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CNN Live Today

Will Ted Williams' Body be Frozen or Cremated?

Aired July 09, 2002 - 13:17   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Will Ted Williams' body be frozen, or cremated? That could be decided by the courts. The attorney for Williams' daughter says the baseball legend wanted his ashes scattered over the Florida Keys. However, the daughter says her half brother has shipped the remains to an Arizona lab to be preserved.

Let's bring in our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen once again to explain how this process, first of all, would work.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN ANCHOR; Well, right now, I have to tell you that most think of this through science fiction. You see it in the movies, many movies actually. It's kind of amazing. Show people being frozen in the hopes that after death, they would be revived.

Here you see "Demolition Man." Sylvester Stallone is being frozen. I don't know what all those flashes of light are. But there he is.

PHILLIPS: That adds to the drama.

COHEN: Right, that's the drama, that's a good reason.

But it realistic? Well, 49 people who have decided to freeze themselves at the Alcor facility in Arizona say, yes, they've had themselves frozen, there are four people in each of those vats -- really, truly, four people in each of those vats being suspended upside down. The aim is that some day they will be a cure for whatever killed them, and that they would be cured and revived.

Here are the people's pictures. All the people we're showing you now is the people who after death are now suspended upside down in those metal vats. But how realistic is it? Well, even the company itself says that cryonics is still an unproven procedure with many uncertainties, and that's from the company that does the freezing.

We asked medical ethicist Art Caplan, and he's published on this issue many times, and he said, what are the chances that this would work, that you'd be able to cure the person and revive them? And he said zero percent, this is a scam.

Now, of course, Alcor, which does the freezing, say, oh, we think the technology is on the horizon, and we think we'll be able to revive these people. But I have to tell you that other people I've talked to say that they think this is entirely crazy and won't work. I want to add that some of those people who you saw, their pictures before, Kyra, they've also had their pets frozen, because just in case they come back to life, they would like Fido there with them. They want to be together.

PHILLIPS: You know, on a serious note, when someone dies, more than anything, you want a loved one to be able to come back. So I can sort of understand why they would want to attempt to do something like this. How expensive is it?

COHEN: How expensive is it? It's expensive. It cost quite a bit of money. For example, if you want to be suspended and frozen in Alcor, you have to spend $150 to sign up, $400 a year thereafter, and then $120,000 once you actually die and want to be frozen. Life insurance policies usually pay for that. In other words, you sign over your life insurance policy...

PHILLIPS: To the company.

COHEN: Right, and they take care of it for you.

PHILLIPS: All right, so besides reviving someone, someone that would want to do this. DNA, you don't have to freeze the entire body just to get a little DNA if you want to have little Ted Williams running around, right?

COHEN: That's what I've heard people say, oh, well, the family wants to freeze him so that they can use his DNA, and they can make a whole bunch of Ted Williams, a whole bunch of World Series winners. Well, if the intent is just to clone Ted Williams, they didn't need to freeze his body; they could have gotten some DNA by swabbing the inside of his cheek or saving some skin from before he died. And if -- and that's a big if -- if cloning turns out to be reality, they could clone off of that. They wouldn't need to save his whole body.

PHILLIPS: Interesting.

Well, I know we will be continuing to follow this story, so we'll be talking again.

COHEN: Right, exactly, to see what they do with him.

(CROSSTALK)

COHEN: Kind of creepy.

PHILLIPS: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you.

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