X-Message-Number: 3966
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From:  (John de Rivaz)
Subject: Evening Standard rubbished cryonics: opportunity to complain
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 1995 07:45:49 +0000
Message-ID: <>

I have been given a page from The Evening Standard which contain a 
vituperative article about Walt Disney. It started:

>>>Those who hope to cheat death through cryonic preservation (sic) are 
curiously inconsistent in their beliefs. They pay up to $200,000 (two 
hundred thousand) up front so that the moment Jesus decides they's make a 
great sunbeam, and they expire from some terminal illness, they can be 
stuffed into a container and  kept frozen until a miracle cure is 
discovered. Yet, if they really believed that the process worked, they'd 
have themselves chilled the moment the first lump was diagnosed, so they'd 
still be in prime condition after defrosting. It is tempting to think that 
those cryonics companies will sooner or later be declared bankrupt, their 
power will be cut off, and their customers will then suffer the ultimate 
indignity: being hosed down the drain.

Walt Disney was deluded enough to have himself frozen, but ... <<< (I am not 
going to waste time in typing in stuff about his fading reputation.)

Here is what I wrote to the editor in reply. I hope others will add their 
comments in separate letters. Letters from overseas no doubt will have 
special consideration because most of the letters will be from the UK.

The Editor,
The Evening Standard,
Northcliffe House,
2, Derry Street,
London
W8 5EE
England - UK

Monday, 6 March 1995

Dear Sir,

          Your article concerning Walt Disney "The Iron Fist of Toontown's 
King" by Victor Lewis-Smith on page 31 of 24 February 1995 contained 
aaccount of cryonic suspension. It is clear from the tone of the account 
that Mr Lewis-Smith seems to relish the idea of cryonics companies 
going bankrupt and their clients losing their lives and their funds. 

          Well, he has the freedom to take pleasure in other people's 
disasters, as long as he doesn't add to them or cause them to happen in the 
first place.

          However I do feel concerned that the article contained serious 
inaccuracies of fact:
1    The costs are $28,000 with the Cryonics Institute, not the figure 
mentioned. In addition there are transport costs from the UK to the US of 
around $4-6,000.
2    The costs do not have to be paid up front until the person dies.
3    It is not true that cryonics clients with incurable diseases won't get 
frozen before they die - they aren't allowed to. Lawyers do not allow people 
to be frozen when a fatal disease is beyond treatment by present day 
medicine. In the USA, a doctor (of mathematics) with an incurable brain 
tumour applied to the courts for the freedom to chose the option of 
suspension before the tumour destroyed his brain. He was refused on the 
grounds that if it were allowed it would cause lawyers solving homicide 
cases some inconvenience.
4    The process of cryonic storage is not dependant on an electricity 
supply. The bodies are kept in dewars of liquid nitrogen which are topped up 
once a fortnight from a delivery of this very common industrial chemical.
5    Walt Disney is not in cryonic suspension.

          I hope that you will put the facts straight, whatever opinions 
your contributors have. If any of your readers are interested in following 
this up, then they can contact Barry Albin, of F. A. Albin & Sons, of Arthur 
Stanley House, Culling Road, London SE16 2TN. This is a firm of funeral 
directors established over 100 years who are the UK agents for the Cryonics 
Institute.

-- 
Sincerely,     ****************************************       
               * Publisher of        Longevity Report *
John de Rivaz  *                     Fractal Report   *
               *          details on request          *
               ****************************************
**** What is the point of life if it ends in death? ****

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