Have any mammals ever been reanimated after being cryogenically frozen?

Just wondering if any mammals have been reanimated after being cryogenically frozen? Yes i know the've reanimated a couple of frogs here and there but thats not the same as reanimating a proper mammal. Is this even remotely possible? since after cells are frozen they form ice crystals effectively destroying the cells and even if you could somehow repair the damaged cells wouldn't all the information the subject had in its brain have already been destroyed?

Yeah, they've got up to Pigs now I believe. Complete braindeath for over 2 days and revived with no apparent damage.

so how are they stopping the cells from forming crystals? It would be interesting to get a trained animal, say a dog and see if it can remember its commands after being frozen.

They replace the blood with a bio-compatible anti-freeze liquid which seeps into the cells and prevents crystals from forming. To revive the creature, all they did was put the blood back in and raise the temperature.

I'm trying to find the link to the story on ATS and other places as it was posted about before, you may have better luck then I

[edit on 1-9-2006 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by sardion2000
Yeah, they've got up to Pigs now I believe.

I doubt that. Here is a quote from the Alcor website:

Q: Has an animal ever been cryopreserved and revived?

A: Small roundworms (nematodes) and possibly some insects can survive temperatures below -100°C. However, since scientists are still struggling to cryopreserve many individual organs, it should be obvious that no large animal has ever been cryopreserved and revived. Such an achievement is still likely decades in the future.

Frogs, turtles, and some other animals can survive "freezing" at temperatures a few degrees below 0°C. These animals are frozen in the sense that significant fractions of their body water converts to ice. However they are not truly cryopreserved. The fluid between ice crystals is still liquid, chemistry is slowed, not stopped, and the state can only be sustained for a few months. If these animals were cooled to temperatures required for true long-term stability (i.e. below the glass transition temperature) they would not survive. [emphasis mine]


www.alcor.org...

Originally posted by sardion2000
Yeah, they've got up to Pigs now I believe. Complete braindeath for over 2 days and revived with no apparent damage.

Where did you hear this? can you provide us with any links.

www.wired.com...

Here is one article where they did it for a few hours, I'm trying to find the one where they did it for a couple of days... Now I think about it, I think it was just a part of a pig and not a whole one.

Yep, like Sardion said, we're up to pigs.

I believe I remember readin a few months ago that possible
human trials may be as soon as 6 years from now.

While this procedure is probably a step toward the kind of cryonics used by Alcor, it is not the same process at all.

[The pigs] temperature is 50 degrees Fahrenheit; brain activity has ceased. Alam checks the wall clock and asks a nurse to mark the time: 11:25 am.

Alam has suspended 200 pigs for an hour each

www.wired.com...

The kind of cryopreservation done by Alcor, takes the body temperature down to -100C and the term of cryopreservation is indefinite.

As the temperature drops below -40°C, the cryoprotectant concentration becomes so high in the remaining unfrozen solution that ice stops growing. Cells survive suspended in the residual unfrozen liquid between ice crystals. As the temperature drops below about -100°C, this unfrozen solution containing the cells becomes a glassy solid.

www.alcor.org...

We really are talking apples and oranges here.

[edit on 2006/9/2 by GradyPhilpott]

Actually no, they both fall under the category of Suspended Animation.

Suspended animation is the technical term for the slowing without termination of life processes by external means. Outside science fiction, the technique as applied to humans is hypothetical. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold is used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions; use of this process had led to the developing science of cryonics.

Frankely, I don't have much respect for Alcors method of Cryo-"Preservation".. It's more like extended freezerburn...

[edit on 2-9-2006 by sardion2000]

No, it's not all that hard to keep cells intact.

The thing is they flash freeze creatures. The faster the creature is frozen, the less ice crystals are formed. Flash freezing, like with liquid nitrogen, doens't have ice crystals (at least with small creatures).

Many Mammoths have been found with meat that's reportably still edible, though the majority are well rotted, even when found frozen....more often what happens is the outer layers 9muslce, etc.) were frozen quickly but the insides (guts) were still warm and protected by a layer of ice meat, so they would rot...and that's not a pretty sight. They were frozen pretty fast, but for this to work, that size creatre (another elephant) would have to freeze even faster than those mammoths did.

Originally posted by sardion2000
Actually no, they both fall under the category of Suspended Animation.

But, let us look at the question posed by the original poster:

Originally posted by ajh91
Just wondering if any mammals have been reanimated after being cryogenically frozen? [emphasis mine]

So, we are actually discussing apples and oranges.

that's right i was refering to the cryogenically frozen version of suspended animation not the body temperature cooled down. after all those pigs would still decompose if they were left in their cooled state for say a month. At temperatures like -100 that can't happen. I said mammals because if you can bring back a mouse or something then that gives some hope for those locked away in vats of liquid nitrogen hoping to be brought back sometime in the distant future.

If you flash freeze the bodies all you do is form "smaller" ice crystals which does even more cellular damage then the larger ones. The goal with "freezing" someone is to encase them in a single macro-crystal(which I think is an impossible goal) and the people who paid Alcor to freeze them are idiots IMHO.

after all those pigs would still decompose if they were left in their cooled state for say a month.

It really depends on how much Oxygen is available for decomposition. In this method I posted about, they do their best to remove as much oxygen from the system as possible that will not kill the patient.

In an automated pod environment, I can see the amount of time being stretched even farther(as long as the patient is woken up every so often to check for O2 depravation damage/oxidation damage).

Freezing is just a bad idea, because the more I think about it, the more idiotic it seems. It's not suspended animation, it's suspended decomposition.

Just think about it for a second. Would you rather have yourself frozen after death in a futile attempt to stave death off or would you rather have yourself put into suspended animation long before you are dead to give you and the doctors time to treat whats wrong with you?

[edit on 2-9-2006 by sardion2000]

I fIU have to be suspended to have a chance to live, I'm likely to be so out of date that (especially if I'm weak) I'd sucide, and waste all that time I could have spent dying with my loved ones around me to such a lonely death.

Nah, Keep me alive for a slong as you can, then chuck me upside odwn ina garbage can with just my running shoes. Maybe I'll stand a chance in hell, for once.

Originally posted by sardion2000
They replace the blood with a bio-compatible anti-freeze liquid which seeps into the cells and prevents crystals from forming. To revive the creature, all they did was put the blood back in and raise the temperature.

I'm trying to find the link to the story on ATS and other places as it was posted about before, you may have better luck then I

[edit on 1-9-2006 by sardion2000]

hard to buy it, how do you get the heart going again, once it stops?

True suspended animation would be best achieved via the bending of space time around the individual so that their relative time almost comes to a complete stop, while the outside world continues at normal pace. Go stand near a black hole to experience time dilation for yourself . If we could bend space and overcome the effects of gravity this would be a much better option as no physical affects would be felt and the individual would not notice a thing. This is the basic principle of time travel, however, there is no going back, the same as cryogenics.

Not that this is ever going to happen, at least not for a long time.

[edit on 11-9-2006 by Toasty]

What about Benny the Dog over at Life Extension ?

Originally posted by sardion2000
If you flash freeze the bodies all you do is form "smaller" ice crystals which does even more cellular damage then the larger ones. The goal with "freezing" someone is to encase them in a single macro-crystal(which I think is an impossible goal) and the people who paid Alcor to freeze them are idiots IMHO.

after all those pigs would still decompose if they were left in their cooled state for say a month.

It really depends on how much Oxygen is available for decomposition. In this method I posted about, they do their best to remove as much oxygen from the system as possible that will not kill the patient.

In an automated pod environment, I can see the amount of time being stretched even farther(as long as the patient is woken up every so often to check for O2 depravation damage/oxidation damage).

Freezing is just a bad idea, because the more I think about it, the more idiotic it seems. It's not suspended animation, it's suspended decomposition.

Just think about it for a second. Would you rather have yourself frozen after death in a futile attempt to stave death off or would you rather have yourself put into suspended animation long before you are dead to give you and the doctors time to treat whats wrong with you?

[edit on 2-9-2006 by sardion2000]

reply to post by sardion2000


flash freezing actually causes less damage than slow freezing because of the smaller crystals, my question is what about stem cells? couldnt they be used some way to repair the damaged cells upon reanimation?