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A 2-Year-Old Has Become the Youngest Person Ever To Be Cryonically Frozen

Posted by Soulskill on from the rest-in-peace dept.

merbs writes: After losing a long battle with brain cancer, 2-year-old Matheryn Naovaratpong became the first minor ever to be cryogenically frozen. This article is the story of how a Thai girl was frozen in Bangkok and shipped to Arizona to have her brain preserved in liquid nitrogen, while medical science works on a cure. "Typically we’d move the head from the trunk of the body. We didn't know what their reaction would be from the family, the mortuary, from border officials; this has to go through a number of shipping venues, customs, the TSA and so on. To see a frozen head in a box might have raised a number of red flags. In the U.S. that’s not a big deal, but there, they may not be accustomed."

6 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. Hasn't this been proven to be junk science? by timrod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can remember reading several articles which stated that cryonics doesn't work because the freezing process is not perfect - it does not stop decomposition, which older frozen specimens were starting to show. Why do people still spend money on this?

    1. Re:Hasn't this been proven to be junk science? by sexconker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Which is why current processes remove as much fluid from the body as possible, inject various chemicals, and freeze as quickly as possible to prevent the formation of ice crystals.

      Animal tests from decades ago show that even "standard" freezing and thawing results in a living, resurrected animal for a few hours.

    2. Re:Hasn't this been proven to be junk science? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Beautifully refuted. Thank you.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  2. Re:Not fully junk by quantaman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It is junk science, some creatures can indeed be frozen and revived because of unique properties of their physiology. Humans cannot.

    In fact, by decapitating this girl and digging her brain out of her skull, they've guaranteed she is forever dead.

    So we're very unlikely to be able thaw her brain and have it work again.

    But that's not the only option. Even in a brain frozen and turned into mush there will still be a lot of information preserved, how do you know that preserved information is insufficient to recreate a human consciousness?

    Remember we're potentially talking about hundreds of years in the future, it's entirely plausible to assume we're talking a full theory of consciousness with nanites and a brains uploaded into computers. Are you really so certain consciousness couldn't be extracted from those brains?

    --
    I stole this Sig
  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Re:WHAT? by BlackPignouf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You're right, anyone in their right mind wouldn't fall for this scam.
    But I suppose that parents who lost their 2 year old kid after a long and painful illness aren't exactly in their right mind.