Legal Limbo Thawing for Those Who Back Cryonics

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has given renewed life to a group that freezes the dead in hopes they may be revived someday.

Judge Aurelio Munoz ruled Tuesday that it is illegal for the state Department of Health Services to refuse to provide death certificates and body disposition permits for those who want their bodies frozen after death.

Until now, those who had chosen to have their bodies frozen after death have been left in legal limbo. The state had refused to issue death certificates or other permits, which relatives often needed to settle estates and obtain insurance payments.

In a written opinion, Munoz said people have the right to dispose of their bodies as they wish. However, he noted that if the state wants to regulate the cryonics industry, it first must set up licensing and regulatory procedures.

State health officials have not decided whether to appeal the decision or to set up such regulations, according to Deputy Atty. Gen. Tammy Chung, who argued the case for the state. “We obviously did not agree with the decision,” she said.

The decision was hailed as a “total victory” by David Epstein, attorney for Riverside-based Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the nonprofit business that took the state to court.

Alcor President Carlos Mondragon said the ruling will give increased credibility to cryonics and predicted his business will “skyrocket” as a result.

Alcor filed the suit in 1988 on behalf of television producer Richard C. Jones, who went under the name Dick Clair. An Emmy-award winning writer for the Carol Burnett Show, Clair was hospitalized with AIDS. The hospital refused to allow Clair to give his body to Alcor, saying state officials told them it was illegal.

Alcor went to court and obtained a temporary restraining order from Munoz that directed the hospital to release Clair’s body upon his death.

Alcor subsequently obtained and froze Clair’s body, one of 16 in cryonic suspension at the facility. Another 280 people are in the process of signing up for the program. Among those waiting are a Xerox scientist from Palo Alto and a computer engineer from San Jose, who were also plaintiffs in the suit.

Alcor charges $100,000 to freeze an entire body and $30,000 for only the head. The fees are usually paid by life insurance policies, which clients sign over to Alcor.

The cryonics movement was started in 1962 by a retired Michigan college physics instructor and has been most popular in California. Alcor conducted its first freezing of a body in 1967.

In the cryonics process, entire bodies or sometimes just the heads are placed in receptacles that look like giant stainless steel Thermos bottles. These receptacles are filled with liquid nitrogen.

Cryonics proponents believe that by the time science advances to the point where the dead can be revived, it also will be able to make new bodies for the frozen heads.

Critics concede the process may be hypothetically possible. But they also say that today’s technology is too limited to prepare the bodies for future revival.

Alcor President Mondragon said that after a Northern California cryonics company went out of business and allowed bodies to thaw out in the early 1980s, the health department decided not to issue any permits for cryonics.

Alcor Attorney Epstein contended that the group was caught in a “Catch-22” situation. State law says firms dealing with bodies--such as cryonics businesses--must be licensed by the health department. However, Epstein said, the health agency does not provide such licenses for cryonics.

“The Legislature was mistaken in assuming that the health department had a mechanism in place to license such organizations,” said Chung.