Cryogenic head freezing could soon be available and less expensive than a funeral

IT sounds like something out of a science fiction series, but a stem cell bank claim that a new cryogenic head freezing service could be available to the public within decades.

At present it is mainly a practice for the rich with the high costs involved, but scientists say it could soon become a more affordable option that some funerals.

The company offering the service say the controversial practice, thought to be a way to bring people back to life at a later date after their death, would be offered at a cost of £5000 for 250 years.

Mark Hall, spokesperson for StemProtect.co.uk said: “Soon we could see this practice becoming commonplace because advances in technology have made it much more affordable.”

Technology, however, is yet to reach a point where the frozen head could be brought back to life.

Hall added: “We don’t yet know what the emotional impact would be of bringing someone back to life this way even when we are physically able to do it.

“That’s not a question for science but for us as human beings, and it’s a question we might not be able to answer until the first person is brought back to life after being frozen.”

While it’s a myth that Walt Disney had his body frozen in liquid nitrogen upon his death, many people have chosen to be cryonically frozen including US baseball star Ted Williams, who died in 2002.

Dr James Bedford was the first person to be preserved in this way when he died in 1967.

In the UK, freezing a body can only happen once someone has been declared legally dead.

Other ways of preserving vital tissue, such as stem cell banking, are also now much more commonplace than ever before.

Unlike freezing a head, which is done to bring a dead individual back to life, the work StemProtect.co.uk currently do is aimed at preserving information about the body which can be used for medical purposes while the person is still alive.