Beorn
03-28-2009, 01:39 AM
Please freeze me! How scores of middle-class British couples are hoping to buy immortality for just ?10 a week
It sounds like the loopiest science fiction, but - like Simon Cowell - scores of middle-class couples are paying ?10 a week for their bodies to be frozen when they die. So can you really buy immortality for the price of a pizza?
When Adele Cosgrove Bray decided to share her hopes for the future with her husband, it was not quite the reaction she was looking for. 'I'd never seen anyone laugh so much,' she reflects ruefully. 'It took me a good 15 minutes to convince him I was serious.'
In fairness to her husband, Richard, these weren't your bog-standard dreams of a move to the country or a home in the sun. Adele's plans are far more long-term than that. Permanent, if you like.
As she puts it: 'I told Richard that I wanted to be frozen when I died, with a view to eventually being brought back to life to experience the future.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/27/article-0-0421E87B000005DC-330_468x399.jpg
Little wonder he was taken aback. But then he's far from the only spouse having to confront such bizarre plans. Once the premise of creaky science-fiction plots, in recent years the cryonics movement, in which people have their bodies frozen in the hope they can be resurrected when science catches up, has gathered pace.
The Americans, unsurprisingly, have been doing it for years, setting up the first 'storage facility' for frozen corpses in the Seventies. Over here, the notion has taken a bit longer to catch on, but while no British firm offers the technology to store bodies, a growing number of Britons have made arrangements to be flown to the U.S. when they die to await the next leg of their eternal journey.
Among them is music mogul Simon Cowell, who last month announced his wish to be frozen, perhaps with a view to returning and conducting X-Factor auditions into eternity.
Still, with a multi-million-pound fortune at his disposal he can easily afford it. But people less well-off can take out life insurance which pays out to the Cryonics Institute - an organisation which stores bodies - rather than to a loved one. It means putting a down payment on the afterlife does not have to come at a premium. Adele's policy, for example, costs just ?10 a month - 'cheaper than a pizza', as she brightly puts it.
Read more @ Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1165377/Please-freeze-How-scores-middle-class-British-couples-hoping-buy-immortality-just-10-week.html)
It sounds like the loopiest science fiction, but - like Simon Cowell - scores of middle-class couples are paying ?10 a week for their bodies to be frozen when they die. So can you really buy immortality for the price of a pizza?
When Adele Cosgrove Bray decided to share her hopes for the future with her husband, it was not quite the reaction she was looking for. 'I'd never seen anyone laugh so much,' she reflects ruefully. 'It took me a good 15 minutes to convince him I was serious.'
In fairness to her husband, Richard, these weren't your bog-standard dreams of a move to the country or a home in the sun. Adele's plans are far more long-term than that. Permanent, if you like.
As she puts it: 'I told Richard that I wanted to be frozen when I died, with a view to eventually being brought back to life to experience the future.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/03/27/article-0-0421E87B000005DC-330_468x399.jpg
Little wonder he was taken aback. But then he's far from the only spouse having to confront such bizarre plans. Once the premise of creaky science-fiction plots, in recent years the cryonics movement, in which people have their bodies frozen in the hope they can be resurrected when science catches up, has gathered pace.
The Americans, unsurprisingly, have been doing it for years, setting up the first 'storage facility' for frozen corpses in the Seventies. Over here, the notion has taken a bit longer to catch on, but while no British firm offers the technology to store bodies, a growing number of Britons have made arrangements to be flown to the U.S. when they die to await the next leg of their eternal journey.
Among them is music mogul Simon Cowell, who last month announced his wish to be frozen, perhaps with a view to returning and conducting X-Factor auditions into eternity.
Still, with a multi-million-pound fortune at his disposal he can easily afford it. But people less well-off can take out life insurance which pays out to the Cryonics Institute - an organisation which stores bodies - rather than to a loved one. It means putting a down payment on the afterlife does not have to come at a premium. Adele's policy, for example, costs just ?10 a month - 'cheaper than a pizza', as she brightly puts it.
Read more @ Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1165377/Please-freeze-How-scores-middle-class-British-couples-hoping-buy-immortality-just-10-week.html)