Did sci-fi writer Robert Ettinger pave the way to immortality?

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Did sci-fi writer Robert Ettinger pave the way to immortality?
July 27, 2011
By Tony Rennell
MailOnline

Robert Ettinger is dead. Or perhaps he isn’t. Perhaps he’s just resting, in a state of suspended animation.

Because when the 92-year-old American science teacher and science fiction writer died at his home near Detroit last weekend, he was instantly deep-frozen and stored in a vat of liquid nitrogen.

It was fitting ‘end’ (or should that be ‘beginning’) for the pioneer of the controversial theory and practice of cryonics.

His body lies close to those of 100 or more men and women who, like him, believed they could cheat death.

Frozen to minus 196c and stored in a laboratory tailor-made for the purpose, they wait for the day when advances in medical science mean they can be brought back to life, and whatever killed them can be cured.

The plan is that in time — whether it’s 30, 50 or 100 years — they will be warmed up back to room temperature, and made alive and well again.

This, Ettinger believed, was the recipe for immortality, the elusive elixir sought by mankind since time immemorial. Each and every one of us could live for ever, he maintained to his ‘dying’ day.


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Not that immortality won’t bring its complications. Two of his neighbours in the special medical facility where he now resides are his two wives. The first Mrs Ettinger died in 1987, the second in 2000.

‘If both are revived,’ he once acknowledged, ‘that will be a high-class problem.’

With warring wives fighting over him for eternity, you might think living for ever would not be such a blessing after all.
Deep freeze: 'Sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us,' said Ettinger

Deep freeze: 'Sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us,' said Ettinger

The vast majority of people would have no trouble in dismissing Ettinger as a nut, whose rather spooky ideas are the result of an over-active imagination and a fear of death so profound that he challenges its inevitability.

Yet the fundamentals of his theory are not totally far-fetched. The advances made by medical science in just the past quarter of a century are phenomenal.

Illnesses that were once invariably terminal are now treatable. Transplanting of organs is almost routine.

There are a lot of us running around with spare parts — valves, stents, pacemakers — that keep us going when we could easily be dead. These are everyday mini-miracles, unthinkable a decade or so ago.

More than 100 corpses are believed to have gone into storage... and 1,000 living people have signed up to the procedure


Extend that principle and in time humans could become like cars, with every part of the body replaceable.

Ettinger, the ultimate eternal optimist, was ahead of the game in grasping the unlimited potential of science to keep us alive. His faith in medicine was founded on the new bone graft surgery that saved his legs after he was badly wounded in battle in World War II.

In his best-selling book, The Prospect Of Immortality, he proposed that ‘if one was deep-frozen and stored away, it is inevitable that in 50 or 100 or 1,000 years — time becomes meaningless in this context — surgery will have progressed to the point where damage to body cells that is now irreparable will be able to be repaired.

‘No matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us.’

That was in 1964, and the idea was greeted with derision. One commentator denounced what he was proposing as ‘unethical, unsanitary and against the will of God’. Others thought his ideas preposterous.
Three years later, the world’s first heart transplant took place — and it didn’t seem so absurd after all to argue that, through science, anything was possible.

‘Cryonics’ — an invented word from the Greek kryos, meaning icy cold — staked a claim to be taken seriously. Storage facilities were set up by Ettinger and his supporters.
Legacy: Robert Ettinger, 92, has been frozen in the Cryonics Institute he founded after his death

Legacy: Robert Ettinger, 92, has been frozen in the Cryonics Institute he founded after his death

Dr James Bedford, a 73-year-old Californian psychologist suffering from kidney and lung cancer, was the first subject to be frozen on his death. He remains in that condition 44 years later, despite being moved between several different facilities over the years.

Since then, more than 100 corpses are believed to have gone into storage, and 1,000 living people have signed up for a procedure that, when their time comes, can cost around £100,000.

Many have already put the money aside, or taken out an instalment plan to pay for it. Some wear a silver bracelet engraved with instructions to doctors and nurses in case of sudden death, and the warning: ‘Do not embalm.’

A few technological hiccups and scandals undermined the cryonic sales pitch. And, inevitably, given the amount of money involved, some cowboys have come into the business.

In 1979, nine bodies stored at a California facility thawed out when the company in charge ran out of funds. After 24 years in a freezer in the cellar of their Loire Valley home, a French couple began to decompose when the fridge motor failed.
Sci-fi: The 1964 book Ettinger wrote introducing the idea of freezing humans after death

Sci-fi: The 1964 book Ettinger wrote introducing the idea of freezing humans after death

But famous names keep cryonics in the public eye. Simon Cowell was reported to have plans to preserve his well-toned body after death and to have discussed this at a dinner with Gordon Brown when he was Prime Minister.

‘I’m not sure my coming back from the dead would be popular,’ replied Brown, in a rare flash of humour.

The process of freezing destroys human tissue at a cellular level, and every effort is made to minimise damage.

While his body was still warm, the dead Ettinger would have been packed in ice. His blood would have been flushed out and replaced with a special type of anti-freeze to try to preserve the cardio-vascular system.

Meanwhile, a hole would have been drilled through his skull and probes inserted in his brain, so it could be monitored when he came back to life. Zipped into a sleeping bag, the body would then be lowered into a tank of liquid nitrogen, possibly alongside other bodies.

There might even be a dismembered head or two. Some cryonics experts believe that only the head — containing the hard drive of brain, intellect, memories and individuality — need be frozen. But after being frozen, who knows what happens?

No ‘immortalist’ has yet been revived. In theory, you thaw out the flesh and bones, jump-start the brain, restore the memory and repair the damage done when the body was prepared for freezing.

Except that the all-important resurrection technology remains as big a mystery as life itself. If death really is being conquered, then there’s no vital sign of it yet.

Sceptics have likened bringing a cryonics patient back to life to trying to turn a hamburger back into a cow.

In some ways, Ettinger felt cryonics was just a way of covering your back. If it didn’t work, he’d lost nothing. He was dead anyway.
High tech: The institute, in Detroit, Michigan, already has Mr Ettinger's mother and two wives as patients

High tech: The institute, in Detroit, Michigan, already has Mr Ettinger's mother and two wives as patients

But do we really want to live for ever? Tune into BBC’s new science fiction thriller Torchwood and the idea of a world where no one dies is dramatically explored. It’s not a pretty sight. Over-population and the battle for resources never are.

Suddenly Ettinger’s optimistic new world where we all live for ever looks ugly — a place where most of the population will have to be culled to allow the privileged to carry on their lives endlessly.

Ettinger had his own bizarre solution to this. If Earth became too crowded, ‘people could simply agree to share the available space in shifts, going into suspended animation from time to time to make room for others’.

But what would be the incentive for the living to wake the dead, even if they had the technology to do so? Ettinger’s philosophy involves a compact of trust with people as yet unborn to do the right thing.

It was his view that, without the fear of dying, humanity would behave better.

In my mind, I see a cryonic nightmare in which we come out of our dead state to be welcomed on stage by Cowell and Co. You get one chance to prove you’ve got talent and are worth keeping alive.

Three buzzes from the judges, three Xs on the board, and you’re straight back in the cooler. Eternal life may not be all it’s cracked up to be after