Frozen Into The Future

Original posting, January 2006

Some 1,000 members of the "cryonics" movement, have made arrangements to have their body frozen in liquid nitrogen as soon as possible after death. Such is the hope to be revived sometime in the future when medicine has advanced far beyond where it stands today.

Hope

Mr Pizer from Arizona has left his money to himself so he won't "be revived in poverty". That assumes the funds of the present are sufficient to cover the needs of an unquantifiable future. With the help of an estate planner, Mr. Pizer has created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated. Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the "richest man in the world".

Such trust. Such belief.

It's truly ironic that someone who thinks like this - totally selfishly - imagines everyone else is unlike him! The double standards and hypocrisy are really quite breathtaking. He should convert all assets to gold stock as in 100 years' time it could all otherwise be valueless.

Though cryonic suspension of human remains is still dismissed by most medical experts as an outlandish idea, Mr. Pizer is not alone in hoping to hold onto his wealth into the frosty hereafter. "I figure I have a better than even chance of coming back," says Don Laughlin, the 75-year-old founder of an eponymous casino and resort in Laughlin, Nev. Mr. Laughlin, who turned a down-and-out motel he bought in 1966 into a gambling fortune, plans to leave himself $5 million.

Some 142 human bodies or heads (and therefore headless bodies), including that of baseball legend Ted Williams, are now held in cold-storage at one of two U.S. cryonics facilities, Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale Ariz., and the Cryonics Institute of Clinton Township, Mich.

No one knows just what future technology may bring. It would not only require a method of uniform warming, but also knowledge of how to connect a head with its body or another (or some other Frankenstein-type combination). Or whatever form existence could take. Mr. Laughlin confronted that issue in a meeting last August with his lawyers while drafting a trust. Mr. Laughlin opted against allowing a mere biological clone to get his money. He insisted whoever gets the funds should have "my memories" [that is truly grotesque! - Devil's Advocate].

Since people like Mr. Laughlin may rest in icy slumber for hundreds of years, protecting their assets from the living is apt to be a key challenge. After all, even the most standard of trusts have long been susceptible to dishonest managers - not to mention challenges from disgruntled heirs.

Imagine what attitudes will be like in a few hundred years. I have no idea, but I do know I wouldn't like them. History does reveal that much.

When Jakob P. Canaday, a Florida investor, died in 2004 of throat cancer, he left behind plans to stash his millions in a long-lasting trust with directions that he would recoup the money if and when his "human remains are revived and restored to life" according to court documents. On the eve of Mr. Canaday's death, however, his two daughters produced a new will, which left his fortune to them.

Such is greed

Now there's a lawsuit pending in Broward County, Fla., Circuit Court. Mr. Canaday's brother, Siesel "Bud" Canaday, a retired Wall Street bond trader, says his sibling always wanted to be frozen and insists that the second will is not valid. No matter how bizarre his brother's choices may be, Mr. Canaday says, "it's tradition to honor the will of the deceased".

Wake up

Daughter Michelle Canaday declined to comment on the case.

In Arizona, Mr. Pizer says he hopes his wife will join him in cryonic storage. And even if his trust money is somehow lost or stolen during his time on ice, he'll be content just as long as he returns to life.

What? Who's he kidding?

If he does, he says he'd use the opportunity to work hard and create new businesses. "I made it the first time from nothing, and I could do it again". Methods and attitudes can change within a few years, so in 100 years time, life would probably be totally unrecognisable.

Nobody will care - all contempories'll be dead

Anyway, a dead challenger is no challenger. Why would the current generation want anyone like this around?

The thawing out is the real problem. Money can't facilitate this. To warm up a body so, so gradually and uniformly is certainly currently not possible. Any minor differences in a warming rate throughout the entire organism would result in fatality.

The cryonic storage companies won't tell you that.

Not the desired outcome.

With this, you can begin to understand what drives greed. It's nasty and quite disgusting.

In a word: grotesque. In another word: madness.

Grotesque madness.