X-Message-Number: 14415
Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2000 22:44:57 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Freyermuth Article on FM-2030

Alan, #14404, offered a machine translation of Freyermuth's German language
article on FM-2030. I wanted the article for background since I am planning
a report on FM for *The Venturist*. Though I know very little German I was
able to produce a more readable version in English, in part using the
automatic translator on individual words and parts of words. I don't claim
perfect accuracy here, but I think this is mostly correct, at least in the
general sense intended. A few things I was less sure of and left untranslated.

Mike Perry

*********
Ice-cold into Eternity.
In Arizona FM-2030, professor Anatol Epstein, and 37 other like-minded
cryonauts wait. 
By Gundolf S. Freyermuth	

FM-2030 was always unusual. By age eleven the diplomat's son had already
lived in 17 countries. With the 1948 Olympiad he started out as a basketball
player and a ringer. In the fifties he worked as a tetralingual mediator for
the UN. In the sixties he became the author of three critically acclaimed
novels, "The Day of Sacrifice," "The Beggar" and "Identity  Card." Finally,
in the seventies, he began his fourth and most successful career. At that
time he modified his name: from F. M. Esfandiary to FM-2030.  The FM stood
both for Future Man, Future Marvel and Future Module - future human being,
future miracle and future component system - and  2030 for the year in which
the "chronic optimist" intended, with the passage of time and many spare
parts, to celebrate his 100th birthday. 

Success as FM-2030 happened immediately: The visionary philosopher became
one of the best known US futurists. In his special books, among them "Are
You a Transhuman?" and "Telespheres," he foresaw in the seventies and
eighties developments which today are part of everyday life - the downfall
of the family has accompanied in-vitro fertilizations and genetic
modifications, along with teleconferencing and teleshopping. 

His sixth sense for the future enabled him to become a highly paid
consultant for a high tech company and an in-demand columnist. On a crucial
point however the ingenious Futurist was mistaken: he would not see his
100th birthday-or so said the reports that appeared in the middle of July in
all major US newspapers. 

But FM-2030 certainly intended, when he became incurably ill with cancer,
that the premature parting would only be temporary. He hoped for a medically
more highly developed future. So the 69-year-old would be put on ice - right

beside professor Epstein, whom I met not too long before in the same situation.

The thermometer showed 42 degrees [C, 108 F] that summer day, in the shade,
and it didn't budge. Phoenix, a town with millions of inhabitants in the
desert of Arizona, is a place of smooth concrete blocks and a fiercely
burning sun. In the air park gleaming, newly-nailed-up flat-topped buildings
made up an industrial area, and between them were closely cropped lawns with
swishing sprinklers. In the headquarters of the nonprofit Alcor Foundation
it was clinically cold in opposition [to the heat]. Off in the distance in
the cold air there was a certain, sweet smell of decay [actually a chemical
smell from the suspension], against which the air conditioning system fought
in vain. That, if not Stephen Bridge's irrepressible smile, should have
warned me. "I would like," said the Alcor president, when he had barely
shaken my hand, "for you get to know professor Epstein." 

"The professor is a historian, an unusually interesting occupation", said he
schwaermerisch, while  he conducted me to the rear area of the building.
There the operating room is situated, and there also is the high hall, in
which Alcor's "patients"  rest. "Already as a child the professor had met
Mussolini. At eleven he fled the Nazis and came to New York, quite alone.
And as a student he sold an insurance policy to Einstein!" 

Behind the door that leads to the operating room muffled voices and metallic
rattling could be heard. The sweetish smell grew stronger. "We are still in
the cleanup phase," noted Stephen Bridge and stopped before a chest-high
cooling crate. It was as long as a child's coffin. Instinctively I started
to whisper. "You can talk in a normal voice," said Bridge, his hand arcing
above the reddish moustache stuck properly under his nose. "Our patients
will not be disturbed." Then he so casually but significantly [shoved and
slid aside the lid of] the crate, as if to pull out a rabbit, and there, on
blocks of steaming dry ice rested professor Epstein - naked and curved like
an embryo and so waxen and tiny, as death makes us all. His body in the
transparent plastic bag was not the first dead person I have seen. But it
was the first that had been pumped full of anti-freeze and put on ice like a
bottle of Vodka. The corpse smell was betaeubend. [In actuality there would
be a strong smell of carbon dioxide gas, plus a sweetish overlay of silicone
oil, but no "corpse smell."]

"The professor came the day before yesterday from the east coast," Stephen
Bridge continued. "Naturally we retrieved him from the airport to the
outpatient clinic." The hurry with which Bridge and his troop proceeded may
appear exaggerated to some, because the 66-year-old history professor had
been pronounced dead many hours before by a New York physician. But in the
eyes of the people of Alcor Anatol Epstein was and is by no means
irretrievably lost. For he only exists in limbo - temporarily deanimated.
Undead. 

"We need only arrange to have our bodies, after we die, stored in suitable
freezers, against the time when science may be able to help us," it says in
the cold treatment cult book, The Prospect of Immortality. "No matter what
kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing techniques are
still crude when we die, sooner or  later our friends of the future should
be equal to the task of reviving and curing us." 

With these starting principles the American physics professor and science
fiction fan Robert C. W. Ettinger began a movement, in 1964, whose following
calls itself cryonics after "kryos," the Greek word for  cold. The first man
who made professor Ettinger's idea a reality was a California physician, Dr.
James Bedford. On 12 January 1967 he died of cancer. His family did not bury
him, but followed his desire and "suspended" him. Suspension means
"temporary removal" according to Duden [German counterpart of Webster?. The
cryonics version takes place, after previous cooling of the patient, in a
bath of liquid nitrogen. 

The white container in which Dr. Bedford spent his first two decades of
suspension is now in Alcor's lobby. [Actually this was his first capsule,
while the second is the one in which he spent two decades.] It is not
dissimilar to a propane gas tank. "We now store the patients upside down,"
says Stephen Bridge. "In case a leak would develop the feet would be exposed
first to the warmer temperature. And it's better to let our feet warm up
than our heads." 

But before the amateur cryonics craftsmen came to such insights, some
research and the development of a halfway professional infrastructure was
necessary. The starting point for this occurred in the mid-sixties when Fred
Chamberlain, a space travel engineer, got his hands on a copy of Ettinger's
book. "Its ideas seemed so reasonable to me that it seemed a likely
possibility someone would soon develop the necessary techniques," says
Chamberlain. "I was too busy to get involved myself, working as an engineer,
building Mariner and Voyager space probes." But when his mother died in 1970
and his father was also ailing, it dawned on him that time was passing and
nobody was making any progress in the practice of cryonics. So in 1972 Fred
Chamberlain and a few like-minded individuals in [the vicinity of]
Riverside, California started Alcor Foundation. Fred Chamberlain drew up
protocols for the freezing of  "cryonaut" patients, and these procedures -
technically improved - are still being used. In 1976 came Alcor's first
suspension, in which Chamberlain also participated personally: "It was my
father. He did not want to die, nobody wants to die. I owed it to him for
that." 

A quarter century later there are a half dozen suspension organizations. The
market leader, moreover, is Alcor, which moved in 1994 from Riverside to
earthquake-proof Phoenix. The foundation counts approximately 600 members,
39 suspended by it. The majority of cryonicists are depending on the
technical expertise of the American west. Cryonics societies have also
formed in Australia and Great Britain,  where Alcor maintains a facility.
But central Europe remains completely undeveloped as far as cryonics is
concerned. Apparently in the German-speaking countries no one yet has had a
fully pioneering spirit, ready for an icy journey into eternity. But it
would be relatively inexpensive to have life without a termination date. 

To cover the costs, the anti-deathists must execute a life insurance policy
making the donation [to Alcor of anywhere from] 50,000 to 145,000 dollars,
depending on the selected procedure and the amount of foreign surcharge.
Then you will your body to Alcor as a whole body donation. 

"Under ideal cryonics criteria," Stephen Bridge indicates, "[the best way to
die] would be [with] a slow cancer." With that the patient could still drag
himself to Phoenix. If a preliminary warning exists, Alcor also sends a
standby team, which provides locally for temporary preparation. In this
manner the  blood of the patient is replaced by Viaspan, a solution which is
used otherwise for the preservation of parts of the body for transplants.
Usual organ donations such as hearts and kidneys remain fresh in the
solution for 18 to 24 hours. 

But whoever dies too soon and too far from Alcor's High Tech OR is treated
like professor Epstein: As soon as the alleged death is official, he or she
is put on normal (not dry) ice and shipped as soon as possible by airplane
out to Phoenix. The suspension team headed by Fred Chamberlain's wife,
Linda, then swings into action. A physician, or sometimes a veterinarian,
opens the thorax, creates a heart bypass and cuts the connections to the
lungs. A more effective vascular channel is established directly from the
heart to the brain, and antifreeze based on glycerol is pumped into the
veins. Perfusion resembles a burr migration.[?] On the one hand a high
saturation of  the brain with [cryoprotective agent, here glycerol] is
desirable, to minimize tissue damage from freezing. On the other hand there
is danger of poisoning the cells [through too high a concentration of
cryoprotectant]. By a peep hole, which the surgeon bores into the head, the
team observes the dehydration: between skull and brain a gap of two or three
centimeters gapes [due to brain shrinkage]. 

If the patient elected the whole body version, then his chest is sutured
shut again. His body is wrapped in a plastic tarpaulin and placed in the dry
ice box, as I found professor Epstein. Cooling to minus 79 degrees [original
has "97"] takes two days. Afterwards the  patient reaches minus 196 degrees
and is then placed in a nitrogen bath. 

But even the most convinced cryonicists do not deny the enormous freezing
damage that develops with the present procedure. Thus many want to minimize
the amount of human tissue needing repair. For instance, contrary to
professor Epstein, FM-2030 waived the storage of his ailing body. He was
more concerned with preserving the brain alone; afterward a new body would
be cloned and attached to the old head. The body could be like the old one
or completely redesigned. 

In such cheaper cases of "neuropreservation" the team at the end of the
perfusion separates the head between the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae
and packs it into a type of Spaghetti pot, while the rest of the body
becomes a special, final concern as refuse. Derek Ryan, rotund in his late
twenties, thus once sawed off the head of an acquaintance, then later, as it
happened, lived with his girlfriend. If the predecessor returns to life,
Derek says, he will speak to him about it: "I would like to tell him how
strangely affectionate she was. In this way I came much closer to her." 

The scene could play well in Hollywood, in a horror film about relationships
and packing crates, and anywhere else that cryonics is not any more popular
than in the popular culture. The frozen are to be found also in all the
following: the Science Fiction classic "2001 - A Space Odyssey," innumerable
"Star Trek" episodes, best-sellers like "Chiller" and "Host," and Myers
Comedy hit "Austin Powers." 

The medical establishment's reaction is less bemused. It regards the concept
of the cryonics time machine as a charlatanism, a futuristic kind of cash
ripoff. The Alcorians set several arguments against these reproaches. Not
the least reads: Alcor may not profit from a donation, and  the salaries of
the paid staff are close to the poverty line. The allegation of charlatanism
still remains. To the preservation method it does not refer specifically.
And because the human remains actually rest at minus 196 degrees Celsius,
the [prospect of preservation into the] far future without further cell
death agrees with the official research position of cryobiology and

cryogenics. These are respected sciences, in contrast to the disputed cryonics.

Their recent progress, moreover, sounds little less fantastic than the
cryonics utopia. Skin and corneas are frozen routinely. And humans have long
lived among us who once were frozen - as  embryos. But despite intensive
efforts no one has yet succeeded in deep-cooling entire organs in such a way
that they would become functional after thawing. "The belief that cryonics
can lead to the reanimation of someone who was frozen," declared Arthur C.
Rowe, former director of the Red Cross Cryobiological Institute in New York,
"is in the same class as the idea of getting a cow back from hamburger." 

"Yes, many people try to be funny at our expense," says Stephen Bridge, when
we are in the hall with the patient dewars, nearly three meters high,
holding tanks that amount to high-grade steel thermos bottles on wheels.
"But for us the suspended ones are not faceless dead. They are instead our
fathers and mothers, daughters and sons." 

In the cooling, shining, nitrogen[-filled] sarcophagi the suspended whole
bodies float, and also a few of their pets. The Spaghetti pots with the
heads of the neuropreserved rest in smaller containers. Hopes of cryonicists
for a not-too-distant revival of all invoke nanotechnology, repairing the
cells atom for atom-this apart from the progress and promises of genetic
engineering. FM-2030 also foresaw the day of [the] application [of
nanotechnology] in making post-biological organisms. As for today's scoffers
at Alcor, in the end they could be no more right than their shortsighted

colleagues of 100 years ago, who could not accept the possibility of airplanes.

"To die is nothing natural. Getting older is an illness just the same as
cancer," says sixties holdout Fred Chamberlain. "For these diseases, we need
the assistance of cryonics - to  transport us to a better future." And
Stephen Bridge asks gently: "How long does it have to take before making the
necessary arrangements for your own survival is no longer valid?" 

[short quotation from earlier text omitted]

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