Life as a popsicle
By Kevin Miller

OTTAWA — It’s the stuff of science fiction and pseudo-scientific web sites. The idea of freezing people and then thawing them out decades, if not centuries, later sounds like something out of an episode of Star Trek.

But is there anything to the extraordinary idea that, in years to come, we can be revived to become productive members of a future society?

According to Cryobiologist Kenneth Storey, when discussing cryonics, the line between religion and science becomes blurred and rational thought processes sometimes go out the window.

Storey likens it to the fight between the church and science over creationism. “The same battle was drawn when Darwin published his book on the origin of the species where he showed that evolution was true, and there was a lot of evidence for it.”

In that case, the church claimed to have the answers to how man came to be on Earth, and science proved them wrong. In this case, as Storey says, “they are more or less a theology; there is really no difference between cryonics and any other religious organization. They have the truth with no proof, you must have faith but you can never see a real example of it, you must do what they say without any hesitation (give large amounts of money to them every so often) and they have the key to eternal life.”

It’s not just the faith-based aspects of cryonics that Storey takes issue with. One of his problems with cryonics is that he says it’s based on a flawed key principle, a process called vitrification.

According to the Alcor Life Extension Facility, the largest cryonics company in the world, “the (vitrification) procedure involves partly replacing water in cells with a mixture of chemicals that prevent ice formation. This is a method of stabilizing the physical basis of the human mind for practically unlimited periods of time.”

Dr. Kenneth Storey disagrees with claims that people will one day be able to revive frozen bodies.

Storey agrees that theoretically, vitrification will hold the cells as if frozen in time. In this process, the temperature of the water (or mixture of chemicals, as in Alcors procedures) is reduced so fast that ice doesn’t have time to form. Storey says the cells must cool “at 1,000 degrees a minute,” or as he describes it somewhat less scientifically, “really, really, really fast.” The rapid temperature reduction causes the water to become a glass, rather than ice.

It’s a bit complicated, but there are easier ways to picture it. Imagine people on a street as water molecules. When the water is free flowing, the people are moving with ease. If time were to stop instantly, everyone would suddenly stop moving in exactly the place they were. However, if time were to slow down gradually, people would have time to gather and talk about what was happening. The same is true of water molecules in vitrification, the molecules have their temperature reduced so fast that they don’t have time to gather and form ice, and since ice is what damages cells in the first place, they will remain frozen in time permanently.

Alcor’s vitrification claim, according to Storey, is in fact, accurate, “Absolutely true, there’s no question, if you want to be frozen…and come back as one brain cell, well, it’s your money. But the thing is it works for one cell, and it looks marvelous, but it doesn’t work for the whole brain.”

The freezing process is a valid scientific principle, and in fact, Storey regularly vitrifies individual cells, and small groups of cells in his lab at Carleton University in Ottawa. The thawing process, however, is entirely speculative and is based on unknown, and yet-to-be invented technology.

Storey says the problem is that Alcor’s procedures don’t talk about the thawing process. Storey does. He says there will be this "horrible reckoning" at those sort of warming temperatures that naturally occur, when water will go from a vitrified, or glass state, and turn into ice — destroying the cells.

Storey has two main problems with Alcor and other cryonics organizations. First, he says they only focus on the freezing, and don’t talk about the problems that will occur in thawing the bodies. Secondly, they put far too much faith in vitrification as a saviour. “Vitrification, although an interesting phenomenon in the lab, is simply not going to transfer itself to organs in the real world. It will never work for organs, and it will certainly never work for human bodies.”

So, in the face of all the evidence that this won’t work, how do cryonics supporters defend their ideas?

George Dworsky is the president of the Toronto Transhumanist Association, a group devoted to “improving the human condition through the use of…available technologies to eliminate aging.”

Transhumanists are typical of cryonics supporters. The general idea behind their beliefs is that if you told someone a century ago that men would walk on the moon and talk to each other on wireless phones while driving 120 kilometres per hour on an eight-lane highway, you would have been ridiculed in the same way they believe they are being treated.

Dworsky admits that there isn’t any real evidence right now. “I can’t sit here today and look you in the eye and tell you we are going to bring people back. Anyone who is going to tell you that is either deluding themselves, or they’re not being realistic... I think there are enough clues now to give us some hope.”

He also admits that the thawing process will need “a radically futuristic technology (that) could resuscitate or revitalize the person.”

Cryonics supporters like Dworsky and Alcor, put their faith in sciences ability to create things that are inconceivable at this time. Yet the lack of real science, and the propensity toward speculation in cryonics is what has caused it to develop the quasi-religious fervour that Storey has seen among its followers.

Storey prefers to deal with science that is applicable today. He is currently studying the way mammals hibernate, in order to prolong the shelf life of organs being used for transplants. “We don’t want to have to take a heart and realize it’ll only live for four hours and have to run it through an airport in a picnic basket full of ice.”

He prefers to deal with this kind of research because he can see the results it is having on the world. “I’ve published nearly 500 papers, I have an endowed chair in research science, I’m world-known in the field of cryobiology and I think I’m actually doing something useful.”

Already, the results from this type of research are being felt. “Figuring out how to lengthen the time of transplantable organs happens, literally, on a month by month basis…the survival times of organs has grown from one hour to four hours, four hours to eight hours, in terms of kidneys, maybe eight hours to 18 hours, but the growth is incremental. Science, at this stage does not work by some huge breakthrough.”

Storey does concede that cryonics, defined as the freezing and reviving of an animal can happen, but is quick to strike down the idea of human cryonics, saying “tragically for cryonics, those animals are only frogs and turtles.” Frogs and turtles survive the winter by allowing themselves to freeze solid and thaw in the spring.

Storey’s distaste for cryonics isn’t limited to the fact that they have no real science, in the end, he says, the fundamental problem with cryonics is that “they (claim) they will somehow overturn the laws of physics, and chemistry and evolution and molecular science because they have the way. There is no difference between somebody dressing up in a long robe, and being the son of some deity or other that’s going to take you to a planet far away if you buy some new Nike sneakers, and cryonics which promises you, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that they will overcome, literally, objective reality…it’s not science, it’s a religion, we can’t really fight it on the basis of science because they don’t have any.”

At this time, cryonics is impossible, even the supporters admit that. And experts like Storey say it will never be possible. But who really knows, maybe future generations will be watching a freshly thawed Ted Williams back in left field for the Boston Red Sox? Williams’ body was preserved by his son and Alcor following the baseball legend's death in 2002.

As Storey sums it up: “In a hundred years or so, we’ll know which approach was valuable. The advantage there is that if they were right, they’ll all be alive and thawed out, and I’ll be well and truly dead, so I won’t care then either."