A father-of-three says he and his family have signed up to be frozen when they die because they have ‘nothing to lose and everything to gain’.
Dennis Kowalski, 55, has spent £110,000 so he, his wife Maria and their three sons Jacob, 25, Danny, 23, and James, 21, can be cryogenically preserved at the end of their lives.
The process involves storing the body in a vat of ultra-cold liquid nitrogen -as soon as possible after death.
Current scientific understanding is that the damage to organs would irreversibly kill a live human being.
The consensus among experts is that reviving a corpse that has undergone this process would be impossible.
But advocates for the technology – which is known as cryonics – hope that future discoveries could prove the sceptics wrong.
Some have decided to call it a ‘lottery ticket to immortality’ – in other words, worth a punt even if the odds of success are low.
‘My entire family is signed up and ready to take a chance at life extension,’ Mr Kowalski, who is from Michigan in the US, told The Sun.
‘They believe in long, healthy and prosperous living so it was an easy decision for them.’
The 55-year-old happens to have quite a bit of skin in the game – as president of the Cryonics Institute, he has overseen the freezing of more than 100 bodies.
They include a 14-year-old British girl who died of cancer, and 125 pets such as dogs, cats and turtles.
Around the world, more than 264 human bodies have undergone cryogenic freezing, which usually involves temperatures of −196°C.
Besides scientific doubts, cryonics firms also have steep obstacles to overcome in terms of their business models.
Since each patient pays a fixed sum, there’s only so long each firm can afford to keep them frozen unless their descendants keep shelling out.
Cryonics saw a wave of popularity after Californian psychology professor James Bedford was frozen in 1967.
Yet all but one of the corpses frozen in the following five years have had to be thawed and disposed off.
Mr Kowalski says his goal is simply to ‘try to alleviate suffering and pain and to help restore life whenever possible’.
‘I would give everything I had to bring back family friends and loved ones, even if the chance is small. So I think what I’m doing is fighting the good fight,’ he said in a previous interview.
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