The creepy lab which freezes you (and your pet) to be brought back to life
DEATH is something we all have to face. But if these scientists have their way, it could soon be a thing of the past.
Danila Medvedev is the Russian founder of KrioRus, a cryonics company which freezes people for a living, with the eventual aim of bringing them back to life once science can cure their old age or illness.
Inside their unassuming headquarters are 45 people stored in giant vats of liquid nitrogen that are keeping their bodies “cryopreserved”.
Over a dozen pets are stored in the same vats, reports the Financial Times, including cats, dogs and a chinchilla.
KrioRus was set up in 2005, and is now one of the biggest cryonics companies in the world.
Their process for storing people is relatively simple. Once a patient is dead, the body is cooled within a few hours, and fetched from the hospital or morgue as quickly as possible.
The patient’s blood is then swapped out for a “cryoprotectant”: chemical anti-freeze that protects your tissue from the freezing process.
They’re then cooled to -195C using nitrogen gas, and stored in the giant communal vats where they dangle from their ankles.
Cryopreservation at KrioRus costs $36,000 (£25,000) for your full body, or if you just want your head and brain preserved $12,000 (£8000).
Medvedev, 35, thinks that we’ll be able to revive brains by 2050. He told the Financial Times: “It’s not possible to revive the brain today but we know we can revive parts of it.
"Artificial organs, stem cells, artificial intelligence — all these technologies can be used to revive a person. It just depends on the regulatory and social climate.
“It’s very likely we will have the technology to reanimate a human brain by 2050 and if not, sometime in the 21st century almost certainly — if we don’t destroy ourselves.”
Some in the scientific community think the idea of reanimation is nonsense, with little scientific proof underpinning the theory. One professor has even deemed it “snake oil”.
Michael Hendricks, a neuroscientist at McGill University, wrote: “Reanimation or simulation is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the ‘cryonics’ industry.”
But this hasn’t stopped cryonics from becoming popular across the world. American firm Alcor has 141 people preserved, with another 1,053 planning to be frozen when they die.
So – Is it worth taking the risk ?
