Freezing People is (Not) Easy

by Bob Nelson

  Computer professionals are even more highly overrepresented, and we have a theory about that. Computer people not only depend on logic on a day-to-day basis but are also accustomed to seeing rapid advances in what is possible.

  One cannot say the same thing about any other profession. Lawyers use logic, but the law changes very slowly, and judges and juries may disregard logic. Medicine involves logic, but a lot of it is guesswork, and clinical proof of effectiveness and FDA approval come very slowly. Engineers use logic, but much of what they do requires lots of capital, and again change is slow. The computer field is unique in its total reliance on logic and the ease and rapidity of improvements—and that, we think, makes computer people unusually open to our thesis.

  Personality? There hasn’t been any scientific survey, but we do know for example that Libertarians are overrepresented in cryonics. The main characteristic of Libertarians is independence and love of freedom, with distrust of authority. Many of them are entrepreneurs, self-employed. I don’t endorse the Libertarian political party, but they are interesting people and less likely than most to be chained to old habits.

  The bottom line of course is that the “typical” cryonicist profile really doesn’t matter. The one thing that matters is whether you and your family will survive and thrive. At present, a majority [of people] are skeptical of cryonics—so will you let that majority vote you into the grave?

  Heroes and Zeroes

  Many people are people-people, responding better to human-interest stories than to dry logic. So let me relate a few of our stories, or at least their brief versions. The “zeroes” are of two sorts: those who are moldering and those who look like long shots but still have a chance. The “heroes” are also of two sorts: those who tried and failed and those who tried and have a chance. I won’t specify in advance which is which.

  Walt Disney

  According to the gossip, Walt had heard about cryonics and expressed his desire to be frozen at death. According to the persistent rumor, he actually was frozen, privately, and is hidden away somewhere. My tentative conclusion is that he did express such a wish but took no concrete steps to assure it, and when he died, he lost a lot of influence. His family thought his wishes were less important than their business, and they buried him—a grave mistake from his point of view, and ours. At any rate, there is a grave in a California cemetery with a Walt Disney marker on it.

  So Mickey Mouse is immortal, in his fashion, but his daddy is probably just dead.

  Andrea Foote

  Dr. Foote was a psychologist on the faculty of the University of Michigan and served on the board of directors of the Cryonics Institute for many years. When she was dying of cancer, arrangements were made to keep her at home under hospice care, with family members (who cooperated with her wishes) in attendance and Cryonics Institute equipment in place. We were prepared; she was promptly perfused and frozen and is now at the Cryonics Institute facility in Clinton Township, Michigan, northeast of Detroit. She left CI a bequest of more than one hundred thousand dollars.

  Note: No director or officer of the Cryonics Institute is paid a penny or derives any financial benefit from its operations. There are no stockholders. It is a nonprofit organization run by the members for the benefit of the patients. CI received the bulk of Professor Ettinger’s estate after his clinical death and he was frozen.

  We have nothing against capitalism and expect and hope that the likes of General Electric, Frigidaire, etc., may eventually enter the field. But we need to squelch the suspicion that CI or its directors are in it for the money. We are in it for something more valuable—to save our lives and those of the people we love.

  Richard Jones

  Professional name Dick Clair, he was a TV writer and producer, especially for The Carol Burnett Show. He was signed up at various times with three different cryonics organizations, the last being Alcor, where he is currently safely stored. He left his estate to Alcor, but the inevitable litigation by heirs resulted in a split settlement. Alcor did, however, receive a substantial bequest, I think over a million dollars. This was Alcor’s chief asset for years. Definitely a hero.

  Stanley Kubrick

  The famous director of Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and many other films saw me on one of the TV shows—I think it was Tonight with Johnny Carson—bought dozens of copies of my book The Prospect of Immortality, and invited me to New York to meet some of his rich friends. Unfortunately, he also invited a scientist/businessman named Ben Schloss, who apparently conned him out of some money and thereby soured his interest.

  Peter Sellers

  The actor (Pink Panther, Being There, Dr. Strangelove, etc.) had a flash of interest and wrote me a warm letter, but he had a short attention span and of course many other interests competing for his attention. He ended in a grave or crematory, I don’t know which.

  Don Laughlin

  Possibly the flashiest of current living cryonics members is the man with a city named for him—Laughlin, Nevada, a kind of junior Las Vegas centered around his casino resort. Laughlin is a billionaire, or half anyway, so who says rich people can’t be smart? And don’t say he’s a gambler, because his habits couldn’t be more different from those of his customers. He only places bets when the odds are in his favor. Does that tell you something?

  K. Eric Drexler

  Dr. Drexler is a shaker and mover in the massive scientific drive loosely called nanotechnology, or molecular engineering. Very roughly speaking, this means building things by moving individual atoms, one at a time. Drexler’s first book, Engines of Creation, was published about the same time, 1986, that two IBM scientists built the first scanning tunneling microscope, which could “see” and even manipulate individual atoms. Drexler foresees computer-driven machines (assemblers), which will be able to build almost anything—including copies of themselves!—out of almost any raw material, such as air, water, or dirt, using any available energy, such as sunlight.

  Such devices already exist in nature of course. They are called plants. But those prospectively designed and built by humans will be much more versatile. Remember the movie Fantastic Voyage with Raquel Welch, where a submarine carrying doctors was miniaturized and injected into the bloodstream of a patient to carry out repairs? That was silly—wasn’t it? Yes, but it isn’t silly to envision ultraminiaturized robots—nanobots—that could do the same thing. They could also repair the damage done by freezing a cryonics patient.

  Yes, one of our greatest heroes, Dr. Drexler is a cryonicist.

  Richard Feynman

  Professor Feynman won a Nobel prize in physics for contributions to quantum theory, the forefront of physics. In 1958 he gave a lecture, “Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” explaining his opinion that no known law prevented our learning how to manipulate atoms individually, with the implication that we could design and build—and repair!—physical systems of any complexity (such as you). This came to the attention of a young student, K. Eric Drexler, who proceeded to do something about it, as already noted.

  Dr. Feynman saw the promised land, however dimly; but, like Moses, he didn’t get there. Perhaps due to cultural inertia, he did nothing about cryonics and died a few years ago. A partial hero.

  Vitrification Progress

  A great many people who ought to know better—including not only physicians but even professional cryobiologists, “experts” in low temperature biology—have said that freezing ruptures cells because water expands when it freezes, and the idea of repairing all the billions of ruptured cells in a human body is preposterous.

  The fact is, first, that animal cell walls are elastic, and the expansion of water when it freezes is only about 10 percent, which could mostly be accommodated. More importantly, however, it just isn’t true that cells burst when a large specimen (such as a person) is frozen slowly (the only possible kind of freezing for large specimens, barring methods involving high pre
ssure). Instead water is withdrawn from the cells and freezes in the intercellular spaces, so the cells, far from bursting, actually shrink.

  That doesn’t mean freezing is harmless. There can still be mechanical damage by ice crystals tearing cell walls, for example. There will also be chemical damage, because when water is withdrawn from cells, the remaining solution becomes hypertonic, with solutes too concentrated, and proteins may become denatured, etc.

  But we mustn’t overdo the pessimism. Despite the difficulties, a great many biological specimens have in fact been completely frozen, stored at liquid nitrogen temperature, and then revived. These include not only microscopic forms of life, and a few insects, but also a few adult mammalian organs, such as the rat ovary and rat parathyroid. There have also been many partial successes, such as recovery of hamsters to normal behavior after half the water in their brains had been changed to ice. Microscopic and other studies show that our procedures greatly reduce the damage that would otherwise occur. (There is much more detail on the CI website: www.cryonics.org.)

  But even though freezing leaves realistic hope, it would still be better if we could avoid ice formation. And there is indeed such a thing as solidification by cold without ice formation. It is called vitrification, which means formation of a glass-like condition.

  Glasses, and similar substances such as tars, which are liquid when hot, can cool and become apparently solid, yet not form the crystals typical of solids. Instead they retain the ability to flow, very slowly. Over periods of many years, glass windowpanes may observably settle, becoming slightly thicker at the bottom.

  Certain water solutions can also vitrify under appropriate conditions. When Dr. Yuri Pichugin was director of research at the Cryonics Institute, he developed new and improved vitrification solutions and procedures, which are undergoing continued and extended tests. We do not foresee that, anytime soon, procedures will be so highly perfected that a healthy person could be vitrified and immediately revived—let alone someone who has died of old age or disease or trauma, or someone who suffered a long delay between death and cryopreservation. But hope continues, and grows.

  The bottom line is the same. For the first time in human history, there is a realistic chance of rescue of so-called “dead” people. How good that chance may be, and how much you value it, are questions for you to decide.

  Acknowledgments

  Professor Robert Ettinger: My mentor and the father of the cryonics generation.

  Frank Enderle: The first cemetery director to allow cryonic suspension patients to be interred on cemetery grounds.

  Saul Kent: A founder of the very first cryonics organization, the Cryonics Society of New York, and president of Florida-based Suspended Animation. He’s a giant in the world of cryonics.

  Curtis Henderson: The first president of the Cryonics Society of New York.

  Ben Best: Until recently, president of the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute, now maintaining more than 120 frozen patients.

  Andy Zawacki: Caretaker of the CI suspension facility—he does it all!

  Mike Perry: One of my favorite people in the world of cryonics. A cryonics historian for more than thirty years, he’s legendary for tenaciously digging to always find the truth. His tireless pursuit of the truth and endless fact-checking of the manuscript were instrumental in making this memoir as accurate as humanly possible.

  York Porter: Executive editor of the Long Life cryonics newsletter, which covers every aspect of what is going on in the world of cryonics.

  John Bull: Former editor of the Long Life newsletter. He’s a gentleman and unsurpassed in his ability to get the written word to the public.

  Jim Yount: Chairman of the San Francisco–based cryonics group of millionaires who have made all legal and financial arrangements to be suspended—and to take their money with them.

  Alcor Life Extension Foundation: Alcor is one of two facilities currently accepting cryonics patients in the United States. This was made possible by the death of cryonics member Dick Jones, who left several million dollars to the cryonics movement for his own suspension. The brilliant work of Fred and Linda Chamberlain in bringing this cryonics facility into existence is comparable, in my opinion, to Neil Armstrong being first man on the moon. And whenever the first man is revived, I believe Alcor will be viewed as an even greater accomplishment.

  Cryonics Institute: Robert Ettinger was the champion of bringing the Cryonics Institute into existence. This futuristic marvel, in my view, is a first-class cryonics suspension facility that has faced and resolved all the legal, financial, and engineering issues that are unique to this futuristic choice of embracing greatly extended life. Alcor and Cryonics Institute presently have 118 suspensions making a total of 236 human patients. There are, on average, 180 suicides somewhere in the world every hour, every day. That translates into every twenty-four hours, a total of 4,320 human beings choose death over life. So it seems that life itself, let alone extended life, is not for everyone!

  My daughter Susan has been my right arm and my strongest supporter of life extension; she was there befriending little Genevieve’s suspension and is here at my side this very moment—I thank you from the bottom of my heart, my beautiful daughter. My daughter Lori has been a staunch supporter of my cryonics activities and has been a pioneering spirit in support of her dad’s adventures into extended life.

  My two youngest daughters—Christine, now twenty-two, and Natalie, just weeks away from turning eighteen—are products of growing up in a world that today looks at extended life as a good thing and simply a part of our Creator’s loving revelations to our ever-changing world.

  My son John was my first child; he passed away from heart disease. You are dearly missed, my son.

  Clyde, Elaine, and Valerie Smith are my precious fans and most dearly loved.

  The shining star of my return to cryonics after a twenty-five-year absence goes to my wife, Moeurth. She reignited the trembling happiness of life.

  My coauthor Kenneth Bly would like to thank his mother, Connie Mayo, and his nephew, Ryan Hall, for putting up with several years when all he could talk about was cryonics. His mother often told him to “take a break from all this dead people stuff and go out and get laid.” She passed away before the book was finished, God bless her soul. Also, he acknowledges Nancy Groesbeck for her loving support through his mother’s illness and the writing of this book.

  My coauthor Sally Magaña wishes to thank her husband, Quetzalcoatl Magaña, for his unparalleled clarity and keen insights.

  Last but far from least is a powerful left arm, the daughter of Sandra Stanley, my coauthor on We Froze the First Man: Jonna Jetson Coleman. Her skill in public relations and management is always an enormous aid in my journey of getting the world to not only look at the cryonics thesis of life extension but to actually see it! Jonna has blossomed into a new generation leader in recognizing that the Creator himself is the enlightener of evolutionary revelations that allow humanity to evolve into beings of an almost heavenly spiritual realm.

  About the Authors

  Bob Nelson is the author of We Froze the First Man and was president of the Cryonics Society of California. In 1967 he froze the first man. He has made appearances with Regis Philbin and Phil Donahue and on NPR’s This American Life. His story is being adapted into a major motion picture featuring a star-studded cast. He lives in Oceanside, California.

  Kenneth Bly worked with Bob Nelson at his electronics repair center from 1995 to 2003, when Bob retired. He spent several years researching Bob’s role in cryonics and worked closely with Bob to write the basic manuscript. He currently works from his home in Oceanside, California.

  Sally Magaña received her PhD in chemical engineering. Previously, she coauthored a novel, Lost Hope, about the Hope Diamond with her husband, Quetzalcoatl Magaña.

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  Bob Nelson, Freezing People is (Not) Easy