RUDI HOFFMAN, CFP, CLU, ChFC

You and I have something in common. We are both careening headlong toward aging and death. That's the gorilla in the room that we try to ignore — the impetus behind countless brands of superstition. But this is 2007, and there may be a more scientific and rational way for us to look at these issues. If control of the material world is rapidly advancing and human beings are part of the material world, then aging and death may soon become problems of medicine, not metaphysics.
 
In 1994, I read an article in Omni magazine about a cryonics organization, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, now based in Scottsdale, Arizona. I was fascinated to find that there were at least two organizations providing human cryopreservation: Alcor and the Cryonics Institute, the latter based in Michigan. I had thought cryonics to be strictly science fiction, and I was thunderstruck to find that two real, solid organizations had been quietly cryopreserving people for decades.
 
At the time, Alcor's price for a full body suspension was $120,000. Due to inflation and improved protocols, it has now risen to $150,000. (The Cryonics Institute charges slightly less.) I was surprised to find that this entire cost can be paid by life insurance! By simply adding an extra policy naming Alcor as beneficiary, for a few bucks a day, I could be a part of this grand experiment.