Cryonics lab one of three in United States
http://www.mlive.com...53743290000.xml
By ELIZABETH PIET
The Associated Press
2/16/2004, 12:41 p.m. ET
CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Five days a week, Cryonics Institute Facility Manager Andy Zawacki goes to work to check on a special set of patients: 51 human bodies that are cryonically frozen.
http://www.cryonics.org/
At first glance, the institute's building in Macomb County's Clinton Township reveals little about the process inside. Several offices and a conference room are set in the front. An open doorway leads to a concrete-floored warehouse with fluorescent lights and several large white containers of various shapes farther in the back.
Zawacki points to a cylindrical container.
"There's six in that one," he said. "And 12 in that one."
Inside the white, opaque tanks are deceased institute members. Metallic tubes run from the sides, carrying the liquid nitrogen that Zawacki monitors daily.
Cryonics is the process of cooling patients down to the level where almost all physical decay stops and storing them in large vacuum-insulated capsules filled with liquid nitrogen until potential technology can bring them back to life.
The Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth licensed the Cryonics Institute as a cemetery on Jan. 7, allowing it to continue operating under state regulations. It is one of only three cryonics facilities in the United States, Zawacki said. The other two are in Arizona and California.
Cryonics Institute is a nonprofit company that has been operating since 1976 and has cryonically suspended 51 patients in about 27 years. The institute has more than 400 members who will be frozen after their deaths and hope someday to be "reanimated."
"Death is not like a light bulb that just goes out," said Cryonics Institute attorney David Ettinger. "Many people believe, as I do, that with future technology, people will live longer lives.
"I don't like the idea that with current technology, I may have only 30 years left to live," said Ettinger, whose grandmother and mother are frozen at the institute.
The process of cryonically suspending a person is very slow, Ettinger explained. It begins when the doctor declares the patient legally dead. He or she is then cooled in ice and blood is replaced with a cryo-protectant to limit damage caused by freezing. The freezing continues in dry ice for a week as the body is cooled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen.
To keep its state license, Cryonics Institute must set aside funds for future care of cryonically suspended patients. The average patient spends $28,000 for the procedure, Ettinger said.
Before the state licensed the institute as a cemetery, it operated outside of Michigan oversight. Concerns about safety and mishandled funds at cryonic facilities came to the forefront two years ago after an incident involving the cryonically suspended Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams, said Bureau of Commercial Services Director Andrew Metcalf. In August, Sports Illustrated reported that Williams' head had been severed from his body and drilled with holes. The article also said Williams' skull was cracked.
"The media is the one who highlighted the issue," Metcalf said of the Sports Illustrated story. "Then we took action."
The bureau is a division of the state Department of Labor and Economic Growth, which oversees regulations for cemeteries.
The state has not received any complaints about the Cryonics Institute, but officials felt the license was necessary to protect Michigan residents, Metcalf said. The new license will help the Labor and Economic Growth department keep track of institute funds, he said.
"The object is to protect those who utilize the service," Metcalf said. "That way you don't have people buying the service and two years from now, it's bankrupt. Who's going to care for those people?"
Like a cemetery, the institute is subject to audits, inspections and financial reporting. In addition, the beginning steps of cryonic suspension must be performed at licensed funeral establishments instead of at the institute.
Ettinger said the institute is not similar to a cemetery because the crypt is not permanently sealed and the liquid nitrogen is frequently replaced. But, Metcalf said, it was the closest law the state had in the books.
"We have to work with what we've got," he said.
Like a cemetery, the institute deals with embalming and disposition of human remains, and those procedures need to fall under federal and state guidelines, Metcalf said.
Some say that while freezing could become more common in the future, it's not an option they're looking at quite yet. Michigan State University sophomore Doug Soltys said he doesn't think technology will advance enough to reanimate a person.
"There'd be so much damage to the tissue. It wouldn't be worth anything," he said. "Freezing is really pointless."
But Ettinger said technology for reanimating patients might be developed more quickly than people think. Still, predictions are difficult to make.
"Does that mean 20 years, 50 years or 100 years? We can't say," Ettinger said. "Of course, with liquid nitrogen, it doesn't really matter. Nothing changes."
Because the technology to revive a cryonically suspended person is not yet available, more funding would allow more research to be done, explained Joe Kowalsky, a Cryonics Institute board member.
About $7,000 of the $28,000 price tag is spent on the initial process of freezing, while the rest is used for future care of the body, Kowalsky said. If new technology becomes available, however, it will be used on patients in descending order of the amount they gave to the institute, he said.
Kowalsky said it is difficult to predict when technology will be able to revive cryonics patients, but he is encouraged by recent improvements in nanotechnology, which uses machines the size of molecules.
"When you freeze the body, there's cell damage and there are the issues of cracks that occur," he said. "That has to be repaired somehow and the only thing we can think of so far is nanotechnology."
Kowalsky said he has been interested in cryonic technology since the seventh grade. Now he is a member of the institute and is planning to be cryonically suspended after his death.
"It's an amazing possibility," he said. "It's heart transplant for the 21st century."