The clinic with 184 frozen people who hoped to wake up in the future

Alcor Life Extension Foundation is an American organization that has ‘promised’ a hundred people, nothing more and nothing less, to keep them alive after death.

That is, if his heart stops beating, instead of taking him to a morgue, dressing him in his best clothes and putting him in a coffin for burial or cremation, the

The objective: “preserve life by stopping death”, reads the official page of the non-profit organization that has monthly plans of 55 dollars (about 209 soles) to enter the project.

How does cryonics work?

The process consists of freeze the bodies of human beings so that in the future – without a specific date – they can withdraw from the capsules and undergo scientific procedures in order to recover their life.

It is an ‘experiment’, according to Alcor, since it is not guaranteed that they will return to the earthly plane. If the technology of the next decades or centuries allows it, perhaps the heartbeat will pick up again.

The foundation follows a series of stages to carry out cryonics.

The first is to visit the person in their last days of life or when they are dying to verify that they can be part of the program.

The subject must die of cardiac arrest and the authorities must declare him legally deceased.

As soon as that happens, Alcor personnel take control of the body: artificially restore blood circulation to protect the brain, transport it to Arizona, U.S, introduces a substance into the blood and cools it during the fifth and sixth days of death to -196 degrees Celsius.

Therefore, “The patient will be protected from deterioration for theoretically thousands of years and the death process has been effectively stopped”, they assure.

The corpse is disposed inside a capsule, which does not need electricity to work because with the injection of liquid nitrogen it is kept at cold temperatures.

“Currently, no organization can revive a cryogenized patient, but at Alcor we trust that reactivation may be possible”, they comment on their website.

Who have dared to be ‘frozen’?

Linda and Fred Chamberlain They are the founders of the clinic, formally established in 1972.

They were inspired by Robert Ettinger, the so-called father of the cryonics -who is also frozen in another US entity.

The couple brought together a series of doctors and experts in the field to cryogenize for the first time James Bedford, a psycologist. Then they would do the same for Fred’s dad and Linda’s mom.

“We want people to understand that this is still an experimental process. We don’t want anyone to come into the project, make preparations, and think this is like going to the hospital and having open heart surgery.”, Linda stated, in a conversation with the ‘Az Central’ media outlet.

Her husband Fred died in 2012 and, unsurprisingly, is underground in the cellars of Alcor.E

n total, 184 people they have no life inside a capsule. For example, there are Du Hong, a Chinese writer; Marvin Minsky, scientist, and Dick Clair Jones, film producer.

There are also more than 90 pets, between dogs and cats, who came to the basements at the wish of their owners, as revealed by Linda to the aforementioned media.

The legal struggle of the living

Ted Williams, renowned baseball player and key player of the Boston Red Sox team, died in 2002 at the age of 83 and had the determination to be cryogenized.

However, his case raised a controversy after the revelations of the magazine ‘Sports Illustrated’ that accused Alcor of decapitating him, keeping his head in a different capsule and taking dozens of DNA tests, which, apparently, would have been recast.

The journalistic investigation found that Williams paid 136 thousand dollars (more than 520 million soles) to be part of the experiment.

However, before dying he would have burned his will to opt for cremation, according to his daughter Bobby-Jo Williams Ferrell.

The clinic has not commented on the allegations. In fact, it is not the only problem that you have faced, because Kurt Pilgrimage He sued them seeking compensation of one million dollars for mistreating his father’s body.

“They cut off his head, burned his body, put him in a box and sent him to my house. I want people to know what is happening, “he said, in a talk with the media ‘Az Central’, during 2019.

There is no law that prohibits Alcor’s actions. On the other hand, there are scientists who criticize their ‘experiment’.

”It is a false science. Those who benefit from this hope deserve our wrath and contempt“Criticized the neuroscientist Michael Hendricks, in a writing for the magazine ‘MIT Technology Review’.

For now, about 1,400 people are members of the organization, including the DJ Steve Aoki, and they hope to die and, ironically, return to life in a few decades and even centuries when technology and medicine are advanced enough.

El Tiempo, Colombia / GDA