Arizona Cryonics Facility Preserves Dead Bodies Until Science Can Bring Them Back to Life

A company in Arizona called Alcor Life Extension Foundation offers body cryopreservation, which puts time and death "on pause" by freezing the dead body and waiting for science to find a way to bring it back to life.

Inside Alcor in Scottsdale are tanks filled with liquid nitrogen with heads and bodies of 199 humans wishing to be cryopreserved and hoping to be revived in the future.

Numerous of the "patients," as the Alcor Life Extension Foundation refers to, had advanced cases of cancer, ALS, or other illnesses that had no cure in the present day, U.S. News reported.

Kid Is One of the Patients in Alcor Life Extension Foundation's Cryonics Facility in Arizona

Matheryn Naovaratpong, a 2-year-old Thai child with brain cancer, became the youngest person ever to be cryopreserved in 2015, Yahoo reported.

"Both her parents were doctors, and she had multiple brain surgeries, and nothing worked, unfortunately. So, they contacted us," said Max More, chief executive of Alcor, a nonprofit which claims to be the world leader in cryonics.

Another Alcor patient and bitcoin pioneer, Hal Finney, passed away from ALS in 2014 and wished for body cryopreservation.

According to More, the body cryopreservation process starts after a person is ruled legally dead. Blood and other bodily fluids are taken out of the patient and replaced with substances that stop harmful ice crystals from forming.

After being vitrified in very cold temperatures, the Alcor patients are placed in tanks "for as long as it takes for technology to catch up." Body cryopreservation costs at least $200,000, and it would cost $80,000 for the brain alone.

More said that most of Alcor's almost 1,400 "members," who are still alive, pay by making the company the beneficiary of life insurance policies equal to the cost. Natasha Vita-More, More's wife, compares the procedure to traveling into the future.

"The disease or injury cured or fixed, and the person has a new body cloned, or a whole-body prosthetic or their body reanimated and (can) meet up with their friends again," she noted.

Human Cryopreservation Is Very Expensive; Only Few Can Afford It

The high price of human cryopreservation can wipe out a person's savings and take a big bite out of their life insurance payout, which could have helped their family in the future.

According to Daily Mail, a person must pay an annual fee of at least $200 to become a member of Alcor at 18, with dues increasing depending on the age the individual decides to join.

A non-member whose loved ones wish to have them frozen must pay an additional $20,000. An additional fee of $10,000 must be paid if a person dies outside the U.S. or Canada to retrieve their remains.

Arthur Caplan, head of the medical ethics division at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine, said many medical professionals disagree with Alcor's body cryopreservation. He said that freezing a body into the future is more like science fiction, and it is naive.

"The only group... getting excited about the possibility are people who specialize in studying the distant future or people who have a stake in wanting you to pay the money to do it," he noted.

Meanwhile, More admitted during a February 2020 interview that Alcor does not know when the technology needed to wake up their patients will exist.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Bert Hoover

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