Freeze-Wait-Reanimate

Perhaps the most ancient function of religion is assuring man that he will live past death--and live in physical fact as well as in spirit. It was such a vision of immortality that led the Egyptians to mummify bodies and stock tombs with worldly belongings. Christians pray for the "resurrection of the body" and have traditionally held that at the Last Judgment the tombs will open and the dead will rise again to life. This age-old belief, combined with new technology, makes it seem prudent to a growing number of Americans that they should arrange to have their bodies frozen upon death just in case they might be resurrected.

Robert Ettinger, a physics teacher at Michigan's Highland Park Junior College, is the main proponent of this modern grasp at immortality. Since 1947, he has been interested in cryogenics, the science of freezing substances at extreme temperatures. For precedents, he points out that technicians have already succeeded in reanimating lower forms of animal life. In his book The Prospects of Immortality, Ettinger proposes that humans take advantage of this example by having their bodies frozen instead of buried or cremated.

"With Good Luck . . ." Ettinger's book and his TV appearances have spurred the growth of such groups as the Life Extension Society, with a dozen chapters. The society publishes a newsletter called Freeze-W'ait-Reanimate.

Interest in the frozen way to immortality has led to the establishment of firms in Phoenix and New York that design and build equipment to contain bodies preserved by liquid nitrogen. These capsules cost more than $4,000 and require another $150 a year in maintenance. One woman who agreed to have her remains frozen explained: "With bad luck, I'll stay simply dead. With good luck, I may live again. It's worth trying."

Freezing enthusiasts argue that their proposals for reanimating the dead conform to Christian teachings, which stress the sacredness of life; they even contend that refusal to be frozen might be construed as suicide. They concede that their program might compel some drastic rethinking in theology, ethics and law. For instance, in law, says Ettinger, "a new kind of manslaughter will appear, namely, the failure to freeze" --that is, somebody might pull the plug on the capsule. Similarly, says Ettinger, theologians might have to revise their concepts of the nature of the soul. There is no agreement, for instance, even as to the time that the soul enters the embryo or leaves the body of the deceased.

Soul & Substance. John Macquarrie, professor of systematic theology at Manhattan's Union Theological Semi nary, dismisses such questions, arguing that they are derived from the erroneous Platonic notion that the soul is a substance. What concerns Macquarrie are the moral problems that reanimation poses, such as the overpopulation of the world.

To Theologian Joseph Sittler of the University of Chicago Divinity School, reanimation of human beings after years in a freezer sounds like an "exalted form of madness," based on a dangerous and "radically nonhistorical concept of what a human life is." Man, says Sittler, is a "profoundly historical being," and to extract him from his historical setting is to destroy him. Reanimation could bring living death to man, not salvation from oblivion.

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