Can You Cryogenically Freeze Your Body and Come Back to Life?

When you die, there are a lot of things you can do with your dead body--embalm it, cremate it, donate it to science (the list goes on), but some people will choose to have their dead bodies, or body parts, frozen until the technology of the future has (hopefully) advanced enough to bring them back to life. This week on Reactions, we break down the chemistry of cryogenic freezing and if its realistic to think we could ever reanimate a frozen corpse.

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Credits:

Producer: Elaine Seward

Writer: Samantha Jones, Ph.D.

Scientific Consultants: Leila Duman, Ph.D. Michelle Boucher, Ph.D., Joe Schwarcz, Ph.D., Michael Swain, Ph.D., David H. Gorski, M.D./Ph.D., Joo Pedro de Magalhaes, Ph.D., David Sherwood, Ph.D.

Executive Producer: George Zaidan
Executive Producer: Hilary Hudson

Music:
Sonoton Vanguard - Crawling Speed
Sonton Vanguard - Components A
AXS - Dark Alley
Sonton Vanguard - Let's Think Big
William Tell Overture

Sources:
General cryopreservation principles
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18080461

Corpse cryopreservation and forensics
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30896124

The church of cryopreservation
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328518/

The false science of cryonics
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541311/the-false-science-of-cryonics/

The case for cryonics
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25717141

Euthanasia and cryothanasia
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28786175

Cryopreservation and its clinical applications https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5395684/

Cryopreservation: An emerging paradigm change
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781087/

Fish antifreeze protein and the freezing and recrystallization of ice.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6700733

Antifreeze and ice nucleator proteins in terrestrial arthropods.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11181959

Cryoprotectant Toxicity: Facts, Issues, and Questions
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4620521/

Scientific justification for cryonics
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18321197

Cryopreserving mammalian cells
https://assets.thermofisher.com/TFS-Assets/LSG/Application-Notes/D19575.pdf

Persistence of Long-Term Memory in Vitrified and Revived Caenorhabditis elegans
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4620520/

An Interneuronal Chemoreceptor Required for Olfactory Imprinting in C. elegans
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/309/5735/787.long

Maintenance of C. elegans
http://www.wormbook.org/chapters/www_strainmaintain/strainmaintain.html

Expression of Ice-Binding Proteins in Caenorhabditis elegans Improves the Survival Rate upon Cold Shock and during Freezing
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42650-8


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Freezing frogs
https://www.livescience.com/32175-can-frogs-survive-being-frozen.html#:~:targetText=There%20are%20five%20known%20species,and%20the%20western%20chorus%20frog