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A History of Cryonics

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 A History of Cryonics
by Ben Best

Robert Ettinger is widely regarded as the "father of cryonics" (although he often said
that he would rather be the grandson). Mr. Ettinger earned a Purple Heart in World
War II as a result of injury to his leg by an artillery shell. He subsequently became a
college physics teacher after earning two Master's Degrees from Wayne State
University. (He has often been erroneously called "Doctor" and "Professor".) Robert
Ettinger was cryopreserved at the Cryonics Institute in July 2011 at the age of 92.
See The Cryonics Institute's 106th Patient — Robert Ettinger for details.

A lifelong science fiction buff, Ettinger conceived the idea of cryonics upon reading a
story called The Jameson Satellite in the July 1931 issue of Amazing Stories magazine.
In 1948 Ettinger published a short story having a cryonics theme titled The
Pentultimate Trump. In 1962 he self-published THE PROSPECT OF
IMMORTALITY, a non-fictional book explaining in detail the methods and rationale
for cryonics. He mailed the book to 200 people listed in WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA.
Also in 1962, Evan Cooper independently self-published
IMMORTALITY: PHYSICALLY, SCIENTIFICALLY, NOW, which is also a book
advocating cryonics. In 1964 Isaac Asimov assured Doubleday that (although socially
undesirable, in his opinion) cryonics is based on reasonable scientific assumptions.
This allowed THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY to be printed and distributed by
a major publisher. The word "cryonics" had not been invented yet, but the concept
was clearly established.

In December, 1963 Evan Cooper founded the world's first cryonics organization, the
Life Extension Society, intended to create a network of cryonics groups throughout
the world. Cooper eventually became discouraged, however, and he dropped his
cryonics-promoting activities to pursue his interest in sailing. His life was ended by
being lost at sea. Cooper's networking had not been in vain, however, because people
who had become acquainted through his efforts formed cryonics organizations in
northern and southern California as well as in New York.

In 1965 a New York industrial designer named Karl Werner coined the word
"cryonics". That same year Saul Kent, Curtis Henderson and Werner founded the
Cryonics Society of New York. Werner soon drifted away from cryonics and became
involved in Scientology, but Kent and Henderson remained devoted to cryonics. In
1966 the Cryonics Society of Michigan and the Cryonics Society of California were
founded. Unlike the other two organizations, the Cryonics Society of Michigan was an
educational and social group which had no intention to actually cryopreserve people
— and it exists today under the name Immortalist Society.

A TV repairman named Robert Nelson was the driving force behind the Cryonics
Society of California. On January 12, 1967 Nelson froze a psychology professor
named James Bedford. Bedford was injected with multiple shots of DMSO, and a
thumper was applied in an attempt to circulate the DMSO with chest compressions.
Nelson recounted the story in his book WE FROZE THE FIRST MAN. Bedford's
wife and son took Bedford's body from Nelson after six days and the family kept
Dr. Bedford in cryogenic care until 1982 when he was transferred to Alcor.
Of 17 cryonics patients cryopreserved in the period between 1967 and 1973, only
Bedford remains in liquid nitrogen.

In 1974 Curtis Henderson, who had been maintaining three cryonics patients for the
Cryonics Society of New York, was told by the New York Department of Public
Health that he must close down his cryonics facility immediately or be fined
$1,000 per day. The three cryonics patients were returned to their families.

In 1979 an attorney for relatives of one of the Cryonics Society of California patients
led journalists to the Chatsworth, California cemetery where they entered the vault
where the patients were being stored. None of the nine "cryonics patients" were being
maintained in liquid nitrogen, and all were badly decomposed. Nelson and the funeral
director in charge were both sued. The funeral director could pay (through his liability
insurance), but Nelson had no money. Nelson had taken most of the patients as charity
cases or on a "pay-as-you-go" basis where payments had not been continued.
The Chatsworth Disaster is the greatest catastrophe in the history of cryonics.

In 1969 the Bay Area Cryonics Society (BACS) was founded by two physicians, with
the assistance of others, notably Edgar Swank. BACS (which later changed its name
to the American Cryonics Society) is now the cryonics organization with the longest
continuous history in offering cryonics services. In 1972 Trans Time was founded as a
for-profit perfusion service-provider for BACS. Both BACS and Alcor intended to
store patients in New York, but in 1974 Trans Time was forced to create its own
cryostorage facility due to the closure of the storage facility in New York. Until the
1980s all BACS and Alcor patients were stored in liquid nitrogen at Trans Time.

In 1977 Trans Time was contacted by a UCLA cardiothoracic surgeon and medical
researcher named Jerry Leaf, who responded to an advertisement Trans Time had
placed in REASON magazine. In 1978 Leaf created a company called Cryovita
devoted to doing cryonics research and to providing perfusion services for both Alcor
and Trans Time.
By the 1980s acrimony between Trans Time and BACS caused the organizations to
disassociate. BACS was renamed the American Cryonics Society (ACS) in 1985. Jim
Yount (who joined BACS in 1972 and became a Governor two years later) and Edgar
Swank became the principal activists in ACS into the 21st century. (Swank was
cryonically preserved at the Cryonics Institute in January 2017).

For 26 years — from the time of its inception until 1998 — the President of Trans
Time was Art Quaife. The name "Trans Time" was inspired by Trans World Airlines,
which was then a very prominent airline. Also active in Trans Time was Paul Segall, a
man who had been an active member of the Cryonics Society of New York. Segall
obtained a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, studying the life-
extending effects of tryptophan deprivation. He wrote a book on life extension (which
included a section on cryonics) entitled LIVING LONGER, GROWING YOUNGER.
He founded a BioTech company called BioTime, which sells blood replacement
products. In 2003 Segall deanimated due to an aortic hemorrhage. He was straight-
frozen because his Trans Time associates didn't think he could be perfused. Two other
cryonics patients at Trans Time are two brains, which includes the brain of Luna
Wilson, the murdered teenage daughter of Robert Anton Wilson. When Michael
West (who is on the Alcor Scientific Advisory Board) became BioTime CEO, the
company shifted its emphasis to stem cells.

Aside from Trans Time, the other four cryonics organizations in the world which are
storing human patients in liquid nitrogen are the Alcor Life Extension
Foundation (founded in 1972 by Fred and Linda Chamberlain), the Cryonics
Institute (founded in 1976 by Robert Ettinger), KrioRus(located near Moscow in
Russia, founded in 2006), and Oregon Cryonics (incorporated by former CI Director
Jordan Sparks, and beginning service in May 2014).

Fred and Linda Chamberlain had been extremely active in the Cryonics Society of
California until 1971 when they became distrustful of Robert Nelson because of
(among other reasons) Nelson's refusal to allow them to see where the organization's
patients were being stored. In 1972 the Chamberlains founded Alcor, named after a
star in the Big Dipper used in ancient times as a test of visual acuity. Alcor's first
cryonics patient was Fred Chamberlain's father who, in 1976, became the world's first
"neuro" (head-only) cryonics patient. (About half of Alcor patients are currently
"neuros"). Trans Time provided cryostorage for Alcor until Alcor acquired its own
storage capability in 1982.

After 1976 the Chamberlains encouraged others to run Alcor, beginning with a Los
Angeles physician, who became Alcor President. The Chamberlains moved to Lake
Tahoe, Nevada where they engaged in rental as well as property management and held
annual Life Extension Festivals until 1986. They had to pay hefty legal fees to avoid
being dragged into the Chatsworth lawsuits, a fact that increased their dislike of
Robert Nelson. In 1997 they returned to Alcor when Fred became President and Linda
was placed in charge of delivering cryonics service. Fred and Linda started two
companies (Cells4Life and BioTransport) associated with Alcor, assuming
responsibility for all unsecured debt of those companies. Financial disaster and an
acrimonious dispute with Alcor management led to Fred and Linda leaving Alcor in
2001, filing for bankruptcy and temporarily joining the Cryonics Institute. They
returned to Alcor in 2011, and Fred became an Alcor patient in 2012.

Saul Kent, one of the founders of the Cryonics Society of New York, became one of
Alcor's strongest supporters. He was a close associate of Pearson & Shaw, authors of
the 1982 best-selling book LIFE EXTENSION. Pearson & Shaw were flooded with
mail as a result of their many media appearances, and they gave the mail to Saul Kent.
Kent used that mail to create a mailing list for a new mail-order business he created
for selling supplements: now called the LifeExtension Buyer's Club.Profits from the
Buyer's Club have gone to the non-profit Life Extension Foundation(LEF). Millions
of dollars earned from LEF have not only helped build Alcor, but have created and
supported a company doing cryobiological research (21st Century Medicine), a
company which has done anti-ischemia research (Critical Care Research), and a
company developing the means to apply the research to standby and transport
cryonics procedures (Suspended Animation, Inc).

In December 1987 Kent brought his terminally ill mother (Dora Kent) into the Alcor
facility where she deanimated. The body (without the head) was given to the local
coroner (Dora Kent was a "neuro"). The coroner issued a death certificate which gave
death as due to natural causes. Barbiturate had been given to Dora Kent after legal
death to slow brain metabolism. The coroner's office did not understand that
circulation was artificially restarted after legal death, which distributed the barbiturate
throughout the body.

After the autopsy, the coroner's office changed the cause of death on the death
certificate to homicide. In January 1988 Alcor was raided by coroner's deputies,
a SWAT team, and UCLA police. The Alcor staff was taken to the police station in
handcuffs and the Alcor facility was ransacked, with computers and records being
seized. The coroner's office wanted to seize Dora Kent's head for autopsy, but the
head had been removed from the Alcor facility and taken to a location that was never
disclosed. Alcor later sued for false arrest and for illegal seizures, winning both court
cases. (See Dora Kent: Questions and Answers)

Growth in Alcor membership was fairly slow and linear until the mid-1980s,
following which there was a sharp increase in growth. Ironically, publicity
surrounding the Dora Kent case is often cited as one of the reasons for the growth
acceleration. Another reason often cited is the 1986 publication of ENGINES OF
CREATION, a seminal book about nanotechnology which contained an entire chapter
devoted to cryonics (the possibility that nanomachines could repair freezing damage).
Hypothermic dog experiments associated with cryonics were also publicized in the
mid-1980s. In the late 1980s Alcor Member Dick Clair — who was dying of AIDS —
fought in court for the legal right to practice cryonics in California (a battle that was
ultimately won). The Cryonics Institute did not experience a growth spurt until the
advent of the internet in the 1990s. The American Cryonics Society does not publish
membership statistics.

Robert Ettinger, Saul Kent and Mike Darwin are arguably the three individuals who
had the most powerful impact on the early history of cryonics. Having experimented
with the effects of cold on organisms from the time he was a child, Darwin learned of
cryonics at the Indiana State Science Fair in 1968. He was able to spend summers at
the Cryonics Society of New York (living with Curtis Henderson). Darwin was given
the responsibility of perfusing cryonics patients at the age of 17 in recognition of his
technical skills.

Born "Michael Federowicz", Mike chose to use his high school nickname "Darwin" as
a cryonics surname when he began his career as a kidney dialysis technician. He had
been given his nickname as a result of being known at school for arguing for
evolution, against creationism. He is widely known in cryonics as "Mike Darwin",
although his legal surname remains Federowicz.

Not long after Alcor was founded, Darwin moved to California at the invitation of
Fred and Linda Chamberlain. He spent a year as the world's first full-time dedicated
cryonics researcher until funding ran out. Returning to Indiana, Darwin (along with
Steve Bridge) created a new cryonics organization that accumulated considerable
equipment and technical capability.

In 1981 Darwin moved back to California, largely because of his desire to work with
Jerry Leaf. In 1982 the Indiana organization merged with Alcor, and in 1983 Darwin
was made President of Alcor. In California Darwin, Leaf and biochemist Hugh Hixon
(who has considerable engineering skill) developed a blood substitute capable of
sustaining life in dogs for at least 4 hours at or below 9ºC . Leaf and Darwin had some
nasty confrontations with members of the Society for Cryobiology over that
organization's 1985 refusal to publish their research. The Society for Cryobiology
adopted a bylaw that prohibited cryonicists from belonging to the organization. Mike
Darwin later wrote a summary of the conflicts between cryonicists and cryobiologists
under the title Cold War. Similar experiments were done by Paul Segall and his
associates, which generated a great deal of favorable media exposure for cryonics.
In 1988 Carlos Mondragon replaced Mike Darwin as Alcor President because
Mondragon proved to be more capable of handling the stresses of the Dora Kent case.
Darwin had vast medical knowledge (especially as it applies to cryonics), and
possessed exceptional technical skills. He was a prolific and lucid writer — much of
the material in the Alcor website library was written by Mike Darwin. Darwin worked
as Alcor's Research Director from 1988 to 1992, during which time he developed a
Transport Technician course in which he trained Alcor Members in the technical skills
required to deliver the initial phases of cryonics service.

Darwin left Alcor in 1992, much to the distress of many Alcor Members who
regarded Mike Darwin as by far the person in the world most capable of delivering
competent cryonics technical service. In 1993 a new cryonics organization
called CryoCare Foundation was created, largely so that people could benefit from
Darwin's technical skills. Another strongly disputed matter was the proposed move of
Alcor from California to Arizona (implemented in February 1994).

About 50 Alcor Members left Alcor to join and form CryoCare. Darwin delivered
standby, transport and perfusion services as a subcontractor to CryoCare and the
American Cryonics Society (ACS). Cryostorage services were contracted to CryoCare
and ACS by Paul Wakfer. Darwin's company was called BioPreservation and
Wakfer's company was called CryoSpan. Eventually, serious personality conflicts
developed between Darwin and Wakfer. In 1999 Darwin stopped providing service to
CryoCare and Wakfer turned CryoSpan over to Saul Kent. Kent then refused to accept
additional cryonics patients at CryoSpan, and was determined to end CryoSpan in a
way that would not harm the cryonics patients being stored there.

I (Ben Best) had been CryoCare Secretary, and became President of CryoCare in 1999
in an attempt to arrange alternate service providers for CryoCare. The Cryonics
Institute agreed to provide cryostorage. Various contractors were found to provide the
other services, but eventually CryoCare could not be sustained. In 2003 I became
President of the Cryonics Institute. I assisted with the moving of CryoSpan's two
CryoCare patients to Alcor and CryoSpan's ten ACS patients to the Cryonics Institute.
In 2012 I resigned as President of the Cryonics Institute, and began working for the
Life Extension Foundation. Dennis Kowalski became the new CI President.

Mike Darwin continued to work as a researcher at Saul Kent's company Critical Care
Research (CCR) until 2001. Darwin's most notable accomplishment at CCR was his
role in developing methods to sustain dogs without neurological damage following
17 minutes of warm ischemia. Undisclosed conflicts with CCR management caused
Darwin to leave CCR in 2001. He worked briefly with Alcor and Suspended
Animation, and later did consulting work for the Cryonics Institute. But for the most
part Darwin has been distanced from cryonics organizations.
The history of the Cryonics Institute (CI) has been less tumultuous than that of
Alcor. Robert Ettinger was President from April 1976 to September 2003, Ben
Best was Preident from September 2003 to September 2012, and Dennis Kowalski has
been CI President since September 2012. (Andrea Foote was briefly President in 1994,
but soon became ill with ovarian cancer.) Robert Ettinger decided to build
fiberglass cryostats rather than buy dewars because CI's Detroit facility was too small
for dewars. Robert Ettinger's mother became the first patient of the Cryonics Institute
when she deanimated in 1977. She was placed in dry ice for about ten years until CI
began using liquid nitrogen in 1987 (the same year that Robert Ettinger's first wife
became CI's second patient). In 1994 CI acquired the Erfurt-Runkel Building in
Clinton Township (a suburb northeast of Detroit) for about $300,000. This is roughly
the same amount of money as had been bequeathed to CI by CI Member Jack Erfurt
(who had deanimated in 1992). Erfurt's wife (Andrea Foote who deanimated in 1995)
also bequeathed $300,000 to CI. Andy Zawacki, nephew of Connie Ettinger(wife of
Robert Ettinger's son David), built a ten-person cryostat in the new facility. Fourteen
patients were moved from the old Detroit facility to the new Cryonics Institute facility.
Andy Zawacki is a man of many talents. Mr. Zawacki has been a CI employee since
January 1985 (when he was 19 years old), handling office work (mostly Member sign-
ups and contracts), building maintenance and equipment fabrication, but also patient
perfusion and cool-down. Mr. Zawacki became a CI Director in 2008.

Throughout most of the history of cryonics glycerol has been the cryoprotectant used
to perfuse cryonics patients. Glycerol reduces, but does not eliminate, ice formation.
In the late 1990s research conducted at 21st Century Medicine and at UCLA under the
direction of 21st Century Medicine confirmed that ice formation in brain tissue could
be completely eliminated by a judiciously chosen vitrification mixture of
cryoprotectants. In 2001 Alcor began vitrification perfusion of cryonics patients with
a cryoprotectant mixture called B2C, and not long thereafter adopted a better mixture
called M22. At the Cryonics Institute a vitrification mixture called CI-VM-1 was
developed by CI staff cryobiologist Dr. Yuri Pichugin (who was employed at CI from
2001 to 2007). The first CI cryonics patient was vitrified in 2005.

In 2002 Alcor cryopreserved baseball legend Ted Williams. Two of the Williams
children attested that their father wanted to be cryopreserved, but a third child
protested bitterly. Journalists at Sports Illustrated wrote a sensationalistic expose of
Alcor based on information supplied to them by Alcor employee Larry Johnson, who
had surreptitiously tape-recorded many conversations in the facility. The ensuing
media circus led to some nasty moves by politicians to incapacitate cryonics
organizations. In Arizona, state representative Bob Stump attempted to put Alcor
under the control of the Funeral Board. The Arizona Funeral Board Director told the
New York Times "These companies need to be regulated or deregulated out of
business". Alcor fought hard, and in 2004 the legislation was withdrawn. Alcor hired
a full-time lobbyist to watch after their interests in the Arizona legislature. Although
the Cryonics Institute had not been involved in the Ted Williams case, the State of
Michigan placed the organization under a "Cease and Desist" order for six months,
ultimately classifying and regulating the Cryonics Institute as a cemetery in 2004. In
the spirit of de-regulation, the new Republican Michigan government removed the
cemetary designation for CI in 2012.

In 2002 Suspended Animation, Inc (SA) was created to do research on improved

delivery of cryonics services, and to provide those services to other cryonics
organizations. In 2003 SA perfused a cryonics patient for the American Cryonics
Society, and the patient was stored at the Cryonics Institute. Alcor has long offered
standby and transport services to its Members as an integral part of Membership, but
the Cryonics Institute (CI) had not done so. In 2005 the CI Board of Directors
approved contracts with SA which would allow CI Members the option of receiving
SA standby and transport if they so chose. Several years later, all Alcor standby cases
in the continental United States outside of Arizona were handled by SA. Alcor
continued to do standby and stabilization in Arizona. Any Alcor Member who is
diagnosed as being terminally ill with a prognosis of less than 90 days of life will be
reimbursed $10,000 for moving to a hospice in the Phoenix, Arizona area. By
2014, over 160 of the roughly 550 CI Members who had arrangements for
cryopreservation services from CI had opted to also have Standby, Stabilization and
Transport (SST) from SA.

A Norwegian ACS Member named Trygve Bauge brought his deceased grandfather to
the United States and stored the body at Trans Time from 1990 to 1993. Bauge then
transported his grandfather to Nederland, Colorado in dry ice with the intention of
starting his own cryonics company. But Bauge was deported back to Norway and the
story of his grandfather created a media circus. The town outlawed cryonics, but had
to "grandfather the grandfather" who has remained there on dry ice. After a "cooling-
off period" locals turned the publicity to their advantage by creating an annualFrozen
Dead Guy Days festival which features coffin races, snow sculptures, etc. Many
cryonicists insist that dry ice is not cold enough for long-term cryopreservation and
that the Nederland festival is negative publicity for cryonics.

After several years of management turnover at Alcor, money was donated to find a
lasting President. In January 2011, Max More was selected as the new President and
CEO of Alcor. In July 2011 Robert Ettinger was cryopreseved at CI after a standby
organized by his son and daughter-in-law. In September 2012 Ben Best ended his 9-
year service as CI President and CEO by going to work for the Life Extension
Foundation as Director of Research Oversight. The Life Extension Foundation is the
major source of cryonics-related research, including funding for 21st Century
Medicine, Suspended Animation, Inc., and Advanced Neural Biosciences, and funds
many anti-aging research projects as well. Dennis Kowalski became the new CI
President. Ben Best retired as CI Director in September 2014.

In January 2011 CI shipped its vitrification solution (CI-VM-1) to the United

Kingdom so that European cryonics patients could be vitrified before shipping in dry
ice to the United States. This procedure was applied to the wife of UK cryonicist Alan
Sinclair in May 2013. In the summer of 2014 Alcor began offering this "field
vitrication solution perfusion" service to its members in Canada and overseas.

In 2006 the first cryonics organization to offer cryonics services outside of the United
States was created in Russia. KrioRus has a facility in a Moscow suburb where many
cryonics patients are being stored in liquid nitrogen. In 2014 Oregon
Cryonics (created by former CI Director Jordan Sparks) began providing neuro (head
or brain)-only services at low cost for cryopreservation and chemical preservation.

Vitrified brain tissue does not result in electron micrographs that look identical to
normal brain tissue. For this reason, the Brain Preservation Foundation offered cash
prizes for a demonstrable brain preservation technique that could be expected to keep
a brain well-preserved (by electron microscopy standards) for at least one hundred
years. 21st Century Medicine won the small mammal prize in 2014 and the large
mammal prize in 2016 (prizes won details) using aldehydes and cryopreservation
(ASC, Aldehyde-Stabilized Cryopreservation). Subsequently, Oregon Cryonics
adopted ASC as the standard preservation method for its cryonics patients.

In April 1990 the Province of British Columbia, Canada, had passed a law against
cryonics. The law stated "No person shall offer for sale or sell any arrangement for the
preservation or storage of human remains based on cryonics, irradiation or any other
means of preservation or storage, by whatever name called, that is offered or sold on
the expectation of the resuscitation of human remains at a future time." (British
Columbia's Anti-Cryonics Law). The law was re-designated Section 14 of Bill 3 of
the he Cemetery and Funeral Services Act (passed 2004). With financial support from
the Life Extension Foundation, the Lifespan Society of British Columbia began legal
efforts to repeal Section 14.

In June of 2018 the Lifespan Society of British Columbia was scheduled to go to court
to challenge Section 14 of Bill 3 of the Cremation, Interment, and Funeral Services
Act on grounds that it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of the Canadian
Constitution. Prior to the court date, however, the British Columbia government
provided the Lifespan Society with a "comfort letter" allowing cryonics services to be
offered in BC to those knowledgeable of the scientific status of cryonics. Following
the recommendation of their lawyers, the Lifespan Society accepted the "comfort
 letter" and discontinued legal action on grounds that no practical obstacles stand in the
way of legally offering or obtaining cryonics services in British Columbia. The
Lifespan Society decided this was a satisfactory resolution, although Section 14
remains a part of the laws of British Columbia. (For more details see Anti-Cryonics
Law Challenge: Resolution on the Lifespan Society website.)

Early in 2018 the Society for Cryobiology removed from its bylaws the bylaw
prohibiting cryonicists from being Members of the Society, which had been a part of
the Society's bylaws since the 1980s. Nonetheless, the society continued to affirm that
cryonics is not scientific.

Also in 2018, Alcor received a five million dollar donation to be used by Alcor to
conduct research which would benefit Alcor cryonics technology. Alcor purchased
a CT scanner that could be used to image vitrification solution perfusion (freezing
damage) in existing cryonics patients (to review protocols) as well as during perfusion
of future cryonics patients. Oregon Cryonics had already been using a CT scanner to
evaluate cryonics patient perfusion. Alcor also used part of the donation to develop an
improved liquid ventilation system to much more rapidly cool cryonics patients in an
ice bath.

(For details on the current status of the different cryonics organizations,

see Comparing Procedures and Policies.)

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