Illustration by Dan Page

Could the nation’s new ‘hope’ mantra help the business of preserving bodies? One Scottsdale-based cryonics organization is banking on it.

“Hope” – that single word emblazoned on all those iconic stenciled posters of Barack Obama in 2008 – has become the ad world’s favorite buzzword in 2009.
 
Iconic brands such as Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Ikea have gotten in on the game with some variation of the “Hope” slogan in ad campaigns.
 
Perhaps soon we’ll see red, white and blue “Hope For Change” logos wrapped around the giant insulated containers that Scottsdale-based cryonics organization Alcor uses to store its cryopreserved human bodies.

Certainly the message fits the elusive commodity that the organization has been banking on since its formation in 1972. After all, nobody has embraced hope for the future more literally than the 84 patients and 872 living members who have elected to spend $150,000 to have their bodies scientifically preserved at the company’s Scottsdale Airpark facility. Not only are cryonicists betting on a brighter society that will someday be able to restore their bodies to full health, they’re also counting on a future simply worth coming back to.

“We’ve always been into hope,” says Regina Pancake, the company’s readiness coordinator, a position that entails transferring patients into precious cargo containers within minutes of their being declared legally dead, thus avoiding cell damage should they eventually be revived.

“To be a cryonicist, you have to be an optimist,” she explains. “You have to really think that we’re going to pull it together and make it as a society and become a technologically advanced one at that. You have to be able to embrace the future rather than running from it.”