X-Message-Number: 4773 Date: Sat, 12 Aug 95 19:00: From: mike <> Subject: Disney-Trans Time connection? This is a response to message #4762, regarding a biography of Walt Disney by Leonard Mosley. The poster, snopes, asks, "Are there any obvious factual errors in the following paragraph?" He then quotes an amazing paragraph indeed from the book--if this is supposed to be nonfiction--as follows: "It was about this time [Fall 1966] that Walt Disney became acquainted with the experiments into the process known as cryogenesis, or what one newspaper termed "the freeze-drying of the human cadaver after death, for eventual resuscitation." He was shown a report that in California, in the small town of Emeryville, across the bay from San Francisco, a medical laboratory called Trans Time had begun experiments with human cadavers to preserve them for the future. A newly dead body was first treated and operated on to eliminate the diseased organs that had ended normal life. It was then stored away in a refrigerated container until such time as it could be thawed out, organs and blood vessels brought back into action, and life restored." My reaction is, "Yes, there are some obvious factual errors." Or a better way to put it might be, "Yes, there is some inkling of truth here, though no small share of distortions too." It's too bad this wasn't sent to someone knowledgeable about the history of cryonics, and cryonics in general, before it was published. Anyway, here are my comments, based on what I believe to be correct information. Trans Time was incorporated in March 1972. Thus it couln't have been contacted by anyone representing Walt Disney, who died in 1966. (They also couldn't have frozen anyone prior to 1972; in fact their first suspensions occurred in 1974.) As for Disney, I happen to know that his minions did contact a liquid nitorgen supplier, Gilmore Liquid Air, which has offices in southern California. But apparently nothing came of this. Robert Nelson in 1990 also said that Disney Studios sent him a letter a few months before Disney died but "that was all." (Nelson, of course, is notorious for the Chatsworth meltdown that occurred years later, but at this point had not frozen anyone.) Other than these, I don't know of any contacts between Disney and anyone involved with cryonics. The issue was also raised in snopes' posting as to when the first cryonic suspension took place. On April 22, 1966 a woman was placed into liquid nitorgen storage; however, this was after about 2 months' storage in a mortuary refrigerator at above-freezing temperature, and she had been embalmed after death, not treated with cryoprotectant. Thus it seems reasonable to discount this as the first cryonic suspension. The next person to be frozen was James Bedford on Jan. 12, 1967, and here the conditions were much better, though still hardly more than a straight freeze. But he was frozen reasonably quickly after death (we think), and this is usually regarded as the first true cryonic suspension. As for "cryogenesis" meaning "freeze-drying of the human cadaver ..." this seems to be a confusion between cryonics (assuming it's reasonable to equate "cryonics" and "cryogenesis") and certain practices now used for pets. Certainly there is no "freeze-drying" process involved in cryonic suspensions. There is also the claim: "A newly dead body was first treated and operated on to eliminate the diseased organs that had ended normal life." This is not part of any cryonics procedures I am aware of, unless you want to count neurosuspensions, in which *all* organs below the neck are eliminated! Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4773