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DETROIT, Aug 27, 2003 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- State officials have ordered Michigan's only cryonics lab to stop freezing bodies, the Detroit Free Press said Wednesday.
The Cryonics Institute cannot accept new "patients" -- though current ones need not be thawed -- because its work amounts to unlicensed mortuary and cemetery services, the Michigan Department of Consumer and Industry Services ruled Tuesday.
But Robert Ettinger, who co-founded the institute in 1976 and is considered a founding father of cryonics, said the order is nonsense because his institute is neither a cemetery nor a mortuary.
"It's in a new and different category," he said Tuesday. "Obviously at some point the bureaucracy will have to catch up with that."
Ettinger, 84, christened the institute in 1977 with the freezing of his mother. His two cofounders and first and second wives followed. As of Tuesday, 50 people and a handful of pets sat in cryostats of liquid nitrogen at the facility, awaiting their reawakening.
Copyright 2003 by United Press International.
