Three lead researchers at Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), Oxford University - Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong, have decided to pay a U.S. company up to $77, 639 to have their remains frozen in hopes of being brought back to life through future technology.
Armstrong has agreed to allow Michigan-based Cryonics Institute to preserve his entire body after death. This researcher is so excited about the idea that he is thinking about signing up his unborn child too. Experts say that preserving a full body is strictly more complex to accomplish and can cost up to $201, 863.
On the other hand, Bostrom, a professor of philosophy at Oxford's FHI, and researcher Sandberg, have chosen to detach and deep freeze only their heads following their deaths at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation outside Phoenix, Arizona.
Researchers are surprised over Bostrom's decision to come to back to life when there are so many debates ongoing about the world's uncertain future.
'Look back at what has happened over the past 100 years, and how many features of today's world somebody from 1913 would have failed to anticipate,' said Bostorm,40, a Swede. 'The more uncertain you are about the future, the more it makes sense to keep your options alive - for example, by trying to preserve as much as possible of the information content in your brain, rather than throwing it away.'
Defending his decision, Sandberg, 41, also Swedish, said that he will be very excited to be welcomed in the new world. Although only his head will be functional, he is hopeful that his memories and personality could be transferred.
Certain cryonics followers believe that the future science will be able to clone human bodies to which defrosted, severed heads could be attached.
Armstrong said that this preservation program costs him $38 a month in premiums, which is far cheaper than the popular alternative of extending one's life through gym. 'If you picture the world in, say, 200 years, when reanimation is possible, it will probably be a wonderful place.'
Armstrong, Bostrom and Sandberg have arranged for life insurance policies costing up to $65 a month in premiums to gather funds required to cryo preserve them upon their death.
When near death, a cryopreservation team will wait until the doctor pronounces them dead after which a machine will be used to keep their blood pumping whilst the body is cooled and the blood stream is infused with preservatives and anti-freeze to protect the tissue.
For freezing the head, it will be first detached from the body and nitrogen gas will be used to reduce the temperature to -124C. Then, the patient will be cooled to -196C, before being placed in a vat of liquid nitrogen for storage at a cryogenic preservation facility, where the patients would be stored until technology advances far enough to revive them.
Apart from these three professors, Simon Phillip Cowell, the TV mogul and several dozen Britons have enrolled in a cryonics programs. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have also expressed an interest in the method.
Critics say that such decisions are the direct result of too much exposure to television or they are taken under the influence of vanity. Some of them even question the existence of such companies when they claim their fees of $25, 621.
Alcor, a preservation company, already has 117 patients in cryopreservation along with 33 pets and 985 members in waiting to be preserved. Ted Williams, one of the greatest baseball players, who died in 2002, and Dick Clair, a U.S. TV sitcom writer, who passed away due to AIDS, 1988, are among the admitted patients.
The waiting list includes film director Charles Matthau and British thinkers Aubrey de Grey and Max More.
