X-Message-Number: 9864
From: "Scott Badger" <>
Subject: The Globe Article
Date: Sat, 6 Jun 1998 16:16:29 -0500

Bob Ettinger wrote:

>When I tried to retrieve it, I got a "page not found" message.
>
>If convenient, perhaps you might be kind enough to send me a copy by email
or
>otherwise.
>
>Long life-
>
>Bob


Your right, it doesn't work anymore for some reason.  I was able to retrieve
the text however.


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Immortality and the chosen, frozen few

By Alex Beam, Globe Staff, 06/03/98


Pawing through a magazine profile of Ralph Merkle, a nerdy West Coast
scientist, I noticed a curious biographical detail: Mr. Merkle is one of the
few people in the world who have paid to have their bodies cryonically
suspended - frozen - after death. He hopes that scientists will discover a
way to revive human life from frozen tissue before the Apocalypse, or before
his yearly payments to Arizona-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation run
out.


OK, it's a bet. But more intriguing, Merkle's Web site provides a link to
''quite a few people well known in the fields of computer science, software
development and other high-tech areas'' who've opted for the deep freeze.
There are 26 of them and, not surprisingly, they have some things in common:


1. They are all nerds.


2. Twenty-five of the 26 are men.


3. Most of them, with the exception of Cambridge's own Marvin Minsky, live
in California.


So here's your first peek at post-Armageddon America: a bunch of cockroaches
scurrying around the pant legs of 25 computer and biotech nerds, who are in
turn scouring the Santa Cruz Moutains for frozen women to revive and
fraternize with. It's a chilling thought.


Interest in cryogenics has been heating up, slowly, since the 1964
publication of Robert Ettinger's book ''The Prospect of Immortality.''
Ettinger now runs the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute, which charges a
one-time, $28,000 suspension fee for clients who want to be around for the
release of Windows 64. On his Web site (http://www.cryonics.org) Ettinger
plays awful music and boasts of his company's ''proven track record,''
whatever that means.


Several other outfits will either suspend you or put you in touch with
someone who will. The above-mentioned Alcor charges an annual $360 Emergency
Response Fee (half price for students!) to fly the dry-ice guys to your
bedside just before, or shortly after, you cross the Rainbow Bridge. (That's
the term ferret owners use when their smelly, rabidoferous little companions
go to the big litter box in the sky. But I digress.)


As with everything, it pays to shop around. Wilmington, Del.-based CryoSpan
claims to flash-freeze ''humans and their companion animals at the lowest
possible price,'' which turns out to be an annual $250 for ''neuro'' (brain
only) or $1,500 for the full monty. The Cryonics Society of Canada does not
perform cryonic suspensions, but has done permafrost interments - prices not
available at press time.


So who wants to stick around, and why? Minsky, who has several major
research projects cooking over at MIT's Media Lab, explains that he could
use the extra time: ''At the moment, I'd estimate that I'd need about 500
years to complete some of my current projects. To be sure, in its present
state, cryonics is very unlikely to help - but right now, it's the only game
in town.''


Robin Hanson, a 38-year-old health policy scholar at the University of
California at Berkeley, explains on his Web site, ''For a few hundred
dollars a year, I estimate I'm buying a 0.5 percent chance of living for
thousands of (subjective) years.'' His favorite musicians are Vangelis and
Enya, so plan on hearing lots of ethereal sounds if you end up spending the
Third Millennium with Robin.


The only woman who may be available for soulful chats at sunset is Kennita
Watson, a Libertarian activist who has run for statewide office several
times in California. On the Internet, Watson calls herself ''a kinder,
gentler Libertarian, because I think that most people are at least trying to
do the right thing, and that (this being reality) we can't teleport from
here to the promised land of Libertopia; we'll have to trek across the
coercion-strewn wastelands to get there.'' See you in 2175!


Is it worth risking freezer burn to see if there really will be 500 channels
on TV? I don't think so. But as the cryonicists like to point out, this is
one experiment you're already participating in. They're the experimental
subjects. You and I are the control group.


Alex Beam's e-mail address is 
********************************************************************

In addition, here is the poll:

********************************************************************
Prospect of Immortality

Would you participate in cryogenic freezing?  Contemplating with their
imminent demises, several wealthy high-tech professionals have paid to have
their bodies cryonically suspended after death. Reflecting on their trust of
and investment in cryogenics, Globe columnist Alex Beam asks if it is
''worth risking freezer burn to see if there really will be 500 channels on
TV?'' [Click here for his column from today's Globe.] What do you think of
cryogenics?

 If you could finance the endeavor, would you cryonically freeze your body
after death?

Yes  No

Would you trust a specialist in the field of cryogenics to honestly arrange
the resuscitation of your frozen body?

Yes  No

Would you rather receive a ''neuro'' (brain only) treatment or have your
whole body frozen?

Brain only  Full monty

Do you want to still be around in 2200?

Yes  No
********************************************************************

And here are the latest results.  The numbers have improved since I saw them
last.  There may well have been an influx of pro-cryonics respondents
because the article was mentioned on the extropians list.

********************************************************************

 Results Item  Option  Number of Voters  Percentage

If you could finance the endeavor, would you cryonically freeze your body
after death?

Yes    252    62%
No     148    37%

Would you trust a specialist in the field of cryogenics to honestly arrange
the resuscitation of your frozen body?

Yes   250   63.1%
No    146   36.9%

Would you rather receive a ''neuro'' (brain only) treatment or have your
whole body frozen?

Full monty  250  70.9%
Brain only  104  29.1%

Do you want to still be around in 2200?

Yes  293   73.6%
No   105    26.4%
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