Alcor Life Extension Foundation is an organisation that performs cryonics, the science of storing a corpse or a severed head. The organisation does this by freezing the corpse or head in liquid nitrogen, with the hope of resurrecting them when such technology is available in the future.
Alcor believes that scientists will soon come up with a solution to ‘legal death’ and its ‘patients’ can be brought back to life. Patients in this context are the cryonically-preserved bodies at its headquarters. Explaining Cryonics as more than just using the term loosely to refer to freezing, Alcor’s website says:
“Adding high concentrations of chemicals called cryoprotectants to cells permits tissue to be cooled to very low temperatures with little or no ice formation.
“The state of no ice formation at temperatures below -120°C is called vitrification. It is now possible to physically vitrify organs as large as the human brain, achieving excellent structural preservation without freezing.”
The Alcor Life Extension Foundation was founded in 1972 and since then, other companies have merged with it. In 1982, the Institute for Advanced Biological Studies (IABS) merged with it, and later; in 1984, it merged with the Cryonics Society of South Florida.
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According to a Wikipedia article, most of Alcor members fund cryonic preservation by naming the organisation the beneficiary of their life insurance. Also, they wear medical bracelets that inform hospitals and responders to contact Alcor in case of a medical emergency.
Alcor has the stored corpse of Emmy Award-winner Richard C. Jones and baseball legend Ted Williams. A CNet article by a writer who recently visited the organisation’s headquarters in Arizona, US, mentioned that corpses were preserved in ’10-foot-tall preservation chamber[s]’.
Additionally, the article says that you can book a space for cryonics preservation with $220,000. The organisation’s co-founder, Linda Chamberlain hopes that within 50 to 100 years, there will be medical technologies to resurrect their patients.
However, Alcor is not in the business of working on human resurrection. It only sells the preservation space as patients hope for a medical breakthrough that will restore them.
Meanwhile, since this sort of science is not yet attainable; there is no way of knowing if the cryonics technique actually works or not. But since the ‘patients’ are technically dead, there appears to be no harm in trying. Additionally, Alcor argues that since scientists have been preserving embryos for years, their procedure will also work.
Will you be willing to be cryonically preserved as you wait for a future version of Edison to fix death?
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