X-Message-Number: 18753 From: "Trygve Bauge" <> Subject: Frozen dead guy festival, answers to common media questions Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 03:42:52 +0100 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0050_01C1C8AE.D2AE7D80 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Here are the questions from various reporters and my answers: > 1: How do you feel about the festival this weekend? Since the town > gave you a hard time about your grandfather some years ago, do you > think they are taking advantage of him and you now? Or do you think > the festival is respectful and will publicize cyrogenics? > Trygve's answer: I like the idea of an annual winter festival. This is not the first festival I have contributed to. I also founded the Boulder Polar Bear Club in 1983. It organizes an annual icebathing winter carnival, that takes place at Boulder reservoir every New Year's Day, it has over the last 19 years grown to about 350 participants and even more onlookers. It has had lots of national and international media coverage from the inception. As to the problems we had with the town board in Nederland Colorado. You are refering to the 1994 conflict. The town did not give me a hard time. Only the town board gave me a hard time. The local newspaper the Mountainear took a poll at the time and more than 70 percent of the local residents supported my case. The town board was replaced at the next election and we have not had any problems with the town ever since. I think a festival is great. It is good to have local support. It even gives volounteers and some economic support for what I am doing. And preempts future problems with various levels of government. We have had local business sponsors for many years now. The company called Tuff Shed donated the wooden cabin that houses my grandfather. They also financed the short movie "Grandpa in the Tuff shed". The movie was produced by the Beck sisters and has won awards at film festivals. It will be shown at the winter festival too. Radio station Fox in Denver is an annual sponsor. And various dry ice companies like Air gas/Liquid Air has donated dry ice at several occations,like last year when we celebrated the 101st anniversary of my grandfather's birth. The festival is fun, like the movie was and like the annual New Year's Day dip at Boulder reservoir is. I look upon happiness as a goal, I think it is important for people to be able to play and have fun. Or like the Danish author Pete Heine said: "The one who only takes the serious seriously and the light lightly, he and she has understood both poorly." It is much better to have and to nurture local support, than to end up with problems like the Martinots in France. Where the authorities are still threatening to have Martinot and his wife thawed out and cremated. I think the festival will continue to make Colorado a safe place for cryonics. It is true that the town still has on its books the unconstitutional ordinance from 1994 against adding more cryonic patients within the town limits. But if anyone wanted to remove that ordinance the support is there to have it removed. Furthermore the conflict in 1994 showed that we have nothing to fear from the health authorities in Boulder county or from the State of Colorado, both came down on our side in the conflict with the town board. And cryonics is not banned in Boulder or Colorado, which is more than one can say about many other places around the world like British Columbia and France etc. Thus I have every reason to think that what I am doing, and such festivals like the one the local chamber of commerce is organizing, are good for cryonics and are making Colorado a safe place for longrun cryonic storage. I think the local sponsors, the witty short movie and the annual festival are a good and healthy expression of local support. And I appreciate this support. It might even lead to some larger and better cryonic facility eventually being built in Colorado. My project is after all just a small pilot project aimed at opening for better cryonic projects in the future. > 2: Was your granfather interested in cyrogenics? What do you think he's > thinking about the festival this weekend (or what do you think that he > would think? I'm not sure if he's currently thinking, or if the > preservation stops thought till he's reanimated?) Trygve's answer: My grandfather Bredo Morstol (Morst l, the last o is actually and o with a slash or with umlaut and is pronounced more like an "e") was born on February the 28th 1900. He was a landscape architect. And was in charge of the parks and recreation department in the county of Baerum (a suburb to our Capital Oslo) here in Norway in many years until he retired in 1967. He died unexpectely and before I had taken time to ask him if he wanted to be suspended. He liked to be alive and had a strong will to live. He almost died of a hearth failure after a ski trip in 1975. My mother was able to give him CPR and bring him back to life and he lived another 14 years. A week before he died his doctor told him: "If you had been younger we would have given you a heart transplant, to which my grandfather replied: "Oh, if I had just been younger". Under socialized medicine they don't give heart transplants to the elderly but they couldn't stop us from freezing him, and thereby possibly give him another chance. Thus it was my decission to have him frozen. I am an Objectivist (yesterday it was 20 years since Ayn Rand died), and though I frequently dream that I am communicating with my grandfather, I look upon this just as dreams. I don't believe that the soul survives outside the body. As far as I am concerned the soul dies with the body. My grandfather was dead when we froze him. All mental functions had stopped. As I see it he remains dead until we find a way to reverse that death. And freezing is just a means to slow down further decay until ways of reversing this can be found. > 3. One more question, to answer my own curiosity than for the story. > Since you believe the soul dies when the body does -- when your > grandfather is reanimated, do you think the soul returns? If not, > then would the reanimated body still be your grandfather? > Trygve's answer: I think the soul is a feedback reaction in the brain. If we repair the brain or if we clone the body and retrain the brain with similar content then the feedback reaction we call a soul will be close to the same. Of course, once we bring back the first cryonic patient we will find out for sure. At least it will be a step in the right direction towards 100% continuation of oneself. It would be survival or a continuation of oneself to a much higher degree than what we presently experience through regular offspring. >4.And how far along are you in your mission to bring him back to life? Trygve's answer: As far as bringing him back, we still have to find a way to clone dead tissue, and this has to become legal and economically affordable. So I would say we are about a generation away from bringing hm back as a clone. > 5.How much have you spent so far on keeping your grandfather frozen? >(I have heard $130,000?) Trygve's answer: We have spent about $ 135.000 : $ 50.000 initially and about $ 6,000 - $7,400 a year since > 6. What was the cause of your grandfather's death? Trygve's answer: He died of a hearth attack while taking a nap on November the 6th 1989. > 7.How long has he been frozen? (I read he died in 1989, but then saw > something that said he'd been in Nederland only 9 years?) Were there > a few years spent suspended in California before coming to Nederland? Trygve's answer: He was frozen in Norway in 1989, then shipped to California on Feb 1st 1990 and stored at Trans Times facility in Oakland for 4 years until we moved him to Nederland Colorado just before Christmas in 1993. He has been slightly more than 8 years where he is now. > 8.Had your grandfather ever been to > Nederland when he was alive? Trygve's answer: Yes at least once possibly twice: he was in Boulder in 1980 and again in 1982. In 1982 I recall that we drove through the town of Nederland, and probably stopped too, on the way to Estes Park. > 9. Do you support the festival, which is really a benefit for the > town and tourism? Especially after town officials tried to evict your > grandfather's corpse years ago? Trygve's answer: Yes I do. I hope the festival will be as popular and as long lived as the other festival I have brought about in Colorado: The annual New Year's Day Dip at Boulder reservoir. That is still going strong after 19 years. > 10. What do you say to scientists who say that your grandfather has > not been properly stored for future re-animation or even cell > regeneration? Trygve's answer: To my knowledge no human being is so far frozen in such a way that they can be reanimated with present technology. Some are frozen in such a way that it might be possible to glean some of the mental content from the frozen brain sometime in the future. Som people have already frozen live cells in such a way that they actually could be cloned with present technology. As far as my grandfather is concerned: My grandfather is dead. His cells are dead. Nothing can be done to restore him with present technology. We do not disagree upon that. However who is to say that we won't be able to clone people by piecing together dead DNA fragments sometime in the future? Or by scanning dead tissue for the DNA code, and then rebuilding live cells with the same DNA code using similar fragments harvested from live cells in other still live beings that carry the same DNA fragments? And who is to say that we can't even rebuild the old body at some point using nano technology, and using a clone as a key to or blueprint for what we are trying to rebuild. As far as the mental content is concerned, one can foresee that this to a large part can be restored to a clone or a repaired body from external sources and by conventional teaching techniques. Some things are common for all human beings. Other things are common for all the people that lived at the same time. Other things are common for many people. Much of the above is already recorded in one way or another in public archives. And much of the rest can be restored from personal sources that we have maintained like pictures, films, writings. Furthermore there are still people alive that has spent time with my grandfather or otherwise shared a lot of my grandfathers experience. Maybe such information too could be stored and later restored. Maybe someone would like to write his biography so that we easier can restore his memory if or when we bring him back? >11. Do you and your mother have plans to be cryonically suspended > after your own deaths? Trygve's answer: I expect that we both will be cryonically suspended after death. >12. And do you have any suspended clients at your business in Norway? Trygve's answer: Non in Norway. But I have been instrumental in the suspension of at least 3 of the people presently in cryonic suspension in the United States. >13.Can you please spell out a phonetic version of your name, and > that of your grandfather? Trygve Bauge is pronounced: Trig (like in trigometry) ve (like in very) Bow (like in a a bow) ge (like in get) Bredo Morst l is pronounced: Bre (like in breath) do (like in Rapido TV) Mor (like in morgage) st (like in still) oe (like u in udder/utter) l (like light) >14. also, what is the name of the town where you live now? I live in Oslo, the capital of Norway. Sincerely, Trygve Bauge Trygve Bauge, Life-Extension Systems, The Norw. Icebathing club & Trygve's Meta Portal: www.trygve.bauge.com ------=_NextPart_000_0050_01C1C8AE.D2AE7D80 Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18753