Lot's Wife Edition 2 2016

SCIENCE
Ice, Ice,
baby!
by Hashwina Vimalarajan
Illustration by Lily Greenwood
What would you do if you were given the rare chance to
extend your life? Would you accept it, or would you
deny it? Would you watch the Twilight saga all over again
just to see how immortality works? Or would you just be
baffled by everything that’s going on?
These were some among the many questions running
through my mind as I read about the scientific breakthrough
of cryonics.
Freeze!
Cryonics is the science of human preservation at low
temperatures. It involves freezing cadavers to extremely low
temperatures so as to delay their decay, in hopes that they will
be revived in the near future. Although this does sound like science
fiction, there is much more modern actual science involved
in the process.
The preservation process involves taking a cadaver after
it is legally pronounced dead, restoring respiratory function
with a resuscitator and/or an artificial lung, and treating the
patient with cryoprotectant drugs such as glycerol to minimize
damage from the freezing process. The body is submerged in
liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196°C, so all physiological,
chemical and biological activity is arrested. It is then stored in a
cryo chamber filled with liquid nitrogen and many other gases.
This cooling procedure takes approximately 2 to 3 days
for whole body patients and 1 day for neuropreservation
patients, where only the brain is frozen, because you couldn’t
give a damn about the rest of your body and also because you
consider yourself pretty smart to be freezing your brain.
The body is preserved until the time has come where
advancements in medical science have progressed enough to
cure the specimen of its various ailments or bring it back to its
full vigor.
Forever Frozen
However, cryopreservation his hasn’t been easy because
this entire process has had its own trials and tribulations.
On one hand, you have enthusiastic go-getters, hipsters,
celebrities, wannabe geeks and open minded millennials who
are quite amazed and enthralled by this New Age innovation.
Simon Cowell, Larry King, Britney Spears, Seth McFarlane and
Paris Hilton are some of the celebrities who are already interested
in freezing and retaining their bodies.
There has been some heavy opposition to this cause as
well. Theologists, biologists and certain religious, social and
political groups around the world are rallying against it and
petitioning to stop it. The real argument is amongst sceptics
and evolutionary biologists, who tend to ignore the fact that
this technique has been scientifically tested and proven with
other animal species but find it hard to accept the possibility
of revival of life in humans. It’s just common skepticism, but
in a way, it is also a sort of fear. Nobody favors the concept of
‘playing god’.
Currently, cryonics is not a fully developed technique.
While it is a scientific proposition which is in practice today,
its feasibility in humans can only be examined using theoretical
science. The theory may remain hypothetical regarding
humans, but with other organisms, such as mice, it has been
tested and proved. This instills in us, hope for the future. If this
technique succeeds, in the future we could abolish diseases,
cryogenically freeze damaged organs and regenerate them back
to life, and finally stop saying YOLO ‘cause it wouldn’t make
sense anymore.
The way I see it, this whole plot is like one bad version of
Frozen, where Elsa singlehandedly freezes her victims and tries
really hard to bring them back to life. But hey, we all know how
that story ends.
Lot’s Wife | 37