You’re Not Dead Until You’re Warm and Dead: Reanimating the Frozen 

Science’s long-standing goal of resuscitating a frozen body has made intriguing progress recently, with frozen brain tissue successfully being restored to a functional state for the first time. Researchers’ samples resumed electrical cellular activity in apparently undamaged slices of mouse brain which had been, for six hours, kept at a temperature of negative 320.8 Fahrenheit. 

History

Such research is ongoing. There have long been proponents of freezing one’s remains after death, hoping to be revived in the future, ideally when medicine has conquered mortality. A number of partially successful cryogenic experiments have been attempted to this end since the 1950’s, but none with the degree of reliabiity necessary to preserve all of  body’s cells and structures with itegrity intact, especially the brain’s fragile syapses. 

Until now, each experiment has resulted in tissue damage, making function impossible.  In  one case, though, limited activity resumed in a feline brain sample following storage for several years at -20 Celsius.

How?

The recent successful mouse brain experiment refined a process called vitrification. Since the human body is mostly water, freezing remains has been challenging because of the catastrophic destruction to cells caused by expanding ice crystals. Vitrification replaces the water in tissues with an anti-freeze type agent (a cryoprotectant) that prevents freezing, water expansion, and ice crystal formation.

Awakening from Cryostasis?

There’s a long way to go, but modest evidence suggests that the polarizing theory may actually be a viable one; the prospect survives mainly because of a few relevant successes.

One of the most amazing to date is that of Anna Bagenholm, a 29-year old skier in Norway who in 1999 broke through the ice of a frozen stream and was trapped beneath it, her body submerged in frigid water, head in an air pocket just under the ice, for more than eighty minutes. She had no heartbeat and wasn’t breathing upon rescue. It was 2.5 hours before she was in a hospital, at which time her core temperature was 56.7 degrees Fahrenheit. 

It took 9 hours and shifts of over a hundred doctors working nonstop to restore her heartbeat, but they did it. Today (20 years later), Bagenholm works as a radiologist at the hospital that saved her, with minimal nerve damage. It took years of physical therapy for her to recover, but recover she has.

Her survival has been attributed partly to the circumstances of frigid immerion, which delayed cell death. The low temperatures slowed her metabolism so much that her cells required a fraction of their typical oxygen requirement. 

Considered with the other successes of freezing eggs, sperm, and entire human embryos alongside the revival of less complex frozen life forms after literally thousands of years, adherents to the possibility of cheating death by deep-freeze see proof enough for hope of greater achievements to come. 

The big challenges

Vitrification could offer a crucial partial solution by eliminating ice expansion and crystals within tissues, but other obstacles remain.

For one thing, will it become ethically acceptable in America to freeze a living brain, thereby killing the patient? It is clearly preferable to preserve a functioning brain and that presents problems here in America, though various national standards already exist. 

Also, however quickly action may follow death, the replacement of the body’s water with cryoprotectant is nowhere near instantaneous. Time is function when it comes to oxygen deprivation in the brain, and hypoxic changes could lead to permanent damage should the patient ever be resuscitated. 

Yet another complication in an already sticky web of them, but the recent results are a  significant step forward.

The Treacherous Task of Recovering Frozen Remains

It’s typical for deceased mountaineers at high altitudes to remain where they’ve fallen, making their final resting place in the snow — transportation of mountain-climbing victims is treacherous for rescuers and complicated for the remains.

But sometimes recovery is possible, though it necessitates a complex and highly particular set of skills not easy to come by: those who would bring back the lost must make a climb which has already proven fatal, endangering their own safety in the process; they then complicate their task further attempting to move the corpse of an athletic adult after the already strenuous climb, through low-oxygen conditions. Freeing the remains from their frozen grave can be its own challenge; they must then be transported — rigid, fragile, and frozen, often heavier with accumulated ice, frequently mummified and prone to shattering – a task that requires a team of highly-qualified specialists, not all of whom may survive the attempt themselves.

Deep-freeze damage

Remains can be in various conditions, depending on how exposed the corpse has been; altitude and duration are significant factors. The higher the mountain and the greater the altitude, the more likely a corpse is to have been exposed to destructive natural forces and desiccated, perhaps mummified. First layers of protective clothing disintegrate in the sun and wind; next, the bodily tissues. Severely low temperatures, unfiltered ultraviolet radiation from the sun, and exposure to hurricane-level winds contribute, as do falling ice, rocks, and avalanches; in addition to causing secondary damage, such ntural processes can also easily displace remains, sometimes removing them from the mountain face entirely, pushed over cliffs or into crevasses.

Those buried by such processes may be better preserved intact compared to those who fell beside a trail, fully exposed, but may not be exposed for decades, if at all, and then by unpredictable weather-induced thaw.

Surprise recoveries

For example, in 2017, a couple who had disappeared together after heading off to milk their cows in a meadow was discovered at the edge of a glacier currently part of a ski resort in the Swiss Alps 75 years after they’d disappeared. They were remarkably preserved, having fallen deep into a crevasse, clothing still intact, revealed by snow and glacier melt. Their surviving daughter, aged 79, was finally able to provide long-awaited funeral service and emotional resolution.

In the case of William Stampfl, the American lost for 22 years in Peru with two other climbers who disappeared during an avalanche; one was found soon thereafter, the other is still missing. Stampfl was also ultimately exposed by melting, his remains mummified and otherwise well-preserved.

And famously, missing for decades, George Mallory and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine were at long last discovered not far apart on Everest. The duo had disappeared during their attempt in 1924, the first known attempt made on the mountain locals call Chomolungma: Goddess Mother of the World. Hillary was missing 74 years; Irvine, a full century, when their still partially-frozen remains were retrieved.

Finally, and perhaps more famous still, is the case of the mummified human “Ice Mummy” named “Ötzi”, estimated to have lived more than five thousand years ago, was discovered in thawing glacier in the Tyrolean Alps in 1991, his DNA perfectly intact. 

Without the help of Mother Nature’s warming embrace, it’s likely none of these remains could have been recoverable.

Defrost

Once thawing begins, degradation of tissues typically proceeds speedily. When mummification has occurred, though, over many decades, leaching the body of fluids and nutrients, a sort of “deep-freeze standard” applies and takes its own route. (In such situations, relatively common when remains have been at altitude and unburied, processing is typically cremation.)

There are also those discovered whose identities are not, and sometimes cannot be, known; when not recently lost, identification becomes tricky indeed, depending on how exposed remains have been exposed due to thawing conditions and exposed scavengers.

Mountaineering is a gamble with inherent risks. Those accepting the challenge recognize that it may not be possible to come home. And while bringing long-lost remains back can provide closure to loved ones, even many decades later, there’s no guarantee of success.  

Frozen Dead Guys & Coffin Coffee Tables | 4M #180

Welcome to the hundred-and-eightieth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #180, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

Fun while it lasted

We were “today old” when we heard about the Frozen Dead Guy Festival in Nederland, Colorado, and, alas, we are five years too late to participate in the celebration of a Norwegian man who died in 1989 and was stored in a cryogenic capsule in a shed in the tiny 1.6-square-mile town. The festival was created in 2002 as a way to promote tourism, and until Covid interfered, it attracted thousands of tourists for coffin races, polar plunges, and hearse parades. 

Remembering the royals

Speaking of newly discovered fun(eral) facts: Did you know that both Princess Diana and her father-in-law Prince Philip were buried in lead-lined coffins? The Royal Observer shared these “lesser-known” details just last week, commenting that Diana’s coffin weighed more than 700 pounds, and Philip’s lead-lined English oak coffin was made for him 30 years before his death in 2021. While the primary purpose of the lead was to “prevent moisture” and therefore keep the body intact for a longer time, a 2019 tweet shared in the article said the lead in Diana’s coffin also helped to “protect her body from any paparazzi or obsessed fans using x-rays to see through the casket.”

Three-in-one

Prince Philip may have had the right idea when he had his casket made for him a full three decades before his death. A now-34-year-old California welder and artist constructed her own five-sided coffin during her senior year of college as she was “unconsciously processing the dread of leaving school and not having a clear idea of what life would look like.” Today, the casket sits in her living room, serving as a coffee table and storage for clothing, blankets, and pillows. She’s also hosted “coffin parties” where she “invites guests to lie in the coffin and contemplate their mortality.”

Website worries

Arlington National Cemetery is the final resting place for more than 400,000 individuals, including presidents, high-ranking military officials, and people who left their mark on the history of our country. Until recently, the names and accomplishments of some of the more notable inhabitants were listed on the cemetery’s website on pages that also highlighted aspects of their race, gender, or ethnicity (for example, one page highlighted the graves of Black soldiers). Last week, Arlington removed most of the pages from the website, citing President Trump’s executive orders to scrub content promoting “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.” Officials told The New York Times that they are committed to restoring this content in accordance with the new guidelines as soon as possible. Although these separate listings and guides to these particular gravesites are no longer on the site, every grave within Arlington can still be found using the website’s ANC Explorer tool, a grave locator app.