Everybody Freeze!

Narratives are made by the artful omission of facts. Never was this maxim more evident than in a gullible feature story that landed on the front page of the New York Times last fall, about a young woman’s last-ditch bid for life extension as she succumbed to the ravages of brain cancer. A sober look at the case would have revealed it to be but the latest botched mortuary procedure conducted by a gang of creepy scam artists. Instead, through the good graces of the Times, this grim tale was spun into an inspirational saga of one person’s courageous quest for a second chance at life, aided by medical visionaries on the verge of miraculous technological breakthroughs.

Kim Suozzi died at age twenty-three in January 2013. After her first diagnosis, twenty-one months earlier, Suozzi chose to become one of the youngest people ever[*] to undergo an expensive form of ritualistic corpse mutilation called cryonic preservation. In pop culture, cryonics is perhaps best known as the plot device that transports the schlubby pizza delivery guy in Matt...