Cryonic preservation: 50 years later

A professor at the University of California and a World War I veteran, Dr. James Hiram Bedford was a multi-talented man who led a happy life and saw the world. However, this man will be most remembered for being the first to have their body cryopreserved. It is the process of keeping a deceased person’s body (or brain) at extremely low temperatures.

In 1967, when medical technology was less developed than it is now, Bedford, a fairly affluent man, was diagnosed with kidney cancer that had spread to his lungs.

Bedford was aware of the idea of cryonic preservation at the time of his diagnosis.
He read about it in Dr. Robert Ettinger’s book The Prospect of Immortality.

Known as the father of body freezing experiments, Dr. Ettiger founded the Cryonics Institute. In order to possibly revive it in the future, when medical technology has progressed to the point where it can cure the condition that led to the person’s death, his institute offers body freezing services after death.

After reading about this procedure, Bedfrod requested that his body be frozen.

After all of his blood was removed from his body, he received an injection of dimethyl sulfoxide in the afternoon of January 12, 1967, to protect his internal organs.

Bedford was then submerged in a liquid nitrogen tank that was 196 degrees Celsius below zero.
Twenty-four years later, Bedford’s body was opened and his cryogenic condition examined by Alcor, a company that performs cryonic preservation.

The body was found to have been well preserved. His face appeared younger than his 73 years, and his mouth and nose smelled like blood. His corneas were the chalky white of ice, and patches of skin on his neck and chest were discolored.

After that, Bedford was placed in a fresh sleeping bag and left to wait in liquid nitrogen.

He is still only a “mummy” today, more than 50 years after the time was supposed to be reached to wake Bredford.

Bredford’s final words were, “I want you to understand that I did not do this with the thought that I would be revived,” according to Robert Nelson, one of the three scientists who carried out the cryonic preservation. I took this action in the hopes that my descendants would eventually profit from this fantastic scientific discovery.