Did scientists test whether cryogenic freezing works?

certain frogs can be frozen rock solid and then thawed without any problems.

Goldfish can almost freeze. I knew some people with a goldfish pond and they (the people and the goldfish) survived the winter. But they (the people, not the goldfish) said that freezing solid would kill the fish.

A lot of people are sitting around frozen in cryogenic labs, but I don’t think anyone has ever been successfully thawed. LOL.

“James Hiram Bedford (April 20, 1893 – January 12, 1967) was a University of California psychology professor who wrote several books on occupational counseling. He is the first person whose body was cryopreserved after legal death, and who remains preserved at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.”
—Wikipedia

For some reason, baseball great Ted Williams had his head frozen at a cryogenic lab. Post mortem, of course. While looking it up just now, I found this:

“The head of Ted Williams was abused by employees at Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., whistleblower says. Workers at an Arizona cryonics facility mutilated the frozen head of baseball legend Ted Williams – even using it for a bizarre batting practice, a new tell-all book claims.”

Bastards. I liked Ted Williams. His head and Bedford’s body are at the same lab, Alcor. Maybe Bedford’s family should check and make sure his head isn’t being used as a basketball.

“Works” in what way? Apparently the freezing process works just fine.

I think what you’re really asking is “Does the thawing and reviving process work?” The answer, at least for humans, is “so far, no.”

However, if you were about to die from an incurable illness or affliction and knew that your imminent death was inevitable, and had the means to freeze your body and brain in a way that might offer a chance at living later on, when (one hopes) a cure for the affliction and a way to safely and usefully bring that body and brain back to life had been tested and proven (on someone else’s body and brain, natch) … then why not try it? What would you have to lose, other than the cash that you couldn’t spend after you die, anyway?

I wish I could remember where,but I read an article about cryogenics once a few years ago. It basically stated that current methods of freezing heads,or cadavers destroys all the tissue. Something about how tissue freezes creates microscopic ice sickles that literally cut through everything. Thawing would not reveal the same thing that was frozen.

The frogs @ragingloli speak of have a special sugar in their bodies that act as a type of antifreeze. Their tissue isn’t destroyed when frozen. That’s part of how they can ‘reanimate’ when they thaw….

@MrGrimm888

Ice is less dense than water, it expands when it freezes. That’s why it floats. We are mostly water. Freezing expands the water and breaks cell walls.

A quick demonstration is freezing and thawing a lettuce. It turns a crisp leaf into a limp mess.

@Call_Me_Jay
The real problem, as @MrGrimm888 already stated, is that water forms sharp edged crystals when freezing that perforate cell walls.

If you are just a few cells, an embryo in its first days, we have become really good at freezing and unfreezing them.

Actual full fledged animals, not so much. The frogs mentioned above are interesting, I wasn’t aware of that.

I say go out gracefully. There has never been a successful reanimation after being frozen. The process destroys tissues that are essential for life. The idea that there will ever be cure for that damage is pure fiction. This system is worse than the funeral industry. They may cure the disease you died from but they can’t rebuild every cell in your body.

If we can be frozen fast enough before large crystals form in theory it can work. This has always been the problem. We are perhaps a hundred years out from essentially being immortal anyway.

We don’t need immortality. We need to have a better sense of history and reasoning at an earlier age so we can make living more pleasant for everything on the planet.

Wikipedia article According to the article, current freezing methods require the future development of microsurgery techniques to undo the damage caused by freezing.

@RedDeerGuy1 Many of us do it on a regular basis.

You do too.

Next time you take a frozen hamburger patty out and thaw it, you have successfully proven the process works. Tastes as good as fresh, right? But it can’t come back as a whole steer.

Ain’t science grand?

@LostInParadise Yepp. I’m sure I mentioned that, too. So, @ARE_you_kidding_me , all the suckers that are paying to be kept frozen have been badly duped.

@cazzie Um, yeah I knew that. Why address me? Future cryogenics is not impossible if we can essentially freeze someone instantly.

I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of such a thing.