ENCORE: Cheating Death: The Cryonics Revolution in Australia

Ever wondered what it would be like to wake up 200 years in the future, in a young, healthy body with all your memories intact? This isn't science fiction - it's the ambitious goal of cryonics, and it's happening right here in Australia.

In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with Peter Solapides, founder, director, and chairman of Southern Cryonics. Peter shares the fascinating journey that led him to establish Australia's first cryonics facility in Holbrook, New South Wales. 

From the intricate process of patient suspension to the complex legal and ethical considerations, we delve deep into the world of cryonics and its potential to revolutionise our approach to death and dying.

Peter's enthusiasm is infectious as he explains how cryonics works, dispelling common misconceptions and painting a picture of a future where death might be merely a temporary state. 

We discuss the demographics of cryonics supporters, the challenges of long-term planning, and the profound philosophical questions that arise when we consider the possibility of extending human life far beyond its current limits.

Key points from our conversation:

• Cryonics involves preserving a person's body at extremely low temperatures after legal death, with the hope of future revival
• Southern Cryonics completed their first cryonic suspension in May 2024
• The process involves a team of medical professionals and specialised equipment
• Cryonics supporters tend to be science enthusiasts, secular, and optimistic about the future
• The cost of cryopreservation is typically covered by life insurance policies
• Legal and ethical considerations include next-of-kin rights and the definition of death
• The facility in Holbrook can currently house 40 patients, with potential to expand to 600
• Maintenance costs are surprisingly low, mainly involving regular liquid nitrogen top-ups

Remember; You may not be ready to die, but at least you can be prepared.

Take care,

Catherine

Resources: 

Find out more about Peter and Cryonics here: https://southerncryonics.com/ 

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Transcript

0:01

Your brain is not at 25. Your brain is the brain that you've built up. Remember how I said the most critical part of all this is the brain? The brain had 80 years, assuming cryonics works, at the time you come back it has 80 years of experience. It's almost like asking, suppose you had your life to live again from the beginning and you know now what you know now. You go back and you can live it again. You can live it again if you want, but basically, you know, everything, you know. Welcome to Don't Be Caught Dead, a podcast encouraging open conversations about dying and the death of a loved one. I'm your host, Catherine Ashton, founder of Critical Info, and I'm helping to bring your stories of death back to life. Because while you may not be ready to die, At least you can be prepared. Don't Be Caught Dead acknowledges the lands of the Kulin Nations and recognises their connection to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and First Nation peoples around Today we're speaking with Peter Soliquides. He's the founder, director, and chairman of Southern Cryonics. Peter became interested in cryonics after reading Robert Ettinger's book, The Prospect of Immortality in the Late Sixties. He thought by now, cryonics would be widely available. But this is sadly not the case. I look forward to delving into the world of cryonics with Peter today. Thank you for being with us today, Peter. Oh, thank you, Cash. And thank you for having me on your program. No! Your organisation made an announcement earlier this year that Southern Cryonics and Cryopath successfully completed the first cryonic suspension with patient one from May 12th to 17th 2024. Can you explain what does this mean? Well, maybe I'll just give a very quick summary of what cryonics is. And when I say a summary, a couple of sentences, but just in case people don't know, cryonics is the preservation of a patient, a human body after legal death. That's very important at very low temperatures, usually in liquid nitrogen. And the expectation is that future medicine technology, science will be able to restore the patient to health in a young body. Most people miss that part about the young body and say, you know, who wants to come back 85 years old? Okay. Now what happened was our organization has been sort of 10 years in the making. We actually opened our doors February this year. And we had our first patient in May, as you said, what that means is that somebody had signed up with us. Somebody had passed away and we set into operation. There's almost two parts to our organization, two sister companies. One part is cryopath, which starts at the hospital bed. and takes it through right to the facility. At the facility, the patient is taken over by Southern Chronics. So essentially a team, which is a very professional and well trained team. We outsource to a group called Australian Blood Management. We use doctors, perfusionists on that group. We're at the hospital bed. They got the patient out to a funeral home. In all this process, we're trying to reduce the temperature. So they tried to pack the patient in ice, put them in a cool room in the hospital, transferred them quickly to a funeral home, went through a process where we cooled them right down, perfused them with special antifreeze chemicals, basically brought them now to dry ice temperatures. And then after that, we took them to the, facility where they were brought to liquid nitrogen temperatures. Now I say that in one sentence, that took seven days. It's not an easy process. And there was a lot of effort, a lot of people, a lot of well trained people involved. And tell me, do they have to be clinically dead? Yes, very definitely. They have to be dead. They have to have passed away, and certified dead either at the hospital or whoever it is that does the certification. That's a key criteria. Yeah, and then you mentioned there's doctors, and who else is on the team? There was a term that you used that I wasn't familiar with. I used perfusionists. They're clinical perfusionists. Now, perfusionists have a slightly different meaning in chronics. This is not a chronics team. We outsource to another group called Australian Blood Management. What a perfusionist does in those terms is a clinical perfusionist, you know, operating those heart lung machines, where they bypass the body when a patient, this is in a hospital or whatever, they clinically do that. They bypass, they, they, aerate, they oxygenate the blood, they have it while the heart is stopped and pass it back into the body. So this is a group that works at hospitals, works for doctors, so they have doctors and clinical professional perfusionists and professional doctors on that team. Now, as it happens, they also have subcontracted, or at least outsourced to us, very nice people. We work together very well. And what's happened is that they do this and they do the perfusion, they do all the rest of it for us. Okay. So that's the process. And we'll come back to that more. I would love to know. How did you get started in this? Okay, well for me, you might have read a little bit in my bio. I was interested very young. I read this book by Robert Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality, and I thought, this is surefire. For sure, this is going to be available. But then I turned my attention to my career. I then went on to do this. retired and thought by the time I retired, I didn't pay a lot of attention during my career. By the time I retired, I thought this would be, I even said it in my bio, I thought it'd be available everywhere. You can just walk down the street and sign up. Of course it wasn't. I came back to Australia. We got together, a team of us got together, a group of us got together, found that there was facilities overseas. So we said we needed something in Australia. It was just too far to go overseas. And since I've always been interested in science, which this goes into with my background, of course, I've been interested in economic project implementation, all these things. It was a natural fit for me to almost do it very soon after I retired. And tell me about the team that you've gathered. So I think that there's three founders, is that right? Co founders? Well, there's actually a lot more in the founding members, we're What we call founding members. We have 35 founding members. Now, when I say initially there were only two or three of us, we're the sort of ones that kicked it all off when I say founding members and it's a nonprofit. So the term is a little bit misleading, but they were like investors, people who put in 50 to 70, 000 upfront. And they became what we call founding members. Now I had thought we'd get 18. I always low ball my forecasts. We got about 35. So we doubled the number that I thought we'd get. Those people are founding members. There's a director group, of course, directors of which I'm one of them on managing director of the organization. And those founding members finance the facility and finance the operation, particularly the Southern Chronics part. And then. After we got started, I'm giving you a very long answer, but after we got started, we started taking in customers, clients, and I'll get to that later, that the patient we had was a client, was not one of the founding members. So it sounds like that there was a team of investors, and then you developed a framework for a not for profit organization after that. Well, yeah, strictly speaking, they're not investors because it is a non profit organization. They don't get a return on investment or anything, but yes, we call them that just for ease of use. Yeah. And what sort of things were you seeing overseas that you thought, okay, this is something we need to bring to Australia? Well, there are two main organizations in the U. S. Alcor and cryonics institute. I visited both those and I great people work very well. They're still my friends, all the rest of it. And what we did was we tried to get the best of all worlds from these groups. Each of them does things a little bit differently and we were trying to get the best from them and bring them to Australia. We are. What we hope are best practices from both. That's what we hope we have brought into Australia. And also very recently, there's a European organization. There's a Chinese organization. We have also got best practices from the Chinese. One of our pieces of equipment. It comes from the Chinese organization and it's sort of the Rolls Royce of that piece of equipment. It's a fairly expensive, but we're trying to get the best we can for Australia. And how long has this process been available overseas? Quite a while. It started back in Robert Ettinger. I guess in the 70s, so it's 60 plus years, 50, 60 plus years. It's particularly alcohol and those two groups that I mentioned in the US Cryonics Institute. So it's been around for about 60 years or so. Wow. And how did the process start? Did it start with animal testing and then move on to humans? Or can you talk me through the evolution of the science? Not really, because if you think about animal testing, let me back off a little bit, and it's developed over time, the process of suspending somebody is fairly well established, there's still work to be done, but it's established, bringing back somebody is impossible. At this stage, bringing back a patient is impossible. So, what happened basically was it started off fairly crudely, I have to say, essentially very simple suspensions, taking people, taking them through a process and putting them almost straight away in liquid nitrogen, the early processes. Later on came a process called vitrification. They did tests on some of the people who found that ice crystals would form in the patient if they were brought straight to liquid nitrogen. So, later on, uh, A process called vitrification, which is what we use. The patient is sort of perfused with a sort of an antifreeze, gets rid of the water, and so you don't get the ice crystal formation. So that came on a little bit later. So it was more an evolution of a process rather than something that people were experimenting on and did straight away. There has been a lot of experimentation, particularly in areas like this, because vitrification is what's used, you know, when your stem cells and embroids and things like that, when they store those, that's a process called vitrification. So there's a lot of work going on in that area. And what's also happening, let me be clear. Precise about that. There's a lot of work going in that area. Sperm eggs, eggs, animals and human beings. They tend to be vitrified and there's a lot of work that goes on in that area. And the reason why it's going on is because what they want to do is to be able to vitrify human organs because then the organ donation program can build a bank of organs rather now where you have to take a human heart and pass it almost immediately to a patient. If they can vitrify it, then what happens is they can build sources and banks of human organs so that it doesn't have to happen immediately. And you get more people being saved with organ donations that way. So there's a lot of experimentation going in that area of which we leverage off. We get the benefits of that. Yeah. When you explain it like that, Peter, I just start thinking about how much we do use that process. Yes, it is used a lot. It's amazing that people don't understand how much of that process is being used in normal ongoing activities. Now the process can be improved and there's a lot of scientific research going on to improve it. The one advantage of Quranics is that a lot of the research is getting done outside and we basically leverage off the different activities that are going on. Wow, that's fascinating. Fascinating. And so Your facility is in Holbrook in New South Wales, and tell me, what sort of process did you have to go through to actually get permits? I've recently had a interview with Luke Krip, who is the co founder of Holbrook. Alluvium, the first water commission facility in Tasmania, and he was explaining that there was very extensive, the process that they had to go through. I assume you would have had to have gone through a very similar process. Yes, it is. Let's say this, it's long, but the actual Legislations are fairly straightforward, but the process is long. Let me say this. First of all, because we're a non profit, we went in and straight away started working with the Department of Health in New South Wales. We didn't start lawyering up or anything like that. We basically said, we want your help. How would we do this if we wanted to do it? And they were very helpful. It was very cooperative, and we also talked with the local council. Because in fact, we bought the land from the local council in the area. Now, as it happens, it's very different in each state, but as it happens, I need to go back one step. We are classed as a cemetery in New South Wales. A cemetery can be designated by a local council. They determine if it's a cemetery. So what's happened is, we talked with the local council, we actually bought the land from them, it was zoned cemetery, they classed us as a cemetery. So that was one step that was covered. The other step is actually burying, let's put it in that way, because it's a cemetery, it would be classed in legal terms, we're burying a patient. We're not really, but that's what it would be classed legally. So what's happening is that we are classed as entombment. We are classed as burying somebody in a tomb and we have a letter and we've all got official advice from the Department of Health in New South Wales that we are able to do that because we meet all the conditions for that. We looked at a lot of other ways, body donation, all the rest, but it was very complex. This was the simplest and we got a lot of help, as I said, from both the council and the Department of Health. So, just clarifying, that was classified as a cemetery, and then the term is entombment. Yes, because strictly speaking, a person is buried underground, but there is also rules in the legislation that they can be buried in a tomb. You've seen them at cemeteries where there are tombs and that. We are, in a sense, classed as a tomb. Because we meet all the conditions. You have to There's, there's about 20 different conditions and we meet them. In fact, we over meet them because we are more careful about what we do with our patients versus what a person might be with a dead body that is going to just decay away. Yeah. Right. Now that's fascinating about how it's actually deemed, you know, under the laws and tell me how Does the funding process work and how does the selection process work? Like, how do you decide who gets to be patient number one? Well, it's not really our choice. Basically, somebody passes away. You know, if they're on our books or they've got a history of being involved in chronic, so they're an actual what can a client of ours or even a founding member, but a client of ours, then they are next on the list. Don't forget, Australia is very small in this. the US. So we had originally planned one a year now, maybe more than one, but we had thought we'd probably do one patient a year. So it's not like they're lining up one after the other. So basically it happens because We hope they never pass away, but that's what happens. People pass away. They die. And that's how we choose. Do they have to be a member or a supporter? Sort of, yes, yes. We opened our doors, as I said, early this year, in February. And we then started taking in what you call customers, subscribers, clients, whatever you'd like to call them. The cost to them is 150, 000. Now, everybody gasps and says, wow, 150, 000. The cost is actually, typically it's covered with life insurance. So what people do is we help them get a life insurance policy, not from us, from a recognized major life insurance organization. And Southern Chronics is the people who get paid the life insurance when the person dies. So they pay. Thank you. A typical person, let's say 40, 45, they pay about 400 or 500 a year. They pay that money, and what happens is when they pass away, the 150, 000 dollars, it's actually 200, 000 because there's some money for the cryopath aspect, but that money goes to Southern Cryonics, and then we use those funds to suspend them, plus a whole lot of other things, plus look after them in the very, very long term. And in the process, say you've signed up and you've got this, and approval from your life insurance policy, is there like any illness or life limiting illness that may actually negate them being able to be part of the program? The only thing that we need to be a little bit cautious of is that there are some diseases that are very communicable. I don't know whether I said that properly, but the Department of Health may not let us take the patient because the disease is something that they have listed, there's a list of various diseases that we cannot take over and take our process in those. Those are rare and it would be very rare for any of our patients to have those, but that would be the area that we would legally have to say, no, we can't do. you know, we just can't do it. It's just legally not possible. And of course we wouldn't want to because there's a chance of spreading these diseases to others. So there is always that case. The first thing that pops into mind for me is something like Ebola or something highly contagious like this. Yes, you've picked, you've picked one that's on that list. Yes, now it may be some patients say, look, if I've got something like that and you wait a certain quarantine period, it's not the best condition for the patient because we can store them in a way that keeps them reasonably okay for a while, but we can then suspend them after that. Once we get the clearance from the department of health, they helped us so much. We want to work well within what the department of health recommends and asks us to do. So are you still currently taking new clients on? Yes, not investors, not those founding members, that stopped. In fact, the time we started opened our doors. We received a lot of applications after our first patient. Before that we had about, and this is from the day we opened our doors, we had about 15 and now we've probably added, the number has become about 20. And our plan, I'll be honest, Australia is not very large in this thing. Our plan was to have 10 a year. Remember how I'm very conservative in my planning? Our plan, 10 a year. We've currently got 15 at the beginning and then we have another 10 or so coming on. I'm not sure of the actual numbers because we're still going through the process after that first patient. People saw that we're legitimate, we work, we're actually doing what we said we were going to do. So, we've got a lot more sign ons. What is that process that you have? Is there an ethics committee? A selection panel? How do you select? Not really. What we do is, we basically, I talk to everybody. We talk to them, we discuss, we see, but most people, if they want to sign on, they're entitled to sign on. As long as they understand the conditions, there's no guarantees. We're talking about after legal death. We don't do anything before legal death. And that's all written. We've got a what 25 page contract or whatever it is, 20 page contract that they have to sign that was professionally put together. But as long as they understand that. We're fine. There's no real ethics issues associated with this other than meeting the legal requirements. Now, Peter, have you found with the people who are applying, is there a particular trend or type of person that is applying? It's interesting. Let me give you the demographics worldwide. And it applies in Australia too, of who gets into chronics. Essentially, it's people who have an interest in science. They work in science or they may, you know, be just an interest. They could be a bus driver, for example, but they have an interest in science, technology, all these types of things. So that's one aspect of it. Number two is they tend not to be religious. They tend to be fairly secular in their view. Number three is they tend to be optimists, optimists about the future. And number four, if you cut the ratio down, it's 80 percent men, 20 percent women. That's the basic ratio. In fact, if you go to a cryonics meeting, I was just at one yesterday, 80 percent men, 20 percent women. I was one overseas, 80%, you know, you could even see who was there. Our membership, roughly 80 percent men, 20 percent women, roughly. And there are reasons for that, and probably very good reasons for that, but that's the characteristics, the demographics. The other thing about chronics is that anybody who's thought about this area, there's two types of people. The vast majority say, great idea, but not for me. That's the vast majority. A very small number will say, good idea. And for me, I'm in that category. And just about everybody who actually comes in and signs up is in that final category. You almost don't have to convince. Somebody who's made that switch to say, Oh, it's available. You know, you hear something like that. Yes, I'm into this, you know, that sort of thing. Most people will be, I've heard about it. Great idea. Good, but not for me. That's the vast majority of people. And tell me at the other side of that, you know, cryogenically freezing someone at what point. Do we thaw them? Who decides that? The actual organisation ourselves, we will decide how and when we thaw them. The thinking is very much that as we are the early sort of group that gets suspended, our organisation, even the people in the last 40, 50 years are still in an early group. By the time we get to a stage, those people in later groups, Maybe in 10, 20 years we'll be suspended even better and the group after that will be suspended better. They will most likely be the ones first coming out. So the last in will be the first ones who will be coming out of suspension. So by that time the processes for bringing people back would have already been tested and because there would have been a certain number of people, I don't know how many hundreds. Thousands or whatever there is that would be coming out of suspension. We would make the decision based on how good the technology is and how sure we are that we can bring somebody back under the conditions we said, healthy, young body for the person. So would it be like transferring them into a younger person? Yes, of course. That's why I stressed that at the very beginning because People miss that aspect of it. And remember, as I said at the beginning, everybody thinks, why would I want to come back as an 80 year old? Well, you'll come back as a, let's say a 25 year old. Most people pick, most people pick 25 years old. You can look how you want to look. I mean, that's not a critical thing. You can look the way you look at 25 where you can look however you want. The interesting part about all that is that everybody gets surprised that we can do that. And yet they are less surprised when we talk about bringing our brain back. Now let me say the human brain, which is probably one of the most complex things we know in the universe, bringing it back is probably thousands of times more difficult than growing a new body. We can actually grow a new body now if we cloned. I mean, if it was legal arrest, we could clone a body tomorrow if we had to. That's the easy part. The hard part is the brain part. And the hard part is then making the connections and making sure that The brain and body are in unison with each other, but the body is the easy part. That's not, you know, you can come back as anything you want, basically, but as a young body is what we normally say, it's the brain, which is what we focus all our attention on in the process. We make sure the brain is cool properly. We even insert, as you know, we insert the patient upside down. In the DUA, which is like a large vacuum flask, the reason is if the liquid nitrogen evaporates off, the last that gets evaporated off is the brain. The brain is always, if, you know, if it goes down, we miss a toe or a foot, who cares, you know, but the brain is critical. So we make sure the brain is in the area that gets evaporated off. Is always the most cold, if I can put it that way. And there's a great diagram on your website which explains the process and we'll definitely link to that in the show notes. Now, when you're talking about the profile, I suppose, of, you know, someone like patient one, did they get to say, I would like to come back blonde haired, blue eyes, The body of a 25 year old, is that part of the process? It is part of the process, but in their case they did not. And the reason is because it was a lot more sudden than what we thought it was going to happen in that case. All the agreements are signed, all the rest of it, but people tend to leave that as a last resort item. We would make the assumption at the time You think about it, if the technology is there to bring somebody back at any age, well then within a week they could change to another body. If the technology is already there, they could keep changing every few weeks if they wanted to. We are making the assumption that unless otherwise stated, we'll probably be in bank. We will work towards bringing somebody back at around a healthy 25 year old, the way they looked at about the time they were 25 years old. They want to try something different. Theoretically, if cryonics works, they've got thousands of years to try every single thing they want. Wow. It's really quite limitless, isn't it? It is because you're getting to a point where. Once you start, you see, a lot of people think about chronics and then apply today's criteria to what may be applicable 200 years from now. It's like if I was living now 300, 200 years in the past and people told me, would you do this? No, no, look, that's impossible. You can't do that. Would you pick up something like a smartphone? And what about, what are you talking about? Everything we're talking about is you have to put your mind into the future. If you're 200 years from now, you would never be able to envisage our world, what it's like now, and we would never be able to envisage what it's going to be like in 200 years. But if you make the assumption that cryonics is possible, then a lot of other things have to be in place. Immortality is in place. Everybody's essentially immortal. If cryonics is possible at that time. So all these things come into play if you make the assumption that we can revive a cryonics patient. And just thinking about the logistics between now and then, Peter. So obviously the business has to have quite a succession plan. Yes. So talk me a little bit through that. What we found was, I'm now phasing out of the succession plan, okay. We have quite a depth in our organisation, a lot of people want to volunteer. The people who are involved in cryonics are involved in cryonics, if I can put it that way. They're very interested in it. They want to be involved. I am probably one of the first. What our plan is, initially we thought we'll bring in some young people, but the problem when you're young, and I know it too, when I was young, your career takes precedence. So you can't really get involved in this to the level you have to. I joined up about my retirement age, around the 60 or something years old. We've got a new group, there's about three of them now, who are coming in and they're in that 60 year old and retirement age. I'm going to phase out and One or two others are going to phase out. That group is going to be the group that phases in. In 10 years, we've got another group who are getting to that sort of age bracket and they'll be taking over and our membership keeps growing and we'll always have the depth of being able to bring people in who have the time. They certainly have the commitment, but the important is who have the time and hopefully over the next 200 years we have this group just continually being replaced as we move into the future. I was just wondering what sort of sureties does patient one who's frozen have? that that recruitment will happen ongoing? Well, it's a recruitment process. They don't have a hundred percent assurance. I can tell you that, but nobody has a hundred percent assurance of anything, but they have an assurance that we have a plan in place. We also work closely with the overseas organizations. So they have assurance of anything will major would have happened to Southern Chironics. We have five or six different levels of what we would do. With the very final, most drastic level being we could use the overseas organizations to take some of our patients. But there's about five or six levels before. So we've built that into our plan. We've got a succession plan that we think works because it's worked. At least it's working now and we see the depth in the organization. So nothing is a hundred percent, but we're trying to do it as best we can. Again, we're a non profit. We're not a, Company that's out to make a lot of money or to do that. So that's the basic process that we have. And as I said, the people are very committed. You know, that, that, that's a plus if they weren't, if they just said, I'll sign up and goodbye, I'll talk to you when I die or something, then. What I'm talking about would not work as well. And most nonprofits have a mission or a vision on how they see the future. What is yours, Peter? Vision of the future for our organization. It's actually just keeps us for the organization itself. If you're talking to me personally, but for the organization itself, our mission is to make cryonics as widely available as possible. and to implement cryonics at the highest standard that we can implement it. That's essentially, I think it's in our constitution too, but that's the mission of our organization. We are looking for people to live, if we can put it that way. If somebody were to live to be a hundred and something, we want our patients to live as much as possible, and then we give them another way in which they could live even longer. If they could, it's the only legitimate way that's available as of today for people to have a chance of living an extremely long life if they wish it. And tell me, at the other side, has there been thought given to a program to reintroduce people into this society? Anything along that line? Because I'm assuming if you get thawed out in a hundred years, It'll be quite a different world. Yeah, it will be very different. We are not paying a lot of attention to that. The reason is, I think I mentioned before, we expect by the time our people start getting thought out, there's going to be a whole network because a lot more would have been thought out before us. Let's use the word thought out, reanimated, whatever we want to use, a lot more would have been done. So there would be a whole mechanism as to how these people get introduced. I can get into some side issues. Some of them are speculation, but there's ideas that say before a patient is brought back, you can actually upload their brain into a computer. They can be living as though they're living a normal life. I don't know whether you've ever seen the movie, the matrix, like the matrix, but a benevolent matrix, you know, you're living a normal life. You're catching up with everything that's happened in the past. You are living the life and know what's going on for the last 150 years. And then when the time comes that we have a body. available, that we can actually revive a body, we put that memories and everything back into your body. There's a whole lot of ways in which if we let our minds get a little bit more freer in thinking here that you could cover that. Some people don't care by the way, some people say as long as I'm alive I'll make my way into the new world. My parents came over to Australia a long time ago and they're on their own and had to make their way. from nothing basically. So a lot of people say I don't mind doing that. There's many ideas as to how that can be covered, but it's not a big issue for us. Might be an issue in 200 years, but it's not for us. I'll let that management worry about that more precisely. And for you, Peter, you personally wanting to be. You know, suspended. I'm one of the founding members. It would be. Yes, I'm going to be suspended as well. Yes. For me, I'm one of the founding members. I will be suspended. And I think it will, you know, I'm looking forward to a good chance of that happening. Now, that doesn't mean I want to live as long a life as I can at the moment. It's not that I'm thinking to myself, Oh, you know what I will do nothing. I want to live because the whole idea of People interested in cryonics is they want to live long lives. So I want to live as long as I can. And then later on, when the time comes, I will give myself a chance for the future, as people say in cryonics, even though there is a reasonable chance, but there's a much better chance than being put in the ground or cremated. Your chances are significantly better. Than if you did that. And tell me, Peter, what is it about life that you love so much that you're willing to give it a crack at another go? Well, I'm a very curious person. I've always been interested in science. I always want to see how things turn out. So for me, life is. Seeing new things, seeing things happen, what goes on in the world, particularly in the areas of scientific developments and things like that, what happens to societies. I'd love to know how a lot of the things that are going on at the moment, how they turn out in the future. And again, I'm an optimist. I'm assuming that they will turn out well. But there's a lot of big questions in science. I would love to know the answers to those questions. It fascinates me. That's what keeps me going, in fact, for a lot of this. And tell me, has any of your loved ones also signed up? Not really, no. My wife is not interested. Remember how I said the 80 20 percent rule for men and women? Yeah, she's not interested, but she's willing to go with whatever I want to do. I mean, obviously she'll support what I want to do, but she herself is not interested. I'm working on her, isn't that not to say? I would love to have her there if I was, you know, suspended and brought back, but she's not at the moment interested in the whole thing. It's interesting, when I was in my young teens, my grandfather lived to the age of 94. And for him in the last few months, I remember him saying, Oh, look, you know, it's a bit boring, you know, all my friends are dead, you know, I've seen enough of life. And that was him at the age of 94. Do you think that there gets a point where if you don't have your loved ones coming with you on the, on the journey, that your feelings may change 200 years, 100 years time? Yeah. Let me phrase it slightly differently. Sure. He was 94, and I know my mother was the same. My mother did not want to be suspended. My mother passed away recently. She doesn't see her loved ones. You know, she wanted to see her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. There was no visiting in that area. Now, imagine you're 25. How much of those sorts of things do you think about? Do you say to yourself, Oh, you know what? I want to see my loved ones. I want to spend time. It's not the big deal. With 25, you're living new adventures every day. See, the difference is your stage in life. It's what probably causes that feeling. But if you're in a young, healthy body, you're able to do all the things that you're able to do. And again, I'll back off a little bit. One of the reasons why the number of females is so low is because relationships are more critically important. A lot of their answers are, who would I know at that time? The men, it's not as critically important with the men. Their basic questions are, how much does it cost and will it work? You know, that's the way the different demographics turn out. So, yes, but I've just got a feeling that somebody thinks differently when they're 94 and dying and very lonely. Versus somebody who's 25 and is able to do every single thing they want to do at 25 in a young, healthy body. You can go and make new friends at 25. I mean, who starts thinking about, Oh, I've lost my friends. I mean, you start making new friends at 25. It's interesting because we are the product of the journey that we've been on. Of course. And they say that, You know, wisdom comes with age, those sorts of things. So it really does ask those questions about if we're perpetually at the age of 25, does we ever get that ability to reflect and have that wisdom aspect? Well, your brain is not at 25. Your brain is the brain that you've built up. Remember how I said the most critical part of all this is the brain. The brain has 80 years at the time, assuming cryonics works, at the time you come back, it has 80 years of experience. It's almost like asking, suppose you had your life to live again from the beginning and you know now what you know now, you go back and you can live it again and you can live it again if you want. But basically, you know, everything, you know. There'll be a lot of other people, by the way, again, assuming chronic works, there'll be a lot of other people like you too, because a lot of people would be maybe looking 25, but essentially be people who are a hundred and something, whatever the age might be. at that time. So I'm more thinking of 25 and if I had the wisdom I had now, if I have any wisdom, and if I had any, and I'm 25 years old, there's a lot more things I'd start doing. At my age now, I'm more starting to think of my retirement plan, my plans of end of life plans. If I was 25 and knew what I knew now, I would not be thinking like that. That's not the way I would be thinking. I suppose it's like, sorry, I can't help the Star Wars reference, but it's like putting Yoda's brain. brain into Luke Skywalker's body. If you could say that, yes, yes. And of course, that's a way of looking at it. But it's again, your brain, again, the brain is most important. You will have the memories. The idea is that you will have those memories. You're absolutely right. But you'll have a young, healthy body. To be able to do whatever you do, make all those mistakes again if you want to or not make the mistakes or try a completely different lifestyle. I mean, imagine not coming out again as I say, I'm now at a place where I say to myself, do I really want to go and do this? Don't you know, I'm too old to just rush down and do things. But if I was 25, I'd be out now. Flash, even with my current mind and current thinking, I'd be out in a flash. Now, tell me, I do have some questions here that I have friends and family that have given me. So, you've already just discussed the ice crystals, because the human body's majority made up of water. Exactly. So that's a, that's a huge issue. It was a huge issue with vitrification. The issue is a lot less. What they do now is they take scans of brains that have been vitrified and they find that the amount of water is a lot less, almost no water in there in the processes that are currently used. It's like the water has been replaced by a high grade antifreeze. It's a vitrification solution. It's the same thing, by the way, that they use as we were talking about before with sperm cells, slightly different, but. You know what I mean, over and all those sorts of things that they do. The only thing that's actually been brought back so far is a rabbit kidney. It's been vitrified. taken down to liquid nitrogen temperatures, put back in a rabbit, survive, you know, with that process. That's the only thing that's been done. So I can't say that, you know, progress, but this will progress. We're talking early days. We're talking the starts of many things. Like everything, things start off A little bit here, a little bit there, and then they move on to be quite, uh, developed. Now, like any cemetery, which you're, you know, legally deemed as, there becomes issues with room. And, you know, we're talking maybe a hundred, two hundred years. down the path that you have to suspend people for. How is that going to work? Have you got larger space at Holbrook? Yes. Our building at the moment will house about 40 people. And you say, Oh, that's not much, but we built it in a way that you could just. Remove walls and keep adding and adding and adding, and we've got a large block of land. We've already talked to the council about this. We've got a large block of land. We could probably have 600 people at our facility. Now you're saying 600 doesn't sound like much, but The number of people involved in chronics, remember I said it's been going for 40, 50, 60 years. Worldwide, the number of people suspended is something like 500 people. That's, US is 350 million, Europe is about 400 million people. All the rest of it, and there's only been about 500 people suspended. And we're talking Australia of 25 million people, so assuming 600, is not too bad. Now, it may become very popular. If it becomes very popular, we can still expand up, we can expand across, but we can cover 600 people if we needed to. As I said, our plan is to suspend one a year. So, you know, you can just imagine how long it'll take for 600 people to be there. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm assuming the infrastructure required, you know, with generators and backup of power. Nothing. Not needed. Oh, really? Yeah, here's what people mistake. We don't need, if the power were to go down for two months, three months, it wouldn't make any difference to us at all. Other than we, in the night, we might not have lights or something, but uh, none of that's needed. All you need is liquid nitrogen. Particularly one of the reasons we picked Holbrook was, it was on the Hume Highway and the main liquid nitrogen routes. We're in that area. What basically happens is a truck comes in every couple of weeks, tops up the cylinder, the cryostat, and that's it stays for another couple of weeks. Now, when we have more cryostats, it may be a little bit more sophisticated what we set up, but basically that's what would happen. So if the power goes off, it makes no difference to us. In fact, the cryopath, the piece that goes from the. Patient to the facility is very, very, very high tech at the facility itself. It's very low tech. And that's one of the reasons why the costs are so low at the facility. So we can keep things it's essentially the cost is liquid nitrogen cost. So that's why your overheads moving forward are very minimal. Very minimal of the 150, 000 that I said, and I'm going to, it's a complex mathematical formulation, but basically a hundred to 120, 000 goes into a sort of a truck, like a trust fund. And what we do is we keep those funds and we invest those funds. Whatever long term secure market type rates we say we can get about being conservative. I say about 3 percent after inflation, I'm always very conservative. We can get more and that gives us about three to 4, 000 a year. The cost of liquid nitrogen again, allowing for inflation is about 2000 per patient, two five. So that can continue for almost forever assuming what liquid nitrogen is from the air anyway. So that's not hard to get. in the end. So the costs are essentially very low. There is some overheads, but the overheads is a caretaker who looks in the place every now and then. It's basically to be there when there's a delivery. And tell me with being a not for profit organization, I'm assuming annual reports will be published annually. We have annual, we submit our tax reports. We give all our members an annual report of our finances, where we are, what we're doing, all the rest. We have a members meeting, but they're not published. Externally. If somebody really wanted to see them, we don't mind sending them out as well. There's nothing in them. They're either tax officers or all our members have access to them. We would, you know, we might want to be a little bit careful because it might state things in there, which gives membership details, which we're always very cautious of, but basically there's nothing that's very hidden in our organization. If I can put it that way, any member can ask for anything and we'll give it to the member particularly. And how does Someone expressed interest in the suspension process. If they want to be a subscriber, essentially they send me or somebody an email. That's how almost all of them start. They send an email and they say to us, you know, we're interested in joining, give us some information, send us the agreements. And I go through the process. The process is first of all, you become a subscriber, then we work with you to get life insurance. Then we sign the agreements. And at any point in time, you can ask a million questions. If you're off, there's no problem, big decision. So don't jump into it. And then at the very end, they sign all this up and that's it. They become a member. Now, as I said, It's not like a thousand people flock to us. It's a very small group that basically join us, but it's not a difficult process. We don't vet for any reason because there's no reason to. The one thing that we're a little bit cautious of is that if somebody would have ring me up now. And say, my mother's dying, I want you to do blah, blah, blah. And they're not a member, they're not a subscriber. We're very cautious about that group. We're not people who are trying to approach people in vulnerable type situations. Every one of our members is somebody who's made a decision over time. They've been interested in cryonics or they've done something. They've made it when they're in crisis. Good frame of mind, and they're planning for their future. We don't want to feel like we're, you know, that somebody's, you know, obviously a very difficult situation. If, say, your mother, father, or somebody's passing away, we don't want, we normally don't take those patients on. We want to have an association with cryonics and an association with us. We don't want to feel like we're preying on anybody in those difficult situations. Typically, most cryonics organizations do not take people in that situation. It's interesting because that was sort of going to lead to my next question about the fact that, you know, you're very keen on being suspended, but your wife isn't so keen. And, and how, Do families navigate that process? I'm assuming those conversations are had over a long period of time, like any wishes for end of life. Yes, that's typically what happens. Now, in some situations, uh, we ask for a next of kin agreement. So that the next of kin signs off and says, yes, uh, let's say it's a wife next of kin. The husband wants to be suspended. The reason we ask for that is that, and this is from overseas experience, that a lot of people might say yes during the lifetime. And then when the final situation comes, perhaps they have their own reasons, their own religious, whatever it is. And, I don't know whether you know the law, but once a patient dies, the next of kin has almost absolute power on the body. The will a little bit, but the next of kin almost has absolute power. So in those situations, we ask the next of kin to sign off an agreement saying that they have agreed to this. It's not something that they can change their mind later on, because we know what the patient wanted. Do we know what the patient wanted during their life? So we have those next of kin agreements in those specific situations where there may be some doubt. In fact, we ask for most people. Because I assume it would be, you know, action stations as soon as you know that they've died. And getting involved straight away in an outlay of money and contracting everyone immediately. Yes. There's a lot that goes on and we have a very short time. If we get into arguments at the hospital bed and into which we won't win. But if we have all this paperwork in place, paperwork also acts as a moral strength because we can say, again, I'm giving a wife husband example. We can say the wife, look, you did agree to this. This is what your husband really wanted. Do you really want to go? changed the decision now. Now that happens and it happens infrequently in the U. S. That's why they have all these. Now, a lot of people in the U. S. There's one particular story where the next of kin were actually the sons and the sons were crying that their father never really wanted this. So they said, All right, we'll give the money back. And you want the body back? No, no, no. They're only looking for the money to get the money back. That's the other side of it, too. You know, they were crying in the courtroom that You know, their poor father had died and he never wanted this, et cetera, et cetera. You know, again, the next of kin does have a lot of decision making power. I can see why it's so important to have those conversations early and making sure like any end of life wish, you communicate that to your family and people know what your wishes are. Yeah. But the thing about it is, and I think you would appreciate it too, everybody does. At that time, it's a very stressful situation. It's stressful for, next of kin in particular. They may flip into a mode that wasn't their normal mode. So even though you might've had months and months of those conversations, it may not be how they are. And we understand it. It's not like we don't understand it. A lot of us have been through this ourselves too. I mean, with family members, et cetera. So we, we understand it's a very difficult situation and there's a vulnerability in that situation, which we try not to take advantage of. So. You know, when you fully understand it, it's difficult. Death is difficult for everybody. Death is difficult, regardless of what choice that you make, you know, and tell me Peter, because this is a new technology, certainly new to me. What is the appropriate terminology that we should use? You know, we, We use the word thaw, but I'm assuming that's not appropriate whatsoever. We normally say revival or, or deanimated, something like that, but only because they're not really frozen in the sense of frozen, like people think frozen in water and things like that. They're vitrified, which is a slightly different process than straight freezing. They're also in liquid nitrogen, which is way below anything that you would think about as being freezing. So we normally use revival. We normally use cryonics rather than cryogenics. Cryogenics is the more general science that takes into account metals at low temperatures, biological material, anything that's at very low temperatures falls into the category of cryogenics. Cryonics is sort of the subset of that, which has to do with what we're doing. So that's, that's how we approach it, but it's too, not such a mainstream area that. The language has been understood by everybody straight away. But the people within cryonics is that's how they tend to talk about it. And suspension is the correct term. We use the term suspension. There's a lot of other terms. Frozen is what is normally, again, the popular way of saying it because people think, and in a sense you are in a very vague sense, but it's not strictly a suspension is what we call it. You can almost say you're put into a sleep, hopefully without any guarantees, you wake up 200 years later. That's the whole idea of what chronics is about. It's interesting. You say that, you know, you're not a religion, but it certainly does take a lot of faith, doesn't it, in science? Yes, it does. It is a sort of a faith in science. Yes, I, I'll have to say it that way, that you have to assume that all the things that are going on now in science are going to develop and a lot more new things are going to develop that are going to make it possible. But again, All we're saying is there is a reasonable chance, again, comparing with being put underground, buried. Think about what the chances are there. There's zero chance versus a reasonable chance. And people are willing to take the reasonable chance. And let me add one side thing too, that people sort of feel like the money's lost. The money is not really lost. The money's in there looking after them that time and will be used. At the time that they can be brought back to finance the bringing back. of that patient as well. Now you could argue if they're never brought back what happens, but maybe it might not matter to people in 500 years what happened to the 150, 000 that they gave at this time. I don't think it's going to be top of their mind. Well, there won't be anything top of their mind if cryonics doesn't work. But all we're saying is there's a reasonable chance. That's, that's what we're saying. Thank you so much for your time today, Peter. It's been a fascinating chat. This was a really good, I enjoyed the interview. I enjoyed what we, how we discussed this too. Gives me a chance to elaborate on some things that normally in a quick five minute I say something then I say afterwards, I'm sure everybody's going to. Don't miss that. It's like when I define chronics at the beginning, I say, and brought back to a healthy body and of course flies past most people and then near the end they say, what, who would want to come back in an 80 year old body? I said, but don't forget, I told you, I stressed the idea that it's a healthy young body. So, and again, we wouldn't be doing it if it was coming back in an 80 year old or whatever it is. Unless an 80 year old in 200 years is as strong as a 25 year old is today, who knows? Yeah, there's that small village in Japan where everyone is very fit and lives despite the old age. Yes. Well, you know, my old age, at least in my wife's family, runs through her family. Her mother's 102. She's getting near 102, my wife's mother. So, yeah, there's this, uh, Particularly area of the Mediterranean, too, in the Greek area, which is our background, which also tends to run into fairly long Lifespan. So, and I hope they live forever. I don't mind. You know, as I said, cryonics is for life. It's just another way in which we can live longer lives if we have to. Again, thank you very much. I'm sorry to go on, but I've enjoyed our conversation. Don't apologize whatsoever. It's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much. No, thank you so much. And thank you for making it a very pleasant conversation too. Thanks. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of Don't Be Caught Dead, brought to you by Critical Info. If you liked the episode, learnt something new, or were touched by a story you heard, we'd love for you to let us know. Send us an email. Even tell your friends, subscribe so you don't miss out on new episodes. If you can spare a few moments, please rate and review us as it helps other people to find the show. Are you dying to know more? Stay up to date with. Don't be Caught Dead by signing up to our newsletter and follow us on social media Head to Don't Be Caught dead.com for more information and loads of resources.