A German cryogenics company claims to offer the possibility of being brought back to life for a high monetary fee. But is what it offers realistic or just empty promises?

According to BBC, Tomorrow.Bio “freezes” its clients after their death in the hope that at some point in the future it will be able to bring them back to life. The fee it charges for these services is $200,000 (195,000 euros).

The company’s co-founder, Emil Kendziorra, believes that in the future it is possible that medicine will be able to “beat” death and bring people back to life. He started out as a cancer researcher, but along the way changed his focus to cryogenics, as he found progress in the search for a cure for the disease “too slow”.

To date, Tomorrow.Bio has applied its method to “3-4 people” and five pets, and 700 people have already agreed with the company to offer its services to them. The goal is to expand to the United States in 2025.

Bringing a person back to life through the process of keeping their dead body at cold temperatures is something that has never been done before, and many argue that it is scientifically impossible. Even if a company did achieve this goal, there are no assurances that the client would “return” unscathed, without brain damage or cellular decay. However, Tomorrow.Bio remains optimistic that it will realize its goals.

How the cryogenics method works

Initially, the patient signs the agreement document and, once a doctor confirms that they are near death, the company sends an ambulance to pick them up. When the patient is “gone” and officially declared dead, he is transferred to the ambulance, where the process of preserving his body begins. The body is cooled to sub-zero temperatures and given cryoprotective fluid. According to Kendziorra, “once you get below 0 degrees, you don’t want to freeze the body, you want to cryopreserve it. Otherwise, you’re going to have ice crystals everywhere and tissue damage. To avoid this, you replace water and anything that can freeze inside the body with cryoprotective liquid. After you do this, you cool very quickly to about -125 degrees Celsius, and then very slowly from -125 degrees Celsius to -196 degrees. Once the final temperature is reached, the patient is taken to a facility in Switzerland, where they await “regeneration”.

As Kendziorra points out, “the goal is that in the future medical technology will evolve so much that cancer or any disease that led the patient to death will become fully curable and the whole process of psychosis can be reversed.” It doesn’t matter if this goal becomes a reality in 50, 100 or even 1,000 years. “As long as you keep the temperature at these low levels, you can maintain a body in this state theoretically forever.”

“A lot of things that have so far not been proven to work can work. It’s just that nobody has tried it,” says Emil Kendziorra. According to him, historically, all medical interventions were met with scepticism before they became widely accepted and integrated into our daily lives. The same was true of human heart transplantation when it was first attempted. “Taking a heart from one human body and putting it into another seemed strange at first, but now we do it every day.” He believes the same will happen with cryogenics.

In 2023, researchers kept rodent kidneys at freezing temperatures for 100 days. After bringing them back to the proper temperature and removing the cryoprotectants, they transplanted them into rodents and the kidneys functioned normally within 30 days. This gives some hope and optimism that organ regeneration through cryogenics is possible, although of course, a successful experiment with rodents does not mean that the same positive results will be seen with humans.

Although proponents of cryogenics hope that future technologies will be able to bring a person back to life and cure the cause of their death, there is no guarantee that this will ever happen, nor that some other unforeseen cause will not cause their death again shortly after they “come back”. There is also the issue of the exorbitant cost, as many families are unlikely to view positively the fact that their inheritance is being spent on such an uncertain project.

King’s College professor of neurology Clive Coen at King’s College is highly critical of cryogenics, arguing that it is based on an incomplete understanding of the nature of biology and death. He explains that when a person’s heart stops beating, their cells begin to decay and damage is caused. A reheating of a body kept at cold temperatures would restart the decomposition process. Cohen suggests the ideal solution is to focus on a method that involves keeping tissues and organs at very low temperatures for future use, rather than the idea of “regenerating” the entire human body.

Is such an investment worth it?

The price for a second chance at life is quite high. The cost of the whole procedure is $200,000 (195,000 euros), which can be a deterrent for many people. Many either cannot afford or do not want to waste their inheritance on a future and quite uncertain gamble. Most Tomorrow.Bio clients are over the age of 60 and intend to cover the costs of the process through their life insurance.

A prime example is 51-year-old Louise Harrison, who has always found the idea of “rebirth” in the future fascinating and seemed like time travel to her. As she claims, the choice was relatively easy, as she believes it is better to have a small chance of returning to life than none at all. She pays $87 (EUR 85) each month for life insurance and membership.

The recent coronavirus pandemic has led to increased awareness of death and maintenance. That’s why Tomorrow.Bio has adopted the ambitious goal of achieving neural structure preservation of memory, identity and personality by 2025 and reversible preservation in very cold temperatures by 2028. Kendziorra doesn’t present himself as confident of the success of these goals, however he says his company’s method certainly makes the chance of a second life much more likely compared to… cremation.