A British cancer patient’s body was flown 3,750 miles after his legal death and deep frozen in the hope of a future reawakening.
The 50-year-old had signed up to a cryonics scheme which offers members the chance of a ‘second life’ via ‘long-term storage’ in Michigan.
His body was packed in dry ice at a funeral home in London ahead of the journey to the Cryonics Institute (CI) in accordance with his wishes.
The future-proofer, from England, was under hospice care at the time of his death, according to a case report from the CI.
His body was also ‘perfused’, a process where blood and water are replaced with a special cryo-protection mixture which stops ice forming to help preservation.
Once the arrangements were in place, the CI’s ‘patient’ was transported in dry ice to Detroit Metro Airport and transferred to the facility, which lies to the north of the city.
The details of the cryo-preservation are included in the latest cases released by the institute following the unnamed man’s death on February 29.
In the CI process, bodies are placed in a large ‘cryostat’ and frozen in liquid nitrogen at –196C in the hope that future technology can bring about a second life as well as a cure for conditions that may have caused a clinical death.
Among those ‘de-animated’ are chefs, students, secretaries and professors — with Brits being the biggest takers outside the US.
More than 250 patients who have paid for a shot at a revival are housed inside the CI’s main, hangar-like facility.
Pets and human heads are also in ‘suspension’ courtesy of the service, which has expanded across two sites in Michigan.
The longest-running patient, Rhea Ettinger, has been in her sub-zero waiting room since 1977.
CI president Dennis Kowalksi has previously described cryonics as a gamble which may result in ‘an ambulance ride to a future hospital’.
He said: ‘Ironically, while the number of members is growing, I’m only surprised that we’re not more popular.
‘What we are doing is pretty rational when you think about it.
‘Cryonics is like an ambulance ride to a future hospital that may or may not exist some day.
‘While we give no guarantees, if you are buried or cremated your chances of coming back are zero.
‘We are therefore a Pascal’s wager, or a gamble with little to lose and all to gain.’
The unnamed British man, known only as patient #254, is among those whose gamble rests on radical advances in future technology.
Advocates point to artificial intelligence, stem cell research and nanotechnology as having particular scope for breakthroughs.
Mr Kowalski has compared doubts over whether humans can be brought back to life — with a revival of the brain being especially tricky — with the progress made over the years to conduct heart or liver transplants.
Critics of cryonics view the process as fanciful pseudoscience, with Dr Miriam Stoppard, a journalist and doctor, previously saying the process ‘robs the dying of their dignity’.
However such doubts have had little impact on the growing numbers who have signed up for the scheme.
One of the best known British CI members, Alan Sinclair, an 85-year-old granddad, has acknowledged that there is ‘no guarantee’ of a second life but said that ‘coming out of suspension at 185 or 1085 is a good idea’.
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