Cryonics: The $200,000 Quest for Immortality – Revolutionary Time Travel or Futile Fantasy?

The ambulance in the heart of Berlin seems almost like a toy, with its compact size and bright orange stripe running along the sides, and a mess of wires hanging from the ceiling.

This vehicle is one of three reconfigured ambulances operated by Tomorrow.Bio, Europe’s pioneering cryonics lab, whose mission is to freeze patients post-mortem with the hope of reviving them one day—all for $200,000 (€195,000).

Manning the blood pump is Emile Kengiora, Tomorrow.Bio’s co-founder and a former cancer researcher, who switched fields after finding cancer treatment progress “too slow.” Although the first cryonics lab opened nearly fifty years ago in Michigan, sparking a debate between those who see it as the future and skeptics who view it as hopeless, Kengiora notes a rising interest in the field.

To date, “three or four” people and five pets have been cryopreserved, with nearly 700 more signed up. By 2025, the company plans to extend its services across the U.S.

No one has ever been successfully revived after cryopreservation; if it were possible, it might lead to severe brain damage. Clive Cohen, a neuroscience professor at King’s College London, points out that there is no evidence that complex brain structures can be successfully repaired, calling the concept “absurd.” He also critiques the claims that nanotechnology or connectomics can bridge the gap between theoretical biology and reality as overblown promises.

Despite these criticisms, Tomorrow.Bio remains undeterred. Once a patient registers and a doctor confirms their imminent death, the company dispatches an ambulance. Upon legal confirmation of death, the patient is transferred to Tomorrow.Bio’s ambulance where the cryonics process starts. This procedure, inspired by cases where patients’ hearts restarted after exposure to freezing temperatures, such as Anna Bagenholm’s revival after two hours of clinical death during a 1999 ski accident, involves cooling bodies to sub-zero temperatures and infusing them with cryoprotective solutions.

“When cooling below zero degrees, it’s crucial not to freeze the body but to cryopreserve it to avoid tissue-damaging ice crystals,” Kengiora explains. The process involves replacing all freezable water in the body with cryoprotective agents like dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and ethylene glycol. The body is then rapidly cooled to around -125 degrees Celsius and more gradually to -196 degrees Celsius.

At this temperature, the patient is moved to a storage facility in Switzerland.

“You wait,” Kengiora says. “The idea is that future medical advancements could cure the underlying cause of death and reverse the cryopreservation.”

Whether this happens in 50, 100, or 1,000 years remains uncertain. “Ultimately, the timing isn’t crucial,” he says. “Maintaining the temperature can preserve the state indefinitely.”

For those outside the cryonics field, the concept oscillates between delusion and dystopia. While Kengiora acknowledges the lack of successful revivals, he likens the skepticism to early attitudes toward organ transplants, now routine procedures. He believes cryonics could similarly evolve.

Research on cryopreserving C. elegans and partially rejuvenating organs in rodents offers some hope, though large-scale human applications remain untested. In 2023, the University of Minnesota successfully cryopreserved rat kidneys for 100 days and transplanted them back with full function restored within 30 days.

Cryonics falls within the “life extension” market, which now predominantly focuses on longevity. Despite the abundance of supplements and lifestyle advice, practical research beyond exercise and diet is limited.

Cohen criticizes cryonics as “misplaced faith in antifreeze and a misunderstanding of biology, physics, and death.” He argues that once the heart stops, cellular decay starts, and reheating from cryopreservation restarts this decay.

He believes cryogenics, the long-term preservation of tissues and organs for later use, holds more promise. The ethical and practical challenges of preserving entire bodies, particularly brain supercooling, remain significant. Tomorrow.Bio stores its clients’ bodies at a non-profit foundation in Switzerland for protection, though how future generations will handle their frozen ancestors is uncertain.

Cryonics enthusiasts hope that a future cure will be found for the condition that caused the patient’s death, allowing them to be revived. However, there is no guarantee that this will happen, or that other factors wouldn’t limit their “second life” to something mundane. The costs are also exorbitant, with many families likely displeased that their inheritance is being spent on such an unlikely prospect.

“I would argue that the freedom to choose for oneself takes precedence over other moral considerations,” Kenjiora insists. “There are plenty of people buying their second superyacht at 85 years old, with just a few years left to live.”

By comparison, a $200,000 investment in potential future life seems, to him, like a reasonable deal.

He notes that most of their clients are 60 years old or younger, and they fund the fees through life insurance, either arranged through the company or independently. For Louise Harrison, 51, signing up for the project was “driven by curiosity.”

“The idea of possibly coming back to life in the future fascinated me—it felt like a form of time travel,” she said. “Having even a small chance of coming back, as opposed to no chance, seemed like a logical choice.”

Harrison, who pays about $87 (€85) a month for life insurance, says her decision was met with disapproval.

“People often say, ‘How horrible, everything and everyone you know will be gone.’ But that doesn’t bother me—we lose people throughout our lives, yet we usually find reasons to keep living.”

Tomorrow.Bio hopes that their U.S. presence will attract those curious about our future world. According to the Cryonics Institute, the American startup that began in 1976, 2,000 people have signed up, with 263 “suspended.”

“We’ve seen steady growth in recent years as the concept gains traction,” they report.

Media coverage suggests that the coronavirus pandemic increased people’s awareness of death, and thus a desire to preserve life. Perhaps because of this, Tomorrow.Bio has ambitious goals: to maintain neural structures of memory, identity, and personality within the year, and to achieve “reversible preservation” from sub-zero temperatures—the “holy grail”—by 2028.

“I can’t predict the odds,” Kenjiora admits. “But I’m confident that the probability is higher than that of cremation, to say the least.