The brother froze him, the sister wants him unfrozen. I don’t see what her problem is. She seems to think he is going to sell his DNA at some future point. As far as I know, the goal of cryonics is to preserve the body until science changes the definition of dead enough to bring him back to life. I don’t think DNA sales are what is intended here.
So assuming cloning isn’t the goal - Either way, what could it hurt? Best case scenario they bring him back, worst case they don’t. I intend on being frozen myself. It’s my last best chance at survival as things stand now. I don’t even have to be rich. A life insurance policy paid out to Alcor works just fine and dandy. I can’t understand why there is a moral dilemma here. Any other medical condition that could be treated today and would result in a saved life would be given. This isn’t any different.
I haven’t followed this too closely, but I believe her main objection (and that of others) is that it is not what Ted wanted.
I agree that as far as cryogenics goes, what the hell? If it works, cool (heh heh). If not, you’re dead anyway.
In this case though, it seems the son should honor his father’s last wishes.
I agree with jk1245. The person’s wishes should be honored if that meant a typical burial, cremation or whatever then that is what should be done.
I will say that I don’t quite see the point in freezing an 80+ year old person so they can be revived at a later time. I mean what is the point of all that trouble if all you get is two more years in a semi (or worse) decrepit state? Even if aging is conquered I don’t see the now undying population of the earth wanting to add to their numbers by bringing people back from the dead.
Ted’s son is, um, well, a slightly less than stellar character. He has been involved in many shady business deals, bilked some folks, and has “managed” access to Ted Williams over the past 10 years or so. People are somewhat suspicious of the cryogenics since Ted made it clear that he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered over the Keys.
Personally, I think the son is a slimebucket, and this goes a long way towards confirming that.
But the anti-cryo people go much further. There have been attempted to shut cryo companies down, even though the people in storage are there because that’s exactly where they wanted to be when they die. Alcor and others have even had to remove bodies and heads from the premises and hide them to prevent the government from taking them.
I suspect that the funeral lobby has a hand in this. They tend to be extremely militant when it comes to this stuff. Many states have byzantine regulations on how the dead are to be handled, which in essence are only there as a benefit to the funeral industry.
I think people are gambling that if you can fix all the freezing damage, all the damage from just being dead, fix the problem that can’t be fixed now, and if you can restart the dead person after all that then “De-aging” should be easy.
Why not? I’d love to see a massive army of Ted Williams clones all storming the beaches, brandishing baseball bats. Why, with Ted Williams’s keen batting eyes, I’ll bet his clones could deflect bullets with their bats, much the same way that Jedi knights deflect blaster bolts with their light sabers, or Wonder Woman deflects bullets with her indestructable bracelets. No military would dare oppose us!
It’s obvious that the disposition of Ted’s remains should be according to Ted’s wishes. His will and testament was just filed, in which he apparently requests cremation.
But assuming that’s invalid for some reason, leaving aside the question of cryonics, it’s my objective opinion that Ted’s son John Henry is a scheming, dishonest creep, and that he deserves zero say in the matter. If the son favors cryonics, he’s got to have some shady plan in mind, and he should be kicked to the curb.
The daughter is going further than just saying she suspects John Henry wants to sell Ted’s DNA. I saw a snippet of an interview where she and her husband claim that John Henry admitted to them that he wanted to preserve the body so he could sell the DNA later. John Henry’s lawyer disputes that claim, of course.
The whole concept of cryonics is looney. Yes, maybe they will one day discover a cure for cancer, or heart disease, or AIDS, or whatever is going to kill you. But they will never discover a cure for death. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. If they freeze you before you die, it might make a modicum of sense, but after you’re dead, there ain’t no coming back.
That said, if you want to waste your money by having yourself frozen, that’s your business. But I think it’s abhorrent to do that to someone who hasn’t requested it. All the reports I have seen indicate that Ted Williams wanted to be cremated. And so he should be.
Sounds like fear talking. It’s a great concept. Preserve you until they can repair you. What’s so looney? The execution (pardon the pun) may or may not be possible at this current time, but as technology advances this may change. It’s a great concept that needs alot of work to be realized. Hopefully, they will be able to move the technology to the point that they could freeze a healthy person and bring them back. A type of hibernation. This would be useful for people with terminal diseases as well as long-duration deep space missions. Looney? I think not. Difficult? Absolutely. Worth the effort? You Betcha.
Oh really? Care to define dead? Is it the same thing that dead meant 100 years ago? What about 200 years ago? If someones heart stopped 200 years ago they were dead. But now we can use technology to restart a heart. The definition of dead has changed in the past. It will most likely change again. I think the statement “Once your dead, you’re dead” is untrue, misleading, and illustrative of an ignorance of the history of the ever changing clinical definition of dead.
The real question is, what will future medicine define as “death”? Even today there have been astonishing cases of people who have fallen into snow drifts or drowned in cold water, and have been revived using current medical technology after literally hours without any detectable pulse, respiration, or brain activity. Of course, these cases are unusual. At normal temperature injury to blood vessels in the brain (such as blood clotting) may be irreversible after just five or ten minutes. Even in these cases, though, individual brain cells (neurons) remain alive and able to resume function for as long as an hour after the heart stops. If future medicine can heal and replace injured blood vessels, it should be able to resuscitate people who cannot be resuscitated today. If it can use microscopic devices to reverse chemical imbalances within injured cells, it should be able to revive people after an hour or more of clinical death.
Bearing this in mind, we can’t say where the outer limits of resuscitation will be. For this reason cryonics procedures are still applied to patients who are far beyond the reach of today’s medicine. We would be extremely short-sighted and arrogant if we assumed that medicine today is the best medicine that can ever exist.
Continuing to care for a patient with an uncertain prognosis is the morally and ethically correct thing to do. Many patients that we would call “dead” today are likely to be reclassified as “seriously ill, but treatable” in the future.
Does this mean that future medicine might be able to bring back the dead? Not at all. If patients in the future can be recovered after hours of clinical death, it will simply mean that medicine today is wrong about when it thinks death really happens. When considering these questions it is helpful to remember that death is usually a process, not an event.
So let’s say you put that in your will and when you die, your son decides instead of following your wishes to be frozen, he’ll sneak your body away to have your corpse mashed into a moist pulp. He does this because he’d like to mix a bit of your liquified remains into millions of yogurt cups. He’ll sell the concoction called Da Lovin Spoonful at $5.00 a cup at A&P and make a hefty profit in the process.
If you want to debate the potential efficacy of cyronics, that’s one thing. But my guess is that Ted, having lived a life that was meangingful and brought joy to millions of people had no real problem with shuffling off the mortal coil. What should be done with his corpse is his call, not his son’s.
There are fates worse than death, you know. One is a life poorly lived. The other is being turned into a Tedsicle only to be revived in the 25th century so you can hit fungos for the amusement of people drunk on watered-down stadium syntho-beer.
edited for clarity, if ya can believe that… --Alpha
The freezing of the body is illegal if he didn’t sign the paperwork before he died. If it aint what he wanted, that’s cool, stop it. But I don’t think Alcor will freeze anyone who doesn’t have the legal paerwork in order. The courts will decide. The sons lawyers deny he intends to sell the DNA. If the son got him to sign the papers, everything is in order.