This article is from WeChat official account:CC Weekly (ID: cancer-weekly), author: Yumeng Qi (freelance copywriter), drawing from the title: “space tourist” stills
core summary
1. Jinan Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute is the only cryonics research center in China and one of only four such research institutions in the world. In China, more and more people are freezing “corpses” here, hoping to obtain the technology of “rebirth” in 50 years or more.
2. The earliest volunteer in China to participate in the “Frozen Man” experiment was Chongqing female writer Du Hong, who was also one of the editors of “Three Body”. Her body was transported to the headquarters of the Alcor Life Continuity Foundation in the United States in a frozen state, with the head separated and stored in a special container in a liquid nitrogen environment at -196°C.
3. At present, there are more than 300 people who have been medically determined to be dead worldwide, stored in liquid nitrogen tanks at minus 196 degrees Celsius. One of the earliest practitioners dates back to 50 years ago. For half a century, it is regrettable that there has not been a freezer resurrected.
4. Each organ requires different techniques for cryopreservation, but once a solution to save all organs is found, the prospect of recovering the entire human body from the frozen state will be very promising. high.
5. The core technical problem of freezing people is not surface freezing, but cell thawing. “Cryosurgery” really wants to achieve a breakthrough, the key is to have an expert doorway, first to be able to “resurrect” the organ.
In China, more and more people are trying to freeze “corpses” through a cryopreservation center in Jinan, Shandong, in order to obtain the “rebirth” technology in 50 years or more. Although this technology and vision are closer to the scene of a fantasy novel.
A few days ago, a report in the South China Morning Post stated that this is called Jinan Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute. It is the only cryonics research center in China and one of only four such research institutions in the world. In addition to providing freezing suspensions for volunteer “freezers” like the other three institutions, which preserve the corpses at extremely low temperatures for “resurrection”, it has a broader scope of research and “has the ability to completely change organ transplants and reinstall body organs.” And the potential of other medical therapies”.
It is said that Shandong Yinfeng Life Science Research Institute has 10 bodies frozen in their huge containers. The media is even somewhat optimistic that: “China has no religious barriers-which hinders the acceptance of “resurrection” in the West-China can quickly catch up and lead in the field of cryonics.”
The comments of the media and the arguments of the frozen human preservation center in Jinan seem to be nothing wrong. In the human world, potential always exists. But to be honest, although the study of “frozen people” is less bound by law and ethics in China than in Western countries.
Huge technical obstacles prevent this brave idea from becoming a reality in the foreseeable future, even if it is only the freezing and resuscitation preservation technology of some organs, there is the possibility of a leapfrog breakthrough. Extremely low.
1. Chongqing female writer freezes brain for RMB 750,000, revealing the whole process of freezing after death of two lung cancer patients
The earliest volunteer in China to participate in the “Frozen Man” experiment was Chongqing female writer Du Hong, who was also one of the editors of the science fiction novel “Three Body”. After reading “Three-Body”, she once mentioned to her daughter that she hoped to be frozen after death. Her daughter contacted the Alcor Life Continuation Foundation through online volunteers and classmates in the United States. .
Du Hong’s family chose to spend 120,000 US dollars (about 750,000 yuan)For brain freezing, according to Du Hong’s daughter, a large part of the cost is for thawing and resurrection after a few years. After Du Hong was declared dead on May 30, 2015, two surgeons from the United States who had been waiting on the scene immediately injected Du Hong with anticoagulants, antibacterial drugs, and antithrombotic drugs to prevent blood clotting. Afterwards, Du Hong’s body was placed in a wooden coffin with ice cubes. After reprocessing, it was transported to the Alcor Life Continuity Foundation headquarters in the United States in a frozen state. The body’s head was separated and kept at -196 ℃ in a special container with liquid nitrogen environment.
The first case of “frozen man” in China was completed in Yinfeng, Shandong. This person’s name is Zhan Wenlian, female, who worked in a bank in Jinan during her lifetime and suffered from lung cancer.
At 4:01 am on May 8, 2017, in the comfortable medical ward of the East Hospital of Shandong University Qilu Hospital, 49-year-old Zhan Wenlian stopped her heartbeat and breathing on the bed, and the attending doctor immediately announced in accordance with legal procedures Clinical death. In the next 2 minutes, several clinical response experts quickly injected anticoagulation, antioxidant, and central nervous nutrition drugs into her body, and quickly infused iced saline through the circulatory system to physically cool down, and at the same time performed tracheal intubation to activate the heart and lungs Support equipment to ensure the body’s blood and oxygen supply and maintain the body’s physiological functions.
Followingly, Zhan Wenlian was quickly transported by ambulance to Yinfeng Research Institute Cryomedicine Research Center, where she received the vital perfusion replacement operation, that is, the blood is replaced with cryoprotective agent to minimize the freezing damage caused by cooling and preservation . Cardiac Surgeon, Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, Anesthesiologists and cardiopulmonary bypass perfusion specialists participated in this process. They established dual-channel cardiopulmonary bypass from Zhan Wenlian’s neck and thighs. On a special low-temperature operating table, their body temperature was lowered to about 18 ℃, and then The transparent, milky white antifreeze is slowly injected into Zhanwenlian.
As the antifreeze becomes thicker and thicker, it will become a solid, but it will not freeze. This process is called “vitrification”.
The perfusion was finally completed, almost 6 hours later. Then, Zhan Wenlian’s body was transferred to a large-size program cooling bed. It is said that this is the only automatic control device in the world that can continuously cool the entire human body from room temperature to about -190°C. It uses liquid nitrogen vapor to quickly cool down, and the entire process takes 55 hours. On May 10, Zhan Wenlian’s body was placed in a liquid nitrogen biological container over 3 meters high, and it has been 3 years.
The second case in China was also in Yinfeng, Shandong. It was completed at 14:30 pm on June 19, 2018. The test subject is Liu Aihui, female, 72 years old, with lung cancer. Earlier, Liu Aihui’s wife, Changyou Zhou, asked Aaron Drake, Director of the Clinical Response Center of Yinfeng Research Institute. (Aaron Drake) 3, 4 Second: “How long will it take for people who have been frozen to wake up?” Drake’s answer is: “According to current technical conditions, it will take at least 50 years.” Drake joined Yinfeng in 2016 and has been in Al Cole Life Continuation Foundation, Zhan Wenlian’s freezing experiment, he is also the main participant.
The second case of a farewell ceremony held by the family members of a frozen person at the scene
According to media sources, nearly 200 people consulted on how to become cryonics volunteers, and 30 of them were evaluated for their condition, showing the appeal of cryopreservation.
Second, is it a medical experiment or a new form of funeral?
The first frozen man 50 years ago may not have any chance of resurrection
The United States was the first country where “freezing people” appeared, but it has been controversial. On the one hand, the scientific rigor of its advocates has been questioned, and on the other hand, religious people resisted. They believe that the soul cannot be frozen. Yes, and resurrection means a violation of God’s will. This is not surprising. After experiencing the new crown epidemic, devout believers will understand that even wearing masks is blasphemous.
The concept of “cryosurgery” appeared very early. The real rise was in the early 1960s. It was proposed by Robert Edinger, known as the “father of cryonics” in his book “Prospects of Immortality”. The book quotes the fact that a large number of plants and lower animals have awakened after low temperature dormancy. He believes that death is only a gradual process, as long as the body is frozen fast enough, there must be a chance to reverse it.
After the publication of the book, a number of fanatical supporters of “cryonics” appeared. However, looking at it now, there are some problems with Egerdin’s statement. Medical scientists believe that freezing is not the same as low-temperature hibernation. Freezing completely freezes the body, basically stopping life in its original state, which is completely passive; Hibernation also has basic metabolism and has a certain degree of initiative. In any case, Aidinger’s vision was truly realized in January 1967.
The first freezing human experimenter was an honorary professor named James Bedford from the University of California. As a supporter of cryosurgery and the first person to sign a cryo-experiment agreement, within a few hours after Bedford died of cancer, another avid cryosurgery researcher Robert Nelson and his medical team called James It froze.
Robert Nielsen, who was once an electrician, founded the first Life Extension Foundation. The cryosurgery at that time seems to be imperfect, unorganized, and even chaotic today. Bedford’s blood was not completely drained, but simply injected with antifreeze, and then Bedford’s corpsePut the body into an insulated container with dry ice. A few days later this container was placed in a large Dewar container filled with liquid nitrogen.
Fifteen years later, due to the bankruptcy of the freezing company storing Bedford, his body was tossed several times, and finally a place was found at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. According to a visual assessment of Bedford’s corpse in 1991, his body has remained frozen and his appearance has not deteriorated. But after that test, there has been no second test for Bedford. Although the freezing process was completed, there was no news about the revival plan that had been agreed 50 years later. In 2017, Nelson announced to the world that Bedford was about to be resurrected, but then he went silently. The experiment failed or did not start at all. The result is even more doubtful.
In fact, although the Alcor Life Extension Foundation is said to have more than 100 frozen people, it does not have a medical license in the United States, but only has an operating license for the funeral industry. Drake admitted in an interview with the South China Morning Post: “It is just a storage facility. It is like people being frozen and stored in a cemetery.”
It is reported that there are currently more than 300 people medically determined to be dead in the world, stored in liquid nitrogen tanks at minus 196 degrees Celsius. One of the earliest practitioners dates back to 50 years ago. For half a century, it is regrettable that there has not been a freezer resurrected.
This new technology, which entrusts mankind’s wish of “longevity”, did not awaken the frozen man more than 50 years ago as expected. Scientists who have been skeptical about this believe that science will never be able to awaken a long-dead frozen man.
Three, extend from six hours to six days? After finding the preservation method of individual organs, proceed to the whole body test
Meaning that the current freezing technology is not complete?
“But this one in JinanLife Hospital hopes that we will not only become a project to freeze someone up. I would also like to know how this project can benefit all medical fields. Therefore, we cooperate with surgeons, anesthesiologists and professionals who do heart-lung machines. This is a large, research-based project that attracted me to join them. “Drake believes that although there is no wake-up technology yet, it has made significant progress in some projects.
Previously, according to Jia Chunsheng, Dean of Yinfeng Research Institute, “Freezing Man” is a comprehensive life science research project, including gene technology project, cell banking and clinical transformation project, tissue organ banking project, and even artificial organ research project . This research hopes that through the preservation and resurrection of tissues and organs, it can be used in clinics in the future to provide better services to patients with diseases, and to promote the donation of life resources such as remains, organs and hematopoietic stem cells that are urgently needed in China. Career progress.
The freezing capsule in the science fiction movie “Space Traveler”
Drake said, One of the biggest obstacles that continue to plague organ transplant operations is the short window of opportunity for obtaining transplantable organs from the deceased and implanting them in patients. Take the human heart as an example”, the available time is about six hours. After six hours, the tissue will begin to die.” Within these six hours, the organ must be removed, cleaned, prepared, transported, and implanted. At the same time, the donor and recipient must be checked for matching. This is very challenging. Especially in China, there is no logistics infrastructure specifically developed for this type of surgery.
“Consider, if you can store your organs in an ultra-cold environment and continue to perfusion, that is, the time for blood to circulate, from six hours to six days, then you will have enough time to complete the transplant. China It is the first country to adopt this method, and Yinfeng is in a leading position in this research field. China may surpass everyone else because they have adopted a new method.
Yinfeng said that it is cooperating with the University of Science and Technology of China to study the preservation of pancreatic cells, And cooperated with Shandong University Qilu Hospital to preserve ovarian cells. Drake said that each organ requires different techniques for cryopreservation. “The bigger the organ, the more difficult it becomes. The equipment you have to use will also become larger.” However, once you find a solution to save all organs The prospect of recovering the entire human body from a frozen state will be very high, “It’s like you resolve a problem, first solve various parts, and then solve a very complex mathematical problem. Then put these parts Together, the answer will come.”
Logically speaking, Drake’s statement is quite reasonable, but in practice, the “freezing man” technology has too many technical problems that cannot be overcome currently.
The technology of cryopreservation of cells has matured
4. It is almost impossible to resurrect human body after 50 years of freezing, but it is a possible future to resurrect some organs
From a scientific point of view, the core technical problem of freezing people is not surface freezing, but cell thawing. Although modern technology is improving day by day, the body is still greatly damaged when it is thawed. The main problem is that when freezing, the body’s water will form sharp ice crystals, causing cell tissues to cause irreparable damage, including some cell tissue necrosis, cell membrane shedding, and small cracks between some tissues. This will cause the dead to be unable to recover after thawing. Therefore, some scientists believe that people who were frozen in the early days like Bedford will never have any chance of resurrection.
Therefore, scientists have always wanted to invent a freezing technology that does not “freeze” human tissues. This requires the invention of a special medium called “cryoprotector”.
Since the 1930s, scientists from various countries have designed more than 300 “cryoprotector” substances, but none of them are really useful, those “cryoprotector” substancesIt can prevent blood, liver, sperm and small pieces of cell tissue from forming ice crystals in the frozen state, but it cannot keep the whole body from freezing.
In 2007, Pavel Shebakov, a heating engineer in the Russian “Cryonics” research team, and Tepukhov, a professor at the Sechenov Medical College in Moscow, invented a hybrid “Cryoprotector” medium composed of inert gas. These mixed inert gases contain argon, krypton and xenon. When these inert gases are injected into human cells, once they are frozen, they will turn into jelly-like substances, thereby preventing the water in the human body from forming “ice crystals.”
According to the Pravda newspaper, in an experiment, a laboratory mouse injected with an inert gas was frozen to a low temperature of -196 degrees Celsius, and then scientists gradually raised its temperature to zero degrees Celsius, and then The heart of the experimental mouse was transplanted to another mouse, and the transplanted heart immediately began to beat. Scientists repeated this experiment 10 times, with success almost every time.
Then why don’t Russian scientists simply resuscitate the entire mouse and let its heart beat in its own body? According to Shebakov, the last problem in resuscitating frozen animals is that these inert gases create bubbles in the blood vessels. When the body temperature of a frozen mouse rises to zero degrees Celsius or higher, the rats’ blood vessels will be filled with these inert gas bubbles; if there is helium in the mixed inert gas, there will be more bubbles in the rats’ blood vessels, so the rats cannot resurrection. This problem needs to be solved by carefully selecting the composition, pressure and heating rate of the mixed gas.
Hua Zezhao, the late retired professor of University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and the first batch of doctoral tutors in the domestic “refrigeration and cryogenic engineering”, once pointed out that it is “impossible to resurrect the deceased one day through human cryosurgery experiments.” Task”. The reason has been clarified in his paper “Cryogenic Storage and Freeze-drying of Human Cells” published more than 10 years ago: organisms are divided into cells, tissues, organs, and human bodies according to their complexity. According to the current level of low-temperature biomedicine, most cells and Some tissues can be stored at low temperature, but the organs have not yet been fully intendedCryopreservation on the right.
Sun Wenyu, a surgical expert who participated in the experiments of Zhan Wenlian and Liu Aihui, also believes that the current human cryosurgery experiments are still in their infancy. He and Hua Zezhao put forward almost the same conservative view on the “resurrection” hypothesis: “The conditions required for the freezing experiments of human tissues, organs, and cells are different, and it is difficult to achieve an instantaneous and uniform vitrification state.” /strong>
So, “Cryosurgery” really wants to achieve a breakthrough. The key is not to let the layman watch the excitement and put the individual into a special jar after freezing, but to have an expert doorway to resurrect the organ. “. In this regard, researchers all over the world are working hard.
In 2019, the British “Nature” magazine identified ten missions that were vital to the scientific community at that time. One of them was Nenad Shestein, from Yale University School of Medicine, and was called “the person who restarted the brain” . The research team led by Shestein found that there was brain electrical activity in the brains removed from dead pigs. So the brain organs were taken out soon after the pig died, and oxygen and a cold protective agent were injected, thereby making the pig brain at least Partially resurrected.
However, Shestein later avoided the media because the latter had been implying in reports that the researchers were creating immortality or staying in a strange laboratory like a wizard, filled with all kinds of living brains. Bottles and jars.
This article is from WeChat official account:CC Weekly (ID: cancer-weekly), author: Yumeng Qi (freelance copywriter)