Humains CRYOGÉNISÉS : le Business de l'IMMORTALITÉ - On Se l'Demande #192 - Le JDE

In 1967, at the age of 73, James Bedford, a former psychology professor, made a radical decision as he faced terminal kidney cancer with lung metastases. He opted to be the first human to undergo cryopreservation, hoping for a future revival when medical science might be advanced enough to cure his illness and restore him to life. This marked humanity's first attempt to refuse the finality of death through cryogenics. Science fiction often portrays cryopreservation as a straightforward process for future resuscitation, whether for long-duration space travel, preserving leaders, or even as a form of punishment. Surprisingly, this concept isn't limited to fiction. Hundreds of wealthy individuals have already entrusted their bodies to low temperatures, with thousands more awaiting the procedure, driven by the hope of awakening in a scientifically advanced future. The question then arises: how does cryopreservation work, and what are its potential consequences, both marvelous and terrifying? More specifically, does James Bedford truly have a chance of being revived one day? Bedford passed away on January 12, 1967. Immediately after his death, a team comprising chemist Robert Prehoda, physician Dante Brunol, and Robert Nelson, president of the newly formed Cryonics Society of California, took charge of his body. To prevent cellular deterioration due to oxygen deprivation, speed was crucial. Bedford received a massive injection of Ringer's solution, typically used for preserving organs in in vitro biology experiments, before being placed in a chamber continuously cooled with liquid nitrogen. This prepared him for his "journey through the centuries." For years, Bedford's unique legal status made it challenging for his family to ensure his long-term preservation. His capsule was repeatedly transferred between institutions, even spending nearly a decade at home, always maintained with liquid nitrogen. Today, James Bedford is preserved at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a company specializing in the voluntary cryopreservation of humans and their pets. In a 1991 evaluation during one of his transfers, it was deemed "probable that his external temperature remained at relatively low negative temperatures throughout the conservation," suggesting he hadn't undergone significant thawing and refreezing. James Bedford remains the longest-term cryopreserved patient, having been maintained for almost 60 years. However, his chances of revival are largely unknown. The entire premise of cryopreservation relies on the immense supposition that future science will discover a way to repair frozen bodies and reanimate them. The actual feasibility of this remains entirely uncertain. From a scientific perspective, cryopreservation of living biological materials for later resuscitation is not entirely science fiction. It's already successfully applied to oocytes, stem cells, embryos, and in the plant kingdom, to seeds and seedlings. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, for instance, stores hundreds of thousands of seeds from major food crops, frozen at -18°C, to ensure future food security in case of global catastrophe. This temperature is sufficient for long-term seed viability, potentially for centuries or millennia. However, -18°C is not yet considered cryo-temperature. To preserve human cells intact long-term without DNA damage, temperatures must be much lower, typically below -150°C, down to absolute zero at -273.15°C. At absolute zero, molecules are immobile, and internal energy is at its physical minimum. In practice, absolute zero is never truly reached; even the cosmic microwave background is 2.7° above it. The coldest laboratory record is 38 picokelvin. For human cell cryopreservation, reaching absolute zero isn't necessary. The -196°C provided by liquid nitrogen is generally sufficient. Nitrogen, which makes up 80% of the air we breathe, remains gaseous even at Earth's coldest temperatures. However, it has a boiling point, below which it becomes liquid. At atmospheric pressure, this point is -196°C. Liquid nitrogen is thus an accessible, non-toxic, and affordable means of cooling cells for preservation over many years. The principle behind this is that all living cell functions rely on chemical reactions. Temperature dictates the speed of these reactions. Lowering the temperature sufficiently almost entirely halts a cell's internal chemical activity. This stops aging and prevents damage from parasitic processes, effectively suspending the cell in time, ready for revival decades or centuries later. This method is successfully used for freezing oocytes, allowing women to preserve their fertility for later use, with minimal impact on DNA. However, the process is not as simple as merely submerging a body in liquid nitrogen. Rapid cooling is crucial to avoid ice crystal formation. The human body, primarily composed of water, experiences crystallization when cooled slowly. These ice crystals can damage cellular structures like the nucleus and mitochondria. To prevent this, cryopreservation involves vitrification, a two-step process. First, the cell's cytoplasm is modified using cryoprotectants, chemicals that increase viscosity and lower the freezing point. Second, the cooling is extremely rapid, reaching -196°C in a fraction of a second, preventing crystal formation and preserving the cell's integrity. While successful for single cells or small tissue samples of the same cell type, scaling this to an entire organ, let alone a whole human body, presents immense challenges. Thermodynamically, cooling a few nanograms of a cell versus dozens of kilograms of an organ is vastly different. Furthermore, an organ contains various cell types, each reacting differently to cryopreservation, making the process incredibly complex. One notable success in 2009 involved cryopreserving a 15-gram rabbit kidney to -135°C using a carefully calculated cocktail of cryoprotectants and ice inhibitors. The kidney was then warmed, transplanted, and functioned correctly, sustaining the rabbit's life. This indicates progress, but vitrifying an entire 60-80 kg human body with countless cell types in a fraction of a second remains a distant goal. Despite these challenges, over 600 people have followed James Bedford's path, spending tens to hundreds of thousands of euros to have their bodies cryopreserved at death, with thousands more registered. The major issue is that current vitrification techniques, even at their best, are only proven for small organs like a rabbit kidney. Those cryopreserved to date likely used less advanced or insufficient techniques for whole-body preservation, as it has never been successfully tested on an entire organism, even a small animal. This suggests that many of their cells may have suffered irreparable damage from crystallization, making revival impossible, even if the fatal diseases could be cured. Regarding James Bedford's chances of resuscitation, the outlook is highly dubious. Sixty years ago, the understanding of cryopreservation was far less advanced than what allows for the laborious preservation of a single rabbit organ today. The prospect of warming his entire body, curing his incurable cancer, repairing billions of crystallized cells, and ensuring no cerebral damage, requires extreme optimism. Yet, this doesn't deter thousands of candidates willing to pay upwards of €200,000 for the procedure. This seemingly blind determination from clients and potentially monumental scam by providers hints at a deeper motivation for some: transhumanism. For many, the goal isn't merely to preserve their body, but the mind within it, regardless of the container. Even if Bedford were perfectly preserved and revived decades or centuries later, cured of cancer, and with an intact brain, he would still awaken as a 73-year-old man with diminished physical capacities and a limited life expectancy. Would such a brief extension of life justify the effort? Furthermore, many clients opt for only head cryopreservation. This implies future capabilities such as transplanting a brain into a new body or transferring consciousness from an organic brain to a machine. Such operations rely on even more speculative assumptions. First, that all aspects of identity—memories, personality, intellect, emotions—are solely contained within the brain. However, neurotransmitters like serotonin, crucial for mood and personality, are produced in the gut, and many hormones regulating behavior are managed outside the skull. Would one truly be "themselves" without these organs? Second, this scenario assumes a benevolent and selfless attitude from future scientists who would have to deal with a multitude of frozen heads. Even if technology allowed consciousness transfer, what would motivate these future scientists to provide artificial bodies and revive these individuals? Would it be pure altruism, or compensation from their distant ancestors? If they are as cynical and mercantile as current society, they might only act if there's something to gain. What could a human mind in a machine offer that future AI hasn't already absorbed or surpassed? The answer is unknown. While optimists might envision these revived minds exploring distant star systems where biological bodies cannot survive, one could equally imagine them condemned to a form of techno-futuristic slavery, trapped in computer networks or cloned at will. Ultimately, cryopreserving astronaut crews for journeys to Jupiter's moons or Proxima Centauri is not imminent. Today's focus has been on the cooling aspect, but successfully reanimating a brain frozen for decades or centuries without any damage or alteration remains another monumental challenge.