X-Message-Number: 22674 From: "Mark Plus" <> Subject: NYTimes: Odd Outpost of Icy Immortality in Sunshine State Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 22:08:50 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/14/national/14CRYO.html?ex=1066708800&en=42b9eb692abbd02b&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE Odd Outpost of Icy Immortality in Sunshine State By RICHARD SANDOMIR Published: October 14, 2003 BOCA RATON, Fla. On a winding street in a nondescript industrial park, the odd science of preserving the dead is creating a new outpost here. The name of the cryonics company is not on the building, and there are no cooled-down bodies awaiting transportation to long-term storage. But the company, Suspended Animation, hopes to receive a construction permit and approval in November from Boca Raton to perform animal research into the preservation and future revival of the dead. If it is successful, it would join two other companies, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the Cryonics Institute in suburban Detroit, that have until recently quietly engaged in cryonics. But the city's ultimate go-ahead, to let the company perform a two-day process at its site that it contends is crucial to preserving frozen bodies for possible resuscitation, will depend on being licensed by the state agency that regulates mortuaries, embalmers and cemeteries. In Florida, Arizona and Michigan, state agencies are seeking more regulatory oversight of these businesses, which preserve the dead in hopes that future breakthroughs in medical science will make it possible to bring people back to life. (People who die, in cryonics parlance, are said to have been "de-animated.") Debate over the issue intensified after a legal dispute over the decision by two of the three children of the baseball Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams to have his body preserved after his death in July 2002, and the discovery a year later that his head had been severed from his body. "These companies need to be regulated or deregulated out of business," said Rudy Thomas, head of Arizona's Board of Funeral Directors. Alcor and the Cryonics Institute store bodies in canisters filled with liquid nitrogen at minus 320 degrees and charge fees of $28,000 to $120,000 for their services. Suspended Animation prepares bodies for preservation for Alcor and the Cryonics Institute, charging $19,000 to $35,000 for its services, depending on time and labor. The company will not store bodies on a long-term basis. While some have nicknamed cryonics the immortality business, David L. Shumaker, the president of Suspended Animation, said: "Death is a process, not an event. We want to slow, or stop, the process of death." Mr. Shumaker, a physicist, added, "You talk about immortality, you start offending people's religious perceptions." For decades, the world of cryonics was insular and confined largely to speculation about whether Walt Disney had been frozen and to films like "Sleeper" about thawed out characters until the head and body of Mr. Williams were surgically separated and preserved in separate containers at Alcor. The existence of the Cryonics Institute, where 50 bodies are preserved, was not even known to Michigan's Department of Consumer and Industry Services until the publicity over Mr. Williams. "We were unaware that it was operating," said Andrew Metcalf, director of the agency's bureau of commercial services. Michigan has temporarily blocked the company from freezing more bodies. Mr. Thomas, head of the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors, said that without state oversight there were no guarantees that the 58 bodies and heads at Alcor were being properly preserved and that environmental laws were being followed. In Boca Raton, city officials do not oppose the existence of Suspended Animation or its proposed testing on laboratory animals. But the mayor, Steven L. Abrams, said the company must comply with the state's requirement that it receive a license as an embalming facility, cemetery or funeral home. Boca Raton's decision to make final approvals for Suspended Animation contingent upon its obtaining a state license has delayed the company's plans and eaten at its finances. `They've got us boxed in," Mr. Shumaker said, "and we may end up seeking some administrative or judicial relief." But he added that he was eager to help the state put together new regulations for cryonics. Cryonics companies say they should not be overseen by state regulators but are covered instead by the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which sets organ donation rules covering all states. They say they are not embalming, burying or cremating the dead. In Michigan, the belated knowledge that the Cryonics Institute had been in business for nearly 30 years prompted a yearlong investigation that culminated in August with a cease and desist order to prevent the freezing of new bodies. There is a squeamishness about cryonics that has kept it from attracting an audience broader than the estimated 1,100 people who have signed up to be frozen after their deaths and the approximately 115 bodies and heads now in subzero storage in Michigan and Arizona. "We walk in lock step with our ancestors," Mr. Shumaker said. "What your parents and grandparents did is normal to you. If three generations of your people were frozen, people would say, `Cremation? Are you crazy?' " In choosing Boca Raton, Suspended Animation might appear to be motivated by a desire to pursue profits in a city where nearly one-fifth of the population is over the age of 65. But the company says that it settled here because it was the only city in South Florida that would allow the company to perform research on animals. Suspended Animation's research will seek to reduce the post-mortem damage and destruction of cells caused when blood no longer circulates and the body is deprived of oxygen. Mr. Shumaker said the research "will be on laboratory rats, and maybe dogs, but never primates." But the company says it hopes to perfect the process so that it can someday be used on people. Until it begins its research, the company provides emergency standby teams that await the death of a terminally ill member of Alcor or the Cryonics Institute. Ted Williams was one of the first to receive its service. "In days gone by, hospitals wouldn't even let us in," Mr. Shumaker said. "Now we sit in I.C.U.'s." _________________________________________________________________ Concerned that messages may bounce because your Hotmail account has exceeded its 2MB storage limit? Get Hotmail Extra Storage! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22674