Welcome to a mind-boggling possibility

The other challenge is to avoid damaging the brain while returning the temperature to normal. The rise in temperature could damage the preserved organ. For example, some human egg cells preserved in low temperature are damaged during the "unfreezing" process, reducing the possibility of their fertilization by 20 to 30 percentage points than usual.

If all these problems are solved and the brain is successfully revived, future doctors will face another challenge: finding the right body and "implanting" the revived brain into it, just like they do with kidneys and livers today.

There is no record of a successful human brain transplantation. Some reports say the first brain transplantation "might possibly" be done in Harbin Medical University in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province this year. We can only wish the recipient and hospital good luck.

To implant a brain into a new body, doctors must connect all the blood vessels, nerves and the spine, and re-establish signal channels in the nerves to make sure the brain can command the new body. They must also avoid rejection reaction of the immune system so that the brain and the body recognize and accept each other.

Most of, if not all, these technologies sound like magic to today's doctors.

That's why Alcor responded to the media's questions saying it was only responsible for preserving a body or brain, and its revival would depend on future medical technologies. It is right. Bringing a dead person or his/her brain back to life is still not possible or plausible. Only the future can give the answer.

The author is deputy editor-in-chief at Encyclopedic Knowledge and a former research scholar at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.