X-Message-Number: 26655
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 00:06:55 -0400
From: Joseph Bloch <>
Subject: [Fwd: [TransAct] Hot Air from Miami Herald]

(Just in case this hasn't made it to the list yet-- I wish I could get 
it in non-digest format!)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[TransAct] Hot Air from Miami Herald
Date: 	Sun, 17 Jul 2005 20:01:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: 	Tom FitzGerald <>
Reply-To: 	
To: 	WTA Act <>, TransAct 
<>



Readers of WTA-Talk may have come across the recent
post of a rather biased (although it could have been
far worse) article by the Miami Herald about the
opening of a new cryonics facility in South Florida. I
have appended the complete text below. The article
makes much of the manufactured Ted Williams scandal,
and creates a general air of nefariousness around
Alcor. The unspoken implication: cryonics is a scam.
Please do write to the editors of the Herald, 
to let them know that cryonicists (of whom I assume
there are many onlist here) value our right to seek a
better chance of revival from death than the 0% chance
currently offered by noncryonics members, and that we
have a right to spend our life insurance money to
pursue this. Indeed, the fact that cryonics funding
usually comes from life insurance might be of interest
to Herald readers, as the article never mentions this.

(As usual, let's try to be classy enough to say at
least one good thing about the article when we write
in, so we don't come off as unjudicious cranks.) ;-)

Here is their e-mail address for letters to the
editor:



And here is the article:

Posted on Fri, Jul. 15, 2005

BOYNTON BEACH

Cryonics firm to open S. Fla. facility

After a rejection by Boca Raton, Boynton Beach has
given the go-ahead to a cryonics company that intends
to freeze the dead, then ship the bodies for permanent
storage in Arizona.

BY ASHLEY FANTZ



A company associated with the Arizona firm that froze
the head of baseball legend Ted Williams will open a
cryonics facility in Boynton Beach, less than two
years after being rejected in Boca Raton.

Suspended Animation expects to open in August, in an
industrial strip just off Interstate 95.

The facility was approved 4-1 by Boynton Beach
commissioners in March, despite the company's
association with the scandal-ridden Alcor Life
Extension Foundation that reportedly severed Williams'
head and stored the body parts in a steel bin that
resembled a lobster pot.

The unproven and often-criticized science of cryonics
supposes that dead people can be frozen and then --
months or years later -- be brought back to life.
Suspended Animation hopes to develop equipment and
transport ''clients'' who have agreed in writing to be
frozen cryonically.

''We're about defeating mortality,'' said Charles
Platt, 60, a science fiction writer with no medical
background who will manage the lab. Platt was Alcor's
Chief Operating Officer.

The South Florida lab will primarily act as a kind of
ambulance service for the dead, Platt said. It will
not store bodies.

''We're first responders,'' he explained. ``Time is of
the essence. Once we're done with the initial freeze,
we ship them.''

AN UNPROVEN SCIENCE

The dream of freezing people and bringing them back to
life has been around for more than 40 years. But it
remains a dream -- one that won't be fulfilled anytime
soon, said Mehmet Toner, a Harvard biomedical
engineer.

''It's out of the question in the foreseeable
future,'' said Toner, who is an expert in the effect
of cold temperatures on human tissue. ``We cannot even
freeze [and revive] individual organs, let alone
freeze a whole human being.''

Nevertheless, for tens of thousands of dollars,
technicians from one of several private companies will
be standing by when you die, ready to replace your
blood with an antifreeze-like fluid and whisk you away
to cold storage.

The fluid should allow you to be stored in
sub-freezing temperatures without the emergence of too
many cell-destroying ice crystals in your tissues. But
there will still be significant damage to your organs
including, most importantly, your brain.

The companies say technology may someday allow them to
fix the damage and bring you back to life, but many
scientists are skeptical.

''Basically what you're doing is recreating the
brain,'' said Dr. Michael Norenberg, director of
neuropathology at the University of Miami. ``I just
can't see it.''

`THE CUTTING EDGE'

Neither scandal nor naysayers deterred Boynton Beach
Commissioner Muir Ferguson.

''I think we have to be open to research and that's
what the Suspended Animation folks say they are going
to do,'' he said. ``Whatever is said about them by the
media isn't an issue. There's an opportunity to be on
the cutting edge here.''

The company says that when a client dies, they'll
deliver the body to the Boynton Beach lab, where it
will be preserved by a series of ''injectable
suspension fluids,'' such as liquid nitrogen. The body
will be packed into an ''ice bath'' and shipped, he
said.

Cleared of wrongdoing by Arizona investigators, Alcor
is negotiating with Suspended Animation to receive
bodies.

The companies share a board member, Saul Kent, also
with South Florida ties.

Kent began a cryonics fundraising organization, the
Life Extension Foundation, in the early 1980s with
seed money from Hollywood real estate developer
Stephen Ruddel. Life Extension has offices and a store
on Commercial Boulevard that sells herbal remedies and
vitamins.

Suspended Animation has secured contracts with at
least one other cryonics lab in the country, The
Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan, its
president Ben Best confirmed. There is only one
additional lab in the United States -- the American
Cryonics Society in California.

The Cryonics Institute charges nearly $30,000. Alcor
charges about $120,000 for full body indefinite
freeze.

Suspended Animation's association with Alcor was one
reason Boca Raton commissioners rejected its
application in January 2004.

''The whole thing was just odd,'' said Susan Whelchel,
Boca Raton's vice mayor. ``And we were concerned about
zoning and regulatory issues. How do you permit such a
place?''

Suspended Animation has not applied for a license from
the Florida Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers,
said spokesman Jerry Wilson. ''But we're not sure they
would even have to,'' Wilson said. ``If they aren't
keeping bodies for an extended period of time, we
wouldn't be interested in regulating them.''

The lab will be zoned like any other medical research
facility, said Commissioner Bob Ensler, the lone vote
against Suspended Animation in Boynton Beach.

''I don't think the kind of research they're doing is
meaningful,'' he said. ``I just don't feel good about
it.''

Herald staff writer Jacob Goldstein contributed to
this report.

Tom FitzGerald

"WTA should be a salon of people who share the sense that technological
development is a revolutionary force, that it undercuts the normative 
weight of claims made in the name of the "natural," and that genetic, 

prosthetic, and cognitive modification are practices of self-creation that are 
this generation's contribution to the ongoing conversation of humankind."
--Dale Carrico


		
____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page 
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs 
 


 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TransAct/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26655