It's 1997 and a British secret agent is revived after 30 years on ice. His mission: Thwart the evil plans of his arch nemesis and save the world. Yeah, OK -- you've got us. This is what happens in the hit movie, "Austin Powers." But is this just pure Hollywood fiction? Or…
Are people actually being frozen for the future?
Yes -- people do get their bodies frozen in liquid nitrogen. These people are called cryonauts. They're hoping that someone in the future will figure out how to thaw their bodies and bring them "back to life." Here's how the process usually works. You sign up with a company that will freeze your body. Then, when you're sick and in the hospital about to die, someone calls the company. They send a team of doctors to the hospital. As soon as you die, the cryo-doctors spring into action.
Right -- now you're wondering, "If you're dead, how can you be brought back to life?" Here's the thing -- the person is what is called legally dead - meaning the heart has stopped. This isn't the same as totally dead - because there's still some stuff going on inside the person's brain. The cryo-doctors and scientists will work to maintain that cellular brain function. The first thing they will do is connect your brain to a machine that supplies it with blood and oxygen. They are trying to keep your brain as "fresh" as possible. They will also inject a medicine called heparin into your blood stream so that the blood in your body does not coagulate. Then they will pack your body in ice to start cooling it down and ship you to the cryonics facility.
The next step is to immerse the cells in your body in a cryoprotectant. The idea is to try to keep your cells from bursting when they freeze. Propanediol is one popular cryoprotectant and it is a lot like the antifreeze in your car. They pump this fluid through your blood stream so that it surrounds and permeates all of your cells. You might be thinking, "That's not going to work!" But scientists have had some success with it. Today this is actually how embryos are protected before they're frozen. Frozen embryos are brought back to life all the time, so we know it can work. It's just that no one has ever seen it work on a full-size body yet. The hope is that, in the future, scientists will figure this all out.
Now that your cells are protected, your body is placed in a bed of dry ice to cool it down to -120 degrees F. Then it is placed in a big vat of liquid nitrogen to give it a deep freeze at -320 degrees F.
Three things need to be worked out in order to bring cryonauts back to life. For one, scientists will have to figure out how to thaw a full-size body so that there is no damage to the thawing cells. They'll also have to figure out how to take a body that has technically "died" and reverse the whole dying process, plus fix any damage to the cells that "dying" caused. And, they will have to figure out how to cure whatever it was that killed you.
It does seem like a long shot. It's also expensive. Right now, it costs about $150,000 to have your body frozen. Even so, there are currently about 60 people who have been frozen. And there are more than 600 people who have already paid to have their bodies frozen when they die. Who knows - maybe a hundred years from now these people will be walking and talking again! | 
