Today, we dive into the frontier of human longevity—where science meets the dream of defying death itself. The medical practice of and research into living longer are surging in popularity, driven by breakthroughs in AI, genomics, and regenerative medicine. From the practical science, to science fiction hopes—could immortality itself be closer than we think? Our cover story is: Frozen.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Step into a world unlike any other.

James Arrowood: Good morning.

Sharyl: Hello, how are you? Sharyl Attkisson.

Arrowood: Welcome to Alcor. Come on in.

Sharyl: Thank you. It is a pretty big building.

Arrowood: It is a large building, yup.

James Arrowood heads up Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a nonprofit pushing the boundaries of life and death.

Sharyl: In one sentence, what would you tell people Alcor is?

Arrowood: Alcor is a scientific research and educational laboratory essentially. Alcor focuses on the cryo-preservation, or long-term storage of human remains for various research purposes.

This video shows the so-called member being prepared for freezing upon her legal death. Alcor counts 1,500 living members and more than 250 preserved “patients” of all ages.

Arrowood: We also have Matheryn.

Sharyl: She’s three years old?

Arrowood: Matheryn is about two and a half years old. So she’s the youngest patient at Alcor.

Arrowood: You can actually see here, these are called dewars. And these are the giant tanks, they are specially engineered, they cost over a $100,000 a piece.

In these icy chambers, science and hope intertwine, preserving not just bodies, but the possibility of a future where death is no longer the end.

Sharyl (on-camera): Human heads and bodies are preserved in these giant tanks at temperatures around -320 Fahrenheit using a special cryopreservation fluid to prevent what a layman might call “freezer burn”.

Arrowood: This is called M22 and I call it ‘liquid gold’ for its color, but also because it’s so expensive. So this one bag is gonna be about three to $5,000.

Sharyl: How many would you put in a person if the whole body’s preserved?

Arrowood: Whole body person my size, probably 15 bags.

For me, this is a return trip, I first visited Alcor when reporting for CNN back in 1992.

(CNN clip, 1992)

Sharyl: They’re not dead?

Carlos Mondragon, Pres., Alcor: Not necessarily. That’s the whole thesis of cryonics. There is still some hope for them.

Alcor’s leader back then predicted we’d be nearing revival by now. That hasn’t happened—yet.

That’s just fine with Arrowood.

Arrowood: The aspirational goal always has been, ‘Hey, what if this could be used to revive your brain?’ When I came in to lead Alcor it, the focus changed a bit because we need to show what we can do today that builds credibility.

He says Alcor’s research could revolutionize organ transplants and beyond.

Arrowood: And we’re looking at things like cancer applications for chemotherapy. We’re looking at space travel, we’re looking at a number of things now that like with many aspirational kind of technologies, now they’re emerging technologies and now there’s complementary technologies.

Alcor guards the identities of many patients per family wishes. But baseball legend Ted Williams and his two children are rumored to rest in these tanks. Even the unnamed hold keys to a sci-fi puzzle.

Arrowood: So James Bedford, he’s the first person cryo-preserved here at Alcor.

Born in 1893, James Bedford was cryonically preserved in 1967, the first of his kind. He’s moved from his original capsule to more modern tech.

Arrowood: But his brain was fully formed about 1915. Right? Well the reason that’s significant is because those are the only brain cells that aren’t chemically fixated or mummified that exist that we know of that could be used to see post-industrial versus pre-industrial DNA in the brain. So those are pure brain cells.

Sharyl: There’s no toxins that we’re familiar with, obviously plastics and chemicals?

Arrowood: Right. Vastly important to science. Right? Incredibly valuable. And we have it.

Research might be the practical goal. But the allure of immortality lingers. David Katz is not just an aging researcher. He’s also a member.

Sharyl: Did what you learn as a student of this influence your desire or your thought that maybe someday this will be possible?

David Katz: Yeah, I think aging will be cured. It’s just a matter of time and if I don’t make it in my lifetime, I’ll be preserved. And then when aging is cured and they figure out the engineering problem of bringing people back, hopefully I’ll be brought back.

Sharyl: How expensive is the process?

Arrowood: Most people, including myself, fund this with life insurance. If you get the right kind of life insurance, it’s about the cost of a funeral—by the time you pay premiums about 30 to 50k. The cost on paper, if you paid full price would be $80,000 for neuro or about $220,000 for whole body.

As for Alcor’s youngest

Arrowood: So we do allow families to come and pay respects or come and visit. We actually laser-etched, put it on this dewar. And so she’s here and they know where to identify her. She died, unfortunately, of brain cancer. And her father was a brain cancer researcher. But he recognized that she might be valuable for science and might be valuable for research. And of course, hopefully someday, if there were ever a way to revive her that would be useful.

Watch video here.