Dead cryonics founder is frozen as planned

Robert Ettinger, founder of the cryonics movement, has finally become a human popsicle himself after dying on 23 July from unspecified causes following weeks of declining health. The 92-year-old joins his mother, Rhea, his first wife, Elaine, and his second wife, Mae, who were all cryopreserved at the Cryonics Institute as well. The minimum price tag: $28,000.

Other organisations charge upwards of $200,000 and offer the option of "neuropreservation": instead of freezing their whole bodies, clients freeze only their heads. The idea is that one's personality and memories will be preserved in the brain and could be uploaded to a computer or artificial body in the future.

No one really knows whether we can ever return consciousness to frozen corpses, but cryopreservation is a genuine phenomenon in the animal kingdom and a useful technique in medicine.

Full Article at New Scientist