X-Message-Number: 22341 From: "aschwin de wolf" <> Subject: Death may not be the end in Boca Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 07:36:27 -0400 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0042_01C3616D.9B194540 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Death may not be the end in Boca http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/wednesday/news_f3931b11158512281040.html?2410 By John Murawski, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 13, 2003 BOCA RATON -- This city of cosmetic nips and tucks could soon offer what believers say is the ultimate preservation: the deep-freeze process of cryonics. A Boca Raton company, Suspended Animation, proposes to be Florida's only freezing facility for humans and the fourth in the nation that prepares eager Rip Van Winkles for an extended hypothermic slumber. The cost: up to $200,000 per person. The company has applied for permits in city hall and expects October approval from the city council to begin freezing operations and related animal research off Clint Moore Road. "We are in essence a time machine," said the company's president, David Shumaker, who describes frozen volunteers as time travelers. Dismissed by mainstream scientists as science fiction, the 40-year-old practice of cryonics made headlines last year when the children of Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams fought in court over whether the deceased baseball legend's remains should be cremated and scattered over the Florida Keys or frozen in liquid nitrogen at 77 degrees Kelvin. In December, Williams' three children agreed to preserve their frozen father indefinitely in a steel tank at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz. Followers, who call themselves cryonicists, donate their bodies for freezing -- or sometimes just their heads -- in the belief that scientific breakthroughs still hundreds of years away will allow doctors to regenerate youthful bodies from DNA. "Really, everything that makes you the person you are exists in your head," said Suspended Animation's chief operating officer, David Hayes. "If you come up with a technology to unfreeze me and bring me back to life, then by that time you will also be able to figure out a way to grow a body back on my head." Kenneth Goodman, director of the University of Miami's Bioethics Program, calls cryonics "one of the great knee-slappers in the history of science." "This is theology, not science," he said Tuesday. "Even if you get this critter that you've just flash-frozen to reanimate, the very idea that it will have the same memory of the person doesn't pass the straight-face test." Nationwide, about 1,000 people are signed up to be frozen, and about 100 are already in deep freeze -- 30 of whom are head-only preservations, Hayes said. It costs about $60,000 to be frozen and from $30,000 to $150,000 to be stored, depending on the facility. In addition to city permits, Suspended Animation will need a license from the state Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers because the agency contends Suspended Animation's two-to-three day time frame to freeze a body and prepare it for shipping out of state amounts to storing cadavers. Shumaker disputes the state's interpretation, saying cryonics patients are not being "stored" any more than patients waiting at a doctor's office are being "stored." The company hopes to persuade state regulators not to require an embalming license or to create a separate licensing category for cryonics. In Boca Raton, most of the cryonics work will involve research in improving methods of preserving the human body, Shumaker said. The company expects to be ready to commence operations next year and plans to freeze fewer than five people a year, according to its application. The frozen bodies will be shipped to one of three states that permit storage of frozen cadavers: California, Arizona and Nevada. In cryonics, the patient's blood and fluids are flushed out within 20 minutes after death. This phase takes place at the mortuary. The body would then be moved to Suspended Animation's lab at 1082 Rogers Circle and pumped with special preservatives. Then it would be slowly cooled to minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit. The entire procedure takes up to 28 hours, according to Suspended Animation's filings in city hall. Suspended Animation picked Boca Raton because it was the only South Florida city that would allow controversial animal research, primarily on laboratory rats, Shumaker said. South Florida is convenient geographically because Shumaker, a physicist, lives in Port Charlotte; Hayes, a computer engineer, lives in Delray Beach; and the company's private financing comes from the Life Extension Foundation, a Fort Lauderdale vitamin and health concern heavily involved in cryonics. "Only one municipality in all of South Florida would permit our animal research activities," the company's Web site says. "Finding a similarly friendly landlord in that one small town proved difficult." The company's chief scientist is Christopher Dougherty, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Miami's medical school and master's and undergraduate biology degrees from Florida Atlantic University. The director of research and patient services, Michael Quinn, has a bachelor's degree from the University of West Florida. Hayes, 40, said he signed up to have his head frozen when he was a 28-year-old U.S. Marine. Shumaker, 58, said he's been a believer in cryonics since he was a teenager, but is waiting to commit until Suspended Animation perfects a freezing practice called vitrification, which would allow entire bodies to be frozen without forming ice crystals that pierce and destroy cells and tissue. Not counting Ice Age accidents, the world's first cryonicist was James Bedford in 1967. "James has been frozen for (nearly) 40 years and there's no hurry to get him out," Hayes said. "When we do get him out, it'll be a five-minute nap for him." ------=_NextPart_000_0042_01C3616D.9B194540 Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22341