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American Morning

Relatives of Ted Williams in Bitter Tug of War Over Remains

Aired July 09, 2002 - 08:38   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now a story that stunned baseball fans and others all over the country. Relatives of legendary baseball player Ted Williams are in a bitter tug of war over the great hitter's remains and whether to have them cryogenically frozen or not. Williams' daughter is outraged and said the procedure to freeze a corpse is something out of a Stephen King novel, and she said her father thought it was morally wrong.

Is cryogenics science or science fiction? Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen looks at the cold, hard facts on today's "House Call."

Good morning, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

Well, let me tell you, right now, this looks much more like science fiction many of us have seen in the movies where people are frozen. Here is "Demolition Man" where Sylvester Stallone is frozen. I don't know what all those flashing lights are. But you've seen this in many different movies. Is this realistic? Could you freeze someone?

Forty-nine people who are hanging upside down in metal tanks at a facility in Arizona called Alcor. There you see the tanks there is four people per tank hanging upside down frozen, four people who died and had themselves frozen. Well, they -- I don't think we'll see bodies, so don't be scared. They think it's realistic. They think as soon as a cure is found for whatever killed them, they can be cured and then revived.

In fact, some of these people have had their pets frozen as well, because they want to make sure that if they're revived, that the pets could be revived along with them.

However, even the company itself says that -- here in the front of this facility, they show some of these people who have been frozen. These people who are now all dead are frozen upside down in the tanks that you just saw. And the company itself says, you know what, we're not even sure if this works. We have a quote from the company's Web site. They say "Cryonics is still an unproven procedure with many uncertainties."

We asked a medical ethicist Art Kaplan who has written on this subject, has published in medical journals, and I said, Art, what do you think? What are the chances that this works, that people can actually be revived, and he said, 0 percent, this is a scam. So that is one man's educated opinion about whether or not this works.

Now a spokesman for the company said he won't -- Alcor, said that he won't confirm it if Ted Williams is frozen or not, and in fact, he won't even confirm if the body is there -- Paula.

ZAHN: But it is also interesting to note that Ted Williams' daughter confirmed with a number of news organizations that Alcor representatives, according to her, accompanied her father's body to facilities in Scottsdale, from the daughter of Ted Williams talking.

Let me come back to the whole idea of 47 folks hedging their bets. Obviously, they think there is hope in this technology. What does it cost these folks to have their remains frozen?

COHEN: It costs quite a bit. While you're still living, you pay a $150 sign-up fee, and then you pay $400 a year, and then when you die, you pay $120,000 to be frozen. Usually life insurance pays for that final cost.

ZAHN: Life insurance picks up that tab?

COHEN: That's the way it works, is that you sign your life insurance over to Alcor. Instead of your children or your spouse getting it, Alcor gets it.

ZAHN: You said the official officials admitted this is sort of cutting edge experimentation that's going on, but what is the thought about this Ted Williams case and whether you would actually be able to extract DNA from a frozen body and later use it to clone or whatever the heck you want to do with it.

COHEN: Right, and get lots of Ted Williams running around winning World Series. What's strange about that sort of thing is you don't need to freeze someone's body in order to get DNA. It if that were really the intention, if they wanted to save his DNA so that if cloning technology works out in the future, they could clone him, they don't need to freeze him, they could have scraped the inside of his cheek and gotten cells that way. They could have taken a piece of skin.

You don't need to freeze someone to clone them. It's really unnecessary. So that doesn't make any sense.

ZAHN: All right. Thanks for helping to set the record straight here this morning.

Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much, and thanks for your insights.

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