X-Message-Number: 7421 Date: Sat, 04 Jan 97 17:07:07 From: Steve Bridge <> Subject: Press Release To CryoNet >From Steve Bridge, Alcor January 4, 1997 This press release has gone out to most major newspapers and TV networks, plus some weekly magazines nationwide (U.S. only). Feel free to post this other places electronically or send to your local paper. January 2, 1997 *** PRESS RELEASE from ALCOR LIFE EXTENSION FOUNDATION *** For release on January 12, 1997 or sooner. Sunday, January 12, 1997 is a milestone in the history of the experimental technology of *cryonics*. Dr. James Bedford, the first human frozen to await treatment by future medicine, has been in his preserved state for 30 years. Although cryonics procedures currently may be practiced only on individuals who are labeled as legally "dead," adherents consider cryonic suspension to be a potential life-saving procedure. They expect that advanced medical technologies of the next century may be able to repair the ravages of disease, injury, freezing, and aging and return the patient to active, healthy life. They also anticipate that physicians will continue to redefine when truly irreversible "death" occurs, so that today's frozen patients may someday be considered alive and revivable. Dr. Bedford was a psychology professor at Glendale College in California. In 1966 he discovered he had terminal renal cancer. He had read *The Prospect of Immortality* by physics professor Robert C.W. Ettinger, the book which began the cryonics movement in 1964. With the help of his wife and son, Bedford arranged for a fledgling organization, Cryonics Society of California (now defunct), to place him into cryonic suspension. When his heart stopped on January 12 at the age of 73, the cryonics volunteers injected protective fluids and slowly froze him to the temperature of liquid nitrogen (-320 degrees F, -196 degrees C). In his long and adventurous life, Bedford had traveled the world, including an African safari and a trip up the Amazon River. His journeys since his cryonic suspension have been no less interesting. The suspension was crude, compared to today's procedures, and reliable companies for the protection of cryonics patients did not yet exist. Bedford's relatives first moved him to Phoenix, Arizona to be cared for at a company which manufactured the first cryonics storage units. Over the following decade, Bedford's dedicated family would move him to three different locations in California, including secret storage in a mini-warehouse. In 1982, representatives of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation contacted the family and offered to take permanent custody of Dr. Bedford's frozen body. From 1982 until 1994, Dr. Bedford was stored at Alcor's California facilities in Fullerton and Riverside. In March, 1994, Alcor moved Dr. Bedford, along with Alcor's other suspension patients, to its current headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. Today, there are approximately 70 total cryonics patients preserved in liquid nitrogen at -3200 F at four different cryonics companies (33 of that number are at Alcor). Several hundred other adventurous people have made the advance legal and financial arrangements to receive low temperature preservation when today's doctors are no longer able to save their lives. For a media information package about cryonics or to arrange interviews, please contact Steve Bridge or Brian Shock at Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Telephone 602-922-9013, Fax 602-922-9027 or e-mail or Detailed information may also be located on Alcor's Web site at www.alcor.org. Stephen Bridge, President () Alcor Life Extension Foundation Non-profit cryonic suspension services since 1972. 7895 E. Acoma Dr., Suite 110, Scottsdale AZ 85260-6916 Phone (602) 922-9013 (800) 367-2228 FAX (602) 922-9027 for general requests http://www.alcor.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7421