Wealthy 'Cryonauts' Put Assets on Ice

Carl Bialik writes "'You can't take it with you. So Arizona resort operator David Pizer has a plan to come back and get it,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Pizer is one of about about 1,000 members of the "cryonics" movement who plan to put their bodies on ice soon after death so that in the future, medical advances can save them. A small, wealthy subset of these cryonauts is exploring ways to leave their money to themselves. 'With the help of an estate planner, Mr. Pizer has created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated,' the Journal reports. 'Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world.'"

Rule against perpetuities

[Peyna]

The rule against perpetuities [wikipedia.org] should probably stop this in most states. The point of it is to keep property from being tied up and being useless for long periods of time. I think it's probably a moot point until they actually manage to unthaw someone and then keep them alive for more than a second or two.

H.G. Wells did it

[246o1]

In "When the Sleeper Wakes," a guy is in a coma for a thousand years, wakes up and his money has taken over the world. Highly recommend it, but that's because I like Wells a lot.

I see your quote and raise a Red Dwarf reference:

[slashbob22]

Teller: OK, you had a balance of 93 cents...
Fry: Alright!
Teller: And at an average of two-and-a-quarter percent interest over a period of 1000 years, that comes to ... $4.3 billion.

Re:New joke

[networkBoy]

Not so sure this is flamebait (I mean it is but...)
Heinlein explored this basic concept (with a timewarp from a nuke) in Farhams Freehold.
-nB

Re:Or.....

[xiphoris]

Yes! Mod parent up!

IANAD, but I am a med student. People are always worried about "viruses from space" coming to destroy us because our immune systems "won't be able to handle it". This is a crock of bullshit. Our immune systems are extremely effective at handling any foreign substances. The dangerous ones are those that have specifically evolved to trick our immune systems. The body (through an extremely complex & inefficient process) can generate antibodies to practically any pathogen.

Though, the grandparent may have a point that diseases of the future may have evolved (like HIV family viruses have) to trick our immune systems. Observe, however, that the most effective parasites do not kill their hosts. All the viruses that kill us are viruses *we* wipe out. There are thousands of bacteria living in our stomachs and viruses elsewhere in our bodies with which we have established harmony (most of the time).

Re:Or....

[KDR_11k]

I think H.G. Wells's The Sleeper Awakes came out a BIt earlier than that Futurama episode...