Chill out!
A high-tech startup is giving people the option to cryogenically freeze their corpses in hopes that they may be revived one day in the distant future.
Tomorrow Bio, a Berlin-based company, is charging a pretty penny — $222,603 plus a $55 monthly membership fee — to put bodies and body parts on ice.
Brains alone cost $83,473.
“Personally, I believe that within my lifetime — I’m currently 40 years old — we may witness the safe cryopreservation and reanimation of complex organisms,” co-founder Fernando Azevedo Pinheiro told the Daily Mail.
“For some, the primary motivation is the fear of dying. Cryopreservation offers them hope and a sense of security, providing a potential path to extend their lives.”
So far, the company claims that six people and five pets have gotten the big chill — and there are 650 people on the waiting list with an average age of 36.
“None of them are expecting to die anytime soon,” he told the Daily Mail.
How does it work? Tomorrow Bio offers what they call “field cryoprotection” in which they “begin the cryopreservation process immediately after a patient is declared legally dead, using our retrofitted ambulances, which function as mobile surgery rooms.”
The company claims to be the only one worldwide to do so.
Pinheiro added that a corpse’s bodily fluids are replaced by “essentially medical-grade antifreeze” to keep from irreversible cold damage. Temperatures are dropped to around minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit over a little more than a week before the body is stored in a long, steel container containing liquid nitrogen for long-term storage.
If a person is successfully revived after the Captain America procedure and their investment hasn’t been fully used in treatment, they get the remaining money back.
Tomorrow Bio cites a successful example of similar treatments to preserve a rabbit’s kidney.
The company has storage facilities across Europe including Berlin and Amsterdam. Soon, NYC will have a satellite location as well, according to Tomorrow Bio.
But many patrons have their sights set on the great beyond, according to co-founder Pinheiro.
“Many customers are fascinated by the possibilities of future technologies and experiences, such as space travel.”
