This Day in History (12-Jan-1967) – Dr. James Bedford is cryonically preserved, the first person to be suspended for the sake of waking up in the future

A group called the Life Extension Society offered, in 1965, to freeze someone free of charge as a pilot project to test whether the concept was viable. Dr. James Bedford, a psychology professor, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, applied and was eventually chosen. On January 12, 1967 he died of kidney cancer. He was 73 years old. The process of freezing him began a few hours after his death in a Glendale, California nursing home. His body was soaked in a sort of primitive anti-freeze to protect organs from tissue damage as part of the freezing process, and his brain was injected with a chemical called DMSO, which would later prove controversial.



As long ago as 1773, Benjamin Franklin expressed his regret at being born into the world ‘too near the infancy of science.’ He wished to be preserved and later revived in order to fulfil his ‘very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence.’ Others, too, dreamed of having their corpses frozen in order that they might later be brought back to life. Yet it was not until the scientific advances of the 1960s that cryopreservation became a reality.