The race to freeze and revive the dead: Science or folly?

Mint

3 days ago

From Demolition Man—where Sylvester Stallone's cryogenically frozen whole body is revived to chase a futuristic villain played by Wesley Snipes—to movies like The 6th Day, Gemini Man, and Universal Soldier, Hollywood has long toyed with the idea of cheating death through scientific advancements such as cloning and cryonics.
That notion of resurrecting the dead is no longer confined to pulp fiction and sci-fi. From Berlin to Arizona, companies are freezing brains—and sometimes the entire bodies—of humans and pets, betting that future science will one day bring them back. For instance, Tomorrow Bio, Europe's only provider of whole-body cryoprotection, recently made headlines when it raised about $6 million.
However, behind the sci-fi gloss lie pressing questions: How does the process really work? Who can afford it? Which companies are leading the charge worldwide? And are these firms reckoning with the philosophical, social, legal, and moral upheavals that would follow if dead people, or animals like the Woolly Mammoth from the Ice Age, were ever revived into a world far removed from the one they left?
What is Tomorrow Bio aiming to achieve?
Founded in 2020, Tomorrow Bio offers post-legal-death cryopreservation across Europe. The Berlin-based startup says it has already preserved 20 people and 10 pets, with more than 800 members enrolled.
Its ambulances—currently in Berlin and Amsterdam, and soon in Zurich—first cool patients to –80 °C immediately after death, before transferring them to long-term storage in Switzerland. There, vacuum-insulated steel dewars (containers) filled with liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) keep bodies preserved indefinitely without electricity. Oversight rests with a non-profit Patient Care Foundation, designed to ensure continuity even if the company itself fails.
The start-up calls whole-body field cryoprotection its hallmark innovation, reducing delays and tissue damage. All equipment is German-sourced or custom-built in Berlin, while Switzerland's stability makes it, according to the company, the safest place to safeguard 'patients until revival becomes possible".
Are there other cryonics companies?
The cryonics industry is still small but growing, with only a few hundred people preserved worldwide. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona, founded in 1972, is the most established player, with around 1,442 members and 248 patients in storage. The Cryonics Institute in Michigan, set up in 1976, offers lower-cost whole-body preservation and has about 2,200 members and 240 patients. In Russia, KrioRus—operating since the mid-2000s—has preserved a little over 100 people and 77 pets, and offers both whole-body and head-only options. China's Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute is newer but has already cryopreserved a dozen or so individuals.
Southern Cryonics in Australia is preparing its first storage facility, while Germany's non-profit Cryonics Germany offers low-cost neuro preservation to a small but dedicated base. In the US, Oregon Cryonics (now Oregon Brain Preservation) has shifted to brain-only services.
Several related efforts complement these providers. Suspended Animation, Inc. handles stabilization and transport for patients in the US, while Nectome experiments with chemical brain preservation and focuses on "advancing the science of memory." Academic initiatives like the Brain Preservation Foundation and Biostasis Technologies pursue research rather than patient services.
But what exactly is cryonics?
James Hiram Bedford, a former University of California psychology professor who died of renal cancer in 1967, was the first human to be cryonically preserved. He has been stored at Alcor since 1991. Founded in 1972 in California by Fred and Linda Chamberlain, Alcor has grown into the world's most recognized cryonics provider. Fred himself is cryopreserved there, while Linda continues to work at the company.
Cryonics, or biostasis, seeks to pause the dying process at subfreezing temperatures so that future medical technology might restore life and health. Alcor calls it the 'ambulance to the future". Ideally, preservation begins immediately after legal death, at cardiac arrest. Patients are not considered dead but 'cryopreserved".
Unlike embalming, which slows decay, or organ donation, which repurposes tissue, cryonics halts biological processes altogether. This is achieved with cryoprotectants—chemicals that prevent lethal ice crystal formation by replacing water in tissues. Cooling is then carried out through vitrification, where body fluids solidify into a glass-like state rather than crystallizing. Once cooled to –196 °C, patients are stored indefinitely in vacuum-insulated steel dewars (insulated containers) filled with liquid nitrogen. The process requires no electricity, shielding patients from power failures and reducing long-term costs.
How much do these companies charge?
For members, the cost is €200,000 (full-body) or €75,000 (brain-only). One can pay in monthly instalments until you are cryopreserved. Membership guarantees standby services and provides a €30,000 discount on cryopreservation costs compared to non-member pricing. For non-members, whole-body cryopreservation costs €230,000.00 while brain-only cryopreservation is priced at €115,000.00.
Those using Alcor for cryopreservation today must take a life insurance policy that pays $80,000 at death for neuropreservation (just the head), or $200,000 for whole-body preservation. Cryonics Institute offers the whole body at about $28,000, but standby and transport add another $60,000. KrioRus charges $36,000 for whole and $15,000-18,000 for brain. Prospective clients often fund services via life insurance policies.
Can cryonics really bring people back?
No full mammal has ever been cooled to cryogenic temperatures and successfully revived. At least, not yet. Still, hospitals routinely resuscitate 'clinically dead" patients—those without a heartbeat or breathing—using modern medical interventions. Cryonics advocates argue that 'absolute death" only occurs when the brain's critical information is lost, and that cryopreservation preserves this data for future repair. The hope is that advances in biotechnology and nanomedicine will one day make revival possible—and perhaps even allow terminally ill patients to undergo cryonics before legal death. For now, those cryopreserved remain in waiting.
Do Big Tech executives support cryopreservation?
Many Big Tech leaders identify with transhumanism—a movement that embraces technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), nanotech, genetic engineering, and cryonics to extend human life. For instance, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has publicly expressed his wish to be cryopreserved and invested millions in longevity research, including SENS Research Foundation and Craig Venter's Human Longevity. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, became a paid member of Nectome in 2018.
Others back ageing and disease research more broadly: Futurist Ray Kurzweil takes more than 100 pills a day to defy ageing. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, carrying a Parkinson's risk mutation, has donated over $130 million to Parkinson's causes. His co-founder, Larry Page, launched Calico Life Sciences to combat ageing, while Jeff Bezos has backed Altos Labs, focused on cellular rejuvenation. Elon Musk founded Neuralink to merge AI and the brain.
Closer home, Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan funds brain-computing research.
What are the ethical and legal dilemmas of cryonics?
Cryonics has long stirred controversy. In 1987, the Dora Kent case saw Alcor accused of preserving a patient's head while she was still alive; police raided its facility, but no charges were filed. Two decades later, the 'Frozen Larry" case alleged mishandling of remains, including baseball legend Ted Williams's head. The claims were never proven, but the headlines dented Alcor's image.
More recently, US-based Colossal Biosciences, cofounded by Harvard and MIT geneticist George Church, is working to revive extinct species like the woolly mammoth and dodo through cloning and genetic engineering. This has raised fears of introducing a Jurassic World.
Critics also argue that cryonics is scientifically unproven, more promise than practice, and borders on pseudoscience. Ethicists question whether billion-dollar longevity research benefits only the wealthy, while faith groups view it as an unnatural defiance of death.
Medically, freezing can cause tissue damage, and even if revival becomes possible, there is no guarantee of restored memory or identity.
Legal concerns include consent, funding sustainability, and the welfare of revived individuals—or pets—who may awaken to a world unrecognizable from the one they left, raising profound identity and quality-of-life dilemmas.
And what if AI is sentient when cryonic patients awaken?
If current trends pan out as feared, cryopreserved individuals—or even pets—revived centuries from now, may likely enter a world dominated by artificially sentient beings. The reason: by then, AI would have surpassed human cognition, running governments, economies, and even healthcare.
Cryonics may hence save the body and brain, but re-entry into a world with sentient AI could challenge the very notion of what it means to be human. For one, revived humans might find themselves socially and intellectually obsolete, struggling to integrate into societies shaped by post-human intelligence. Second, pets could be seen as sentimental relics in a world where digital or bioengineered companions are common.
Last but not least, it raises philosophical questions of personhood and rights: Would revived people have the same legal and social standing as those who never died? Would AI recognize their dignity, view them as historical curiosities, or simply lab rats? There are no easy answers.