Rhiannon Ingle
Everyone thinks about the future. From what you're having for tea this evening and how you plan to spend your weekend all the way to your dream wedding and maybe even what your grandkids will look like - it's clear we all dreaming of what's yet to come.
Well, for some, the desire is even greater after one man took a massive risk with his own dead body in the hopes he’ll come back to life in the future.
In short, cryonics is when you freeze someone in the hopes to extend their lifespan later down the line.
The technique involves cooling legally-dead people to liquid nitrogen temperature where physical decay 'essentially stops'.
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This is done in the hope that future scientific procedures will someday revive them and 'restore them to youth and good health'.
"A person held in such a state is said to be a 'cryopreserved patient', because we do not regard the cryopreserved person as being inevitably 'dead'," the Cryonics Institute explains.
The CI has performed more whole-body suspensions than any other cryonics organisation.
The CI charges members $28,000 for 'whole-body suspension' and 'perpetual storage'. The official website states that the small fortune is 'usually paid with life insurance'.
The bloke in question, referred to only as patient #254, died earlier this year (29 February).
The Brit's body was then flown nearly 4,000 miles from his home in London to the Cryonics Institute in Michigan, US.
Patient #254, aged just 50, signed up to the cryonics scheme which offers those interested in 'a second chance at life' and 'life extension within reach' via 'long-term storage'.
He was reportedly under hospice care and had cancer at the time of his death according to the CI - the world's largest provider of whole-body cryonics
Well, patient #254's body was 'perfused' meaning that what was previously blood and water was replaced with 'a special cryo-protection mixture which stops ice forming to help preservation'.
Once done, the 'cryopreserved patient' was held in dry ice in a funeral home in London until transportation arrangements were made.
Once the arrangements were in place, the he was transported to Detroit Metro Airport in dry ice, where he was picked up and brought to the CI facility, the case report states.
He then arrived at the facility a month later (14 March) before being transferred to the computer-controlled cooling chamber to cool to liquid nitrogen temperature.
"The human vitrification program was selected and the time needed to cool the patient to liquid nitrogen temperature was five days and 11 hours," CI adds.
"The patient was then placed in a cryostat for long-term cryonic storage."
CI president, Dennis Kowalski, has previously described the cryonic process as a 'gamble' which may result in 'an ambulance ride to a future hospital'.
"Ironically, while the number of members is growing, I’m only surprised that we’re not more popular," he said.
"What we are doing is pretty rational when you think about it."
Kowalski continued: "Cryonics is like an ambulance ride to a future hospital that may or may not exist some day.
"While we give no guarantees, if you are buried or cremated your chances of coming back are zero. We are therefore a Pascal’s wager, or a gamble with little to lose and all to gain.’"