DEAD BODY (BlogPost #3)

We cannot choose on how we are going to die but we can decide on how we want our body to look on our burial. I think it is more expensive to die than to live because some need medications  before they die and some wants their funeral ceremonies to be the most memorable. I want to know what do we get if our bodies will be preserved like the Egyptian's mummification or the modern Cryonics. Cryonics reminds me of the movie "Vanilla Sky", the movie is starred by Tom Cruise where his character's body was frozen on the exact time of his death. The end part of the movie explained that he signed a contract of a program called Life Extension where his body will be frozen until they find a cure and while the body is frozen they place the body on a lucid dream state. I could imagine our surroundings if this movie is true, the population will reach it's highest, supplies of things we need will lessen because no one gets to die and they just need to rest, and the environment will be destroyed because some environmental cycles were broken.

Ancient Egyptians have many secrets and even the process of mummification was kept as a secret by the embalmers but some tried to reveal it just like what is included in the article Ancient Egyptian Mummification Practices Revisited by New Study by Jennie Cohen from history.com.

Herodotus revealed that there are three levels for different prices. The finest mummification process is where embalmers would remove the brain through the nose then make a little slit to remove the abdomen. If the family could not afford it their is a lower fee where the embalmers use cedar oil to liquefy some particular organs. If the family of the dead could not really afford, the cheapest is where the embalmers flush water through the body and leave it in natron for 70 days. Diodorus Siculus also described the process the same but he reported that the heart was left in place unlike other organs like the brain. The study of Herodotus and Siculus were done a long time ago so a new study by Andrew Wade revealed that one-fifth of the corpses that he studied still had brains and a quarter still had hearts. It was also stated that some hearts were kept in place to distinguish the nobles from the commoners so the elite would maintain a more favorable afterlife.

I think the preparations for our burials should not be too expensive because we do not need our body for the afterlife but our soul is needed. I respect the belief of the ancient Egyptians but distinguishing rich from the poor is not right because I believe that in afterlife we are all equal. It is our or our family's choice on what we want to do with our body when we die. When I die I would offer my organs that is still usable to people who would need it but I also want to freeze my body to preserve it and if possible, I want to magically live again just like in the movies.

The article The Modern Mummification Cryonics: Search for Immortality Continues by Alim Birkiye from fountainmagazine.com describes the process of Cryonics.

Mummification and Cryonics has the same purpose to preserve the dead but has different processes. Unlike mummification, Cryonics freezes the body to preserve and then cure it to bring it back to life. Although it sounds like impossible, a professor named James Bedford decided to freeze his body in 1967. Many people decided to also freeze there dead bodies but some stopped due to financial reasons. On 1994, the number of frozen bodies had risen and now a lot has signed up for this. The process begins if the body did not loose many cells, the first step is to hook a machine to body that provides oxygen to the still living tissues and at the same time the blood is drained then some chemicals are circulated so the body will not be damaged by the low temperature. No body has been proven revived but it is said that the skin, some tissues, red and white blood cells, the bone marrow, human embryos and the sperm survived the low temperature.

Although it was said in the article that Cryonics can be cheap I would still look at it as very expensive. The process could take a lot of time and who would pay if it took hundreds of years. To revive the dead that was frozen for a long time sounds impossible but with out modern technology we cannot really say if it is impossible. The first person that will be revived by Cryonics will be lucky and at the same time miserable because if you wake up suddenly after a long time then not one of your family is still alive or you got left behind by everything because a lot changes everyday then it is like having an amnesia. The possibility of immortality was also stated in the article so I assumed that it does not matter the age of the person who will be frozen and people could live for hundreds of years but still aging after they have been frozen. In contrast, I think that immortality is impossible but the possibility of people to live hundreds or even thousands of years could be true and their has to be a limit to that.