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.'"

Before any says...

[Eightyford]

Before anyone says that this guy is greedy and should give the money to charity, I'd like to point out that there's little chance that he will come back to life unthawed, and if he doesn't spend the money it makes us all just a tiny bit richer.

STTNG

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Reminds me of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they wake up people who were frozen. The doc cured them, and one guy wanted to check on his stocks. They thought he was nuts, because why would you need stocks when you could just ask the replicator for anything you wanted?

Doubtful legality

[Raindance]

I'd suspect that the legal status of someone that's, well, legally dead would be rather iffy. And for good reason- why should we set aside economic power for inactive (and potentially never-to-be active) members of our society? I think the burden of proof that this should be possible lies on them.

There's also things such as Adverse Possession that could throw a wrench into things. I'd recommend that any 'cryonauts' conceive of any post-death, pre-revival arrangements to be tentative at best.

Family members

[RedWizzard]

This scheme was mentioned in at least one of Niven's books. It didn't work - surviving family members took the estate to court to get at their rightful inheritance. I think that's a pretty likely outcome. Another likely outcome is that the estate management will embezzle it (it's not like you can watch them closely when you're dead). It's also possible the government might decide to seize it, if it's a tempting enough target.

this works? since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

when you freeze a cell (single cell of your body) the water molecules will freeze, expanding the cell untill its walls break. just freezing this guy would kill him... let alone save him... test it with a daisy and liquid nitro

Instant

[RickPartin]

The one cool thing about freezing yourself that no one seems to mention is the process, if successful, will seem instant to you regardless of how many hundreds of years you're out for. Thinking of it that way makes it seem way more appealing. It's like a crude form of time travel.

Re:Doubtful legality

[timeOday]

I'd suspect that the legal status of someone that's, well, legally dead would be rather iffy.

I'm reminded of the Pharoahs of Egypt, who wanted so badly to "take it with them" that they were buried with great riches and even their own (living) servants. Fast forward a few thousand years to the explorers/theives who plundered the remains. There nobody around to protect whatever ownership rights the mummies thought they had over their loot.

All I can say is, let it go. You don't own anything in perpetuity, not even the water and dirt your body is made of.

So... Even if we do get enough advances medically

[timothyf]

So... Even if we do get enough advances medically to do this, tell me why on earth would we /want/ to revive someone so selfish and materialistic as to want to do this? Sorry, couldn't help myself.

decisions

[wall0159]

The difficult part would have to be deciding when to cut one's losses with life and be frozen. Persumably, if he waits until he's actually dead, it might be too late...

"I figure I have a better than even chance of coming back," he says. *laughing* based on WHAT?? Just goes to show - wealth doesn't corrolate with intelligence.

(personally, I reckon his chances are more like 42%... ;-)

Re:Or.....

[Ucklak]

I would imagine that in a hundred years time or more that the normal abundant viruses and other microorganisms that are bent on destroying the human body would probably take out his immune system immediately upon reanimation or drying out or whatever you want to call it. Of course you could put him a 'bubble' or quarrantine but if you don't have an evolution of antibiotics, his system would most likely shut down upon an infection.

The cold and flu that you and I shrug off today would kill our great grandparents (at an age of young adulthood) in an instant because of sex and diversification. Just a natural evolution process.
Viruses evolve and his immune system won't, that's the point of having kids. Hell, the next batch of kids may be immune to this current avian flu and we ourselves may be immmune to some ancient avian flu.

Re:Or....

[Bald Wookie]

"First one to revive me gets half my fortune."

The upside is that your remaining money must be worth something, since it was a large enough bounty to bring about your revival.

Re:You don't have to be rich.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Perhaps rich people are the ones worrying about preserving their assets for the future, but I don't want people to get the impression that you have to be rich to be a cryonicist.

Maybe not, but the OP has a point: if and when you wake up, will it do you much good to wake up a) broke, and b) without a marketable skill? You'll be about as useful to the new society as a buggy driver is to ours. Worse, you'll probably have a huge medical bill--while you've paid for the suspension (although how can they guarantee the rate?) you couldn't have possibly paid for the cure that will bring you back, as they can't at this point know how expensive it'll be to give you the cure, since it doesn't exist.

Really, that sounds great. You might wake up someday, but you'll be broke, jobless, a relative idiot, nowhere to live, no friends or family, and maybe will have a crushing medical bill. Thanks, but I think I might prefer to stay dead.

Re:Before any says...

[Dun Malg]

The banks yes, but also everyone that uses the same currency as him. Taking that much money out of circulation should help increase the value of the bills in your wallet right now.

Pfff! 10 million is infinitessimal in relation to even the minted and coined (M0) money supply (AKA "cash"), which is itself already fairly small in comparison to the full (M3) money supply as a whole. On top of that the value of the money supply is additionally at the mercy of a myriad of external forces. In the larger scheme of things, this guy's "fortune" is actually as meaningless as his plans to keep it forever.

Re:STTNG

[MBGMorden]

Unfortuneatly for our "real" situation makers of everything from candy bars to bath soap would cry foul if replicators were ever invented. "Pirates" would be trading templates for items all over the place, but the technology would be villified beyond belief.

Re:Rule against perpetuities

[ThreeE]

RTFA -- he's earning a return, therefore it's not stuffed under a mattress. The money is either invested in a company, or is earning interest in a bank -- and therefore is being used.

But all this is meaningless -- if I have $10M I can use it to stuff my pants if I want to. It's my money. I don't have to "use" any of my assets if I don't want to.

Re:Instant

[thesandtiger]

Who's to say one wouldn't have dreams? Or just some kind of low-level pseudo-consciousness? Or something else entirely?

I'm not saying that any of those are possible, but I am saying that, since no human being has ever been frozen, suspended for a "long" period of time, and then thawed and revived, saying anything about the subjective experience is an iffy proposition.

I suspect that you're right - likely there'll be no notice of the lapsed time - but I wouldn't rule anything else out.

Me, I'll probably get frozen. After all, if it fails, well, I was dead anyway, and if it succeeds, go me - any world that would revive me would have to be stable/desirable enough for me to want to live in it (the Niven story, while amusing, was pretty absurd). One extra life insurance policy to cover the expense of it, it seems like a cheap enough way to slightly hedge one's bets.

Re:Instant

[Dun Malg]

The one cool thing about freezing yourself that no one seems to mention is the process, if successful, will seem instant to you regardless of how many hundreds of years you're out for.

Heh. You hope it seems instantateous, at least. Until we thaw one of those suckers out and reanimate 'em, we won't know if they wake up saying "what was that?" or "OH MY GOD WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG, THE ETERNAL FREEZING LIMBO!!!!!!!!!"

Re:Or..... short story

[saskboy]

I read a short story in Grade 7 English, about 3 people who cryogenically froze themselves to be revived later. One wanted to be rich, but found out inflation had made him very poor. One later was revived looking to be cured of his ailment. They had cured him, but when he coughed from the cold air, they "sterilized" him because he might have the cold virus they'd wiped out by exterminating the sick. The third was looking for a way to get out of jail-time, and when he awoke, society was no different from the prison he came out of.

Re:Instant

[malsdavis]

If you were having thoughts of anykind, "low-level pseudo-consciousness" or whatever, you would NOT be cryogenically frozen. Thoughts require large amounts of chemical reactions to occur in the brain and the whole point of cryogenics is to stop chemical reactions from happening as they are also what causes ageing.

So by the very definition of cryogenics you would be thoughtless and completely unconscious for the entire time. Apart maybe from any wake-up period which possibly might be required during reanimation (not sure if its called reanimation?, I just remeber that word from Austin Powers).

Re:Or.....

[Servants]

The cold and flu that you and I shrug off today would kill our great grandparents (at an age of young adulthood) in an instant because of sex and diversification.

That's completely not true. You don't think that people's immune systems in any given generation just luckily happen to be attuned to exactly the germs which will be around during their lifetimes? The immune system is extremely adaptable and will effectively attack nearly any foreign menace. We don't have to rely on it evolving to match specific germs that go through a million times as many evolutionary generations as we do.

(As a side note, it's typically not advantageous for infectious agents to evolve to kill their hosts anyway, except under crowded and unsanitary conditions where they can spread very quickly. Many germs could well evolve to be less deadly as world sanitation improves.)

You're probably thinking of the (extremely plausible) argument that the main evolutionary purpose of sex is to "change the locks" against such parasites. But the point of this is more that a genetically uniform population would be vulnerable, so lineages that could vary their genetic makeup would gain an advantage; not that genetic change is the primary line of defense against parasites. Luckily for all of us, it isn't.

Shouldn't he be frozen while still alive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was pretty much impossible to revive a body post death, and it seems much more likely for reanimation if the person were frozen while still alive.

Re:Or.....

[Anonymous Coward]

The cold and flu that you and I shrug off today would kill our great grandparents (at an age of young adulthood) in an instant because of sex and diversification. Just a natural evolution process.
Viruses evolve and his immune system won't, that's the point of having kids. Hell, the next batch of kids may be immune to this current avian flu and we ourselves may be immmune to some ancient avian flu.

Good grief, people will believe anything these days.

Re:History repeats itself

[Harmonious Botch]

It's different because it might really work.

This is Nothing New

[Greyfox]

When the Pharohs were placed in their reincarnation devices (The pyramids) they tried to take it all with them, too. I expect the results will be similar for the modern day people who are trying to cheat death. I don't believe that our current level of technology can preserve a body well enough to fix it at some future date and I don't believe that the current infrastructure is reliable enough to keep a body frozen for 100 years much less several. In fact, I doubt the current bunch of frozen dead guys will hold up as long as the Egyptians who were mummified thousands of years ago. My money's on them all quietly ending up in some medical waste bin somewhere within 40-50 years time.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:You forget the nano/biotech revolution comming.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

in the comming years it will be natural for future slashdotters to be able to handle the complexities of nano and biotech programming of nanotech assemblers and nanosensors and be able to do a lot of "matter" hacking even though there will

No it won't. Replicating nanobots are pure sci-fi, and nano assembly is going to stay industrial for at least the next 100 years. Slashdotters are not going to be able to create a woman out of sand anytime soon.

we should be able to advance nano/bio in the next 10 years to be able to demonstrate age halting/reversal in mice (the M-prize), and then, soon in people.

Halting age is not the problem. Fatuige is. People could easily live until 150 if their body did not slowly succum to acumulated wear and tear. Free radicals will turn your brain to putty long before you ever had a hope of reaching 200.

It may be hard to do, but, remember, they went to the moon in 9 years using slide rules and mainframe 32 bit computers with core memory

That's because it was possible to go to the moon. Most of the stuff you mention is about as feasable as a perpetual motion machine.

Investments aren't being sucked out of the economy

[cduffy]

It would be "sucked out of the economy" if he stuck it under his mattress. He has it invested. Money that's invested is funding companies that pay taxes, produce products, and do all those other useful things that money that's part of the economy does.

You just don't get this autonomy thing, do you?

[f1r3br4nd]

You get to decide what you should do and what you deserve. Other people get to decide what they should do and what they deserve. And the burden of proof is on you to show that the decisions someone else makes about their life or death have more of a negative impact on you than regulations prohibiting that class of behavior would have on everybody.

asset trusts limited to living beneficeries

[peter303]

Generally states limit the lifetime monies held by nonliving entities (trusts) to living beneficies or one generation thereafter. Family/dynasty trusts like the Rockefellers or Kennedies have to renewed each generation.
To be blunt, the even the dead cant avoid taxes forever. The concept of the dead and unborn owning assets is alien to current law.