To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 23:30:47 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Fw: Cryonics: the skeptics pile on
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

--------- Forwarded message ----------

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,53709,00.html

Get Yer Ice-Cold Afterlife Here
By Randy Dotinga

2:00 a.m. July 9, 2002 PDT

A semi-permanent deep freeze doesn't have to break the bank. That's the
message of a human cryogenics company engaged in a price war with the
folks who are planning to put former baseball star Ted Williams on ice.

"Cryonic suspension" -- the freezing of a dead body in the hope that it
can be resurrected in the future -- isn't cheap. Alcor Life Extension
Foundation, the Arizona company reportedly working to store all or part
of
the former Boston Red Sox slugger, charges as much as $120,000 per
cold-storage job.

But a competitor in Michigan, perhaps taking a cue from car dealers,
boasts that its freeze jobs are offered at "The Most Affordable Prices
Available Anywhere" -- as low as $28,000.

"Remember," says the perky Cryonics Institute website, "You need us, and
we need you. Help us to share and build the long tomorrow."

Of course, no one knows for sure if there will be any tomorrow for the 41

"patients" who are spending part of eternity in Cryonics Institute
storage
units and the 59 at Alcor. If anyone has even been revived from frozen
slumber, they're not talking.

The institute freezes its clients side-by-side in multi-person units.
With
the help of liquid nitrogen, the bodies are kept at a steady temperature
of 328 degrees below zero, said spokesman David Ettinger. His father,
83-year-old Robert C.G. Ettinger, helped kick-start the cryonics movement

30 years ago by writing a book proposing life after death.

"The idea is that it's such a low temperature that essentially nothing
happens," Ettinger said. "This preserves the body in exactly in the state

it was in as close to death as possible."

The frozen dead don't even have to worry about rolling blackouts. The
insulated units that hold the subjects are simply high-tech versions of a

Thermos, Ettinger said. They don't require power or computer control and
are essentially "idiot proof," he added.

Technology -- or lack thereof -- doesn't change the fact that cold
storage
probably just won't work, said Kenneth B. Storey, a biochemistry
professor
at Canada's Carleton University, who studies how small animals cope with
cold temperatures.

Storey has received media attention by freezing and then reviving small
animals like frogs. But the critters were alive throughout the process
and
prepared their bodies for the cold when they felt the initial chill,
Storey said. Also, the temperatures are much higher than those used in
cryonics.

"If you freeze huge creatures like humans who aren't prepared, every one
of their cells will be broken when they're thawed out," he said. "You're
not only not alive, but you don't even look particularly good."

Cryogenics experts have tried to prevent such an unhappy moment by
tinkering with the freezing process so it's more complicated than making
a
Popsicle.

Among other things, cryogenics labs typically remove the blood from a
client's body after death and replace it with a kind of antifreeze known
as cryoprotectant that's found naturally in insects, frogs and turtles.
The embalming process may not take long for Williams, one of the greatest

players in baseball history. According to a Boston Globe report, his son
may want to preserve only his head in a procedure known as
neurosuspension.

At Alcor, putting a head in cold storage costs more -- $50,000 -- than
freezing an entire body ($28,000) at the Cryonics Institute, which
doesn't
freeze heads.

Cryonics Institute says about 400 families have signed up to be frozen
upon death; Alcor has more than 580 members, according to its website.

Ettinger, the Cryonics Institute spokesman, said his organization engages

in "friendly competition" with Alcor. "While we're both nonprofit, we
emphasize that we're run by members, and a lot of support is provided on
a
voluntary basis," he said.

Cryonics Institute has only two full-time employees -- a facilities
manager, to watch over the storage units, and a biologist who studies
cryonics. "We're not in it to make money," he said.

If the institute did want to make a buck, this might be the best of
times.

Interest in cryonics has skyrocketed thanks to the Internet. Ettinger and

others have noticed that a growing number of techies want to be put on
ice.

Storey, the Carleton University professor, said scientists and techies
naturally lose their skepticism when it comes to areas outside their
expertise.

"Scientists believe what they're told," he said. "They assume what they
hear from other people is true. We're not set to be that skeptical about
little details."

Even if cryonics does work, Storey is skeptical that people in the future

will start defrosting their ancestors. "Two hundred years from now, will
10 billion people on Earth really want to thaw out a bunch of rich
Americans?"

.

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