How often have you obsessed with the idea of a TV show plot turning into a reality? Well, Game of Thrones fans, this might just be your chance as experts claim human corpses frozen by cryogenics could be brought back to life right in just ten years!
About 350 people worldwide have reportedly had their corpses preserved at low temperatures immediately after death, as Daily Mail Online reported, in the hopes of being revived and brought back to life in the future.
Also read: US man plans to cheat death
Dennis Kowalski, head of the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute, the organisation fronting the human freezing process, now believes that one of those frozen corpses could be revived as soon as within the next decade.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, the 49-year-old said: "If you take something like CPR, that would have seemed unbelievable 100 years ago. Now we take that technology for granted. Cryonically bringing someone back to life should definitely be doable in 100 years, but it could be as soon as ten."
The Institute which has almost 2,000 people signed up for the freezing process and already has 160 patients frozen in specialized tanks of liquid nitrogen at its headquarters. The timing of the first reanimation, however, depends upon the rate of modern medicine's advancement.
"It depends on how much technology like stem-cells advances," he claimed, talking about the technique of cryonics, which is also known as cryogenics and cryopreservation and involves freezing a dead body or body parts in order to preserve them.
While people in support of the process see it as a miracle to 'cheat death', it mostly depends on medical science progressing far enough to cure whatever had killed the person in the first place.
As of now, the process of freezing a dead person is legal only when they have just been declared dead. The process must start as soon as the patient dies, to prevent brain damage. The facilities for the same are currently available only in Russia, the US and Portugal.
The procedure involves the body being cooled in an ice bath to gradually reduce its temperature. It is followed by experts draining the blood and replacing it with an antifreeze fluid. This prohibits harmful ice crystals forming in the body.
Also read: Man wakes up after being declared 'dead
First making headlines in December, Kowalski had paid $140,000 to have his entire family frozen post death to be revived together. His wife Maria and their three sons - Jacob, 19, Danny, 17, and James, 16 - are all signed up to be preserved in liquid nitrogen upon death.
The ex-paramedic shared in an interview that this process could give them a 'second chance at life'. The Wisconsin resident also believes that people partaking in the process have 'little to lose and virtually everything to gain'.
"I heard about the process when I was a teenager. I thought it sounded really interesting. Many years later I signed up with the Cryonics Institute. That was 20 years ago now. Now my wife and three teenage sons are also all signed up," he had said.
He added: "Of course my sons are young so not thinking about it too much. But things happen in life and you never know."
