cryonics

       The �11th Annual Canadian Cryonics/Life Extension Pool Party� took place in the westward residential homes near Yonge and Eglinton, though not wealthy per se, definitely better than your average middle income community. Walking along the quiet streets punctuated by the pleasant chirping of birds, the drone of a lawnmower and the purr of a late model Lexus or Audi that slid by while the windshield reflected tall, overhanging branches of majestic old oaks that flanked the street. I double checked the address when I reached a gorgeous stone and brick home with the lawns manicured like the finger nails of a fussy young model. Strolling up to front door I did not spot a lawn jockey in sight, evidently, I had come to call on style and taste. A sign taped to the front door indicated pool party attendees were to walk to the back. There weren�t many cars around, nor did I hear the din traditionally associated with a pool party which inspired some apprehension. �Don�t tell me the guest�s froze themselves already!� I muttered under my breath. Curiosity got the better of me and I walked along the narrow laneway that led to the back to see what this gathering was all about.
        Like the geek that I am, before heading to the party I did some research on cryonics on the web. Here�s what I found: cryonics, (not to be confused with cryogenics which is the science of freezing) is the process where after legal death (though participants of cryonics prefer to be called �metabolically-challenged�) his/her body is preserved (in glycerol and other cryo-protecteant drugs) and kept in a thermos-like container in deep freeze (-320� F, -196� C) via liquid nitrogen indefinitely until medical technology is advanced enough not only to revive the clinically dead but reverse the aging process as well. Think of the thermal containers as stretchers slowly taking patients to the doctors and life support equipment of the future. According to the Cryonics Institute (www.cryonics.org), the �one-time suspension fee� is $28,000.00USD, not bad for what might potentially be eternity.
        A wooden fence enclosed a cement backyard with a large awning to keep the mostly middle aged well-to-do white male guests from being aged by the sun. Not far from them was the ice blue pool where, upon closer observation I was relieved to find that it was set to conventional temperatures. The guests, spoke to eachother in quiet, funeral-dirge tones about the feasibility of preservation and re-animation. Only a few of those present were women and only one woman showed up out of curiosity, the others were brought by their husbands who were more interested in the topic. Interestingly, according to www.cryocare.org, women only make up a quarter of cryonics societies or less. The host and Canadian Cryonics Society member, Bruce Waugh along with Ben Best, the president of the Canadian Cryonics Society both gave me a warm greeting.
        Throughout the pool party, the pallor of death seemed to hang above the attendees only the demise being talked about was our own. It�s ironic how intimate you grow with something you strive so hard to avoid. Death is a weighty topic, particularly when kept so remotely from our society, out of sight, out of mind; not at all a part of the daily reality of life. Instead casualties are reduced to a brief paragraph in newspapers, a screaming headline or a brief sentence on the radio and television. My nervous apprehensions were thawed when I got a chance to sit down next to Bruce Waugh who broke the er-ice. Waugh has a calm, amiable demeanor and spoke somewhat shyly about his decision to try cryonics and openly admitted that this was a response to the weight of his own mortality. He is middle-aged, in great shape, actively participates in sports and is reasonably well off after having spent the greater part of his life providing for his family in better than average circumstances. Waugh loves life and wants to see what wonders remain to be explored in this world, and if technology is advanced enough at time of revival, other worlds as well. He informed me about an ice bed (later exhibited to all guests) he keeps in the garage in case of an unexpected death at home. Response time is very important, the difference of a few hours can make a world of difference in how well one is preserved, thus increasing chances of revival. Though the practice of cryonics has been around for 30 years, it is only recently that preservation technology has made significant breakthroughs.
        Ben Best, the president of the Cryonics Society of Canada is rather pallid from too much time spent indoors, yet trying a tack an age on him would only be guess work, he�s timeless. A quiet, analytical man, Best is your quintessential technophile since he is a senior programmer for a major financial institution and maintains a meticulous web site on cryonics. I asked Best which he believed likelier upon reanimation, immortality or extended life? Best leaned towards the latter �Because of proton decay and all sort of thing.� Though active in cryonics research, Best hopes that death would be eliminated within his lifetime, as he puts it, �I�m not dying to expereince dying.� During my search on the web, Best�s site appeared more thorough than others. His findings and summaries can be found on www.benbest.com. Both Best and Waugh, as with the majority of the attendees have no spiritual faith or belief in a soul as the essence of our being. Rather, they share a belief that the basis of our identity resides in the brain and can be reactivated once it�s complexities are solved; an abiding faith in the inventiveness of the human race and a penchant for science fiction with an awareness that much of what has been dubbed �science fiction� in the last 100 years have become science fact.
        Despite many advances in science, aging and death, that age-old problem has yet to be overcome regardless of gains in cosmetic surgery. As Waugh puts it, though the chances of re-animation are slim, a slim chance is better than no chance. On my way out as Mr. Waugh wheeled out his body-preservation ice bed to show guests, I recalled the ancient Egyptians. I placed a call to the Royal Ontario Museum and spoke with curator Roberta Shaw. The Egyptians were quite fanatical about body preservation after death yet many of those preserved bodies wound up in museums, purchased by wealthy Europeans and dissected and not just for research purposes and at one point during the 15-1600�s used as make-up, ground-up mummy was known as �mummy brown�. Who knows what will happen to body-sicles of the future? Similarly, in the tradition of the ancient Egyptians, cryonics particpators are looking for ways to keep their life savings in trust funds until they are resurrected. Yet Best, Waugh and all those who attended are optimistic and believe that the world of tomorrow will be better than today. But how good can the world of the future be if money is still important?

Recommended web sites on the topic are www.cryonics.org
www.alcor.org (Offers a virtual tour of cryonics facilities)
www.benbest.com/cryonics/cryonics.html
http://prix.pricom.com.au (Has a very good essay on cryonics.)
www.cryocare.org