Robert Ettinger: 'Why should not everyone be frozen to await later resue by our own people?'
Frozen In Time
Robert Ettinger refuses to believe in mortality.
He is convinced that if frozen today, man will
one day live again.
ELIZABETH KAPLAN
Features Editor
hea Chaloff Ettin-
ger had no in-
tention of being
buried when she
died.
Instead, she was slowly
cooled to freezing tempera-
tures. The blood was drained
from her body and replaced
with a protective solution.
Then she was loaded into a
cryostat, a white, dome-
shaped structure filled with
liquid nitrogen.
Now she waits.
It may take 50 or 100 or 200
years. But one day science
will be able to revive Rhea Et-
tinger and others like her
who rest quietly in cryostats
throughout the world, accor-
ding to her son, Robert C.W.
Ettinger, the father of
cryonics.
Ettinger, who lives in Oak
Park, practices freezing
R
bodies in the hope they will
be resuscitated in the future.
His book The Prospect of Im-
mortality, which launched the
cryonics movement, was
published in 1962.
On Saturday, Ettinger will
present his case in the first
Cyronics Science Court at the
Southfield Civic Center,
where a panel will debate the
legitimacy of crynonics.
obert Ettinger was
a nice Jewish boy
who liked to read.
In the 1930s, he
came across "The
Jameson Satellite" by Neil
Jones. The short story details
the adventures of Professor
Jameson, who has his corpse
sent into orbit where he
believes it will remain forever
at freezing temperatures.
Millions of years later,
mechanical men with organic
brains who rule the earth
discover Jameson's corpse.
They revive and repair his
R
brain and give him a.-new,
mechanical body.
"It was instantly obvious to
me that the author had miss-
ed the main point of his own
idea!" Ettinger writes in The
Prospect of Immortality. "If
immortality is achievable
through the ministrations of
advanced aliens repairing a
frozen human corpse, then
why should not everyone be
frozen to await later rescue by
our own people?"
Ettinger pursued his in-
terest while maintaining a
career as a physics and
mathematics teacher at
Wayne State University and
Highland Park Community
College. And the more he
studied, the more he became
convinced that reviving and
repairing "slightly dead" --
individuals dead only briefly
— is possible.
His book, and other subse-
quent publications, are
replete with the studies Et-
tinger found so compelling
and help prove, he says, the
validity of freezing corpses —
a state called cryonic suspen-
sion — for future repair.
He cites a report by a Lon-
don researcher who suc-
cessfully revived golden
hamsters after they were half
frozen. In another case, em-
bryo chicken hearts treated
with glycerol solution and
cooled to minus 190 degrees
Centigrade continued beating
after being thawed.
"Year by year and almost
day by day scientific research
strengthens our case," Et-
tinger says. "The belief that
death is complete and irrever-
sible is not true. We're learn-
ing how to reverse it every
day."
The evidence is overwhelm-
ing, Ettinger says. It is more
difficult for most people to ac-
cept that they do not have to
die, he says.
"What keeps people away is
not logic or money but tradi-
tion and inertia," he says.
"Take the case of someone
very wealthy. Even if he
thought he had one chance in
a million, wouldn't he set
aside $30,000 for the
possibility that he might be
young and healthy again?
"The problem is that we've
adapted ourselves to the idea
Ettinger operates a cryostat.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS .,.71