Cheng reminds me of the example of gene therapy. Back in the ’80s, gene therapy was the next big thing. We thought we were going to cure genetic disorders and cancer. But, Cheng argues, we jumped into clinical trials too soon, before we understood the mechanisms, and as a result nothing happened.
He contrasts that with science’s approach to HIV. First we worked out the mechanisms, he says, and the biology. Then we created and tested treatments. Now, finally, we’re getting to vaccines. And that approach worked, he points out. People are living for decades with HIV, whereas gene therapy hasn’t cured genetic disorders and cancer yet.
As Cheng walks me to the street to find a taxi, we talk about how gene-therapy research was driven by pressure from investors and the public. Everyone wants to see how an experiment today could save lives next week. That’s troubling to him, but it’s part of the game. He shrugs.
“Human beings are impatient,” Cheng says. Indeed we are.
5
The Deep-Freeze Future: Cryonauts Venture to the Frontiers of Immortality
THE THING
Picture this: It’s a chilly late afternoon in March, and you’re walking alone through a deep, dark northern forest. The past few days have been warm and sunny, but there are still pockets of dirty snow under tree trunks and around boulders. Everywhere you look there’s an unbroken carpet of last fall’s leaves covering the half-frozen mud beneath. You notice that with every step it’s an effort to pull your heavy boots free. You’re getting tired.
Night is coming on quickly, and the temperature has dropped twenty degrees in the past hour. The wind is working its way inexorably through your jacket and you keep thinking that the road you’re looking for should have appeared a long time ago. There’s probably only an hour of daylight left, and you’re trying to avoid the obvious conclusion that you’re lost.
Then you hear a noise. It sounds like leaves rustling. But you spin around and there’s nothing there.
There’s the sound again. It’s even closer now. It’s coming from right in front of you. Again, though, there’s nothing there. Your heart begins to race, and you start to hyperventilate. You tell yourself there’s nothing to be afraid of, but you are, undeniably, very afraid.
Then you see it, right in front of you. It came from nowhere and it’s looking right at you. It’s got long webbed toes that end in clawlike fingers, which are reaching toward you. It opens a wide, horrific gash of a mouth. You jump back, heart pounding, as the perspiration beading on your forehead turns to ice.
Can you outrun it? And would a girlish scream be justifiable under the circumstances?
In brief: yes, and no. Specifically, a scream would be a little out of line, unless you want to be the laughingstock of the forest.
Because no matter how much this story resembles a scene from a low-budget remake of John Carpenter’s The Thing, the imminent danger is really negligible.
The creature that just clawed its way out of the ground in front of you is not a threat. Honestly? It’s kind of cute.
I can report this with 100 percent certainty because I’m looking at one now, in the Philadelphia Zoo. It’s about three inches long, is a murky brownish-green color, and has bulbous, trusting eyes. It’s an American wood frog (Rana sylvatica), and it’s perfectly harmless. I think this one just winked at me.
THE FREEZING TRICK
Like many amphibians, the wood frog survives harsh winters by burying itself under loose dirt and leaves and snow. Just a few inches below the surface, it can survive even the worst weather. But what’s remarkable about this little guy is not that it can survive a harsh northern winter but how it manages that trick.
What’s its secret? Unlike most northern animals that hibernate, the wood frog doesn’t simply slow its metabolism. Instead, it allows itself to freeze.
In fact, it can let its body temperature drop to a few degrees below freezing (-2 degrees Celsius). At that point, it stops breathing and its heart stops beating. It’s not just dormant, it’s dead. And it can stay that way for up to several weeks until it’s jolted back to life.
Now, I’ll admit that allowing yourself to freeze doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment. But this little frog has pulled off a trick that a hundred years of science hasn’t managed to replicate on any other animal. Freezing is extraordinarily difficult to survive because it does three very nasty things to our cells.
First, freezing creates ice. That’s hardly a surprise, but it’s a serious problem because when water (of which our bodies are primarily made) turns to a solid, it forms jagged crystals with lots of uncomfortable pointy, spiky ends. So at a microscopic level—the level at which our cells are living happily—ice crystals become lethal threats to a cell’s membrane, poking ragged holes and tearing them apart.
Second, as if that weren’t scary enough for a small cell, remember that as water solidifies, it expands. One gram of ice at 0 degrees Celsius has a volume that is about 9 percent larger than one gram of water did at 1 degree Celsius. So when water outside a cell turns to ice, it presses in on the cell, squeezing it in a way that one can only imagine is very, very uncomfortable.
And there’s water inside a cell too (at least 80 percent). When a cell freezes, water gets pushed out. That’s when things start to get very unpleasant.
Have you ever put a can of beer in the freezer just for a few minutes to chill it quickly? And have you ever gotten distracted enough that the “just for a few minutes” part didn’t work out? How long did it take you to mop beer off those bags of frozen peas? You can imagine how our cells might get a little nervous about all this talk of freezing.
Third, there’s the problem of what happens to all of the electrolytes that float around in solution, inside and especially outside of cells. For instance, as ice forms in the fluid that surrounds a cell, there’s no room in that crystal structure for ions like sodium, chloride, calcium, and potassium. So as water freezes, those ions build up in the remaining liquid, in increasingly high concentrations. Those high concentrations, in turn, pull water out of cells by osmosis, causing the cells to shrink to the point at which their membranes collapse irreversibly. This results in cell death, which is generally considered to be a very bad thing.
In short, our cells really, really don’t like to freeze. They’re not made for it, and they’re not good at it. And when freezing happens despite their objections, they die. Yet somehow wood frogs have managed to sidestep these perils, and their cells freeze and thaw happily.
Humans, on the other hand, haven’t managed to come close. Even with the benefits of a hundred years of science, the best we’ve been able to accomplish is freezing small parts of animals and people. And I do mean small. One of the first reports of successful cryopreservation was of chicken sperm in 1949. More recent advances have led to the successful freezing and thawing of human sperm, pancreas cells, red blood cells, corneas, and heart valves. But that’s about it. Even now, scientists haven’t managed to achieve what Kermit and his pals are able to accomplish every winter.
Nevertheless, you can’t help but wonder whether freezing might be possible eventually for mammals. And large mammals, like people.
That would be a neat trick. Think of everything you’d have to look forward to if you could step into a freezer and then out again in, say, a thousand years. But is it possible?
Unfortunately, this is not something one can ask respectable scientists. There’s something about the topic of freezing people that seems to activate some sort of allergic reaction. No, if I hope to find out whether freezing people might be possible someday, I’ll have to go someplace where respectable scientists are scarce.
TIME FLIES WHEN YOU’RE DEAD
The man sitting next to me in this packed hotel conference room is in his thirties, with tousled brown hair, blocky glasses, and a thin goatee. He looks like an aging hipster playing hooky from family life for the weekend. He is, as nea
r as I can tell, an ordinary guy. That impression is confirmed as he turns to me and introduces himself.
“Hi! I’m John. I’m just an ordinary guy,” he says cheerfully, nodding vigorously as if to reassure me. “Just an ordinary guy,” he says again. “I’m not a paid-up member yet. You know. In the program. In fact, my wife doesn’t even know I’m here.”
“The program” is the reason why the three hundred people around me have packed themselves into this auditorium at a resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. All of them are here at this cryonics conference to learn about the latest advances in the science of freezing people and then (hopefully) reanimating them. Many are here because they’ve already agreed to invest the $200,000 that will buy them a membership in the cryopreservation club when they die, and they want to know what they can expect. But a skeptical few, like John, are still weighing their options.
In the course of the morning’s lectures, I’ve discovered that John and his fellow attendees are a mixed bunch. There are the “ordinary guys,” but they seem to be few and far between. Much more common are what I’ve come to recognize as the “true believers,” who seem to be motivated by a mix of enthusiasm and curiosity that is at the same time baffling, admirable, and just a little bit scary. You can recognize them because they’re the ones asking arcane questions (“Wouldn’t preservation with potassium chloride increase the likelihood of successful cardiac resuscitation?”).
This bunch describes themselves, first and foremost, as “cryonauts.” They also employ the terms “futurist” and “transhumanist” and “strategic philosopher.”
Many are inspired. Some are visionary. Others, like John, are ordinary. More than a few, though, seem to be utterly and completely bonkers.
To spend a day in the company of cryonauts is to oscillate between astonished enthusiasm and incredulous skepticism in a cycle that is punctuated by sudden and uncontrollable urges to laugh hysterically. And yet, if you can put all that aside for a moment, you have to wonder whether, just maybe, they’re onto something here.
That’s what I’m here to try to find out. I’ve come to the fortieth anniversary conference of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, whose Web site defines cryonics as “the science of using ultra-cold temperature to preserve human life with the intent of restoring good health when technology becomes available to do so.” It’s a nonprofit organization that promises to freeze the bodies of recently deceased cryonauts, safeguarding them at a chilly -196 degrees Celsius until such time when medical science can reanimate them and can cure whatever diseases ended their lives in the first place.
I turn to John and tell him that I’m new to all this. I admit—hoping this will draw him out—that I’m just a little bit skeptical.
John’s mouth tightens and he adjusts his glasses nervously. “I don’t really like talking to skeptics,” he says carefully.
Oh boy. This, I’m thinking, is not going to go well.
After a tense pause, though, and perhaps against his better judgment, John relents.
“Well,” he says, “here’s the thing. You know how much medical science has advanced in the past hundred years, right?”
I nod.
“So it stands to reason that there are people dying every day of diseases that, a hundred years from now, won’t be much more serious than the common cold.”
John looks at me expectantly, as if he’s hoping for agreement and maybe validation. But I’m not nearly as convinced of this second point as I was of the first. For instance, the common cold has survived happily for the past thousand years or more, untroubled by the scientific advances that have produced open heart surgery, antibiotics, and breast implants. But mindful of John’s earlier warning about skeptics, I offer a hesitant nod, which seems to reassure him.
“That’s the theory,” he says, growing more animated. “It’s like putting people to sleep and then waking them up”—he pauses—“when it’s safe.” He grins. “It’s like a . . . time machine, almost.”
A time machine? I’m not sure what my face reveals as John makes this analogy, but it probably doesn’t indicate wholehearted acceptance. John’s grin dims a little, but just a little. Indeed, his enthusiasm seems unshakeable.
“I mean, not really, you know?” he says cheerfully. “You can’t really put people to sleep for a thousand years.” He waves at the roomful of people around us, laughing a little too heartily. “We all know that.”
Actually, I wouldn’t count on that. I’m thinking back to the earlier sessions that morning and to the questions that I heard being asked. One earnest woman, for instance, wanted to know whether it’s easier to freeze a cat or a small dog. Another man suggested developing an iPhone application that could keep an eye on his stock portfolio while he was frozen. So I’m not ready to take for granted this audience’s understanding of anything. But John, at least, seems to have retained his grip on reality.
“Sleeping? Hibernation?” He laughs. “That’s just flaky science. But cryonics? That’s real.”
I nod enthusiastically, as if he’s convinced me. As if we’re on the same page. Brothers on ice.
But I’m curious. If cryonics is real science, why isn’t he a member? So I ask him whether he thinks that kind of reanimation is really going to be possible for people like him. For people like us, I correct myself.
His grin fades, but then he nods seriously. “I do,” he says finally. “I really do. Of course, some of this is hype,” he says in a half whisper, waving at the stage where the next presenter is getting ready. “It’s a business, right? They’re trying to sell a service, so of course they’re going to exaggerate what it can do. But that’s OK. I’m in IT sales—my job is to get companies to buy bundled telecommunications packages. So I’ve got no problem with a sales pitch as long as the product makes sense. Nothing wrong with that.”
But what does he think the chances are of being reanimated in a thousand years? A hundred percent? Fifty percent? One percent?
John thinks about that for a second, then he shrugs. “One percent seems too low,” he says hopefully, “but I’ll admit the chances really aren’t very good. And there will be lots of mistakes, probably. You don’t want to be the first to come out of the deep freeze, do you?”
Before I can ask him about that, the next speaker has walked onto the stage. We’re about to learn about what happens to a cryonaut after he dies. I can hardly wait.
THE STRANGE AND AMAZING VOYAGE OF A CRYONAUT
What little I know about cryonics sounds particularly unsavory, and for this part of the program I’m fully prepared for a titillating exposé, full of late night skullduggery and cryopreservations carried out in garages and basements.
But it turns out that I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The slim, petite woman with a pixie haircut who has just taken the stage is Catherine Baldwin, the general manager of Suspended Animation, Inc. (SA), a Florida-based company that has focused on advancing the science of body retrieval and preservation. Although this is an Alcor conference, SA is prominently featured because Alcor’s success in preserving someone depends on how quickly a cryonaut is transported to the Alcor facilities, and how cold they are when they arrive. SA has five employees and numerous consultants, but Baldwin is its most visible face. As she talks, I can begin to see why.
Carefully groomed and elegantly suited, she delivers her spiel rapidly but flawlessly. She talks forcefully, with a calibrated cadence that is careful, polished, and a masterpiece of rhetoric. But she speaks in architecturally complex paragraphs that often carry clauses nested within clauses. In short, she looks like a CEO and talks like a scientist. As she introduces herself, it turns out she is both. Before her role at SA, she has held a variety of positions, including as a biologist at UCLA. She’s pulled together that experience and those roles into a presentation that’s as polished as any medical grand-rounds lecture I’ve ever seen.
Usi
ng slides that flash rapid-fire on the screen, Baldwin whips a rapt audience through the cryopreservation process. That process begins, she says, when a patient has a health crisis, such as hospitalization for something serious like heart failure. At the earliest hint of trouble SA sends out a team, staffed from lists of dozens of physicians, nurses, EMTs, and medical technicians around the country.
She notes that these are highly skilled professionals, and that they undergo further training for the cryopreservation work that they will be asked to do. For instance, she mentions that all of SA’s field teams do a stint at a US Department of Agriculture facility. There they practice freezing and perfusion on what she describes as a “human-sized animal cadaver.”
Now, I’m thinking very, very hard, but I can’t think of anything that is both human-size and . . . well . . . not human. All I can think of is a six-foot, 180-pound wood frog. But that thought is terrifying.
Sometimes the SA team is mobilized and their gear is packed onto a plane, or one of two trucks, if they’re within driving distance. And soon—ideally within six hours—the team arrives with their gear. That gear is surprisingly technical, and would be a credit to most hospitals. For instance, there are ice baths for rapid cooling of the body, and medications like heparin to prevent blood clotting. And there is a portable cardiopulmonary bypass machine, which is managed by the bypass technician and the cardiothoracic surgeon.
A cardiothoracic surgeon? This is hardly the basement science experiment that I was expecting.
The team goes to work and the surgeon inserts two large intravenous cannulas, one each in an artery and a vein. Then the bypass technician connects them to the bypass machine, allowing the patient’s blood to be flushed out rapidly and replaced with chilled organ preservative fluid. Then they try to cool the patient to as close to 0 degrees Celsius as possible.
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