Frozen Head: the weird world of cryogenics
An attempt at freezing a cryogenicist’s mother involves putting her body on ice before emptying it of blood and pumping it with “cryo-protectant” solution. The woman’s head is then removed.
Living forever sounds expensive – you’d need a lot of superannuation. What if being alive got boring? Or depressing? Isn’t the point of life death?
Podcast Frozen Head takes listeners into the weird world of cryogenics – the experimental science of freezing the deceased with the hope future technology will be able to restore life. As the podcast name suggests, there are frozen heads. A few of them actually.
And not everyone’s happy about it. Turns out police get a bit suspicious when the body of a dead person goes missing. And then there’s disagreement over whether the deceased should be buried or frozen.
According to urban legend, Walt Disney is a cryogenicist, the founder of the beloved animation giant is rumoured to be frozen underneath an amusement park ride.
How does cryogenics work? On Frozen Head episode one a man called Max Moore walks listeners through an attempt at freezing a fellow cryogenicist’s mother, a woman called Dora. Her body was placed on ice and emptied of blood before it was pumped with “cryo-protectant” solution.
The cryogenicists then drilled holes in her head before cutting off her hands, which apparently ensures the cryoprotectant solution spreads throughout the body.
Moore then says “She was a neuro case so we actually did a neuro separation”. “Rather (than) preserving the whole body, which was in pretty bad shape at that age with illness, we’re just going to cryo-preserve her brain.”
Neuro-separation is apparently the technical term for removing someone’s head.
This podcast – from US production house Wondery and hosted by Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquhart – goes to some very weird places. But it’s enthralling and very fun, if a bit macabre. The interest is not just in the wacky science and the shock factor but the existentialism of the characters.
Why are these people so scared of death? From all accounts cryogenic enthusiasts are deeply scientific and thoroughly lack faith in some kind of afterlife, ruling out the fear of eternal damnation as a motivator.
A man called Mike develops an obsession with cheating death after discovering his cousin’s decomposing corpse, eventually earning him the nickname Dr Darwin among his bemused peers.
“I got very interested in trying to preserve animals like dead birds,” Mike tells listeners. “So I was doing things like immersing animals in isopropyl alcohol or injecting them with it.”
Dr Darwin or Dr Frankenstein? Listeners can make up their own minds but Mike legally changes his name to Mike Darwin.
Maybe the belief in cryogenics is fuelled by the desire for a second chance, a resurrection when the world will be ready to accept cryogenicists as they are. Unsurprisingly the cryo crowd is full of outcasts and people who had trouble fitting in.
“You’re going to find people who just don’t accept authority because they’ve been told (by society) they’re no good, they’re evil,” says Dr Darwin. “They don’t believe that so they no longer trust the wisdom of the culture.”
Huh. Maybe cryogenicists are just goth kids who reject the authority of life and death.
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