X-Message-Number: 6227
From:  (hEpCaT)
Subject: Leary in the LA Times
Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 17:57:34 -0700 (PDT)

LEARY SEVERS TIES TO CRYONICS ADVOCATES

*Death*: "They have no sense of humor," says cancer sufferer, who had
planned to have his head frozen after his demise.

		-----------------------------------------

By David Colker, Times Staff Writer

     The widely discredited cryonics movement, which advocates freezing
bodies upon death in the hope they can be thawed and revived in the
future, has lost its most eagerly anticipated client.

     Timothy Leary, 75 and ill with prostate cancer, has ended his long
association with the movement.  "They have no sense of humor," said Leary
of cryonics advocates.  "I was worried that I would wake up in 50 years
surrounded by people with clipboards."
     Leary, who is frail but still a prankster, wouldn't get any more
serious than that in describing the motivations behind signing up for
cryonics in 1988 or deciding against it as death nears.
     But the former Harvard psychologist, who became an international
celebrity in the 1960's by advocating the use of mind-altering drugs, has
seldom taken the well-trod path.
     His decision to pull the plug on cryonics followed a tense scene over
the weekend during which representatives from BioPreserve [sic], a local
company that prepares a body for freezing, angrily removed its equipment
from Leary's Beverly Hills home.
     The falling out between the Leary and cryonics camps was prompted in
large part by the famous psychologist's plans to end his own life, which
he disclosed in a Times interview in August.
     Cryonics advocates say legal and medical complications after a
suicide make it difficult for them to properly prepare a corpse for
"cryonic suspension."  Because of Leary's notoriety, they wanted
everything to go according to their procedures.
     And even if Leary did die of natural causes, cryonics officials
feared that because he did not have 24-hour nursing care, as they had
suggested, there would be a delay in having him pronounced officially
dead.
     "Our job is to be there to take immediate action to keep his heart
and lungs working with CPR techniques, to inject medication to prevent the
brain from freezing damage," said Charles Platt, vice president of the
CryoCare Foundation.
     Cryonics officials have been especially cautious about legal matters
since the Alcor Life Extension Foundation was accused in 1987 of hastening
the death of a woman whose head was frozen.  The case was eventually
dropped.
     "It's real feeling of defeat," said Platt of the Leary matter.  The
foundation, one of two in the country that make arrangements for cryonics,
would have received $50,000 to freeze Leary's head (full body cryonics
costs $100,000) and priceless publicity.
     The money would have come from donations and Leary's life insurance,
according to members of his staff.
     The scientific world has overwhelmingly dismissed cryonics, whose
advocates hope that future technologies will allow frozen bodies to be
revived and perhaps even cloned.
     CryoCare split off from Alcor three years ago.  Platt would not
disclose how many people are on CryoCare's current member list.  He said
the group has overseen the freezing of only one body.
     Leary first contracted with a cryonics company in 1988.  "He used to
say, 'Cryonics is the second stupidest thing I've ever heard of,'" said
Leary's friend and writing collaborator, Vicki Marshall.  "'Being eaten by
worms is the first stupidest.'"
     Leary said he is now considering more "conventional" post-death
procedures, including burial and cremation.  He said he is still pondering
suicide, but has not set a date.  Nor has he ruled out broadcasting his
death live via the Internet.
     Shortly after Leary broke off relations with CryoCare, a fax arrived
at his home from Alcor, saying he was welcome to make an agreement with
it.  But he said he is through with cryonics.
     "I guess he is not going to be their poster boy," Marshall said.


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David Cosenza                                           
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