Will We Be Able To Cryogenically Bring People Back To Life One Day?

Recently we reported that a 14-year-old girl had been cryogenically frozen in the hope she may come back to life in the future after dying of cancer.

Her mother supported her decision, whereas her father did not.

She wrote a letter to the judge, of which this was included:

"I think being cryo-preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up - even in hundreds of years' time. I don't want to be buried underground.

"I want to live and live longer and I think that in the future they may find a cure for my cancer and wake me up. I want to have this chance. This is my wish."

Her body has been sent over to the States, which has the facilities available to keep her frozen.

But is there actually any chance that you can be cryogenically frozen and, as science develops, you can effectively come back to life? Or are companies exploiting people by taking their money to freeze their bodies?

As stated by IFLS, nature does have ways of having natural cryonic procedures and some types of animals can effectively die and come back to life, including certain reptiles, amphibians, insects and worms.

National Geographic explains why some types of frogs can survive despite being frozen. The Rana sylvatica can do just this, existing with two-thirds of their body completely frozen. This isn't a complete cryogenic procedure, but the creatures can stop breathing and their hearts stop beating for days on end. They effectively rise from the dead.

However, this cannot be replicated for humans right now as each thawing process causes considerable damage to tissue. This chap thinks, however, that it will be possible one day to bring people back from the dead.

There has been some work done on the cryopreservation of body parts such as fingers and legs to be used later, while some organs have been thawed and re-transplated into animals.

However, this doesn't account for humans actually dying and then somehow being

reincarnated, so, as sad as it is, successful cryogenics in humans remains as movie science fiction, rather than have any base for scientific fact.

Furthermore, people who suffered from neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's would not benefit from waking up, as they would likely still have the illness.

There's no definitive answer as to whether cryogenically freezing a human could be successful or not. With regards to preserving the brain, a lot of work needs to be done to ensure the quality of cryopreservation and successful processes for revival work.

This is where nanotechnology comes in, and my brain, although not frozen, is seriously starting to hurt. I got a B in GCSE science and this is all a bit too much for me to cope with. Sorry.

Basically, nope, certainly not now do we have the science to bring someone back to life, and, with my very limited knowledge, we never will. Death is not an illness you just wake up from. Just stick to freezing fingers and toes.