Kind: captions
Language: en
near the hot desert just outside of
Phoenix Arizona is a company called
Alor despite the high temperature
outside within over 100 human bodies are
being preserved at very low
temperatures host David po met with the
president and CEO Max Moore to learn
about the field of cryonics so who's in
this Gallery here
these are some of our patients we call
them patients because we don't regard
them as dead people their idea is that
what we call death today is something of
an arbitary line really it's today's
doctors giving up and saying there's
nothing more I can do for this person
and I'm letting them go what we're doing
is we're saying let's not quit there
let's give the future a chance to bring
these patients back Moore doesn't
promise he'll be able to bring any of
his patients back but he thinks the
chances are pretty good already we're
seeing the field with regenerative
medicine just burgeoning uh we're
already starting to replace organs and
grow organ parts and I think within the
next 20 years you're going to see some
amazing developments so pretty much any
organ in the body will be replaceable
either with a biological one growing
from your own tissue or perhaps a
synthetic organ after an Alor member is
declared legally dead the patient is
immediately placed in an ice bath then
the Alor team restores respiration to
make sure oxygen continues to flow to
the brain until the body is
cryopreserved
in fact certain patients choose to
preserve their heads alone Ted Williams
the baseball star is a famous Alor
neurop patient but here's the part I
don't get suppose Medical Science does
advance as you hope and in 75 years they
can revive this decapitated head you
don't have a body
anymore well this is the way I look at
it I personally am a neuro member myself
I'm not taking along my body my
reasoning being that by the time I need
this my body is going to be a disaster
area so in my view
if you have the technology that can
repair 100 billion damage neurons
replacing this part is going to be
pretty easy by comparison but we leave
that choice to our
M so let me show you the patient care
Bay patient care Bay yes this is where
we have currently 117 patients the
olders being Professor James Bedford
whose Crow reserved back in 1967 wow oh
my gosh this is very sci-fi it's not
quite as sci-fi as in the movies where
they always have a little Frosty face
behind a glass plate can't really do
that but here uh in these larger duers
we have uh four whole body patients and
we can also fit five neurop patients in
the central colum there's there's people
in those cans that's
right the bodies are wrapped in a
sleeping bag to protect the skin from
direct exposure to liquid nitrogen each
one is held in its own aluminum
compartment within the can so if we
could see through these we would see
people just kind of like floating like
this or uh you see the the aluminum pods
and inside they're actually head head
down so that head down yeah so that the
uh head would be the last thing to be
exposed so are these heavily insulated
are these basically giant thermoses
exactly just room temperature little bit
cool to the touch y That's not inside is
extremely cold - 196 c - 320 F I mean
you must get some strong reactions from
people you tell them what you do
especially when they don't really
understand it they they think there some
kind of strange creepy thing where
you're freezing people why would you do
that but once they understand that
really it's an extension of critical
care medicine it's just us picking up at
the point where today's medicine gives
up on people it makes a lot more sense
when they see patients in hospitals
being taken down 10° C to slow down
metabolism while you do brain surgery it
starts to make sense when they look at
the research into organ prior
preservation the goal being to actually
build an organ bank and you know keep a
stock of organs rather than having to
match one across the country very
rapidly it starts to make sense it's
certainly speculative it's certainly not
guaranteed we not sure if it's going to
work but it's not crazy it's a shock it
gives you a
chance and as for Max Moore you would
live forever I don't use the word
forever because forever a very long time
uh there may be the heat death of the
universe some might explode in a few
billion years who knows but indefinite
lifespan I'm talking about really
changing death from being compulsory to
making it an option so you check back
with me in a thousand years and ask me
if I've had enough till then more will
be at Alor well at least his head will