‘Until science brings them back to life’, Michigan lab freezes bodies of hundreds of patients for just $28,000
A growing number of people and pets are being frozen in cryogenic labs, with the hopes of one day being brought back to life by science. Business is booming at the Michigan Cryonics Institute’s lab, filling capacity and forcing it to store patients in a new facility nearby.
Between 10 and 20 places are occupied in the expanded storage facility. What was once the whimsical brainchild of Walt Disney and the ultra-wealthy elites is becoming more accessible to ordinary people.
At the Michigan facility, chefs, students, secretaries, professors and pets are among those preserved in liquid nitrogen. The lab says this is affordable for the average person starting at $28,000, which is usually paid for through life insurance.
Cryonics, the practice of freezing the bodies of dead people is a worldwide phenomenon. While 1,374 of the 1,975 patients stored at the Michigan facility are American and 128 are British, according to member statistics published by the institute.
From the outside it looks like any other warehouse. But inside it contains the frozen dead bodies of hundreds of patients.
So far, 199 dead are preserved there, thanks to liquid nitrogen that keeps the bodies at minus 275 degrees Fahrenheit (-135 degrees), a temperature so cold that it stops all cellular function and preserves their condition until thawing.
The number of patients at the Michigan center has grown dramatically from about 600 in 2006 to nearly 1,975 in 2023.
The longest-serving patient, named Rhea Ettinger, has been there since 1977.
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