The Mansion of Happiness (48 page)

47.
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan
, 1:200. “While the only certainty in life is death,” Hyland observed, “what constitutes death is far from certain.”
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan
, 1:84.

48.
Until the twentieth century, the phrase “
sanctity of life” meant “sacred life.” This
usage is commonplace, although the phrase itself is rare. From 1639 to 1800—by my search of
Early American Imprints
, series 1 (Readex, online)—it appears in all of American printed books and pamphlets only twice, both times in religious tracts. In the nineteenth century it appears to be synonymous with “purity of faith” (
Catholic Layman
, 4 [May, 1855]: 51). Although it is now often referred to as a timeless feature of Christian teaching, it dates only to the nineteenth century. See Geoffrey Drutchas, “Is Life Sacred? The Incoherence of the Sanctity of Life as a Moral Principle Within the Christian Churches” (DDiv diss., Lancaster Theological Seminary, 1996), and also Fabián Andrés Ballesteros Gallego, “Sanctity of Life: Exploring Its Significance in Modern Medicine and Bioethics” (PhD diss., McGill University, 2001). In the first decades of the twentieth century, it was used to argue against capital punishment, with something like its modern and less wholly doctrinal meaning. See Herbert L. Stewart, “Euthanasia,”
International Journal of Ethics
29 (October 1918): 56. Schlesinger Sr. uses it to talk about revolutionary rights: Arthur Meier Schlesinger, “The American Revolution Reconsidered,”
Political Science Quarterly
34 (March 1919): 63. The phrase entered the legal lexicon about 1957, chiefly through Glanville Williams,
The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law
(New York: Knopf, 1957).

49.
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan
, 1:203, 258–60. This conflation was new in 1975. It has become common. See, e.g.,
Cruzan by Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health
, 497 U.S. 261 (1990) (Stevens, J., dissenting).

50.
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan
, 1:294, 252, 258–60.

51.
Ibid., 1:252, 492.

52.
This is from the October 23 testimony of Dr. Sidney Diamond (
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan
, 1:493), but is also cited in Bruce Hallett, “3 Docs: Karen’s Lost, but Keep Her Living,” New York
Daily News
, October 24, 1975.

53.
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan
, 1:328–29.

54.
Raymond Duff and Alexander Campbell, “Moral and Ethical Dilemmas in the Special Care Nursery,”
New England Journal of Medicine
289 (October 25, 1973): 890–94; see also Duff and Campbell, “Moral and Ethical Dilemmas: Seven Years into the Debate About Human Ambiguity,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
447 (January 1980), 19–28; quote from 24. Filene,
In the Arms of Others
, 114. Rothman,
Strangers at the Bedside
, 194–204.

55.
Commonwealth v. Kenneth Edelin
, 371 Mass. 497 (1976); Dr. F. J. Ingelfinger, “The Edelin Trial Fiasco” and “Edelin Supported” in
New England Journal of Medicine
292 (March 27, 1975): 697; 705; Carol Altekruse Berger and Patrick Berger, “The Edelin Decision,”
Commonweal
(April 25, 1975): 76–78; Connie Paige,
The Right to Lifers: Who They Are, How They Operate, Where They Get Their Money
(New York: Summit Books, 1983), chapter 1. On the sentencing, see 24.

56.
Rothman,
Strangers at the Bedside
, 221. On the importance of the case as landmark jurisprudence, see, e.g., Norman L. Cantor, “Twenty-five Years After Quinlan: A Review of Jurisprudence of Death and Dying,”
Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics
29 (Summer 2001): 182–96. The case also commonly appears in casebooks—e.g., Gregory E. Pence,
Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases That Have Shaped
Medical Ethics, with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Backgrounds
, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990; repr., Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Inc., 2008), chapter 2; citation comes from the 2008 edition. On the legacy of the issues Quinlan raised, see, e.g., Henry R. Glick,
The Right to Die: Policy Innovation and Its Consequences
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), and Robert M. Veatch,
Death, Dying, and the Biological Revolution
, rev. ed. (1976; repr., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), especially chapter 5.

57.
For an interesting statement on the nonadversarial nature of the proceedings, see Daniel N. Robinson’s introduction to the second volume of
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan:
“Even those, driven by chivalric devotion to protect the weak, search in vain for Karen Quinlan’s assailant. Karen Quinlan has no avowed enemy in this case; her parents love her, her Church stands ready to commend her soul, her physicians labor with tireless enthusiasm over her wasting body” (xvii).

58.
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan
, 1:203. Also: “You are doing what Hitler did,” a reader wrote, in a letter to Duff and Campbell. Duff and Campbell received a great deal of mail in 1974. More than three-quarters of the letters were supportive. The rest of the letter writers objected, strenuously. More than one mentioned Hitler. Duff and Campbell, “Moral and Ethical Dilemmas in the Special Care Nursery.” See also Duff and Campbell, “Moral and Ethical Dilemmas: Seven Years into the Debate About Human Ambiguity”; quote is on 24.

59.
“The trial itself did not receive extensive press coverage. Over 1945 and 1946 fewer than a dozen articles appeared in the
New York Times
on the Nazi research; the indictment of forty-two doctors in the fall of 1946 was a page-five story and the opening of the trial, a page-nine story. (The announcement of the guilty verdict in August 1947 was a front-page story, but the execution of seven of the defendants a year later was again relegated to the back pages.) Over the next fifteen years only a handful of articles in either medical or popular journals took up Nuremberg” (Rothman,
Strangers at the Bedside
, 62, 63). On the history of bioethics, see Albert R. Jonsen,
The Birth of Bioethics
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

60.
Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke,
Doctors of Infamy: The Story of the Nazi Medical Crimes
, trans. Heinz Norden (New York: Henry Schuman, 1949). A. Mit-scherlich and F. Mielke,
The Death Doctors
, trans. James Cleugh (London: Elek Books, 1962). It wasn’t only Nazi medical atrocities that Americans ignored in the 1940s and ’50s, and that became the object of dedicated fascination by the 1970s, as Peter Novick has argued in
The Holocaust in American Life
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).

61.
Hannah Arendt,
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
(New York: Viking, 1963; repr., New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 69; citation comes from the Penguin edition. Those italics are Arendt’s. On the reception of Arendt’s book, see Novick,
Holocaust
, chapter 7.

62.
Filene,
In the Arms of Others
, 49.

63.
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan
, 1:518.

64.
Geyer, “A Question of Life or Death,”
Los Angeles Times
, October 27, 1975.

65.
Da Vinci: Quinlans,
Karen Ann
, 53.

66.
Bruce Chadwick, “For Quinlans, Weather Was Portent of Ruling,” New York
Daily News
, November 11, 1975.

67.
Filene,
In the Arms of Others
, 44.

68.
In re
Karen Quinlan
, 348 A.2d 801 (N.J. Super. Ct. Ch. Div) (1975).

69.
On March 29, 1976, while awaiting the verdict, the Quinlans celebrated Karen’s birthday. Trapasso held a Mass in the Quinlans’ house. “Twenty-two years ago,” he began, “a child was born who will probably in some way change the world.” Filene,
In the Arms of Others
, 88. Said the seven-member court to Armstrong: “You seem to say that this is a medical question and at the same time you say that the family and the doctor should make the decision. Well here the doctor has said ‘no.’ Now what do you want us to do?” Armstrong restated the argument he had made in Morristown.
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan
, 2:222. See also the exchange on 223–25.

70.
Two useful assessments of the court’s legal reasoning: Cantor, “Twenty-five Years After Quinlan”; Annette E. Clark, “The Right to Die: The Broken Road from
Quinlan
to
Schiavo
,”
Loyola University Chicago Law Journal
37 (2006): 385–405.

71.
In the Matter of Karen Quinlan:
“they shall consult with. . . . If that consultative body agrees that there is no reasonable possibility of Karen’s ever emerging from her present comatose condition to a cognitive, sapient state, the present life-support system may be withdrawn” (2:315). The Quinlans weren’t in court to hear the opinion. They were at the Nassau Inn in Princeton. See Quinlan,
My Joy, My Sorrow
, 50.

72.
Filene,
In the Arms of Others
, 98–104.

73.
Quinlan,
My Joy, My Sorrow
, 59.

74.
Ibid., 87–90.

75.
Ibid., 64, 66.

76.
Congressional Record
, May 26, 1982.

77.
George F. Will, “The Killing Will Not Stop,”
Washington Post
, April 22, 1982.

78.
Funeral and burial: Quinlan,
My Joy, My Sorrow
, 103–9. An obituary: Robert D. McFadden, “Karen Ann Quinlan, 31, Dies; Focus of ’76 Right to Die Case,”
New York Times
, June 12, 1985.

1.
Most of this account comes from Robert Ettinger, interviews with author, May 1–3, 2009, but see also R.C.W. Ettinger,
Youniverse: Toward a Self-Centered Philosophy of Immortalism and Cryonics
(Boca Raton, FL: Universal Publishers, 2009), 392–93. For more on Ettinger’s suicide plans, see Ettinger,
Youniverse
, 278, 395. Ettinger’s views are the subject of
The Philosophy of Robert Ettinger
, ed. Charles Tandy and Scott R. Stroud (Parkland, FL: Universal
Publishers/uPUBLISH.com
, 2002). There is very little serious scholarship on cryonics, but see Christine Quigley,
The Corpse: A History
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, Inc., 1996), 233–36, and Ed Regis,
Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition: Science Slightly over the Edge
(New York: Addison-Wesley, 1990), chapter 3.

2.
The best summary of the practices of the Cryonics Institute, including perfusion,
is “Outline of CI Cryopreservation Procedures for Human Patients,”
http://www.cryonics.org/phases.html
.

3.
“He may have the physique of Charles Atlas if he wants it, and his weary and faded wife, if she chooses, may rival Miss Universe.” Robert C. W. Ettinger,
The Prospect of Immortality
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), 6; on this same theme, see 59, 101, and 162.

4.
In 2003 the state of Michigan placed a cease-and-desist order on the institute until Ettinger’s son, David, and David’s wife, Constance, both attorneys, helped arrange its reopening. Michigan Department of Consumer and Industry Services, “CIS Orders Cease and Desist for Cryonics Institute,” August 26, 2003, Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affiars,
http://www.michigan.gov/lara/0,4601,7-154-10573_11472
-74066-,00.html
, and “State Orders Cryonics Institute to Close,” Associated Press, August 26, 2003. The “state’s Department of Consumer and Industry Services found that the Cryonics Institute, which has frozen both people and pets, is operating an unlicensed mortuary science establishment and a non-registered cemetery” (“Body Freezing-Halt Ordered,”
Grand Rapids Press
, August 27, 2003). Ettinger told the press that CI is not a cemetery: “It’s in a new and different category. Obviously at some point the bureaucracy will have to catch up” (“State Orders Cryonics Lab to Freeze,” UPI, August 27, 2003). The ruling that CI is a cemetery came on Janu-ary 7, 2004. For more on David Ettinger’s role, see Elizabeth Piet, “Cryonics Lab One of Three in United States,” Associated Press, February 16, 2004.

5.
Robert F. Eldredge,
Past and Present of Macomb County, Michigan, Together with Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Leading and Prominent Citizens and Illustrious Dead
(Chicago, 1905), 621–25;
History of Macomb County, Michigan
(Chicago, 1882); Clinton Historical Commission, “History of Clinton Township,”
http://ctwphc.org/article.html?id=1
. See also David Zeisberger,
The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger, 1772–1781
, edited by Herman Wellenreuther and Carola Wessel, trans. Julie Tomberlin Weber (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005).

6.
Cryonics Institute, “Becoming a Member: The FAQ,”
http://cryonics.org/become.html
.

7.
Robert Ettinger, “The Past, Present, and Future, and Everything,”
Cryonics
15 (1994): 27–32. Ettinger,
Youniverse
, 388.

8.
Jack Barnette, “The Purple Death,”
Amazing Stories
, July 1929.

9.
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” in
Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe
, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), 3:1233–44; quote from 1242. On immortality
in science fiction, see George Slusser, Garry Westfahl, and Eric S. Rabkin,
Immortal Engines: Life Extension and
Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996).

10.
H. G. Wells,
When the Sleeper Wakes
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1899). Jack London, “A Thousand Deaths,”
Black Cat
4 (May 1899): 33–42; quote from 40.

11.
Benjamin Franklin, “Observations on the Generally Prevailing Doctrines of Life and Death,” in
Works of the Late Dr. Benjamin Franklin
(New York, 1794), 1:61–63. See also Gerald J. Gruman, “A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life: The Evolution
of Prolongevity Hypotheses to 1800,”
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
56 (1966): 1–102.

12.
E. D. Skinner, “The Corpse That Lived,”
Amazing Stories
, January 1930. William Withers Douglas, “The Ice Man,”
Amazing Stories
, February 1930.

13.
Neil R. Jones, “The Jameson Satellite,”
Amazing Stories
, July 1931.

14.
Paul de Kruif, “How Long Can We Live?,”
Ladies’ Home Journal
, February 1930.

15.
Ettinger quoted in Faye Flam, “Scientists Say Freezing Is Risky Business,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, July 11, 2002. Paul de Kruif,
Men Against Death
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1932).

16.
Bryan S. Turner, “Longevity Ancient and Modern,”
Society
46 (2009): 255–61. George F. Corners,
Rejuvenation: How Steinach Makes People Young
(New York, 1923).

17.
R.C.W. Ettinger, “The Skeptic,”
Thrilling Wonder Stories
, February 1950; R.C.W. Ettinger, “The Penultimate Trump,”
Startling Stories
, March 1948.

18.
Oscar Edward Anderson Jr.,
Refrigeration in America: A History of a New Technology and Its Impact
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953), 3–7, 128, 195–98, 221, 275, 279, 284, 288, 298–300. See also Elaine Tyler May,
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
(New York: Basic Books, 1988, 2008), especially chapter 7.

19.
Ettinger, “The Penultimate Trump.” For an interesting survey of the life of the damned, see Alice K. Turner,
The History of Hell
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993).

20.
David H. Keller, “The Cerebral Library,”
Amazing Stories
, May 1931.

21.
On the Williams case, see, e.g., Maya Bell, “Scientists Scoffing at a Frozen Williams,”
Star-Ledger
, July 9, 2002; Rick Anderson, “The Long, Cold Road to Undeath,”
Seattle Weekly
, July 18, 2002; and Richard Sandomir, “Please Don’t Call the Customers Dead,”
New York Times
, February 13, 2005.

22.
Henry Fountain and Anne Eisenberg, “Just Chillin’; Putting Mortality on Ice,”
New York Times
, July 14, 2002.

23.
Ettinger was, I believe, alluding to C. H. Waddington,
The Scientific Attitude
(Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1941).

24.
On the history of plastic surgery, see Elizabeth Haiken,
Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), especially chapter 5.

25.
See, e.g., Bryan Appleyard,
How to Live Forever or Die Trying: On the New Immortality
(London: Simon & Schuster, 2007).

26.
Paul Ernst, “The Incredible Formula,”
Amazing Stories
, June 1931.

27.
Ralph Merkle’s relationship to Fred is reported in Allen Abel, “The Death of Death,”
Maclean’s
118 (October 10, 2005): 160–68.

28.
Marvin Minsky, e‑mail to the author, May 24, 2009. See also Minsky’s articles, e.g., Marvin L. Minsky, “Will Robots Inherit the Earth?,”
Scientific American
(October 1994). And Alex Beam, “Immortality and the Chosen, Frozen Few,”
Boston Globe
, June 3, 1998.

29.
Robert L. Steinback, “Advocates of Cryonics Undeterred by Naysayers,”
Miami Herald
, September 21, 2002.

30.
Tom Verducci, “What Really Happened to Ted Williams,”
Sports Illustrated
, Au-gust 18, 2003.

31.
Ettinger had earlier commented about neuropreservation to the press. “We don’t have any quarrel with the rational,” Ettinger told a reporter in 1997, but “it’s a public relations negative” (Michael Moss, “Cryonics Entrepreneurs Say Business Is Ice Cold,”
Wall Street Journal
, February 2, 1997). For an example of media coverage bringing Ettinger local attention, see “Macomb County Lab Puts People on Ice,”
Grand Rapids Press
, August 7, 2002; this is directly reported in “State Orders Cryonics Institute to Close,” Associated Press, August 26, 2003.

32.
“In 1948 I saw the light and waited patiently for about twelve years,” he once explained, “momentarily expecting some prominent scientist to announce the arrival of the freezer era” (Ettinger,
Prospect of Immortality
, 189).

33.
Ettinger, “The Past, Present, and Future, and Everything.”

34.
Thomas McCormack, telephone interview with author, June 15, 2009.

35.
Dr. Strangelove; Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
, directed by Stanley Kubrick (1964; Culver City, CA: Columbia Tri-Star, 2001), DVD.

36.
Ettinger,
Prospect of Immortality
, 1, 99, 179, 125–27.

37.
Ibid., 127, 99, 42, 127.

38.
Ibid., 117, 161, 59, 162.

39.
Ibid., 116, 96–97.

40.
Ibid., 73.

41.
Thomas McCormack, telephone interview with author, June 15, 2009.

42.
Barbara Metzler, “Cryonics: Is Freezing Bodies Visionary Medicine or the Work of Mad Scientists?,” Associated Press, January 25, 1988.

43.
Ettinger, “The Past, Present, and Future, and Everything.” Clarke’s diary entry from March 8, 1965, as reprinted in
The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey
, selected by Stephanie Schwam (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 38. “The Playboy Interview: Stanley Kubrick,”
Playboy
, September 1968, and reprinted in
The Making of 2001;
quote from 286. Kubrick also believed in the conquest of aging: “Too many people view senile decay, like death itself, as inevitable. It’s nothing of the sort” (289).

44.
Robert Ettinger as a guest on
The Long John Nebel Show
, WNBC Radio, New York, June 14, 1964, as transcribed by the author from an audiotape archived at the Paley Center for Media, New York.

45.
Robert C. W. Ettinger, “The Frozen Christian,”
Christian Century
82 (1965): 1313–15. And see also R.C.W. Ettinger, “Cryonics and the Purpose of Life,”
Christian Century
84 (1967): 1250–53.

46.
On Bedford’s freezing in 1967, see Robert F. Nelson as told to Sandra Stanley, with an introduction by Professor R.C.W. Ettinger,
We Froze the First Man
(New York: Dell, 1968). Ettinger flew to California only after Bedford had been frozen; he gave a press conference. See Christine Quigley,
Modern Mummies: The Preservation of the Human Body in the Twentieth Century
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998), 140–46.

47.
Ettinger,
Man into Superman
, 226. See also Saul Kent,
Future Sex
(New York: Morrow, 1974).

48.
Sleeper
, directed by Woody Allen (1973; Santa Monica, CA: Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 2005), DVD.

49.
Ettinger,
Man into Superman
, 88 (cheese), 64 (flying), 62 (body armor), 117 (penile enhancement).
See also Osborn Segerberg Jr.,
The Immortality Factor
(New York: Dutton, 1974).

50.
Metzler, “Cryonics.” When Alcor refused to hand over the head to a coroner, six people were handcuffed and taken in for questioning. In the court case that followed, Connie Ettinger filed an amicus brief, and the case was eventually dropped. Robert L. Steinback, “Advocates of Cryonics Undeterred by Naysayers,”
Miami Herald
, September 21, 2002.

51.
Ettinger,
Prospect of Immortality
, 156.

52.
Ettinger,
Youniverse
, 175.

53.
Ben Best, “The Cryonics Institute’s 93rd Patient,” Case Report,
http://www.cryonics.org/reports/CI93.html
. On preservation techniques, see also Christine Quigley,
Modern Mummies
, 140–46.