On January 12, 1967, Dr. James Hiram Bedford became the world’s first person to be permanently cryonically preserved after death. He worked as a psychologist during his life, and developed kidney cancer which metasticized to his lungs. He died at the age of 73, and his remains began their own story.
James Bedford was not the first candidate to be frozen after death. In May 1965 a woman who wanted her body frozen died, but the hospital she was in would not cooperate with “life extension” staff who came to freeze her. In 1966 a woman actually was frozen after death, but she had been stored unfrozen for too long so researchers had no hope of her brain still being functional. She was removed from storage a few months later. But upon Dr. Bedford’s death, preservation researchers were on hand to freeze his body with ice cubes over the course of eight hours. They kept the body on artificial respiration to protect vital organs. Afterwards they drained his blood and replaced it with antifreeze to minimize ice crystal formation. He was moved back and forth between Arizona and California to different storage facilities over the years (narrowly escaping the Chatsworth disaster, in which nine cryonics patients were accidentally thawed) and is now in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Sources:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901998,00.html
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/BedfordSuspension.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bedford
On January 12, 1967 the first person successfully preserved by cold after death was frozen. He may be revived once people have discovered a cure for cancer, and a way to unfreeze him, and a cure for death.
