplantation can save lives, and also treat dozens of difficult and complicated diseases such as lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis; and frozen sperm and eggs can have the next generation. "Every technology that applies organs to freezing has medical value, but human freezing currently has no medical value."