Why the Sci-Fi Dream of Cryonics Never Died

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The idea that humans could be frozen and later brought back has survived for decades:

When Aaron Drake flew from Arizona to the Yinfeng Biological Group in China's eastern Jinan province in 2016, he was whisked into a state-of-the-art biotech hub. More than 1,000 staffers-including an army of PhDs and MDs-were working on things like studies of the stem cells in umbilical cord blood. The center specialized in research on human cells, from gene testing to tailored cancer treatments.

But it also had other plans: cylindrical stainless-steel tanks would eventually contain corpses suspended in liquid nitrogen. The tanks weren't installed yet, but Yinfeng hoped Drake would help with that while it invested some $7 million to get the new project off the ground. As its high-profile new hire, he was there to guide China's first forays into cryonics, or freezing corpses for reanimation.

[...] The foundation, and cryonics in general, had long survived outside of mainstream acceptance. Typically shunned by the scientific community, cryonics is best known for its appearance in sci-fi films like 2001: A Space Odyssey. But its adherents have held on to a dream that at some point in the future, advances in medicine will allow for resuscitation and additional years on Earth. [...]

[...] Still, the field remains rooted in faith rather than any real evidence that it works. It's a hopeless aspiration that reveals an appalling ignorance of biology," says Clive Coen, a neuroscientist and professor at King's College London.

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