Episode Transcript
Episode 20. Cryopreservation with Dr Emil Kendziorra
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[00:00:00] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Now it's possible. I can't say it's a guarantee, it's far from a guarantee, but it's possible that in the future, medical technology will advance enough, so that you can bring people back from that cryo preservation. So that they can then live on at the time when the cancer that killed them in the first place is curable.
Just like in the past we died due to infectious diseases. Now you take antibiotics. Just like in the past when your heart stopped in the 1960s, people said, okay, that's it. Now it's medical mal practice. You can bring people back from what people in the past would've called well, they're dead forever. Just like how we would say right now, once someone is cryopreserved, right, they're dead forever. That might not at some point be the case anymore.
[00:01:00] Mizter Rad: Hello, beautiful humans. So this one is gonna go a bit different to how I recorded my previous episodes. I'm recording this one live. From Berlin and with over 40 people attending this live conversation. I'm very thankful with our sponsors today that made the release party of the Mr. Rad Show unforgettable.
I wanna start with thanking Mindspace in Kudamm. For hosting us in their beautiful location. I also wanna thank Something and Nothing. These guys have the perfect drinks for all the curious people out there, and they certainly match our show a hundred percent. I'm also very grateful with Mountain's Goat from Austria. They provided us with their refreshing tonic with a touch of cannabis and lemon. It was delicious. And of course, I also wanna thank the one and only Mondhügel, a self-produced spirits brand from Kreuzberg, Berlin. And by the way, these guys are opening a new bar in that city very soon. So if you're around Berlin, make sure you go and check 'em out.
And without further ado, I wanna introduce my guest today. I normally do these shows on Twitter. They're also live, but they're online. They're not offline, they're not in real life. So it's a bit different today, but I'm gonna try to wing it. And today I have Emil Kendziorra with me. He's a doctor, he's a medical doctor.
He is the founder of Tomorrow Biostasis. And he's chairman of the European Biostasis Foundation. He also has a lot of experience doing cancer research before starting what he's doing now. And what he's doing now, which is something that he is being, or he wants to dedicate himself for the next decade is advancing biostasis and crypto, or crypto medicine, uh, sorry, not crypto, cryo, it's all, crypto is all over the place. But crypto, you can also call it crypto, right? Yeah. You, you could,
[00:03:01] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: I, well, maybe you could,
[00:03:04] Mizter Rad: but anyway, I wanna give the word to Emil. Emil, how did we get here?
How... what, what on earth happens?
What on earth goes through your head when someone says, I wanna freeze my body. Why? Why the heck would someone want to do that?
[00:03:20] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Well, I would say greater. Great plan. No, listen. Um, first I would, no, so, so, um, may maybe to briefly introduce what cryo preservation even is and what we do. Right.
[00:03:30] Mizter Rad: Please.
[00:03:31] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Of course, freezing your body, that's always the kind of, if I talk to journalists, that's the, the headline I need to deal with.
But we do a lot to not freeze anything. It's basically, it's basically, from a fundamental idea, it's the same what you might know from science fiction movies, right? You know, if you go to another star and then you go into these capsules. And then sometimes they're malfunction. Cuz of course movies are always more interesting if there's a bit dystopian.
Um, this, this process of basically if, if you want to, if you want to not age for a very long time, you go into these cryo capsules and then, you know, the smoke comes and then you wake up at the same age, I don't know, a thousand light years, uh, at another star.
So, so I studied medicine and went into cancer research, even though I didn't practice much as a, as a doctor. I went into that space to go into the, what would be now called the longevity space. This idea that at some point in the future, just like in the past, people died at the age of 40, right? And everybody felt like, Hey, 40 is fine.
Now everybody would say 40. Way before their time. Tragedy. Right? Whereas everybody now says at 85, well still of course sad for the family and so on, but everybody kind of accepts it. In my mind, and this is why I studied in medicine and did all what I did after, um, how long someone should, how, how long someone lives should be their choice, right?
And so if I, if I would be diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, basically I have two options. I can either be cremated, well, assuming it's like incurable cancer. And this is the cancer that it'll work for. There are luckily some cancers right now that are to a degree curable, at least have good five or 10 year survival rates.
But let's say I'm being diagnosed with incurable cancer, then I have basically options to be cremated or buried. I'm personally not religious enough to think there's anything after that, right? In my mind, that's it. Or I have the chance to be cryopreserved. Which is basically a technique where at the time of death you don't do it earlier, right?
It's the last ditch effort when the early alternative would be cremation or burial. With a specific procedure, you cool down the body, you don't freeze anything. You cool them down to very, very low temperatures. And at that temperature you can now maintain the body practically indefinitely. And now if it turns out that the connections in my brain make me, me, and the connections in your brain, and it's a bit more complex of course, but like figuratively speaking, make you, you, that part is being kept around.
Now it's possible. I can't say it's a guarantee, it's far from a guarantee, but it's possible that in the future, medical technology will advance enough so that you can bring people back from that cryo preservation. So that they can then live on at the time when the cancer that killed them in the first place is curable.
Just like in the past we died due to infectious diseases. Now you take antibiotics, right? Just like in the past when your heart stopped in the 1960s, no one did C P R. Cpr, it has only been around since the 1960s. When the heart stopped, people said, okay, that's it. Now it's medical mal practice. You can bring people back from what people in the past would've called well, they're dead forever. Just like how we would say right now, once someone is cryopreserved, right, they're dead forever. That might not at some point be the case anymore.
[00:06:52] Mizter Rad: So how many people in your experience are cryopreserved at the moment?
[00:06:57] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Somewhere around 550 worldwide.
[00:07:00] Mizter Rad: Really?
[00:07:00] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: So it's a very novel topic.
It's, you know,
[00:07:03] Mizter Rad: they're already frozen, they're ready. Okay, let's call it frozen
[00:07:06] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: for arguments sake. Of course, I can fight against that. That's right. For, for let's, it's much easier to say frozen.
[00:07:12] Mizter Rad: Okay, so 500 people, they're already cryopreserved. And where are their bodies, for example, where, where are they storing the bodies?
[00:07:19] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Usually at nonprofit foundations. Okay. So there's a couple in the US. There's one in China. There's one in in Australia now. And there's one minus in ours is in Switzerland. Okay. So at one of these, one of these foundations.
[00:07:32] Mizter Rad: So these foundations are storage places for bodies more or less.
[00:07:36] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Kind of, they're research institutes.
Okay. But they also then have just like you can store cells in cryo preservation, right. In, in, in you you can store technically whole bodies. Just, you know, the capsules are a bit
[00:07:47] Mizter Rad: larger. So you can technically store whole bodies, but also you can store the brain, for example, or someone only at only brains.
[00:07:54] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: At, not everywhere, but at some you can, yeah.
[00:07:56] Mizter Rad: Okay. So you can choose, let's say, yeah. What you wanna store. Yeah. So let's say, let's take this example. I'm 39 right now. I feel fit, I am healthy, and I, but let's say I'm tired of, you know, being in this. Mm-hmm. Reality. And next year I say, okay, whatever. Ciao, I wanna go, I wanna cryopreserve my body.
Can I do that already?
[00:08:20] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Strongly advise against it.
[00:08:22] Mizter Rad: Okay. Why?
[00:08:23] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Well, so, um, there's multiple reasons. First of all, there's a lot of ethical reasons and, and moral reasons. And to be fair, I think there's, in the end is your choice and not anybody else's. Mm-hmm. Um, from a medical perspective though, if you want to have a good cryopreservation... cryopreservation is still an active research topic. Right. So I would definitely not advise anybody does that now cause they just want to, right.
[00:08:43] Mizter Rad: But yet there are 500 people.
[00:08:45] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: No, but they've not done that because they just wanted to do it. They've done that because they're, they died. Right. Okay. So they had some terminal disease, um, and they died of that terminal disease, and then instead of being cremated or buried, they decided to be cryopreserved instead.
[00:09:00] Mizter Rad: Okay. I see.
[00:09:01] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: So it should not be, I, I don't think this should be a choice. I don't think the technology is yet good enough to just say, I'm doing this. In fact, it's far from good enough to do that. Okay. Think it. Only it's, it's morally and at least in my mind, acceptable if you do it at the time when the alternative is cremation or burial.
And arguably if you wanna be around in the future, that alternative would be worse.
[00:09:21] Mizter Rad: So the alternative is cremation or getting buried?
[00:09:25] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah
[00:09:25] Mizter Rad: being buried.
[00:09:25] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: In most countries it is. There might be some other alternatives, but in most countries these are the two options.
[00:09:29] Mizter Rad: Is it illegal in most of the countries cryopreservation or legal?
[00:09:33] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: legal in most countries...
[00:09:33] Mizter Rad: Legal?
[00:09:34] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: As a research, so, so cry preservation...
[00:09:36] Mizter Rad: as a research...
[00:09:37] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: it's basically you donate your body to research. Just like you donate your body to a medical university for, you know, educating doctors and so on, right? It's not a form of burial, right? It's a form of research where you donate your body to a scientific institute, and cryo preservation is depending on the country.
Either it's research or it's an experimental and try kind of would be the direct translation. Um, it is not a form of burial.
[00:10:02] Mizter Rad: Okay. So take me through the process. I, let's say I'm 80. I'm, I'm already on my way out. Mm-hmm. Uh, I can feel it actually. So I say, okay, you know what? I wanna be cryo preserved. I don't want the other two options.
Mm-hmm. I wanna be cryo preserved because I have the hope that in 500 years from now I'm gonna be waken up and Yeah. Live my life right as it was before. What's the process? What do I have to do?
[00:10:27] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Right? So let's say someone comes to us and has that, has that story, we would now like first try to make sure that the person really understands what they're signing up for, right?
So as, as a doctor, not only as a doctor, but in general, I think informed consent is highly important for it, right? So for you to sign up, it's very important that you understand, we don't know if it's gonna work. We don't know when it's gonna work, and so on and so on. So there's a lot of red tape around it.
Right.
But if you still say, Hey, listen, yes, I understand. I still wanna do it. Right? Um, then you would sign up, you basically sign a contract that says: I if I die, if I'm pronounced by a doctor, I donate my body to a medical, to, to this top, to this research topic. Right? Then at the time of death, right? You or the doctors would tell us, let's say you have now, now you're really dying in a hospital. Right? The doctors tell us that. You might die in the next couple of days. Mm. We send one of our medical teams to the hospital. The ho the team would now wait in front of the hospital. And then the second you're pronounced, basically what happens, right when the heart stops, the rest of the body is not supplied with oxygen anymore, and then gradually the cells start dying.
Right? It's, it's not like a one zero thing right? When you're being pronounced, right? Um, if, if you do it relatively, uh, quickly after circulatory arrest, after the heart stops, right? The cells start dying slowly.
[00:11:42] Mizter Rad: How slowly? How fast? How fast?
[00:11:44] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Well, so it depends on the technology, right? And it depends on technology and how cool you are.
So how cool if, if someone, if one of our hearts hopefully doesn't happen, but stops now, right?
[00:11:54] Mizter Rad: Then how much time do we have?
[00:11:56] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Minutes. Minutes. Like, okay, so five minutes, maybe four minutes. Like I think there have been some cases with SE six and seven minutes after that you have with churn technology, irreparable, um, brain damage in most cases. Okay. You can't bring fever back, right? There have been cases where people were cooled. So one typical case is when children go ice skating in the, in the winter and fall into the water. There have been a case from a doctor in Sweden, I think, that died during, during this died technically, but she's still alive, but had a hard, a heart stopped.
Um, and then she fell into a small river right in, in ice water. She was resuscitated after 40 minutes. Right? And that the trick is cooling, right? Basically why the cells die, cuz the cells need oxygen to do metabolism, right? If you cool, the metabolic rate goes down so the cells need less oxygen. So they start these basically cell deaths is not, it's, it's partly a passive process, but it's also an active process.
So it's basically, it's kind of a self recycling process. Every individual cell says, I don't have enough oxygen. I should start self recycling.
[00:13:04] Mizter Rad: How, what do you mean with that?
[00:13:06] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: So, so basically cells, you know, cells die all day long. Right? Okay. And since the body doesn't want to have like that cells lying around, it basically self recycles them.
I mean, of course we're making this very simple, but self recycles, right? And one of the trigger of self recycling, recycling is not having enough oxygen.
[00:13:22] Mizter Rad: So, But you mean self recycling cells? Recycling would be self destroys itself. Destroy itself...
[00:13:28] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: basically. Yeah.
[00:13:29] Mizter Rad: Okay. Because the other cells are also lacking oxygen.
[00:13:32] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah. Yeah. So every cell starts at if, if your heart stops, every cell starts at at the same time. But if you cool you, you slow this process. Okay. Right. And if you cool further, then you can stop this process. Mm. Now if you fall into an ice river, you might have 40 minutes tonight. Mm. What we do, we start cooling.
And we give cardiopulmonary support. So we do what you would do in cpi. You, we supply the body with oxygen, right? We give oxygen, we do chest compressions, we give medication and so on to. Basically expand this time where yes, there might be some processes going on. Mm. But they have not advanced enough so that they're arguably not recoverable.
[00:14:11] Mizter Rad: Mm. But how do you, sorry, to interrupt, but how do you cool your body?
How do you cool the body? Cuz you said that that's part of the process.
[00:14:16] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah. There are multiple ways. So just like in the Ice River, right? Yeah. You flow ice water around the body.
[00:14:22] Mizter Rad: Okay, so is there's a bathtub with ice and you...
[00:14:24] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: yeah. Basically.
[00:14:25] Mizter Rad: The body there, basically more or less...
[00:14:26] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: basically. Yeah. We have mobile operating rooms that are basically ambulances that have operation tables. And these operation tables have vaults. So you can have ice water flowing around?
You can do, you can do, uh, what is called peritoneal lavage. So use basically the space in the, in the, the abdomen.
Mm. To flow cold water. Mm. Through the, through the abdo, right? Mm-hmm. Um, So this is how we initially cool. And then to really cool fast, um, you put the person on a bypass just like you would in an OR, right? Like on cardiopulmonary bypass. Where you basically use the circulatory system to flow cool fluids through the whole body.
And this cooling then is very, very fast.
[00:15:06] Mizter Rad: So is the blood coming out at this same time?
[00:15:08] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah. And you replace all the blood.
[00:15:10] Mizter Rad: So you take out the blood and you put inside some cooling.
[00:15:13] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Now might the question be where? Where will the blood in the future come from? Right. But okay. Synthetic blood.
[00:15:18] Mizter Rad: That's a good question.
Actually, I didn't think about that. Answer to that...
[00:15:20] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: I mean, you can do blood transfusions right now. Right? Okay. Like blood transfusions, synthetic blood is probably not that far away. So blood is, blood is uh, luckily a very easy thing to replace. If the blood is being taken out, it's being placed against these fluids initially for cooling and then against so-called cryo protective agents.
That's why we don't do freezing. Of course you don't want ice crystal, right? Everybody who ever put a strawberry in a freezer and took it out or had the strawberry doesn't survive freezing well.
It's like it's mush, right? Um, cuz the cellular structure of that strawberry is destroyed by the ice, by the ice crystals.
The ice crystals are sharp and so on. So you don't want ice crystals. So, We basically give a fluid, we replace not only the blood, but the whole water antibody against the fluid that you can cool to extremely low temperatures. In our case at the end, at negative 1 96 degrees Celsius.
[00:16:08] Mizter Rad: Negative 1 96.
[00:16:09] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: 1 96.
So 100 around 200 degrees below
[00:16:13] Mizter Rad: freezing. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Because now I'm, I'm thinking, where do you preserve this fluid? Where, what kind of storage. Where do you store this fluid? Because it needs to be,
[00:16:22] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: yeah, so they're so-called doers, like these fluid that's very well these bodies including with the fluid, right?
Um, or do you mean the fluid that goes into the body?
[00:16:31] Mizter Rad: That goes into your body...
[00:16:32] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: oh yeah. So that's the fluid into the body just stays in the body. Okay. So you, you basically replace all the water against that cryo protective agent. And now you can, now there's no water anymore. Now you can cool down without ice crystals forming.
[00:16:44] Mizter Rad: Me. Okay. Yeah. And the ice crystals are not good because they would penetrate the tissue...
[00:16:49] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: yeah. One of the reasons it's the most, yeah that's one of the reasons why you don't want ice crystals forming me. They're just sharp. They basically, they, they puncture cells and they puncture, you know, literally just physical there.
There there's other types of damage. But the puncture...
[00:17:02] Mizter Rad: So that's, that's why basically technically it's not really freezing your body otherwise.
[00:17:05] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah. That's why always, you know, whenever I, when the, the, you know, the newspaper and the articles always have like an ice cube and then there's a brainless ice cube, then we ask if maybe we can change that picture and then like, I didn't even pick that picture.
The editor did. We can't change it. Yeah. And I understand it to a degree of course cuz like, it's very, it's easy to understand, right? With a picture like that. I'm only arguing cause we do everything to not have that happen. It's not like, it's like slightly incorrect. Everything we do is to not do that.
Right. So that's, I usually lose these discussions.
[00:17:35] Mizter Rad: Okay. So, so let's go back to the process. You, let's say I'm 80. I'm, I'm going, I'm on, I'm on my way out, like I said, um, I know that's happening. I, I alert you guys, you're on alert. Um, and it's my date. It's coming. I'm gone. Okay. You have five minutes, 10 minutes.
You apply the substance, the, the, the anti freezing? No, the, the super cold substance.
[00:17:56] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: It's a medical antifreeze.
[00:17:58] Mizter Rad: And then what happens?
[00:18:00] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: So after that, right now you first, now, now we have time. Now we can cool down to around negative 80 degrees. Okay. While we do this, we drive to, in our case, to our research institute in Switzerland.
It's run by this nonprofit foundation. And there you would cool down very, very, very, very slowly from negative 80, well, from negative one, basically you cool fast to negative 80, then you cool fast to negative 130. And from negative 130 to negative 1 96, you cool very, very, very slowly. Um, over, around a hundred hours.
[00:18:33] Mizter Rad: And why is that?
[00:18:34] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Uh, it's, it's, it's a detail, but, um, so. I mean, we we're getting a bit technical now, so
[00:18:39] Mizter Rad: let's do it...
[00:18:39] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: okay. And if someone has questions, we can dig. We can dig much deeper.
[00:18:42] Mizter Rad: Let's do it. Let's do it.
[00:18:42] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: So at negative 31, 130 degrees, you go to what is called the glass transition temperature.
[00:18:48] Mizter Rad: Okay.
[00:18:49] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Basically there's fluid and the body now make goes kind of a state change from, well, kind of fluidy. Flexible to a glass like structure. So basically it becomes a glass like structure. Okay? And now the glass like structure is kind of a solid. Now, if you would, cool fast. Parts of the outside would cool faster than the inside, for example.
And since it's a solid, you generate thermal stress. Just because like parts, like the outside like shrinks a bit, right? And you have thermal stretch. Cause this is solid, it doesn't, cannot release that pressure. Now. And of course now this pressure needs to release. So you can have this, you can have fracturing basically similar, if you think of ice cubes, sometimes you have ice cubes, you have these fractures in them.
This is basically these types of fractures would happen. Mm. So you wanna very cool, very, very slowly. So you give enough time to release the pressure. Okay. Um, and there's other techniques you can do as well, but by and large, that's it. Why you do it very slowly. And then once you've reached negative 1 96, you basically put the patient into a, a large capsule, not as picturesque as you might remember them from the science fiction movies.
But it's basically a large stainless steel three meter high, one meter diameter, um, capsule. Where these patients are now in liquid nitrogen. Mm. A fluid that is naturally at the temperature of one negative 1 96. So you just need to, you don't need electricity or anything. You just fill new liquid nitrogen into it.
And now at that stage, there's no more degradation. There's no more damage. There's no more nothing. And now arguably, he'll just wait it out, right? Mm. If it takes 50 years, it takes 50 years. If it takes a hundred years, so be it. If it takes more, okay.
[00:20:26] Mizter Rad: Takes 50 years for what?
[00:20:28] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Until medical technology has advanced enough, to do three things.
To a, let's say you died of cancer, so the cancer of course, needs to be cured. Right? So you need to cure the underlying disease that led to the personal death in the first place.
B, you need to be able to reverse the cryopreservation procedure. And C,
[00:20:46] Mizter Rad: we are not there yet. We, we cannot...
[00:20:47] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: no, we cannot do this.
You can do that with like small animals. You can do that. That's why I'm saying it's just a chance. I can't tell you how high the chance is. Right, right. I'm pretty confident it's better than cremation, but how much better? I don't know. Um, and if I say that I have some researchers in the US they're always like, why are you so negative?
We have these great, like it's pretty good. And the good cryopreservation con conditions based on what we understand, where memories come from, where identity coming from. And of course we don't fully understand it, right? But as much as we understand all of that is still there. Under good cryopreservation conditions.
Now basically you wait on, go ahead.
[00:21:26] Mizter Rad: Is, is, is that the reason why some people only preserve their brain, for example?
[00:21:30] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Well, the idea is that the rest of the body is technically, you know, we're not that far away from organ 3D printing. Probably. When I say not that far, I don't mean next year. Right. Probably.
Um, it's gonna take less time than bringing someone back from cryopreservation. So the idea here is, um, so I would always advocate for whole body. Cause you don't know, like, who knows. Right.
[00:21:51] Mizter Rad: Just, just so you guys know, there are two options. Preserving your brain or preserving the whole body. Right? And there's some people smiling and stuff.
It's, it's a bit, it's a bit. So, so
[00:22:00] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: whenever I, whenever I start using this talk, I start this with two slides and one slide says, there was a time when we didn't fly to America. And when we would, when we would've asked people, can we ever fly to America in the 1500, they would've said, first of all, they would've said America.
What?
And then B, they would've said, know. Crazy, right? Yeah. The second slide is, To go a bit like more recent, right? If you would've told doctors that we do heart transplantations in the 1950s, taking one heart and putting into another human at first hearing it. At first principle, that sounds pretty weird.
Right now it's standard practice. No one wants to miss it, right? So I think there's always a strong, if you talk about topics that are a bit in the future or a bit further in the future, there's always a, a strong bias of first saying, Hey, this sounds very out there.
[00:22:46] Mizter Rad: Super weird...
[00:22:46] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: but so was flying, right?
Mobiles. Like, even when I was young, right? Mobiles was, weren't in a thing. Even at all. Right? And now everybody has more computational power in their pocket than probably the whole city had back then. So like, progress is, is really, really, really difficult to predict. So I think it's almost impossible to say what will be possible in a hundred years.
And so I, I always think about these topics if I'm not aware of something that is not possible in principle. And for cryo preservation, I'm not aware any of anything that way. It's not possible in principle. If the alternative is cremation again, I might as well try it.
[00:23:20] Mizter Rad: When you talk about like futuristic ideas, tech, futuristic technologies, some people maybe even like make fun of it.
I guess one of the main challenges, and maybe you correct me if I'm not right, is funding, maybe getting funding from investors. You probably need a lot of money to like do a lot of research. But also, maybe another challenge is, from a medical perspective, from a technical perspective, stuff that maybe you don't even think about cuz you're not there yet.
I wanna know from your side, what are the main, those main technical, mechanical, or medical challenges that right now you're having and that you would like to solve during your lifetime?
[00:24:01] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah, so, so that's, that's a long list, right? So, um, usually in biology, that's always a long list. It's not like this one thing that is really problematic if, in fact cry and cryo preservation, if you would be able to cool much faster and warm much faster.
Which is just physically not possible, right? So if you warm something large, then the outside warms the inside is still ice. So hot pocket problem in the microwave for putting something the microwave has taking that problem. So, um, if you would be able to do that, a lot of problems would go away.
But by and large it's, it's like you can't cool fast enough. There's still some amount of ice formation, right? You don't know how you're gonna warm up fast enough. These cry protective agents, they're a bit toxic, so you wanna reduce toxicity and so on and so on. That's a very, very long list. So I think about this in the following way.
I have like statistically speaking about 50 years left if nothing fundamental changes, right? Mm-hmm. So I just wanna make it as good as possible. First low hanging fruits, then more complex stuff. Um, So, so again, like as many of these problems as possible to either solve them or at least find significantly better answers,
[00:25:04] Mizter Rad: why is, um, cryop preserving or cooling the, the body faster a problem?
Why, why is that a problem still?
[00:25:12] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah. So, so ice crystal formation, it's, it's ice crystal formation is, is a, is a really complex process. Basically in short, if you cool fast, you outrun the ice crystal formation. So that's something which is called the critical cooling weight. If you cool faster than that, let's say you cool faster than one degree per minute, right down, then you don't get ice crystal formation.
So ice crystal formation is a, is a, yeah, it's a complex process and you can outrun it. Same if you warm up, you also get ice crystal formation during warming up. Cuz you need to remember, right? We warming up from negative 1 96. So let's say we warm up to negative 100, we're still under zero degrees, right? So we still get ice crystal formation. So there's something called the critical warming rate. So you also want warm up very fast. Mm. But physically warming and cooling something large volumes very fast is physics is a physics problem, basically. It's very difficult. But if you would be able to do that, you wouldn't have problems with ice crystal formation for example.
[00:26:07] Mizter Rad: Okay. So ice crystals is one of the main...
[00:26:09] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: it's one of the main commons, absolutely.
[00:26:11] Mizter Rad: Okay. And when you, like you personally, I believe you, you wanna freeze yourself?
[00:26:16] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: I don't want to like, so, um,
[00:26:17] Mizter Rad: no, but, but that's like the i'd much choice, let's say.
[00:26:20] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yes. So, so I, I definitely don't want to, right. I'd much rather, you know, let's say future medicine is very powerful and just take treatment A, B, c. Do take, take some pills and just live a longer, right.
That's the much better option. But biology is very hard and so I don't think this is gonna happen anytime soon. So, So if the, if the choice were, I said many times, if the choice is, I know I'm gonna die and I can choose between cremation or burial, or I can do cryopreservation, I am definitely don't wanna do cryopreservation, right. Because the alternative is worse.
[00:26:50] Mizter Rad: What, what are the values if someone wants to be cryopreserved, for example, just, you know, some numbers just so people know.
[00:26:56] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah, it's, it's very, very expensive. Cause very, very few people do it right. It's not only so, so if you do whole body cryo preservation. Switzerland of course, is unfortunately also expensive.
Um, with storage in Switzerland. It's currently somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 euros
[00:27:09] Mizter Rad: per year?
[00:27:10] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: No, one time. One time. Yeah. So, so the reason, the reason why it's so expensive or so cheap is because, um, you need to put around a one around 120,000 euros aside. No one gets that right. And that money is now invested with around one to 3% above inflation in return. And then maintenance of cryo preservation is just paid from that return.
Cuz I can't say it's, if it's gonna take 10 years, 20 years, it's not gonna be 10 if it's 50 years or a hundred years or much longer. So you need to be able to maintain cryo preservation indefinitely. So that's why you need to put a lot of money aside. One of our goals is to make it significantly more affordable.
Right. Because I, I don't like, the only reason why we offer brain preservation is not because I think brain preservation is embedded. I don't like that. Some people can't afford it. Right. Um, 200,000 euros. If you, if you look at population, a good amount of people, just, even if they want to, even if put all their money at the end of life, they would not be able to afford it.
And, and that is in my mind, just like it's not okay in medicine. It's not okay in cryo preservation. So, Um, but it's gonna take time until the cost comes down, unfortunately. But for now, um, yeah, it, it's a relevant cost.
[00:28:23] Mizter Rad: And how, how do you think the cost will come down?
[00:28:26] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: So there's basically three parts of what Cryopreserve Cryo preservation is expensive, right?
One is medical teams, right? Having medical teams that do the procedure. The second one is liquid nitrogen. You need to fill these twos, like basically liquid nitrogen boils off, right? And then you need to refill it. And then see, it's like building these buildings and having some personnel and so on. So, If you build larger volumes with liquid nitrogen, then the, the, the ratio between surface area and volume, you have less boil off.
Um, of course if you have one person, they can maintain one doer, but they can also maintain 50 doers, right? So that skates well and less, but not least, we now have one medical team here in the Lin. We have one in Zurich. We're literally building one. We have one in Amsterdam. We are building one in US and so on.
Um, but we have one team for, I don't know, in Berlin we have maybe, I don't know, 50 members, right? Mm-hmm. But we just would also need one team if we have a thousand members in Berlin, right? Mm-hmm. So all the cost scales quite well. Mm-hmm. Um, so the cost can count down significantly if significantly more people do it.
[00:29:28] Mizter Rad: So when you say you have a team in Berlin that is ready to jump in to cryopreserve the members of Berlin, is that the case? So if someone is a member of Biostasis tomorrow, Um, and they have an accident. These guys are ready to jump in and yeah, start with the procedure.
[00:29:44] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Kind of accidents are not great, right?
So we cannot pick people up from the street, right? Okay. What means to go to the hospital, right? So, um...
[00:29:51] Mizter Rad: not yet...
[00:29:52] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Um, yeah. Well, yeah. Not yet. Yes. Um, good. But luckily, most people die. Don't die due to accidents. Right. Most people, unfortunately, or fortunately for cryo preservation, know that they're gonna die soon-ish.
Right. Heart disease, you know, I don't know, cancer, and so on and so on.
[00:30:07] Mizter Rad: Is there a, like a, an ideal age where you kind of have to take that decision?
[00:30:12] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Nop. As old as possible.
[00:30:14] Mizter Rad: As old as possible?
[00:30:15] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: I mean, not as possible.
[00:30:16] Mizter Rad: I thought you was gonna say as young as possible.
[00:30:18] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: No, cuz so, so every additional, so, so of course you might argue that, you know, rather like core preserving a younger body is somehow better, right?
I don't know. For whatever. And to be fair, medically speaking it is. But every additional year you gain the improvement in technology probably is more important than the additional year that you have in age. Right? So, Wait as long as possible. Live as healthy as possible. Hopefully you are making the cut and there's just gonna be some treatment pill.
I don't think it's gonna be the case. And if anybody wants to bet, I'm taking a lot of bets there. Do it the last possible time. If you, of course so want to.
[00:30:53] Mizter Rad: I wanna pick your brain here and I wanna imagine a case, when you're cryo preserved and 500 years from now you wake up.
Do you think you're gonna be looked at as a king or as a weird person from the past? Are you gonna be like...
[00:31:09] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: somewhere between these two, it's...
[00:31:11] Mizter Rad: have you ever thought about it?
[00:31:12] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah, sure. Like, so, so, so I think there's a couple of arguments, right? So, um, um, so, so it's not gonna be king or weird person, right?
It's gonna be somewhere in the middle, right? Middle meaning like, they will be like, okay, cool. Like, Like, I mean, just like, let's say we would find someone now from, let's say 200 years ago, and we would be able to uncryopreserve them. Bring them back, right? Mm-hmm. It wouldn't be a king, it wouldn't be a weird person.
It would be like, okay, cool. That's like, I don't know, like, like somewhere in the middle. Normal. And...
[00:31:39] Mizter Rad: but I mean, if I, if I, if I would wake up someone today from the tier, you know, What, right. 1,850. That would be very interesting ... some people would find it weird as well.
[00:31:52] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah. The first time around. Until brought a few people back.
It'll be like, okay, sure. Now we can do that.
[00:31:58] Mizter Rad: All right. Yeah. You know what we were talking before, earlier when we met, about maybe this idea or this concept that scientists in cryo preservation, in the field of cryopreservation, may be sometimes, and you correct me if I'm wrong, inspired by nature.
Because we, you find species in nature where they actually do a process that is quite similar. Yep. Can you tell us a bit more about this and maybe some examples of some species that, you know Yeah. Do this to preserve themselves?
[00:32:27] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah. So it's, it's kind of a spectrum, right? Where on, on one end you have hibernation, right?
Why do you not hibernation? Because in winter there's not enough food, right? So they reduce their metabolic rate, and of course they don't reduce it to zero, but they reduce it to zero to use less oxygen, less food, less water, right?
Then going one step further towards cryo preservation, you have like this, like this, there are these frogs called tree frogs, right?
That can basically freeze themselves. They can go down, for all intents and purposes, they can do something akin to cryo preservation. Where they basically, they, they produce a, a solution, a compound that is very alike to a cryopreservation agent, where they can freeze to minus 20 degrees. You can put them in a freezer and they survive it, right?
They can't go to cryogenic temperatures, so they would not be able to go to negative 1 96. So there's still a bit of a difference.
[00:33:15] Mizter Rad: Cryogenic temperature is what?
[00:33:16] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Um, anything under 130 about.
[00:33:19] Mizter Rad: Okay.
[00:33:20] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: But one...
[00:33:20] Mizter Rad: so they can't go there?
[00:33:22] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: They're talking about, yeah, they can go to minus 20, but they can't go much lower.
Right. Um, but it's the same procedure. You reduce the metabolic rate. They do it of course in winter when again there's not enough food and so on and so on. Um, and they do it quite well cause they have this cryoprotective agents. So nothing freezes. And then you go further down. And of course on the other end you have the in cryopreservation, how we do it, right?
So this, this is, this is a technique that does exist in nature, at least very, very similarly.
[00:33:50] Mizter Rad: I find that super interesting because, you know, before understanding a bit of this topic, I didn't even like think that some species or some animals would, or maybe even didn't go through my head, that some species... that this is already happening right In nature.
That's super interesting. I mean, it's not weird actually for living beings in a way, you know, it's just that we don't know about it.
[00:34:11] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Right.
[00:34:12] Mizter Rad: I think education maybe, or awareness of this possibility is also a problem.
[00:34:17] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah.
[00:34:20] Mizter Rad: What, what happens when, you know, you encounter this kind of problem of awareness?
What do you have? What do you do? What's your, as a company, what's your objective? What, how do you wanna change this?
[00:34:29] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: So, so our objective is, is, um, so, so I, I don't think cryopreservation should be marketed too much.
[00:34:36] Mizter Rad: Okay. Why not?
[00:34:37] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Because, because, so if you come from this concept of informed content marketing kind of, um, implies, you know, just making someone do something as quick as possible, right?
Mm. Um, clicking buy as quick as possible. Whereas cryopreservation, um, and, and, and medical decisions, I think should be made with informed consent. Okay? Right? Meaning, you know, the pros and the cons, and you know the downsides and you know the upsides and you weigh these two, and then you, you make your personal decision based on your value system, right?
Just like when a doctor wants to operate or suggest an operation, right? Patient and doctors sit together and you, you fill one of these forms and it's all the downsides and you need to know the downsides. Of course, the doctors don't do it enough as they should cuz they don't have time. Well, don't give really care, but technically you should know what are the downsides, what are the alternatives and so on, right?
And in cryopreservation in my mind should be similar. Where, where people, after weighing the ups and the pros and cons make an informed decision for themselves. So from a, from a outreach perspective, what, what we do in that regard is trying to provide information, right? Giving, giving, um, giving people the tools and the information and the knowledge to make that informed decision.
So that's kind of how we work. So, so interviews like that, like, you know, giving, I don't know, we doing webinars. We do like open houses. And whatever we can do. Of course, we also have content online and so on and so on, to, to give people, um, to inform people about the option. Because of course a lot of people either didn't know that this was an option or they know about the concept and don't know this is reality unless you can actually know, sign a contract and do it.
Right. And then again, a lot of people might have heard about it, like, I don't know, at somewhere online and, but they've never really thought about it as a tangible thing.
[00:36:17] Mizter Rad: But you get a lot of pushback sometimes from some sort of circles of society, or, no, not really?
[00:36:23] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Much less than I thought.
[00:36:24] Mizter Rad: Really?
[00:36:24] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yes.
[00:36:25] Mizter Rad: So people are generally interested?
[00:36:26] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: No, they, they either, either they're saying, Hey, cool, but not for me. I would never do it, which is totally fine. Or they're interested. Or they're really like, interested in regards to just as, as, as a, it's an interesting topic. Or some people say, oh, it's interesting.
I, I don't, I don't even know if I wanna do it. I need to think about it.
[00:36:41] Mizter Rad: I wonder how many people here would actually freeze themselves. But, um, Oh, there you go. Yeah. Two more than average. More than population. More than average. Okay. Okay.
[00:36:52] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Not inversely, but population. I mean, this is not an average crowd, right?
It'S Berlin and so on and so on.
[00:36:56] Mizter Rad: Yeah. Well, I know, I know the crowd also has some people that are into spirituality and maybe meditation and awareness. And in crowd. Um, no. Here. Oh yeah. Yeah. Maybe not in crowd. No. Probably a smaller, yeah. Okay. So I know that, you know, the crowd has this kind of people that are, you know, practice meditation every day.
Spirituality maybe. There's even some, more religious people. And when you talk about cryo preservation, you're actually kind of saying, let's sort of recycle the body, or let's use the body later when the technology is there. And I wonder if you, if it ever go, goes through your mind if, when that happens, do you still keep that soul, that spirit when you wake up?
Do you have that same charisma that you had, that you have now? Do you still have that same smile the same way of, I don't know, maybe seeing life or seeing, you know, being a bit more meta? I'm, I'm trying to be a bit more meta here. I try to understand what you, if you ever, you know, thought about this.
[00:37:57] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah, of course.
Like, so for all intents and purposes, I mean, I personally, of course, soul you need to tell me what that is, so then I can answer, right? But, um, so for all intents and purposes, you are you. There's no, there's no subjective. If there's a difference, cryopreservation was not worth it. Then like if there's something like a soul, something metaphysical that we can't explain, then cryopreservation will not work.
Right. Cause then that is an important part that is metaphysical by definition cause so far, at least we don't have any scientific proof that this is there. Right. So cryo preservation currently primarily operates under the assumption that consciousness, memory, not memories, but consciousness and all of that it's an emerging quality from our connections in the brain. Right. And as long, as long as these are around, you are around. And now if you wake up, you would for all, for everything that we can say today, what makes me, me and you, you and anybody, someone, right? That that entity, that subject, would be around. With all their memories, with all their identity, with all their personality, with all their subjective emotions, and so on.
[00:39:02] Mizter Rad: Okay, so you would wake up the same...
[00:39:04] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: you would wake up and say, ah, I remember great that I did this choice. I remember when I was dying in the hospital, um, and now I'm in the whatever positive future.
[00:39:13] Mizter Rad: Yeah, that's, that's a bit strange in a way.
[00:39:16] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Oh yeah, absolutely. Sure. Yeah, that's a bit, but it's not fundamentally different than someone waking up, from an experience perspective, someone waking up from a coma after 10 years.
[00:39:24] Mizter Rad: But you could think that, um, You know, alternative view to that could be, you wake up being someone else because somehow something happened that science and medicine doesn't know about yet at this point.
[00:39:39] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Absolutely. So there, of course, there are unknown unknowns, right? So there might be stuff that, that we currently don't know, right?
I like the likelihood of you being someone else, I think is, it's, it's, it's very unlikely, at least if you don't mean someone else like let's say you have a car crash, right? And you, you lose, let's say the last month of your memories. Technically you're now someone else. But we in society, of course, would not say that person is someone else right now.
We would say it's the same person, but they lost their memory for the last month. Right? So that type of, someone else might happen. In a more metaphysical sense, someone really else, I, I, I see no reason why this would be the case. I think it's rather, either it doesn't work or it works and you're the same person.
I don't think that's the third option where you wake up and somehow you're someone else or your soul is not there. Whatever. I think this option practically I have, I don't see...
well, I can never say never. Right? So again, we don't know everything, so there might, there might be an off chance that this is the case, but I have would have no, based on my current understanding of how stuff works, I would have no reason to believe that this third option is a relevant risk.
[00:40:47] Mizter Rad: When you look at this world of, of synthetic biology and the future of life and maybe longevity, living longer. And this sort of like I see, at least in my experience, I've interviewed people also that, you know, create pill bots that you can like swallow and look at your interior of your body through your phone almost, and maybe even mini robots that travel through your brain and cut here and there, like in a, sort of like in a small surgery, right?
So that's the idea, right? That's not there yet, but there's a lot of people working towards that. When you look at this world and you kind of realize that the machine slash human connection is getting, or the frontier, the border, is kind of getting blurrier. It's kind of, I think at some point, imagine where you cannot really tell if it's, you know, a human, a robot or a humanoid. A mix of both.
[00:41:43] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah.
[00:41:44] Mizter Rad: So if we, if we get there, And, it gets so blurry. It gets so weird in a way that you can basically, or maybe so for some people it's cool. I personally think it's, it's a pretty cool, scenario, but if you can monitor your interior, let's say with your phone mm-hmm.
And you can, you know, also control, what happens inside of your body. Let's say you're missing some zink or some magnesium, you just click on it and you get a shot, Jeff, and then you feel much better. Uh, and you can do that on a real time basis. If we live in a culture like that, where we have more control, we can manipulate more of the body.
Do you think ideas like biostasis would be more accepted?
If we are there in that kind of culture, in that kind of environment where people are more used to sort of being able to manipulate your body as opposed to seeing the body as something untouchable because...
[00:42:42] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yes...
[00:42:43] Mizter Rad: culture have thought as that the body is sacred and the body is perfect and
[00:42:48] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: sure, absolutely.
[00:42:49] Mizter Rad: We are not Gods to touch it, to manipulate it in a way.
[00:42:52] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Um, yeah, absolutely. Sure. Like, um, but I think this is just a continuous process, right? I mean, everything we do is like, Sometimes I have this question, like, isn't it against nature? And I was like, okay, heart transplantations. I don't see any heart transplantations in nature.
Neither do I see glasses in nature. So, so, um, I think there's like, I think there's always an easy way of making arbitrary, arbitrary like thresholds where everything that we kind of often do, it's like, sure, that's normal. Everything that goes beyond that is okay. It's against nature. And then the, the Overton windows switch shifts a bit, and now suddenly we do more new things and then suddenly it's like, okay, sure now, now this part is not against nature anymore. Now it's normal, right?
So I think these lines are pretty much arbitrary. Um, and we as society just need to decide, um, if there's any societal downside to someone doing something. And otherwise, at least in my moral framework, I think, um, personal choice should be valued pretty highly.
And, um, if someone wants to be cryopreserved or do something else. Or click the button to get more magnesium, hey, hold the power... to
[00:43:49] Mizter Rad: go for it.
[00:43:51] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Um, yeah, I mean, if there's no downside, um, then like,
[00:43:55] Mizter Rad: do you think you're too early? Do you think you're too early with this idea? Um, in terms of, I understand that in your circle you have a lot of people maybe working on it. Or thinking that the idea is great or, you know, pushing, pushing you.
[00:44:07] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: For me, I'm too late. You should have started like 10 years ago. Um, no,
[00:44:11] Mizter Rad: I, no, I mean too early in terms of having sort of like a more massive
[00:44:15] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Yeah, of course. So, so if I would do this 20 years from now, I would probably have more people interested in it. Right? But then again, too early, kind of like too early, I think only works if there's a limited, I'm gonna do this till the end, till I die, right?
I'm gonna be trying to present. Right? Um, um, so, so I don't, I don't think, like for me, too early doesn't really exist. Cause too early, kind of... for my last startups, that there was always too early, right? Because you do it and if it doesn't work, you shut it down, right? This, I don't care. I tell our investors, like, you know, if I'm sitting around here with three people in five years, it's not my plan.
But so be it. I'm not gonna do something else due to this. Right. so I, I don't, I never think about it too early or too late or whatever. Um, um, like, kind of like what you would maybe normally, normally innovative of companies think about.
[00:44:58] Mizter Rad: Yeah. So you don't care if this basically doesn't work and,
[00:45:02] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: uh, no.
I care very much if it works, but, um, I, I don't care about what the rest of... if, if there's like, markets demand. Okay. Right. I would, I would try to,
[00:45:13] Mizter Rad: so you don't see this like a, like let's say like a typical, obviously it's not a typical company, but Yeah. You don't, you don't wanna even...
[00:45:20] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: I'm not selling it.
I'm not like, it's a, it's a, it's a mission driven thing. It's not even like parts of it done, non-profit. Right. Most all the long storage, long term storage is a nonprofit. Right. It's a, so
[00:45:30] Mizter Rad: the, the company in Switzerland, not the foundation in Switzerland.
[00:45:33] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: The foundation in Switzerland. Yeah. Um, so it's a, it's a, it's a mission driven, it's a mission.
It's not, it's not a, it should, it's a company, but it's not, it's not a business. Even though, of course there are business parts and so on. But, um, I'm not doing that to make money with it.
[00:45:46] Mizter Rad: Do you think you, you convinced someone here to cryopreserve themselves? Should we ask?
[00:45:51] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: Uh, usually there's like one, no, like...
[00:45:54] Mizter Rad: at least one...
[00:45:55] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: like, again, I'm not there to convince anybody. Right. So I, I'm there.
[00:45:58] Mizter Rad: No, I know, I know that's not your objective. Right. But with you explaining what it is and how it works, et cetera, maybe someone got convinced.
[00:46:04] Dr. Emil Kendziorra: So, so my, my, my goal or my, like, success would be if one of some people would say now huh? I should think about this.
[00:46:11] Mizter Rad: Okay. So is anyone now we can open up, I think for questions if anyone has questions. But also I wanna know if someone would actually consider cryopreserving themselves. We have one here, 2, 3, 4. Wow. No, no. You can do it now if you want.
