When the partnership cools it’s the bodies in the freezer that suffer.
There are few things that preoccupy the minds of the living quite as much as the inevitability of death.
And as with most human self-absorptions, commercial opportunities abound for enterprising folk adept in the art of separating the gullible from the contents of their bank accounts.
One such endeavour that routinely distracts your Back Page correspondent is the business of cryonics. For the uninitiated, this involves snap-freezing a body (usually human, but pets are not off-limits) immediately after death in the hope that at an indeterminate time in the future, science will have advanced to the stage where said body can be defrosted and successfully reanimated.
Fans of cryonics include noted non-scientist Paris Hilton, who has been quoted as saying:
“It’s so cool. (pun probably not intended) Almost all the cells in the body are still alive when death is pronounced. And if you’re immediately cooled, you can be perfectly preserved. My life could be extended by hundreds and thousands of years.”
Normally, such an endorsement would be all the incentive this author and his credit card would need to spark a visit to the local freezing works to check out the life-after-death facilities.
But that was before a rather disturbing tale out of Russia cooled our jets.
According to a report in the The Daily Beast, an unseemly domestic dispute between the two founders of a Russian cryonics business does not bode well for the health of the 50 frozen brains and 26 frozen bodies stored in the company’s high-tech eskies.
Although never officially married, former partners Valerija Udalova and Danila Medvedev have become embroiled in a spat over ownership of the company’s frozen goods, including an incident last year when Udalova cut through a metal wall and loaded the disputed cryonic tanks into the back of a truck.
Both parties claim they have the rights to the bodies, and the assets have reportedly changed hands several times subsequent to the initial heist, and the current whereabouts of the bodies and brains are unknown.
This is probably not good news for either the frozen deceased or their living relatives. Even the slightest raising of temperature for the bodies and brains, even for the shortest of times, would turn them essentially into slush.
Cryogenics expert Hans Bozler from the University of Southern California told media that “a deterioration would be highly accelerated within minutes” following the moving of the tanks. “It’s the same as taking out a steak out of the freezer, letting it thaw and refreezing it.”
Putting to one side the issue of whether cryonics would ever actually work in the first place (spoiler alert: no), an intriguing twist to this tale is that under Russian law it is illegal for one person to own another person’s body.
So it’s not only the science that is dubious, the business model is decidedly whiffy as well.
If you see something that chills you to the bone, let felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au know before it defrosts
