• Southern Cryonics, an Australian company, announced that it has completed cryonics suspension of its first client at its Holbrook facility. A Sydney man, who died this month in his 80s, has become what the company refers to as Patient 1.

• The patient, who passed away on May 12, was securely wrapped in a special sleeping bag that stays intact in liquid nitrogen. Patient 1 was then cooled to dry ice temperature and transported to the Holbrook facility.

• At the facility, Patient 1 was gradually brought to liquid nitrogen temperatures in a computer-controlled cooling chamber.

What is cryonics?

• The word cryonics is derived from the Greek kryos, meaning “icy cold”. 

• Cryonics involves the long term storage of human cadavers at sub-zero temperatures with an expectation that in the indefinite future the legally dead will be ‘reanimated’. 

• Cryonics is the preservation of the human body at cryogenic temperatures (−196°C) in the expectation that future medical technology may be able to repair the accumulated damage of aging and disease at the molecular level, and restore the patient to health.

• The concept of cryonics was introduced in 1962 by Robert Ettinger in his book ‘The Prospect of Immortality’. Ettinger was later known as “the father of cryonics”. 

• The freezing of Dr. James Bedford in January 1967 was the first cryonic suspension.

• Cryonic preservation can be performed only after an individual has been declared legally dead.

• Cryoprotectants are used to prevent the formation of ice crystals at extremely low temperatures. Once the patient gets below a certain temperature, everything stops where it is and becomes a glass-like substance, rather than forming crystals.

• In a process known as vitrification, the body is drained of its blood, which is then replaced with chemicals and anti-freeze. The body is placed in a sleeping bag and housed in a tank of liquid nitrogen at -196°C.

• A person held in such a state is said to be a “cryopreserved patient”.

• Cryonic suspension is not a form of euthanasia. 

• Cryonics offers what proponents view as a radically new proposition, in other words that death can be defeated through preservation of a cadaver in a way that will allow future reanimation.

• Continuing progress in medical technology strongly suggests that treatments will be found for most currently fatal conditions.

• Researchers say that bringing the dead creature back to life might take place when medicine has discovered a cure for cancer or another disease that afflicted the person.

• Critics argue that cryonics is not a proven method, but a speculative field that faces many technical and ethical challenges. 

• There are no specific laws in many countries that address the practice of cryonics. It is relatively a niche field and its legal status varies from country to country.

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