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Friday, March 29, 2024

Brain freeze: Russian firm offers immortality for a fee

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Brain freeze: Russian firm offers immortality for a fee
Brain freeze: Russian firm offers immortality for a fee

KrioRus' "patients" are frozen in vats of liquid nitrogen in the hope of one day being revived.

Freddy Tennyson reports.

It may look like an international space hub -- but hidden in these vats are the frozen cadavers of so-called patients.

A Russian company called KrioRus is offering its customers the chance to cheat death -- for a fee -- by literally freezing them.

They say 71 brains and bodies float are already floating in liquid nitrogen hundreds of degrees below freezing in a small warehouse near Moscow, in the hope that one day, science will find a way to bring them back to life.

Ivan Stepin is KrioRus' deputy director: (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) CRYO-ENTHUSIAST, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF RUSSIAN CRYO-COMPANY "KRIORUS", IVAN STEPIN, SAYING: "Eight to 12 people can fit inside this Dewar flask, depending on their body type as well as a few dozens of clients who chose to cryo-preserve their heads or brains only." Alexei Voronenkov paid to have his late mother's brain frozen.

He plans to have his own body preserved too.

(SOUNDBITE) (Russian) "KRIOURUS" CLIENT, ALEXEI VORONENKOV, SAYING: "I reached out to "Kriorus" to carry out the necessary procedures to cryo-preserve my mother, even though she did not express such a desire in any way.

I did it at my own risk.

I did this because we were very close and I think it is the only chance to meet in the future." But it's not cheap -- $36,000 for the whole body and $15,000 per brain.

Director of the firm Valeriya Udalova insists it's a price worth paying for those we care about.

She says she froze her beloved dog after it died, back in 2008.

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