The New Age of Cryonics: Is it Worth it for a Second Chance at Life?

“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.” 

~ Woody Allen

            I am writing about the subjects in this article because I saw a fictional story on the television where a wife murdered her husband (who was dying of brain cancer) so that she could have his body frozen, with the hope that in the future, the two of them could be together again once there is a cure for cancer.  At that point, she hoped to have his body defrosted and brought back to life so that they can be together again, perhaps forever. Although it was a television drama, the idea of life after death by way of being frozen for some unknown reason intrigued me.

            I thought to myself, “Can they really do that?” Would I do that? What if they thaw you out and turn you into some sort of future servant, or food source (e.g., Soylent Green), science experiment, or throw you in a coliseum so that future gladiators can attack you, or lions? As you can probably tell, I probably watch too many science fiction and gladiator movies. But, I digress.

  Apparently, there are people and scientists who think it can be done and that it is going to be something very commonly done in the near future.

As weird and bizarre as having your body frozen to be later brought back to life may first sound, many people are currently having their bodies cryonically preserved.  HowStuffWorks.com defines cryonics as “the practice of preserving human bodies in extremely cold temperatures with the hope of reviving them sometime in the future.”  Scientists claim that they can freeze people who are legally dead but not totally dead.  Someone is declared legally dead when the heart stops beating, but this does not mean that all brain function has ceased.  They believe that if they freeze the body while there is still some brain function, the body can later be brought back to life.

In order to have this procedure done, you would have to join a cryonics facility (cryobank) and pay an annual membership which is somewhere around $400 a year according to HowStuffWorks.com.  Once you have been pronounced legally dead, the team immediately retrieves your body and takes it back to the facility where the freezing process begins.  The body is then stored in a liquid nitrogen filled tank (after paying up to $150,000 for the procedure) which many times doesn’t even get you a private tank.

  According to an article by Mental Floss, the first person to have this done was Dr. James Bedford.  Bedford was a professor at the University of California who had his body frozen in 1967.  Among the most well known to have this procedure done, is perhaps the famous baseball player Ted Williams. His son, John-Henry Williams, was also cryogenically frozen after his death.

There is also a possible tragic tale of a woman named Dora Kent who allegedly died of pneumonia says the publication Mental Floss.  Her body was immediately taken to a “life extension foundation,” where the procedure was performed without the presence of a doctor for freezing.  When her body was later examined by a medical examiner, not only was her body headless, but also the examiner suspected that she was still alive as the process of freezing began.  Oops.

HowStuffWorks.com states that critics of the practice claim that these cryobanks are simply stealing money by promising people something they will never be able to deliver.  Another huge problem is that the process of freezing a body is so tedious, that if it is not done at the right speed and temperature, the cells can turn into ice and then shatter, making it all for nothing.  The source also reports that many of these facilities opened, but were forced to close down due to the cost of the process.  Only a few facilities remain, with one of the most prominent being the Alcor Life Extension Foundation (located in Arizona) with 59 preserved bodies and 650 current members. 

Rationalwiki.org claims that scientists who practice cryonics are collecting large sums of money with the apparent hope of delivering a goal that is at a “science-fiction level.”  There is apparently no evidence to support any of their beliefs that they will be able to revive these bodies, but they are conveniently collecting annual membership fees while the people are alive and large sums of money for the actual procedure to take place.  There is also no guarantee that even if the technology is somehow developed to revive these frozen people, that the foundation will still be around or have the finances to bring them back to life.  Benbest.com claims that the large fees pay for the cost of preparing the bodies and to cover the costs of the storage. This seems a bit sketchy as a long term project since scientists have no idea if, when, and how they will ever be able to revive the bodies. How can they possibly know how much to charge? It’s like when a general contractor quotes you a price to build a house, nine times out of ten you end up paying more than what was originally contemplated----only with a cryobank you will be dead and not get a refund.

Benbest.com claims that it is not necessary to be rich in order to be preserved.  But paying dues upwards of $400 a year simply to be a member of a foundation and then paying up to $150,000 for the procedure doesn’t seem very attainable by the average person.  Most people do not even make what the procedure cost in several years of work.  The source also claims that the scientists involved with cryonics are poorly paid and that many volunteer simply for the greater good of their grand experiment.   They also admit that they have no idea how much reanimation will cost or the complexity of such a project. 

Other critics claim that it is immoral to pay outrageous amounts of money for cryonics when there are millions of people starving in the world.  Benbest.com again defends cryonics by saying that paying for cryonics is the same as trying to find a cure for Cancer or AIDS---only you are frozen the entire time the search for the cure for the disease goes on. 

Biochemist Professor Ken Storey criticizes the practice saying that there is little hope of it ever being successful.  According to BBC Science, Storey reports that it is common knowledge in science that organs need to be frozen at different temperatures in order for them to remain intact and functioning.  The source reports another potential problem pointed out by Cryobiologist Dr. Dayong Gao, from the University of Washington, says that safely removing the bodies from liquid-nitrogen filled tanks is virtually impossible.  He also notes that the body could shatter when being thawed.  The Alcor Foundation itself recognizes and admits that in over 50% of its cases, legal death occurs way before a representative from the foundation is able to arrive, causing extreme damage to the cells in the body. 

Religion is another major critic of cryonics.  Many believe that death is natural and that trying to come back to life for a second shot is, well, just unnatural.  Alcor tries to combat this belief in its website.  It claims that religion has nothing to do with the decision and that medicine itself was invented to help people live longer and healthier. In essence they are saying that God would want us to try and cure disease and live as long as we can even if we have to die first.  Although Alcor claims to take no stance when it comes to religion, it does admit that the majority of its members are atheists and that Alcor is not affiliated with any religion. 

When it comes to looking at a legal perspective of cryonics, Alcor’s website discuss the potential problems it may face even though there are currently no state or federal laws that specifically address entire bodies that are frozen after death.  They admit that due to the increasing interest in the subject, there is a very good possibility that laws will begin to emerge regarding the regulation of cryonics. 

The death and preservation of Ted Williams did bring up some legal issues.  According to the East Valley Tribune, three family members of the baseball legend filed a lawsuit claiming that Alcor took possession of and froze the body without the correct legal documentation.  Ted’s son, John-Henry Williams, had the body frozen after his father died of leukemia.  The family members claim that they repeatedly requested the documentation from Alcor, and that the foundation failed to produce anything.  The lawsuit was allegedly dropped by the Plaintiffs in exchange for a sum of $645,000 to be paid immediately and split between the three family members.  Apparently, money in their pockets somehow managed to diminish and have a sedating effect on their outrage.

It is not only entire bodies that are being frozen for later retrieval; there has been quite a lot of litigation regarding freezing such things as the following: sperm, eggs, and embryos. According to attorney Cynthia E. Fructhman, there is actually an entire area of law called ART (assisted reproduction technology) wherein lawyers assist clients to help clients obtain gametes (sperm and eggs) and make embryos so that they can form families that they would not otherwise be able to have.

Not surprisingly, as with just about anything involving people, there has been litigation that stems from disagreements concerning cryopreservation. Fruchtman describes different scenarios. In one, a woman retrieved sperm postmortem from her fiancé and had it cryopreserved. At the time she did this, the fiancés family did not object to her taking this action. After approximately a year and a half the woman decided to withdraw the sperm from the cryobank. The cryobank insisted that she had to get consent from her dead fiancé’s next of kin. When she tried to do this, the family told her that they were no longer comfortable with the idea and did not agree to sign the consent. The woman is now stuck with the awkward decision of having to sue the cryobank and/or her child’s future grandparents in order to get her dead fiancé’s sperm released to her.  Imagine going to a family reunion in that case scenario?

In another scenario, a couple with frozen embryos obtained a divorce. The court did not make any provisions for the embryos in the divorce decree. The issue that now arises is must the cryobank refuse to release the embryos to one of the depositors without the consent of the other, or does the cryobank have to insist on a court order before releasing the embryos to any of the depositors?  According to Fruchtman, there are no clear answers to the above situations. 

For those of you who would like to read some interesting cases that discuss the role of cryobanks as it relates to reproductive tissue, I highly recommend reading the following cases: York v. Jones, 717 F. Supp. 421 (E.D. Va. 1989) and Johnson v. Superior Court, 124 Cal. Rptr. 2d 650 (Ct. App. 2002).  According to Fruchtman, these are the only reported decisions to date that discuss the legal position of a cryobank that deals with reproductive tissue.  The issue of cryonics becomes far more complicated in those states, such as Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, and Texas that find that embryos are human beings which are entitled to the same legal protection afforded to all persons.

 In Tennessee, the highest appellate court has concluded that embryos are not strictly persons or property. Rather, they should be considered to be an interim category that entitles them to special protection because of their potential to become life. Davis v. Davis, 842 S. W.2d 588 (Tenn. 1992) cert. denied, sub nom. Stowe v. Davis, 507 U.S. 911 (1993). Interesting conceptually, well-intentioned, and thoughtful on the part of the court, but what kind of legal mess are labels such as an “interim category” and “special protection” going to eventually lead to? Only the creativity of trial lawyers and the divergent opinions, philosophies, agendas, politics, and biases of appellate courts throughout the country are going to give us the answers as new cases make their way through the court systems.

One probate court in Texas had a rather bizarre case where eleven frozen embryos where held by a fertility clinic and both the mother and father were murdered. The parents left no will giving instructions regarding what was to be done with the embryos in the event they both died.  Their only heir was a two year old son. The court ruled that the embryos must be maintained by the fertility clinic until the two year old boy turns eighteen, at which time he will acquire all rights to their disposition and he can decide what he wants to do with them. See Report and Recommendation of Master in Chancery. In the Estate of Yenenesh Abayneh Desta, Deceased, No. PR 12-2856-1. Probate Court No. 1 Dallas County (Feb. 23, 2014). So in essence, when he turns eighteen, he could possibly have eleven siblings or none at all---it all depends on him.

Needless to say, the litigation games have already begun and a whole new universe of possibilities and scenarios to fight over ownership of frozen “property,” “persons,” or “interim categories” has resulted in decisions that reach different results just depending on what state you happen to live, or die for that matter.

The future is now. What seemed like science fiction only a few years ago is now an entire spectrum of law that remains unsettled.  As for me, I prefer to treat life as a one-time only very special gift and enjoy the most of it while I can. I do not like the idea of jumping off of a cliff and trying to figure out how to build a parachute on the way down. This is exactly what is happening at these cryobanks because they may be able to freeze you and charge you a lot of money for it while you are alive, but what happens when the time comes to finally thaw out?

~Leonardo G. Renaud