Anyone see this story about Ted Williams's remains?? This is beyond weird.

[FatTony]

NEW YORK (AP)— Ted Williams was decapitated by surgeons at the cryonics company where his body is suspended in liquid nitrogen, and several samples of his DNA are missing, Sports Illustrated reported.
The magazine's report, appearing in the issue that hits newsstands Wednesday, is based on internal documents, e-mails, photographs and tape recordings supplied by a former employee of Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

After Williams died July 5, 2002, his body was taken by private jet to the company in Scottsdale, Ariz. There, Williams' body was separated from his head in a procedure called neuroseparation, according to the magazine.

The operation was completed and Williams' head and body were preserved separately. The head is stored in a steel can filled with liquid nitrogen. It has been shaved, drilled with holes and accidentally cracked 10 times, the magazine said. Williams' body stands upright in a 9-foot tall cylindrical steel tank, also filled with liquid nitrogen.

The procedure, approved by Williams' son, John Henry, and daughter, Claudia, carries a $136,000 bill. Alcor claims it is still owed $111,000.

The magazine said that according to a taped conversation between former Alcor chief operating officer Larry Johnson and a board adviser, eight DNA samples among 182 taken from Williams are missing without explanation.

Spokeswoman Paula Lemler, wife of Alcor chief executive officer Jerry Lemler, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that company officials had not seen the article and would have no comment

 

[harrington]

This is some crazy shit man.

 

[TheGeneral+]

Interesting. Clone heads stole Ted?

 

[Journeyman]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> drilled with holes and accidentally cracked 10 times <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

 

[EverFresh]

What is the current status of this matter?

 

[TheComputerGroup]

This article is 11 years old, wowzers!

As for this scientific craziness, why was his head separated from his body? What was the purpose for separating it?

Someone planning to plant DNA evidence somewhere?

Why would someone steal a dead mans DNA? I haven't read up on cloning, etc for years......can you take DNA of a dead man & clone it?

The world is off its rocker........maybe we will see a cloned Ted Williams back in action soon at a baseball field near year you!

 

[5teamparlay]

What is the current status of this matter?

Great bump !!!

 

[CarolinaKid]

In 2002, the whole body procedure cost $120,000, the neuro $50,000. Among cryonicists, the neuro was becoming the preferred option. It was cheaper, for one thing, though Alcor liked to say that both procedures were easily affordable through life insurance. Most importantly, for Alcorians, the head contained the brain, which they considered by far the most important organ in the body because it holds the memory. When the patient comes back to life, or is "reanimated" in cryospeak, he (the believers are overwhelmingly male) will want to remember from whence he came. Furthermore, the brain is the hardest organ to replace. With stem cell research and other advances on the horizon, it would be possible to regenerate tissue, and therefore simply grow a new body beneath your old head. Or so the hope went.
Inside the Alcor operating room, it took five or six people to lift Ted out of the Zigler Box—the airtight, metal container that airlines require for shipping bodies—in which he'd arrived. Under instructions from Alcor, a Florida mortician had filled the box with ice, a cryonics staple applied to the body immediately after death in order to keep it as cool as possible, and to help preserve vital organs.
Ted's body was placed on the operating table, face up. Attendants quickly pressed fresh bags of ice against his skin, especially around the head, neck and groin. The table was surrounded by a custom made, six-inch-high, white plastic wall to contain the ice and to keep excess fluids from spilling onto the floor during the upcoming operation that would last about four hours. Technicians began connecting the major blood vessels to a perfusion machine that would replace the blood with so-called cryoprotectant solutions. These chemicals, similar to antifreeze, were designed to help prevent the formation of ice crystals which could cause further cell damage before the intense cooling process began.
The technicians then started to drain blood and water from Ted's body in what Alcor called a "washout," replacing them with glycerol and another cryoprotectant known as B2C, which was used for the head only. Then, using a perforator, a standard neurological tool that looks like an electric drill, a surgeon and his assistant bored two small holes on either side of Ted's skull so that the surface of the brain could be examined during the perfusion process to guard against swelling. Small wire sensors were inserted into each hole to be used to detect cracking of the skull during the freezing process later.
Soon, the surgeon announced that he was ready to perform the "cephalic isolation." This meant Ted Williams's head was now ready to be cut off. The surgeon took out a carving knife and began to cut—starting below Ted's neck, slicing through tissue and bone, working his way down through the sixth cervical vertebrae, at the top of the spine. At one point, the going slow, the surgeon remarked that he wished he had an electric knife. Finally, he switched to a bone saw to finish the job, and at 9:17 p.m., Mountain time, the head of the greatest hitter who ever lived had been sliced off.