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(Image: CRYONICS INSTITUTE)

Dennis Kowalski, director of the Cryonics Institute, claims that what he is offering is the future of death — and it won't cost you an arm and a leg.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Star Online, Dennis said that the work he does may sound like science fiction, but it's happening now.

"Cryonics is an ambulance ride to the future," he said, "but we don't know what that future will be."

Dennis, who made headlines last month after he paid £100,000 to have his wife and three sons cryonically frozen after they die, claims he wants cryonics to replace traditional burials and cremations in the next few decades.

Cryonics involves freezing a body in liquid nitrogen to keep the brain and tissue alive so that the person can be brought back in the future when medicine has progressed.

It's been around for some time — the first cryonics patient Dr James Bedford died in 1967 — but Dennis says the technology is enjoying a surge in popularity.

"Imagine CPR 100 years ago," he said. "Bringing someone back from the dead by hitting their chest or pumping electricity through them — you would have sounded like Frankenstein!

"But now we take it for granted. Soon we'll look at cryonics in the same way."

Dennis argues that the last 20 years have seen such major leaps in medical technology such as stem cells, that cryonics isn't shocking to people anymore.

(Image: CRYONICS INSTITUTE)

"Things that were impossible to imagine two decades ago are now normal. Look at smart phones.

"If you'd told me in 1998 that by 2018 we'd all be walking around with little devices in your pocket that allowed you to contact anybody in the world via the Internet and answer any question with the click of a button, I'd have said you were crazy."

Dennis says that his institute, in Clinton Township, Michigan, has 1,767 people signed up to be frozen after they die, including 96 Brits.

(Image: CRYONICS INSTITUTE)

And he says that although $28,000 (£20,678) per-person to be frozen may sound steep, if you take out a life insurance policy, it will only cost around $30 (£22.16) a month.

With the average funeral in the US costing over $7,000 (£5,170.90) according to US sources, Dennis says that cryonics will be cheaper than traditional funerals in the next few decades.

"In 1976, it cost $28,000 to be cryonically frozen," Dennis said. "Today our prices are the same as back then. In real terms they've got much cheaper."

(Image: CRYONICS INSTITUTE)

Dennis says the more people that sign up to be cryogenically frozen, the cheaper the price will get.

And he wants the funeral industry to get into cryonics.

"They could buy into this in a big way," he said. "Forget funeral parlours, we can have cryo-parlours.

"In the near-future people will have a third choice when it comes to the death of a loved one: buried, cremated or frozen.

"Funerals in many states are already costing over $10,000 (£7,387) thanks to lack of new land for burials," Dennis went on. "So cryonics is going to get cheaper and cheaper."

With the average burial in the UK costing £4,257 according to Money Advice Service, Dennis believes that cryonics are going to take over in the UK too.