Robert Ettinger, pioneer of the cryonics movement that advocates freezing the dead in the hope that medical technology will enable them to live again someday, has died. He was 92.
Ettinger died Saturday at home in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township after weeks of declining health, said his son, David Ettinger. His body became the 106th to be stored in at the Cryonics Institute, which he founded in 1976.
"My father devoted himself to doing what he could to enable his family, his friends and others to come back and live again," David Ettinger told The Associated Press. "Whether he will achieve that nobody knows at this point, but we think he has a good shot."
Robert Ettinger, who taught physics at Wayne State University, was seriously wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and spent years in hospitals. The bone graft surgery that spared his legs inspired his optimism about the future prospects of preserving life through technology, a Cryonics Institute statement said.
His son said Ettinger also was inspired by science-fiction writings about deep-freezing the dead and expected researchers to make serious progress toward developing the idea. But when nothing seemed to be happening, he wrote a 1964 book, "The Prospect of Immortality," introducing the concept of cryonics.
"If civilization endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body," he wrote, "including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death."
He added: "No matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing techniques are still crude when we die, sooner or later our friends of the future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us."
Ettinger promoted his theory in other writings and appearances on television talk shows. The Cryonics Institute has 900 members. Similar facilities for preserving dead bodies operate in Arizona, California and Russia. Ettinger also established the Immortalist Society, a research and education group devoted to cryonics and extending the human life span.
The Cryonics Institute charges $28,000 to prepare a body and store it long-term in a tank of liquid nitrogen at minus-321 degrees Fahrenheit. The first person frozen there was Ettinger's mother, Rhea Ettinger, who died in 1977. His two wives, Elaine and Mae, also are patients at the Institute.
Ettinger was never bothered by ridicule and was a "reluctant prophet," his son said.
"He did what he thought was necessary and appropriate and didn't worry much about what people thought," David Ettinger said. "The people who are scoffers are like the people who said heavier-than-air flight won't work."
