A Hobson’s Choice: -321 or a Glass of Phenobarbital

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

Here we are in Phoenix and I had forgotten that Ted Williams is our neighbor in Scottsdale at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation facilities. That is, his head is. I think his body is too, but it’s hard to get the real skinny on his body, so to speak. Being a big baseball fan and fellow Marine, I took Corky to the Ted Williams Museum in Hernando, Florida, in 2005, just three years after his death at the age of 83. The Museum was part baseball and part military in that Ted flew Marine Corsair fighter planes during WW II and the Korean War. The Corsair was a big, brawny fighter that had to have gull wings because the engine powered a huge propeller.
We went through the museum with friends who wintered at Homosassa. It contained memorabilia from his Boston Red Sox playing days, including his batting titles, All-Star awards, uniforms, hundreds of awards, and many films and pictures of teams and field action shots. Our visit was during the days of the big Williams family hassle over what to do with his body and head.

Ted was kind of a scientific guy. With a lifetime batting average of .344, he certainly had to take an interest in the science of hitting a round baseball with a round bat. Joe Mauer of the Twins approaches hitting the way Ted Williams used to, except that Joe has developed the skill of hitting to the opposite field. Ted was too ornery to hit to left field where players weren’t, although teams usually employed the “Williams Shift” against him to try to cut down on his hits to right field. All infielders would be moved to the right side of thel diamond and the left fielder would play in center field. Ted loved to knock infielders down with line drive shots to right–and he did put many over right field fences. But I digress. After playing high school, American Legion, college, amateur, and semi-pro baseball when young it does get in one’s blood. I watch the Twins, win or tie. Back to Ted’s head.

Cryonics and the Prospects for Immortality

Evidently Ted wanted the opportunity to hit baseballs forever, because he agreed to have at least his head frozen in a cryonic process. Cryonics is the freezing of humans as shortly after death as possible, with the hope that the human may be brought back to life later. Claims are made by proponents that it is possible to preserve “with reasonable fidelity” the brain so that future medicos can repair damage done it by the freezing process.

When Ted died, his head was cut from his body and frozen. This must be accomplished as soon after death as possible because body parts must be cooled properly. They are then maintained indefinitely at minus 321 degrees. He was known as “the splendid splinter” because of his tall, lanky, but muscular frame that helped him generate all of that batting power. I hope his body and head will be reunited in the future. What if his head was attached to Mickey Rooney’s body? Goodby, .344!

There are nine companies in the U.S. that offer cryo-preservation and “eternal” maintenance services, the Alcor Foundation (named after a star in the Milky Way) being the largest. Alcor claims they have 90 frozen patients and over 915 paid members. Alcor has bragging rights with the oldest frozen patient in its freezers, James Bedford, who died of cancer in 1967.

Other companies claim they have as many as 50 patients in “cold” suspension and 300 clients who have paid for future services. Some cryonic experts say that the brain will never be revived after freezing because not only do brain cells deteriorate quickly, they turn to mush when thawed. Of course, some are mush to start with.

Dr. Jerry Leaf, a UCLA surgery teacher, was an early patient of Alcor. He developed a method of resuscitating dogs that had spent several hours in extreme hypothermia. The dogs did not seem to suffer any neurological damage. His body was frozen by Alcor in 1991.Scientists are working on the mushy brain problem. Brian Harvey of Victoria, British Columbia, has done experiments with oyster embryos frozen 25 years ago. Under microscope they look like hairy volleyballs. He can take embryos, stick them in salt water, and watch them swim away with the little hairs beating away.

As far back as 1966, a Japanese scientist froze some cat brains and then thawed them after about a month. He demonstrated to some people that the cat brains recovered much of their function. However, many of the records of the event have been “lost.”

A Founding Father Really Wanted to Be Found

Ideas about “resurrection” or scientific means to arrest life for centuries have existed for hundreds of years. In 1766 John Hunter, a Scottish surgeon, tried to revive fish after freezing them. The process didn’t work. Benjamin Franklin, who liked to tip more than a few in his day, suggested he would like to be preserved in a vat of Madeira wine so he could see what the world was like in a century or two.

The founder of the U.S. cryonics movement is Robert Ettinger, who dates his interest in cryonics from1930 when he was 12. At that time he read “The Jameson Satellite,” a story about a dying professor who has himself placed in a rocket and fired into freezing space. He ends up 40 million years later as a mechanical man with steel head and probing tentacles—but with his own brain. This fascinating stuff is in an article in The New Yorker by Jill Lepore called “The Iceman.”

Ettinger, now 91with several degrees in the sciences including physics, will die soon. When he dies the blood will be drained from his body, anti-freeze will be pumped into his arteries, and holes will be drilled into his head. His body will then be cooled and placed in a sleeping bag (purchased at WalMart), hoisted up headfirst by forklift and lowered into a freezer containing other frozen humans. The author wrote that the “patients” in the freezer reminded her of hibernating bats. Historical items such as photo albums and family Bibles are stored in rooms near the freezers. Alcor stores all family history materials a mile underground near a Kansas salt mine.

He will be frozen to minus 321 degrees, hoping that someone will “defrost” him in the future. He will have family with him. Ettinger has already frozen his mother and his two wives. His first wife was frozen in 1977, the second in 2000. His facility near Detroit called the Cryonics Institute has 14 round freezers about 14 feet tall and six feet wide, each holding up to six patients. He currently has 92 patients who have paid a membership fee of $1250 during life and a $28,000 fee when they die. According to Ettinger, there are only three ways to go when you die: burying, burning, or freezing. He has chosen option three.

Future Repair Shops for Major Health Problems

Some cryonic experts are suggesting that fetuses with cerebral palsy, Downs Syndrome, brain defects, and other handicaps be frozen and stored for the time that medical advances will make it possible to correct their problems. Nanotech experts are also predicting that in the future microscopic robots will be able to enter individual cells and repair them. Then the fetuses could be put up for adoption, perfect for that known world. Sound impossible?

We have to remember that about 50 years ago when the heart stopped pumping blood people were dead. Now we have CPR, electrical defibrillation, and other mechanical techniques to get the heart beating again. Persons submerged in cold water for as long as 45 minutes have been “brought back to life.” We are now operating on livers, kidneys, hearts, and other vital organs with robots through one-inch holes in the body. The doctor can be many feet away from the patient operating the robotic arms. In some cases holes do not have to be made. Operations are now conducted through almost any of the body orifices. What will the world of medicine be like in another 50 years? Alcor has some interesting challenges in its list of patients, one being a 101-year-old-woman and another a 21-year-old female accident victim.

How About Option Four?

Ettinger said there were only three options in dying. Actually there are more. The variations include: assisted suicide, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia by action, euthanasia by omission, passive euthanasia, active euthanasia, voluntary euthanasia, involuntary euthanasia, voluntary passive euthanasia, involuntary passive euthanasia, voluntary active euthanasia, and involuntary active euthanasia. Whew! I didn’t know there were so many means of dying until I read Bruce Falconer’s article in the The Atlantic, “Death Becomes Him.” It takes awhile to figure all those out.

In his article Falconer is writing about Ludwig Minelli, a Swiss citizen who has helped more than a thousand people kill themselves. He founded Dignitas in Zurich which has made Switzerland the world assisted suicide leader. He describes himself as a crusader for “the last human right.”

Assisted suicide is also legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg–and in the U.S. (Oregon, Washington, and Montana). But the Swiss have a very different, permissive environment. Usually, assisted suicide is limited to those who have proven they have incurable, terminal diseases. Not in Switzerland. It is actually legal in Zurich to hand a pistol to a person in your living room and watch him blow his brains out. That’s why the Swiss have four major assisted suicide organizations.

Dignitas uses sodium pentobarbital in its killer cocktail. It’s the only group that will help to speed the death of almost anyone who asks. Minelli often helps people who have screwed up in attempting suicide. He has assisted in the killing of the following: people who have used car exhaust and failed (modern cars with catalytic converters make it almost impossible), a woman who jumped off an eight-story building to a paved parking lot and survived–to be in a wheelchair, a man who shot himself in the face and survived, and a man who jumped in front of a train and lost both legs but lived.

Assisted suicide has been around since the Greeks. In Athens judges placed poisons around town in convenient areas with the statement: “If your life is hateful to you, die; if you are overwhelmed by fate, drink the hemlock.” The Hippocratic Oath in the 4th century B.C. slowed this down to some extent, but mercy killing was quite prevalent even in the religious world until the 12th century.

It costs about $10,000 to have the assistance of Dignitas. It pays for two doctors who see the patient twice before they can write a killing prescription (This is a local law only), cremation, and the use of rooms and facilities by family and friends. Usually the patient is asleep in two minutes and dead in eight. Many Western Europeans believe in assisted suicides. Over 70,000 people belong to just two of the organizations providing this service in Switzerland.
Although Great Britain has laws against assisted suicide, the Brits have just issued guidelines on how people can avoid prosecution if they “help a loved one end their life.” These changes have come about because of the number of Alzheimer’s patients. Terry Pratchett, a famous British author, is a victim of the disease at 61. He says: “I would like to see death as a medical procedure–in very carefully chosen cases.” He does not want to live as a 24-hour vegetable wearing a diaper.

Cryonics and suicide present options to the aged and infirm. Aldous Huxley predicted all of these things in his 1932 futuristic novel “Brave New World.” When I read it in English class in 1947 it was hard to believe any of it would come to pass. Well, pass the soma and give me a good horse to ride. Remember Hobson? He was the livery owner who rented horses. He would rent to anyone–but you had to take a swayback if it was the next one in line.

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