Cryopreservation

Extended definition essay: Cryopreservation
“Death is the surest calculation that can be made.” Ludwig Büchner, Force and Matter. So far this is a universal truth and we always hear people talkabout fear of death or what is going to be the cause of our death. What if we could delay death? What if we could stop time and figure our death out? This essay is about to tell of a new alternative topostpone death and find a cure for many diseases. This alternative is the cryopreservation, which is “The storage of a living organism, or a portion thereof, at an ultralow temperature (typicallycolder than –130°C) such that it remains capable of survival upon thawing.”1
The definition above is oriented in an engineering point of view. Engineers base their cryonics studies in the substances andcontainers used in cryopreservation. They define cryopreservation according to the ultra-cold freezers used to stabilize some living cells for weeks or even years, and in substances like liquidnitrogen which is required for very long storage times. Also, for them is very important to pay attention to some devices used to control the transient cooling and warming rates during preservation. Theengineers’ definition helps understanding what is cryopreservation about (the process itself) and what are the devices and substances that make it possible.
These days, the number of institutionsanalyzing cryopreservation is increasing, and many of them are non-profit organizations. According to the non-profit organization ALCOR Life Extension Foundation, cryopreservation is an effort to savelives by using temperatures so cold that a person beyond help by today's medicine might be preserved for decades or centuries until a future medical technology can restore that person to full health. Thismay sound like science fiction, but their practices are based on modern science. This type of institutions believes that cryopreservation is an experiment in the most literal sense of the word and...