By Abbianca Makoni January 28, 2022 in Break into Tech, Engineers, Main No Comments
Earlier this year, a two-year-old Thai girl named Matheryn became the youngest person to be cryogenically frozen, preserving her brain moments after death in the hope that she would one day be brought back to life.
According to reports, baby Matheryn Naovaratpong, nicknamed Einz, is a patient currently being held at Alcor, an organization currently housing 200 bodies that it hopes to give a second chance of life.
The company depends on science and tech to do this.
Matheryn died from brain cancer in 2015. Her parents, Nareerat and Sahatorn, made the unconventional decision to preserve their daughter’s brain following 10 surgeries, 12 rounds of chemo, and 20 rounds of radiation, which failed to eradicate cancer.
Linda and Fred Chamberlain spearheaded the company Alcor, back in 1972 after being enlightened as attendees at a cryonics conference in early 1970,CNETreports.
Determined to provide a second chance of life, Alcor houses hundreds of bodies at a lab. Bodies are frozen for $220,000 and the head and brain for $80,000, CNET reports. Incoming patients will have their bodies incubated and kept on ice.
Matheryn is one of those bodies.
How the ‘freezing’ works
After arriving in Arizona from her native country, her brain was extracted, and is preserved at a temperature of -196 degrees Celsius (-320.8 Fahrenheit). She is reportedly Alcor’s 134th patient and by far its youngest, the BBC reported.
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Alcor says its operation is “an experiment in the most literal sense of the word.” It does not promise a second chance at life but says cryonics is “an effort to save lives.”
It says “real death” only occurs when a dying body begins to shut down and its chemicals become so “disorganized” that medical technology cannot restore them. However, future technology could make it more likely that the process can be reversed.
Moments after a customer is declared legally dead, the body is put on artificial life support and blood replaced with preservatives for transportation from anywhere in the world to Alcor’s headquarters.
The body is flooded with chemicals called “cryoprotectants,” which cool cells to -120C (- 184F) without ice forming, a process called vitrification.
The body is then cooled further to -196C (-320.8F) and stored indefinitely in liquid nitrogen, according to the Alcor Foundation.
