"Nothing in life is certain except death and taxes," were the famous words of Benjamin Franklin. But for one Cornish couple the American statesman's outlook is well wide of the mark. Chrissie and John Rivaz, of Porthtowan have paid to be frozen when they die in the hope they will one day be brought back to life healthy again.
by Jamie Smith, photos [in the original magazine] courtesy of the Cryonics Institute
Franklin may have had an impressive insight into economics and foreign affairs but he probably never dreamed it would be possible to cheat death. Had he met Chrissie and John de Rivaz who live high on the north Cornish coast at Porthtowan, he may have thought differently. They have invested their imagination, their money and their dreams in the possibility that they will be brought back to life long after the rest of us are gone.
They are believers in the science of cryonics and have each arranged to pay around £28,000 for their bodies to be frozen in 'cryostasis' when they die - in the hope that they will one day be brought back to the world a fitter, healthier version of who they were when they passed away.
“I don't think religion or anything like that comes into it," said Chrissie, 62, "if my soul is going to flit out of my body when I die then so be it. The cryonics process will have been useless but it will not matter, I will know nothing about it. I don't have any fears at all.
"I have been interested in this for about ten years and I am signed up to be suspended in the event of my death. There is still a long way to go in terms of the science but we are looking at what is developing and what is likely to happen in the future. There's an awful lot of work going on in this field including anti-ageing research. Undoubtedly one day people will be able to have hugely longer lifespans."
Chrissie, a writer of fiction and children's books, and her husband John, 58, have signed up with the Cryonics Institute, in Michigan, where they will be shipped after their bodies have been cooled. When and if future medical technology allows, patients in cryostasis will be healed and then revived, and will wake to extended life in youthful good health.
Chrissie and John are part of the European Cryonics Support Group, which can help members with advice on how to gee about cryonics. That advice can include life insurance plans, which are a low-impact way of paying for the treatment. The younger people are when they start, the easier it is for them to afford it.
"It costs about £28.000 ," said Chrissie, "but, having said that a funeral costs a lot of money and what does that achieve?" Instead of a funeral for Chrissie, her three children have been told to have a party.
The couple are part of the Cryonics Support Team which has been in training so that it is ready to spring into action when a member is close to death. In order to give the team a professional image that would be recognised by hospital staff, it has adopted a similar uniform to that worn by the paramedics worldwide. They wear light blue shirts and trousers with photo-style identification badges. Epaulettes read Cryo Service Team in white on royal blue.
The idea is for the cryo support team to get there before people die. The team can play a crucial step and begin the cooling immediately. This prevents the body tissues from breaking down. At this point funeral director Barry Brabin [sic] will be dispatched from London with a cryo-preservation unit to officially release the corpse and chill it further.
As soon as it becomes clear that John or Chrissie is about to die others in the team, who are all signed up to the programme, will race to their bedside ready to help them into cryostasis. Chrissie said: "If it was known that you were about to die they would take steps to get here to prepare the body for freezing. As soon as death has been pronounced the body is cooled. If you know it's going to happen in a day or so then you can have a team standing by. We are part of a group of members, but living in remote Cornwall, as we do; have a bit of a problem, which is something that we have been looking at in some detail."
The cooling process involves replacing the body's fluids with a glycerine-type product. Injecting this into the system removes most of the water from the brain, which reduces damage done on freezing. Bodies are taken down to minus 70 degrees Celsius in this country before they are flown to the Cryonics Institute in Michigan where they are cooled further using liquid nitrogen.
The team has a base in southern England where vital equipment is stored in a ready-for-action trailer. Members of the group train for the delicate task every few months, as it is crucial that when the inevitable happens, everything goes just right. They have not had a real call-out yet.
Graham Hipkiss, one of the team who lives in Nottingham, said: "We have a training session once every three months because it's vital that we get it right. One of the problems is that people don't die very often so we don't get very practical experience but we do our best to be as prepared as possible."
To date, cryonic science has not managed to revive anyone who has been put into cryostasis. Thus far scientists have managed to freeze a baboon for under an hour and bring it back after replacing its blood with a nonfreezing compound and experiments have been done on dogs. The baboon is still being monitored for side effects.
John said: "Cryonics, really, is just an ambulance to get people from this primitive time to when something can be done. We don't know how well cryonics will work but out of this group I would say the chance of you having spoken to somebody who will be alive in 6,000 years' time is quite high.
"It is quite exciting, I feel like we are at the forefront of science. I understand that the idea could be repulsive to a lot of people who think 'I don't want to get frozen and I don't want to mess around with my body or I don't even want to come back' which is fair enough, it is not for them.
"But would you take an anti-ageing pill to stop you dying? You have to think about that carefully because you would have to be pretty petty, or be totally dedicated to some belief, to not take it and admitting that you would take it is the half-way-house to doing this."
John believes that cryonics is more about blurring the boundaries between life and death than bringing people back from the grave. He explained: "You're not going to bring anybody back who is dead - but when are you dead? It's not as simple as an on-off thing. Ageing is a degenerative disease that everybody suffers from. The technical definition of death is when your heart stops but I don't see death like that - it is a process rather than a single event. So if you can stop that process happening you can preserve the person and that person will still be alive if you can take him down to minus 196 degrees and he will effectively be frozen in time.
"There are new scientific advances happening all the time and within 100 years we're going to cure all known diseases anyway - and reverse the ageing process - all ageing means is that your molecules are in the wrong place. There are scientists in America, cryobiologists and nanobiologists, who are leading the field and who are signed up for cryonic suspension because they do not doubt that it will work.
"My hope is that I'll be alive again. In 300 years they will be able to give you what body you want. If you die as an 85-year-old you are not going to come back as an 85-year-old, you will be brought back with the body of a 25 or 30-year-old or whatever, it is you desire. The expectation is that you will be revived as a very healthy, young adult human being. Some people have this worry that they will be allowed to come back in some poor state, but that is just absurd."
Chrissie added: "This group contains so many incredibly intelligent and straight-thinking people. The idea that it's just people when haven't thought through is just so wrong."
Cryonics in brief
There are currently 36 dead people in cryo-preservation in the Alcor Life Extension Foundation - a heavily guarded facility in Arizona. Bodies are kept at minus 196 degrees centigrade in cryostasis. It is expected that reanimation to full health could occur between 50 to 100 years. A full body suspension with the Cryonics Institute is £28,000 with the Alcor Foundation it costs £83,500. Cryopreservation of just a head costs around £38,000 with the Alcor Foundation.