March 17, 2006
Like My Kid's Rocket Pop

Corpsicle-no-more:

Raymond Martinot and his wife were the toast of the world cryonics movement. For years they were France's best preserved corpses, lying in a freezer in a chateau in the Loire valley, in the hope that modern science could one day bring them back to life.

But the French couple's journey into the future ended prematurely when, 22 years after his mother's body was put into cold storage, their son discovered the freezer unit had broken down and they had started to thaw.

When you're talking about technologies that will probably take centuries to materialize, if ever, you need to rely on mechanical systems which will last centuries, or forever. Which are expensive, where they exist at all, and usually require expensive upkeep as well. Since whole governments aren't very good at lasting more than a century or so, the whole cryonics movement would seem a sucker's bet.

Of course, Las Vegas is nothing if not a monument to the sucker's bet, and it's doing just fine. Something tells me cryonics will too.

Posted by scott at March 17, 2006 08:53 AM

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Well, they were dead before they were frozen, so it's not like things are any worse for them. I feel sorry for the folks that let themselves be frozen before they kicked off, because it's pretty certain they'll never be brought back to life.

Posted by: Tatterdemalian on March 17, 2006 07:03 PM
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