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Posted on Sun, Sep. 21, 2003 | |
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NEW FRONTIERS Lab to freeze humans planned in Boca Raton South Floridians who seek life after death through cryonics will be preserved at home before being shipped to Arizona. afantz@herald.com Lab to freeze humans may be built in Boca Ready or not, the practice of fast-freezing the dead for future ''reanimation'' is coming to South Florida. A company called Suspended Animation, which already has an office in an industrial district of Boca Raton, hopes to build a cryonics lab before the end of the year. It would be the fourth such lab in the country. The unproven science of cryonics reaped a whirlwind of publicity, much of it scathingly critical, after it was revealed that the son of Ted Williams had contracted to have his body and head stored in separate liquid nitrogen containers at Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz. In addition to experimentation on rats and other animals, Suspended Animation plans to sign up clients locally, freeze their bodies in Boca Raton, then ship them to Alcor for long-term storage. According to David Shumaker, a physicist who is Suspended Animation's president, the typical customer is a 'successful 40-year-old professional saying: `Life is so great, I want it to go on forever.' '' Boca Mayor Steven Abrams said he sees no reason to object to such a land use when the matter comes up for a vote next month. ''It's in an area that would permit research. There is no other concern than that,'' he said. But those who remember the story of Dora Kent may think otherwise. Suspended Animation Chairman Kent, also the president of the company's primary fundraising arm, was suspected of beheading his mother, Dora, 15 years ago in Riverside, Calif. The son told acquaintances he'd had his 83-year-old mother's head cryogenically frozen. The location of Dora Kent's head was unknown. Kent wasn't charged with a crime. Years later, Alcor officials announced that Dora Kent's head had been at their facility, where it remains to this day. STATE'S OK NEEDED Kent's Life Extension Foundation, which has offices in Fort Lauderdale, has been Suspended Animation's primary source of funding, Shumaker said, for at least a year. In addition to zoning approval, Suspended Animation also might need a go-ahead from the state's Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers. The board's newsletter says the matter is still under consideration. The process begins with the patient signing a consent form. The one-time cost of preservation can be as low as $28,000 (which entitles the recently departed to little more than being packaged in dry ice) or as high as $200,000 (which involves a variety of surgeries and injections), according to Shumaker. But because no one has ever been revived, it's impossible to determine whether the price makes any difference. Clients will be stored at Alcor until medical science comes up with a cure for whatever ailed them. `BUSINESS, NOT SCIENCE' Kenneth Goodman, director of the University of Miami School of Medicine's bio-ethics program, said cryonics is a reflection of ``society's denial of mortality.'' ''Calling this medicine is unfair because medicine is available to everyone, whereas this is a service for the fantastically wealthy,'' he said. ``This is business, not science. Rarely in science do you sell the product before you've successfully developed it.'' Christopher Dougherty, 35, has been hired as Suspended Animation's chief scientist. The 2002 Ph.D. graduate from the University of Miami School of Medicine was looking for a job when he came across Suspended Animation's six-month post-doctorate research position. ''It was an opportunity to build on what my focus of study is,'' Dougherty said. He researches cardio-vascular ischemia -- or the destruction of cell tissue that occurs during trauma to the heart such as a heart attack. Dougherty is seeking ways to reduce damage to dying cells. It's what he was trained to do, except he'll work on the dead, not the living. And if his work and that of others at Suspended Animation leads to what has never before been achieved, ''then we've done what we're here for,'' said Shumaker. ``Buying time for people who believed it was not their time to go.'' |
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