A 2 year old Thai girl became the youngest person to be cryogenically frozen, preserving her brain moments after death in the hope that she will one day be brought back to life.
Matheryn Naovaratpong, or Einz, suffered from a rare form of brain cancer that proved fatal just before her third birthday earlier this year.
Einz’s parents, who are both medical engineers, decided to commission the “life extension” services of US-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Moments after her death in a Bangkok hospital, a team from Alcor began the process of “cryoprotection” that preserved her brain at sub-zero temperatures without large-scale tissue damage.
“The first day Einz was sick, this idea came to my mind right away that we should do something scientifically for her, as much as is humanly possible at present,” says her father, Sahatorn. “I felt a real conflict in my heart about this idea, but I also needed to hold onto it. So I explained my idea to my family.”
That idea was to preserve Einz through technology known as cryonics. The body, or in Einz’s case just her brain, is put into a deeply frozen state at the point of death, and kept that way until, at some point in the future, extraordinary advances in medical technology allow her to be revived, and for a new body to be created for her.
A standby team from Alcor flew to Thailand to supervise the initial cooling of the body. As the little girl deteriorated, she was moved from hospital to her own room. The moment she was pronounced dead, the Alcor team begin what is known as “cryoprotection”; removing bodily fluids and replacing them with forms of anti-freeze that allow the body to be deep frozen without suffering large-scale tissue damage.
Her brain was then extracted and preserved at a temperature of -196C and stored indefinitely in liquid nitrogen.
“As scientists we are 100% confident this will happen one day – we just don’t know when,” he said. “In the past we might have thought it would take 400 to 500 years, but right now we can imagine it might be possible in just 30 years.”
Would you want to live forever if such a technology does become a reality someday? Please share your thoughts…..
