X-Message-Number: 3681
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 95 20:49 GMT
From:  (John Styles)
Subject: CRYONICS Guardian Newspaper Article

The Guardian, one of Britain's 10 or so national daily papers, has a 
column musing about cryonics on its op-ed page today (Friday 13th Jan).
This is mentioned on the banner above the title on the front page (where 
articles are highlighted) as 'Is there eternal life at the end of the 
Rotherhithe tunnel?'
The 'commentary' by Joanna Coles is titled 'Is life after death an 
eternal chat show with Oprah?'. Some quotes follow:
'At number 52, F A Albin & Sons know a fair bit about tradition: they've 
been directing funerals in London for 212 years. But tradition suggests 
old fashioned and Barry, the fifth generation Albin now managing the 
family firm, is anxious to persuade you otherwise. "We have the 
technology," he says, with no hint of a smile.
And who knows? Perhaps he is right. Perhaps the 90-year old lady in 
Cologne who is presently waiting to die, will one day reawaken and thank 
the Lord that she booked Barry Albin to embalm her.
[...] 
'It takes a special kind of mind to meddle with the dead and exploit our 
fear of dying by promising eternal life. But unlike Dr Frankenstein, Bob 
Ettinger has no illusions about playing God. In fact Bob takes a purely 
pragmatic view of his work. Like he once said to Barry: "Hey, dead people 
don't have much fun!"
'Who knows? But the point of cryonics is surely that nobody does know. 
Just like Bob also said to Barry: "Hey, once you're in a box and buried 
out there in a graveyard, that's it!"
'But with cryonics there's the chance. A tiny chance that in 100 years 
you may receive a wake-up call from the big chill and be brought back to 
life.
[...]
'It's not difficult to dismiss cryontologists as cranks. Never mind the 
technology, who would want to come back in 100 years? You wouldn't know 
anyone. Sentence to captivity in your grizzled body, you'd end up 
confined to the chat show sofa while Oprah Winfrey III grilled you over 
the significance of sexual abuse in the 20th century.
But oddly, Barry shows no signs of crankery [...]
[...] 
'As we nudge towards the year 2000 we appear to have developed a fin de 
siecle obsession with death. No wish is too absurd, no request ignored. 
As long as the price is right. One man, conscious he didn't have much 
longer on this planet, begged Barry to dispose of his remains in space. 
Cremated in Rotherhithe, he was flown to California where his small pot 
of ashes was fixed on to the outside of a satellite and released into 
orbit.
'Meanwhile, there are 40 bodies stored in Bob Ettinger's fridge at the 
Institute of Cryontology. Are they the latest victims of a confidence 
trick that has been going on since carpet-bagging medicine men purveyed 
the elixier of life off the back of a wagon? Of will they have the last 
laugh, post mortem?

To put this into context, The Guardian is fairly up-market and is the 
most 'left-wing' daily paper (apart from one owned by the Communist Party 
which sells about 3 copies a day). 

The general tone of the article i.e. 
it probably won't work but more likely to work than the alternatives, a 
bit cranky, rather a waste of money but people should be allowed to choose 
it if they want to, is what I perceive to be the general attitude to 
cryonics in Britain.

John Styles ()

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