THE ULTIMATE COLD CASE
Kiwi freezes body in hope of cancer cure
Burial? Cremation? Or frozen upside-down in liquid nitrogen. All things to consider when making your final arrangements. It’s called cryonics – the process of freezing a person’s body with hopes of being revived in the future. For most, it sounds like science fiction. But for those who truly believe, and truly invest, it means a second chance at life.
Cryonicists believe reanimation will be possible by employing technology and medicine yet to be discovered. Among the discoveries they await, a cure for death.
What sounds like mad science at first becomes much more relatable when given a human face. There are 1716 members and more than 150 patients held in cryostasis at the Cryonics Institute in Detroit, Michigan, including the only patient from New Zealand.
The patient list found on the institute’s website reads like a coroner’s report. ‘‘CI patient #116 was a 48-yearold male from New Zealand. The cooperating funeral director perfused the patient through the right and left carotid arteries using CIs vitrification solutions.’’
It continues, saying CI #116 was shipped to Michigan on dry ice, where he was placed inside a purpose-built chamber and cooled for a further six days. Once reaching -196 degrees Celsius, the patient was placed upsidedown inside a vat of liquid nitrogen.
There he remains in stasis, four years later.
So who was CI #116? What were the circumstances that lead to his death and subsequent freezing, and what could have convinced him of the potential for reanimation?
Searching ‘‘Cryonics in New Zealand’’ on Google Maps will yield one result. Deep in Hataitai village’s close-packed housing is a lonely pin drop for the Cryonics Association of Australasia.
The association’s chief officer, Philip Rhoades, is based across the Tasman. The association is a not-for-profit liaison for others who wish to pursue life-extension by means of cryonics. Its website bears the logo of a human silhouette hanging upside down, arms crossed like a bat, or perhaps more appropriately, a mummy.
Rhoades is confused by my request to visit the facility in Wellington, saying that no one had contacted him about an office in Hataitai.
And yet, there it was. A cryonic ‘‘X’’ marking the spot.
‘‘We used to have a person in New Zealand, but he was frozen some years ago,’’ Rhoades says.
Rhoades cannot summon a name for his frozen associate – so my only option was to visit the cryonics site in Hataitai.
The place hardly looked open for business, then again what might a suburban cryonics facility look like? The street was unassuming, the letter box overflowing with junk mail.
A pressed nose to the window revealed a darkly lit sitting room with nobody in it. Wood floors and high ceilings. The place looked cold, but not sub -196C.
So I leave a message. A little later, the phone rings. ‘‘I suppose you’re wondering why this place is listed as a cryonics association,’’ the woman on the other end offers. ‘‘Well, it’s not entirely a lost lead.’’
The woman on the phone was Tania Deichert, who purchased the house in 2012.
With the keys came one condition, an existing tenant living downstairs. A man, in his forties, fascinated with selfpreservation. ‘‘And from what we understand, he is the first and possibly the only New Zealander to be cryonically frozen,’’ Deichert says.
CI #116 had lived here. His name was Campbell Christie.
In September of 1999 Ben Best, a cryonicist from America, arrived in Wellington. Campbell Christie was waiting to pick him up. The pair immediately drove to the top of Mount Victoria, taking in a panoramic view of the capital.
Best kept a record of his time visiting Christie on his blog. His writing gives insight into a kind man with a keen interest in cryonics.
Cam Christie took his guest to his home, a room in the Otaki motel he managed. He revealed he was in regular contact with the inventor of cryonics, Robert Ettinger, and had been for a long time. Christie wanted to be a member of the Cryonics Institute. The costs associated were high, he said, but he was slowly making his way toward full membership.
Membership to the Cryonics Institute today will cost you at least US$29,295 or just over NZ$40,000. The price tag on its website has the words ‘‘does not include local help’’ in parentheses. $40,000 plus shipping and handling.
In truth, the price of being cryonically frozen comes to nearly $200,000, according to Christie’s younger brother, Mark Christie. ‘‘It’s a tremendous cost.’’
Sitting in a quiet pub not 200 metres from where Cam Christie used to live, Mark agreed to meet and talk about his brother. He described a kind figure who was well loved by everyone he met, but a quiet man with low self-esteem.
Mark confirmed his brother moved out of the Otaki motel and into the house in Hataitai sometime around 2002. He registered his new home as the Cryonics Association of Australasia
and became the liaison in New Zealand for anyone interested in cryonics wishing to make arrangements for safe transport and storage.
Cam had renal-cell cancer and died in April 2013, shortly after he was diagnosed. But Mark said his brother was constantly ill from a young age. Cam survived meningitis as a child, but it left him blind in one eye.
Mark explained that Cam saw cryonics as a second chance at a life free from illness. ‘‘They weren’t going to give him his eye back along with a cure for his illness. Cryonics was hope for him.’’
Mark brought a box of his brother’s research, including a copy of The
Immortalist, a bi-monthly cryonics publication. Cam was on the cover in May, 2006.
In the May edition, Cam wrote he had enjoyed a fairly reasonable life, however that changed when he was diagnosed with type one diabetes. Cam was aware of cryonics theory but not until he became seriously ill did he research further. He wrote that what he uncovered through cryonics academia was similar to a religious revelation. ‘‘From that afternoon onwards my whole purpose in life became focused.’’
Cam was passionate about the science. He attended seminars in America and kept in contact with his peers. Mark said his brother even went as far as to have a personalised number plate spelling ‘‘FROZEN’’ displayed on his car.
The Cryonics Institute’s record is comprehensive, but not entirely accurate. Mark reveals it was him, not a funeral director, who performed the initial procedures shortly after Cam died in 2013 – including filling his brother with antifreeze.
‘‘That’s a funny story actually,’’ Mark says with a grin.
When he learned his brother would live only another two months, he ordered the vitrification solution called heparin from the Cryonics Institute and arranged to collect it from a pharmacy. ‘‘The pharmacist brought it to the counter and stared at it for a long time, he couldn’t believe it.’’
Mark asked: ‘‘You know what that’s for, right? You know what we’re going to do?’’
The pharmacist nodded, and stared a little longer.
Mark said a funeral director’s assistant had agreed to carry out the procedure of cooling, perfusing and transporting his brother. But when Cam died, the assistant was on leave.
The first steps in cryonically freezing a person are the most important. A patient must be perfused with heparin and cooled quickly with bags of ice to delay any atrophy that naturally comes with death. If Cam was ever going to live again, Mark would have to act fast. ‘‘It’s all time-sensitive. I had to do it, no other way around it.’’
Mark injected his brother with the heparin and packed him in ice. When he talks about the experience, Mark does so with practicality. He was not daunted by the task, he was just doing what Cam would have expected.
The logistics of getting Cam from New Zealand to the experts in Michigan were complicated and uncharted. The American consulate needed to be constantly updated on Cam’s status and when they could expect to receive him stateside to ensure the process was carried out as smoothly and quickly as possible.
There was little correspondence between the Cryonics Institute and the Christie family. The only communication they had received in four years was to let them know of a problem in transit. Slight thawing had occurred in Cam’s left foot, but otherwise he was received safely and stored in cryostasis.
That one-time guest of Cam’s, Ben Best, had since become president of the Cryonics Institute in Detroit. Nearly 15 years after they met, he wrote the patient entry for Cam, labelling him Patient CI #116.
‘‘My brother was trying to pioneer cryonics over here. In the end, we followed his wishes and got him to Detroit,’’ Mark says, as he gets up to leave the empty pub in Hataitai.
‘‘Mum still talks about going to Michigan to visit Cam.’’
There, Campbell Christie, patient CI#116, remains. Waiting upside-down in cryostasis for the day medicine and technology will allow him to live again.
My brother was trying to pioneer cryonics over here. In the end, we followed his wishes and got him to Detroit. Mum still talks about going to Michigan to visit Cam. Mark Christie