X-Message-Number: 15813 Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 09:03:35 -0800 From: Subject: Freezer culture thought you would be interested in this article at Salon.com http://www.salon.com came from IP: 157.252.128.79 - - - - - - - - - - - - Freezer culture By Christopher Kemp http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2001/03/07/cryonics/index.html When Robert Ettinger froze his mother's body in 1977, she became the <a target="new" href="http://www.cryonics.org/">Cryonics Institute's</a> first customer. Last year he froze his wife too, cooling her body to minus 196 degrees Celsius and storing it in an insulated tank of liquid nitrogen. For $35,000 Ettinger and his attentive staff will provide the same service for anyone. <P>"Dead people don't have much fun," says Ettinger, the 82-year-old founder of the Cryonics Institute. "It's not a question of whether you're happy now," he says. "I think in the future it's going to be better, not worse." <P>Twenty miles northeast of Detroit, the institute sits atop a small patch of grass, backed by a screen of trees, squat and unremarkable. Few would guess from its drab exterior that it houses the bodies of 38 customers frozen and suspended in liquid nitrogen. Even fewer would guess that seven dogs and nine cats, equally frozen, are keeping them company. But since opening the institute almost 25 years ago, Ettinger has seen membership grow steadily, and his team is performing more suspensions now than at any other time. <P>"In recent years we've been getting maybe three or four a year, I guess," he says. Ettinger, like his patients and their pets, is waiting for the day they can all be revived. - - - - - - - - - - - - Wed Mar 7 09:03:35 2001 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15813