Over 50 years later, people are still curious if science can bring a frozen person back to life. Can today’s technology revive someone who has been dead for decades? Many want to know. Dr. James Hiram Bedford, a wealthy man, believed it might be possible. In hopes of living again, he had his body frozen with the plan to be revived in 2017.
Now, three years after that target date, people are asking: what happened to him?
James Hiram Bedford was a psychology professor at the University of California and a World War I veteran. He lived an exciting and adventurous life in the mid-1900s. He married twice and traveled to many places, including Africa, the Amazon rainforest, and countries like Greece, Turkey, Spain, England, Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland. He even drove along the Alcan Highway to Canada and Alaska, being one of the first to do so.
In 1967, James was diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer that had spread to his lungs. Medical treatments at the time couldn’t save him, and he had to face the reality of his situation. However, after reading The Prospect of Immortality by Dr. Robert Ettinger, which discussed freezing a body after death to possibly bring it back to life in the future, James became inspired. He chose to undergo cryonics and was frozen by Robert Nelson, who injected him with a chemical called dimethyl sulfoxide shortly after his death on January 12, 1967.
Before James, a woman in Arizona was frozen in 1966, but her preservation lasted only a few months. Experts think her body was frozen too late, leading to cell damage and the likelihood of severe brain injury if she were ever revived.
James Bedford’s freezing process became widely known in January 2017, when the Daily Telegraph reported on it. According to the report, James’ last words to Robert Nelson, one of the scientists involved in his preservation, were: “I am not doing this because I think I will be revived. I am doing this in the hope that my descendants can benefit from this amazing scientific experiment.”
James set aside over $100,000 (around 2 billion VND today) to cover the costs of the freezing process. On January 12, 1967, at 73 years old, he died of a heart attack in a nursing home. To prepare his body for cryonics, Dr. Renault Able performed CPR to keep his blood circulating, then replaced all his blood with dimethyl sulfoxide, a chemical used to protect his organs. His body was frozen in liquid nitrogen at -196°C.
In 1991, 24 years later, Alcor, a cryonics company, inspected James’ body to check its condition. When they opened the metal container, they found him wrapped in a light blue sleeping bag secured with nylon straps. He was transferred to a new liquid nitrogen tank for further preservation.
Technicians reported that his body was surprisingly well-preserved. His face appeared younger than his age at death, though there were some issues. Parts of his chest and neck were discolored, there were holes in his body, and his nose and mouth emitted faint blood odors. His eyes were partially open with icy white corneas, his legs were crossed, and there were cracks in his skin. Despite these changes, the overall preservation was deemed good. The team rewrapped him in a fresh sleeping bag and returned him to the tank.
Now, over 50 years later, James remains frozen alongside 145 others, waiting for the day science might bring them back to life.