A company based in Berlin, Germany, offers to cryogenically freeze a person’s body after death, aiming to bring them back to life when technology advances sufficiently. Tomorrow Bio currently charges $222,603 for the procedure, along with a $55 monthly membership fee.
Freezing a brain alone costs $83,473. Despite these astronomical figures, by August 2024 the company claimed to have frozen six people and five pets already. They also have a reported 650 members waiting for their chance to be frozen.
The co-founder claims freezing people and reviving them may be possible in our lifetime
In an interview with the British outlet the Daily Mail, Fernando Aze Pinheiro, cofounder of the company said, he personally believed that during his lifetime we may witness safe cryopreservation and reanimation of complex organisms.
Cryopreservation, which is the process Tomorrow Bio offers, involves freezing someone who has recently died in a way that would preserve their remains for the future. To do so, the body must be cooled down to -198°C. The idea is that in the future, a patient who has undergone cryopreservation can be revived and treated for whatever condition or disease led to their untimely death.
The company’s main selling point is how quickly patients can be preserved after their death. Indeed, Mr. Pinheiro explained to the Daily Mail that, “We are the first, and currently the only, cryonics company to offer field cryoprotection.”
The idea is that the company starts the freezing body immediately after a patient is declared legally dead, using retrofitted ambulances that work as mobile surgery rooms. Speed is key for cryopreservation, so the company employs a series of teams on stand-by in Berlin, Amsterdam, and Zurich ready to act whenever they are needed.
Dead patients can be frozen for the foreseeable future as no electricity is needed to preserve the bodies
After the patients are put in the ambulances, they are brought to storage in Switzerland, where the bodies are cooled to -196°C (-320°F) over 10 days, and subsequently put in a vacuum-sealed container filled with liquid nitrogen.
The containers do not need electricity to stay cold, so the company argues the bodies can essentially be preserved indefinitely into the future. This would mean patients could wait in their freezing sleep for hundreds of years until the technology can bring them back to life.
Tomorrow Bio has even said that if there is any of the money left once you’re awake you could have it back. The company aims to expand its operations to the United States by 2025.
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