Michigan cryonics lab boss who freezes bodies until ‘science can bring them back’ DEFENDS his attempt to ‘defeat death’ – while working on guinea pigs, including a 14-year-old British girl: ‘I’m fighting for the good fight’

The boss of a Michigan cryonics lab that freezes bodies until “science can bring them back to life” has defended the practice, claiming he is “fighting the good fight.”

Cryonics Institute President Dennis Kowalski has frozen more than 100 bodies – including a 14-year-old British girl who died of cancer and at least 125 pets – held in tanks at -196 degrees Celsius.

Kowalski – who signed up for the service himself – said patients have nothing to lose and everything to gain from the questionable practice.

“You can be buried or cremated and we know what happens to those people, but they will never be repaired, rejuvenated or turned around, back to a healthy age,” he said. the sun. But many scientists warn that cryonics offers ‘false hope’.

Kowalski himself previously admitted that even if the frozen humans eventually come back to life, they could potentially awaken as “zombie-like clones” of their former selves.

Nevertheless, Kowalski considers the method of Cryonics to be the most viable option for those hoping to be brought back to life after death.

‘The grave is your only real alternative and that is total oblivion. That’s why we want to defeat man’s greatest enemy: death itself,” he told the Sun.

Preserving your body at the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan will cost you more than $28,000.

The institute was founded in 1976 by Robert Ettinger, the ‘Father of Cryonics’, and is currently the world’s largest cryogenic laboratory.

“I would give everything I had to bring back family, friends and loved ones, even if the chances are slim. So I think what I’m doing is fighting the good fight,” he added. “I think it comes from love, compassion and the desire to do good. and when it works, it works. If not, then not.’

‘I think it’s at least worth seeing if it’s possible to ever bring these people back and I hope scientists can put us out of business. If you’re already dead, there’s no harm in trying, and you might as well take a risk.’

In 2016, an extraordinary case sparked a fierce debate about the ethics of cryo-freezing – and the lack of regulation surrounding the cryonics industry

A 13-year-old from London diagnosed with a rare form of cancer announced she wanted to be cryopreserved after all treatment options failed.

She researched the trial online and told relatives in the months before her death: “I’m dying, but I’ll be back in two hundred years.”

Her case was heard in the High Court after her estranged father opposed the plan, saying he could not finance the £37,000 procedure at a facility in the US.

The girl’s maternal grandparents agreed to pay all costs, but the father still wondered what future the procedure held for his daughter.

The girl’s father told the Mail in 2016: ‘We came to the end of the road after my child died, what’s left to say? It’s all over, it’s over. Her mother wouldn’t allow me to have contact with her.’

‘I have ended up in court ten times trying to see her. I have done my best to contact her through the court. I was able to see her for about a year and a half in 2005.’

A growing number of people – and pets – are being frozen in cryogenic labs, hoping to one day be brought back to life if science catches up.

Business is booming at the Cryonics Institute laboratory in Michigan, keeping it at capacity and forcing patients to be stored in a new center nearby.

Between 10 and 20 places have been taken in the extensive storage facility.

What was once the crazy idea of ​​Walt Disney and the ultra-rich elites is becoming increasingly accessible to ordinary people.

At the Michigan facility, chefs, students, secretaries, professors and pets, among others, are stored in liquid nitrogen.

The center prides itself on being affordable to the average person with full body preservation starting at $28,000, which is usually paid for through life insurance.

Cryonics – the practice of deep-freezing the bodies of dead people – is a worldwide phenomenon.

Another well-known freeze location in America is the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona. From the outside it looks like any other warehouse. But inside lie the frozen dead bodies of hundreds of patients.

It’s on the pricier side: It costs people $200,000 to have their entire body stored in a high-tech freezer, but there is an option to put just the brain on ice for a discounted price of $80,000.

So far, 199 deceased remains have been stored there, kept fresh thanks to liquid nitrogen that keeps the bodies at -275 degrees Fahrenheit — a temperature so cold that all cell functions are halted and their condition is preserved until they thaw.

The longest-running patient in Michigan is named Rhea Ettinger and has been there since 1977.

Her son, Robert Ettinger, a World War II veteran and founder of the Cryonics Institute, is also in the Arctic limbo, along with his first and second wife.

“Say you have a heart attack now, you would have been dead a hundred years ago, so what’s the point of beating your chest or using a little electricity to revive your heart if you use that logic ? Kowalski said to the sun.

“Yet today we routinely use cardiac defibrillation and CPR to bring back deceased people, so we’ve moved the goalpost. We have changed the definition of what death means.

“So now we’re not really bringing back the dead. You just restart their hearts and I would argue that bringing back people who have been in liquid nitrogen for a hundred years is something similar.”