Florida's First Body-Freezing Cryonics Facility Says It Will Open in Miami

Though they're more typically used to explain the process of dealing with the loss of loved ones, the five stages of grief can also be applied to our own thoughts of fleeting mortality.

There are those of us who deny it, those of us who are angered or depressed by the idea, and those of us who, like Larry David, have accepted the fact that death might actually be a sweet, sweet release from earthly obligations like marital vows. 

If you're more of a bargainer, however, you're in luck: A new cryonics center is set to open in Miami this November, truly expanding the definition of #305tillIdie by letting you freeze your body in hopes of some advanced future when you can be revived. 

"Surely you can appreciate the irony of people wanting to deep-freeze themselves in the heat of Florida," says Tim Allen, a spokesman for Osiris Back to Life.

Currently, the only cryonics centers are located in Arizona, California, and Michigan. Opening such a facility in South Florida expands the still-controversial practice to both East Coasters and international clientele.

"Miami is great because it's open to a lot of other markets," Allen says. "You've got the Latin American market, people coming in from Brazil, Central America, the Caribbean Islands, anyone who wishes to be cryogenically frozen."

Named for the Egyptian god of death and the afterlife, Osiris offers memberships for $295,000. The package includes prompt pickup of your body by ambulance and storage in the company's local facility.

Once in Osiris' hands, the body would be drained of blood and filled with an antifreeze-like serum before being introduced to the liquid nitrogen. It's recommended that bodies be transported to the facility within one to two hours after death. 

"The process is actually not as simple as people think," Allen says. "It's not a case of just flash-freezing someone in a vat of nitrogen."

Before the company begins accepting bodies, however, it'll have to sort out the proper permitting and licensing. Cryonics centers aren't yet legal in Florida, according to a Division of Funeral, Cemetery, and Consumer Services spokesman. 

"It's unprecedented for us; these facilities don't operate in Florida," press secretary Joel Brown said. "Pursuant to our current laws, you would not be permitted to just freeze people and keep them indefinitely."

Brown said the department would keep an eye on the company, which isn't yet a licensed death-care facility with the state. Until it begins storing bodies, there's nothing wrong with the business signing contracts for customers, Brown said.

Allen, the company's spokesman, said the business was advised by state regulators that cryonics isn't expressly banned in Florida. He said the facility would operate under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which allows people to donate their bodies to science. 

Osiris is owned and operated by Limor Derhy and her husband, Dvir Derhy, who was released from federal prison last November after bribing a fire inspector to make code violations at his office space go away.

The couple's website says the new venture "aim[s] to facilitate people’s realistic expectations of a better tomorrow with superior medicinal technologies that would cure things we can only dream of."