Abstract
In the autumn of 1983, at Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, a group of doctors, by lowering the body temperature of a cancer patient 32 degrees from the usual 98.6 degrees for 40 minutes, stopping his heartbeat, and inducing a state of hypothermia approximating suspended animation, while performing surgery to remove a kidney growth which had spread through the vena cava into his heart, unwittingly advanced the possibility for medical science, at some time in the future, to achieve a total body suspension in order to combat physical degeneration caused by such occurrences as cancer, heart disease, and a plethora of other debilitating or fatal diseases.1 The implications of this process have not only intrigued the medical-scientific community, but have also touched the popular imagination with the distinct possibility of making the dream of immortality by holding illness at bay more tangible, if perhaps not a reality.
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Notes
McShane, Hopkins Saves life with New Techniques, Wash. Post, Oct. 12, 1983, at C1, col. 5.
Time, June 22, 1981, at 71.
Newsweek, July 7, 1980, at 8. Because of these expenses, even estimated as high as $125,000.00 in order to assure the care and maintenance of the cryon until re-animated in the 21st century, one cryotorium, notably the Institute for Cryobiological Extension (ICE) in Los Angeles, has chosen to preserve cryonically on “ice” just the head of the cryon for later grafting onto new bodies. Thompson, The Eerie World of Living Heads, Wash. Post, Feb. 14, 1988, at C3, col. 1.
Newsweek, August 16, 1976, at 8.
R. Prehoda, Suspended Animation: The Research Possibility That May Allow Man to Conquer the Limiting Chains of Time 10 (1969).
Id. at 11.
Id. at 7.
Id.
See Klebanoff & Phillips, Temporary Suspensions of Animation Using Total Body Perfusion and Hypothermia: A Preliminary Report, 6 CRYOBIOLOGY 121–125, (Sept.-Oct., 1969).
Supra note 5, at 9.
A. Smith, Current Trends in Cryobiology (1970).
R. Ettinger, Man into Superman 251 (1972).
Supra note 5, at 73.
Id. at 13.
Mazur, Cryobiology: The Freezing of Biological Systems, 168 Science 939–949 (1970).
Dukeminier & Sanders, Organ Transplantation: A Proposal for Routine Salvaging of Cadaver Organs, 279 New Eng. J. Med. 413 (1969).
B. Luyet & M. Gehenio, Life and Death at Low Temperatures (1940).
R. Nelson, We Froze the First Man (1968).
Id. at 48.
Id.
J. Huxley, Science, Religion and Human Nature (1930).
Albano, The Medical Examiner’s Viewpoint in the Moment of Death 19 (A. Winter ed., 1969).
J. Haldane, Daedalus: Or Science and the Future (1924).
J. Tuccille, Here Comes Immortality (1973); L. Kavaler, Freezing Point: Cold as a Matter of Life and Death (1970); R. Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality (1964).
A. Harrington, The Immortalist: An Approach to the Engineering of Man’s Divinity (1969).
Id. at 20.
Id. at 61.
Id. at 241.
Bryant & Snizek, The Iceman Cometh: The Cryonics Movement and Frozen Immortality, 11 Society 58 (Nov.–Dec. 1973).
R. Ettinger, Man into Superman (1972).
Supra note 24.
Supra note 29, at 215.
Kavaler, supra note 23, at 258.
Supra note 28, at 56, 60, 61.
Kavaler, supra note 23, at 228.
In 1976, it was estimated that the cost of preparation and indefinite storage was approximately $50,000. Newsweek, Aug. 16, 1976, at 11 See supra note 3 where the current estimated cost runs as high as $125,000.
Time, June 22, 1981 at 77..
Supra note 29.
E. Rievman, The Cryonics Society: A Study of Variant Behavior Among lmmortalists 92 (1976).
Burger, Reflections on Law and Experimental Medicine in 1 Ethical, Legal and Social Challenges to a Brave New World at 211 (G. Smith, ed. 1982).
M. Shapiro & R. Spece, Jr., Cases, Materials and Problems on Bioethics and Law (1981).
Task Force on Death and Dying of The Institute of Society, Ethics and Life Sciences, Refinements in Criteria for Determination of Death, 221 J.A.M.A. 48 (1972).
Id.
Jeddelah, The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act and a Statutory Definition of Death, 8 Transplantation Proceedings No. 1, at 245 (1976).
Dukeminier, Supplying Organs for Transplantation, 68 Mich. L. Rev. 811 (1970).
International Comments, Declaration of Sydney, 206 J.A.M.A. 657 (1968).
Minutes of the Eleventh Meeting of The President’s Commission for The Study of Ethical Problems in Medical and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Washington, D.C., at 3, July 9, 1983 If cryonic suspension were to be recognized as an heroic measure designed to sustain life, then the concept of “mercy freezing” might have some legal validity and would thus be defined simply as freezing a terminally ill patient before clinical death occurs. R. Ettinger, Man into Superman (1972).
R. Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality 3 (1964).
J. Gray, The Rule Against Perpetuities (1942).
Schuyler, The New Biology and The Rule Against Perpetuities, 15 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 420 (1968).
G. Smith, Medical-Legal Aspects of Cryonics: Prospects for Immortality 15-23 (1983).
Smith, Uncertainties on the Spiral Staircase: Metaethics and The New Biology, 41 The Pharos Med. J. 10 (1978).
See generally, Smith, Manipulating the Genetic Code: Jurisprudential Conundrums, 64 Geo. L. J. 697 (1976).
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Smith, G.P. (1989). El Dorado and the Promise of Cryonic Suspension. In: The New Biology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0803-2_6
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