Can frozen humans really be brought back to life? | 60 Minutes Australia

Soon we simply live in the moment. We love to explore

life

, but you don't want this

life

to end. No, could death be curable? There is a magic temperature at 130ºC. I can't wait for Australians to join a global movement cuter than a coffin. live forever 2 hour window to deploy our team anywhere in the world, but keep in mind there's a problem: they have the technology to put us in, but they haven't figured out how to get us out yet. Cryonics is science or nonsense, there is an enormous amount of wishful thinking since humanity has been able to think, we have known that the truth about life is that it ends in death, but as our scientific knowledge increases, there are every More and more optimistic believers, if you will, who think

humans

will soon be smart enough to Hal the inevitability of mortality others, of course, will never be convinced that living forever is possible or desirable say that the idea that some The day death can be considered a curable disease is nonsense, although its advocates say it is actually very close.

Now is the time to start preparing for Life After Life. Allan and Barbara Peace don't know what the future holds, but they are sure of one thing: they don't want to end up here after 35 years of wet bliss. They decided that until death do us part is not enough, they want their love story to continue until eternity, to see the two of them together and see the way they live, they have a fantastic life, so we want more, that's the point , It is not like this? The more we want more of it we can't, we can't imagine giving it up, so there's no death, right?

We don't think about it, we just live in the moment and, um, we enjoy every second, we enjoy our children, our grandchildren, ourselves, we just love exploring life, but you just don't want this life to end. No, the reality is that it will be, but there will be the next life, whatever that is, and it is largely unknown because we don't

really

know what it is. It will be, but a conventional bual or cremation will not allow them to discover it, leaving only one option. They signed up to be cryopreserved at Australia's first cryogenic facility. They have the technology to install us, but they don't.

I've already figured out how to get us out, uh, and there's always a risk, but the alternative is eternal blackness. I mean, this is not an alternative for us and you have a deal, don't you, we will stay together when we return. The deal is when they unfreeze this when they finally figured out how to do it, which we don't know when it will be 20 years, the best hope is 60 70 80 years, but the deal is if one of us doesn't freeze it properly, they'll pull the plug on the another because none of us want to do it alone.

I don't want to go

back

without her. I also don't want to go

back

without him when the time comes for each of them. Their bodies will make a final journey from their home on Queensland's Sunshine Coast Hinterland to the small country town of Holbrook, halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, where Southern Cryonics owner Peter Soles is almost ready to open the doors after 14 years of planning. We are at a stage where if we had treated a patient tomorrow we could do it, he would be the first, but we could do it. We have members who are in their 80s, we have to assume that within the next year something will happen.

It happens to be a charming Old Country town, but perhaps an unlikely location for a critical facility. That's why H Brook spent many years trying to find a place. We are looking for a place. Under earthquake. Low fire danger. Low danger of flooding. They were the important things. In this 100 S M concrete shed, the bodies will be cooled to sub-zero temperatures and then placed in a tank like this where they could spin for hundreds of years until science and technology evolves to somehow bring them back to life. How sure are you about science? will exist, I'm somewhere between um, let's say, 20% 20 30% which is pretty high, that's my opinion at the moment, it's a long shot, but Alan and Barbara think there's very little to lose, crying is like If you were on a plane flying over the Alps and the Captain shows up and says if all the engines have given out, we are going to crash in the next 15

minutes

, however, we have an experimental parachute on board, they were never used, we think we have worked on the F. they are going to work and even if you jump and hit the ground we don't know what's underneath you would take the parachute you would take the parachute everyone says everyone take the parachute well that's what's crying the suspension is a parachute. let me show you a little bit what we're doing, well look at it so far. 50 Australians, from doctors to bus drivers, aged between 30 and 80, have paid $150,000 to secure a place here.

This is what we call the cooling chamber. The important thing is that we need to bring them down to the temperature of liquid nitrogen very slowly. Allen will visit H Brook Keen to see what the future holds for him here. It would take him 5 to 6 hours to get it down to the right temperature. I can not wait. Can. Don't wait, I'm a volunteer, but I can't wait, don't rush, we don't have you first so don't rush, there's only one tank here at the moment, but the plan is to fill the shed with them. Each tank will have capacity for four bodies.

It's only when you take a good look at one of these tanks that the reality of it all hits home and you spend potentially eternity. Frozen tied face down next to strangers seems like an extreme and strange decision. What do you think when you go to that shed and you look in and they're fiddling with all the bits of vinal and Bobs and I look at it and I think we're going to be here for a long time, but we won't. I know we won't know we'll be there if we just like to go to sleep and whether it's 20 years, 50 years, 100 years or however long it takes, it will feel like 5

minutes

and if something happens. wrong, we won't get out of this, we won't know that it's some kind of unlikely symmetry, right?

Yes, I want a photo of Alan and hey in our little cylinder so the kids can say hello mom. I wanted to put in a glass window so we could have our smiling eyes looking out oh but this is serious business today Alan is looking at a test of liquid nitrogen supply in the cooling chamber that you placed over the entire body yeah do you think If you came back and some of your kids were gone, the world is a different place, I mean, it's attractive to you, I think the world will definitely be a different place, but I'm excited about that, to actually go back and have our babies and grandchildren here would be amazing, but even if they decided not to, there would still be descendants of ours and even we didn't know anyone, so why as long as we have each other exploring, don't we?

Yes Yes. Pioneers on the other side of the world. The American Kim Swy wanted to be a Pioneer. She was also diagnosed with brain cancer at only 23 years old. The budding Neuroscience student decided to be cryopreserved. It's not that she's afraid of dying, but I don't want to die knowing that she could have done something more for her boyfriend Josh Cisla. Memories by Kim The sudden diagnosis is still incredibly raw, it came as a pretty big shock, she was basically told she was going to die in 2 years. We talked about cryonics pretty straight away because it was something we had already established across the university, but at that point it's just In theory, you're not thinking you're going to die, but Keem was dying and cryopreservation isn't cheap.

The alcohol life extension center in Arizona charges up to $300,000, so it turned to the Internet to raise funds. I can not say it. I am quite grateful for everyone who has given me so far. I am totally amazed by the response I have received from both my friends, family and the PR community, less than two years later in 2013, Kim and Josh made it to the finals. On the trip to the Crime Bi building, she declined very quickly, so she was very afraid that she was going to die before we got there. It was

really

good to get here and be here and it was like the last leg of a horrible journey, yeah, um, and I guess you felt safe in a way, you had the team, the plan was going correctly and she was going to be able to. do what he wanted, yes, Kim got his last wish suspended in liquid nitrogen, who knows how.

Although it has been 11 years since his death, the science of cryonics remains unproven, no one has been revived yet and, as you will see, there is no evidence that it can be done, I am still not convinced that it is anything more than a extreme expression of illusions on the subject. Just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, is the world's oldest cryonics facility, Alor Life Extension Foundation. Well, this is really impressive, James, how many people do you have here as patients? We have about 200 u, a little more than that, and people from all walks of life, different ages. you know different different circumstances, different nationalities around the world James Arrowwood is co-CEO of Alor and a paying member, which means that when he dies he will be stacked in one of these huge steel and aluminum tanks called Jas, each one holding four bodies and As grim as it may seem, several decapitated heads because some people choose to preserve only their brains in the hope that one day science can design a new body for them.

It's scary, but you are part of history and if we succeed even in part you make history and then your body contributed to that. Do you really think you could walk this Earth again? There are some people who are convinced that this is going to work and then there are other people who say it's probably not going to work, but I want my brain in particular because we do brain research, we scan brains and see how this all works together. . I'm sorry, that bleeds us. When you're in a lab, sometimes you hear these interesting noises, but it's actually liquid nitrogen, it's diffusing. a tank and there's something that's supposed to happen because there's an animal in that tank that probably has some small, rare, almost extinct chinchillas, I actually think that's what they are, but yeah, so it's a small animal, probably yeah , although they are fine.

They're okay, it's almost like we're on the set of a sci-fi movie about cookies, but Ted's residents here are real and this is his grim resting place and how long will these patients be in the tanks? Well, the good news is. It's that the storage here can be indefinite, okay, so nothing happens to the temperatures, nothing happens, that's the goal, like hundreds of years could be hundreds of years. Kim Swy is among them who was diagnosed with brain cancer when she was 23 years old, the Neuroscience student was determined to be cryopreserved when she died, that was 11 years ago, her brain is now suspended at -196° here in Alor in the hope that it may one day be revived for Kim's brother, John Swy, and her boyfriend Josh Cisla.

This room full of tanks is the closest thing they have to a cemetery it's kind of crazy to think she's in there, probably sharing it with a lot of other people, uh, yeah, it's uh, I guess it's better than a coffin or anything else. I can think of what she could have done. It's good to visit and remember that Kim was able to get what she wanted. I think the idea is that preserving the cry is better than rotting or being cremated and this is where it all happens, in the trauma room, plus the process is military style. operation in fact, many of the team's doctors are former US Navy seals, the teams deploy.

What happens next? We generally look for a window of about 2 hours to deploy our team anywhere in the world and when they deploy they have to carry specialized kits. that you see in front of you and these kits have things that don't exist anywhere else in the world, the teams are racing against the clock again, you're trying to control time to temperature and you're trying to have very little variation, so you don't you want the body to suddenly drop 50°. Well the goal is to prepare the body for the antifreeze agent, a very expensive untested chemical called cryus, it's an experimental chemical that doesn't exist anywhere else and is used. to replace the blood in your body and that prevents the cells from freezing.

For all this optimism about the possibility of life after death, the reality is much more moderate. There is no way that the body, much less the brain, can adequately protect itself with the living antifreeze Cohen is a world-renowned Professor of Neuroscience at the prestigious King's College London in Great Britain. Professor Cohen teaches students the intricate workings of the brain and is extremely cynical about cryonics. Is there a way to stop the brain death process? Someone who has died by definition has a heart that can no longer be restarted and therefore there is no way that the organ of our identity, the brain, can get that oxygen back there again and keep the system functioning well,yes, we still have no evidence that it works.

The terms of the brain coming back fully recognize that, but there's actually no evidence that it doesn't work and people are familiar with this in terms of IVF and an embryo. I mean, you have a human being that's walking that was the result of a similar type of liquid nitrogen storage process, the difference is one of scale when it's something like a full body or even just a full brain, it's not just a question of scale, so it is a completely different category from the question of sperm and eggs and eight-cell embryos, while the prospect of eternal life is clearly attractive to cryonics investors and members.

Professor Cohen and many others in the scientific community are eagerly awaiting evidence. I don't see how this exercise could make significant contributions to science. What would make a contribution to science would be if you could test the entire proposition in first a small mammal and show that it works, so what do you say then to your critics who say that you are selling false hope to our critics who say that are we selling fake H? I hope I say don't do it. I'm not selling. For you, we are a non-profit organization. I don't earn extra money if you sign up.

You have to want to do this. I'm glad you finally made it. Yes, it's good to be back here. John Swy and Josh Cisla are glad that Dear Kim made the decision to be cryopreserved, what would Kim be waiting for now? I mean, I think she'll be happy that we're together and going to see her, yeah, I mean, I guess there's two scenarios, one where she's revived and another. when she is revived, I'm sure she'll feel very good about the decisions she made, you know, like I told you, but there's also the scenario where she's not revived and in that scenario, what's the difference between that and what would have happened? it happened naturally and she won't know it well I love you, I love you honestly here in Australia, devotees of the country's first cryonics facility.

Alan and Barbara Peace will not allow critics to undermine her conviction or change the tune of her love song. determined to continue their adventures far beyond this life, sincere, I love you, you seem like an incredible team, but there is no, uh, there is no until death do us part here, no, we will be together holding hands like this forever , in any direction you look. up the S come on they're not coming back they have no choice none at all we have the choice to go back and if it doesn't work out we won't know but would you rather be in the tank than on the ground yes absolutely in the tank yes I have options so yes well the future is unknown but why isn't it exciting you know you don't know when you don't know that's the excitement that's what we like about this hey Bob hi I'm Amelia Adams, thanks for watching 60 Minutes Australia .

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