Is Ted Dead ?

Let's talk baseball ! Baseball great Ted Williams "died" on July 5th 2002. Or did he? No this is not another one of those "did Elvis die or is he living quietly in seclusion somewhere" scerinos. Ted really did die by legal definiton back in 2002. The questiion here is what is dead?
Centuries back many people were pronounced dead who were merely in comas. How do we know this? Bodies were dug up back then by grave robbers to steal the dead's jewelry and to remove gold fillings from their teeth. Those who found the work of the grave robbers after their exhumations noticed that some of the interior ceilings of the coffins displayed the "dead" person's fingernail clawings in their futile attempt for escape. Soon after when people were buried they were put in a coffin with a string around their hand that went through the coffin and was attached to a bell above the grave. If they awoke, were reborn, came out of their coma, call it what you will, they moved their hand rang the bell and were dug up by a grave yard attendant. Thus the term "He is a real bell ringer" which has now come to mean someone who looks real good but was then meant to describe someone who came back from the grave. I guess when you think about it when someone does come back from the grave they do look pretty good.
The point of all this is that the legal and medical definitions of dead had to be rewritten. Once again we are now on the threshhold of redefining death. The reason for this is cryonics "the study of life preservation at extremely cold tempertures (-300 degrees F and colder)".
When Ted "died" back in 2002, after some family bickering, his head was surgically removed removed from his body in a process called "neuroseparation". Then his head and body were frozen separately in liguid nitrogen at extremely cold tempertures. Most water from the head and body are removed to prevent cellular bursting and the body and it's cells are preserved in a glycine solution. When science is advanced enough to cure the disease that "killed" the person, the body is reattached and reanimated years later to resume a more "normal" existence.
Now that's what I call a real bell ringer. Some even believe that in the not to distant future that we will be reanimating the skeletal remains of our parents, grandparents, and ancestors. I suppose they will be "dead ringers" of their former selves.
David Ettinger, the son of Robert Ettinger and founder of the cryonics movement, has this to say about death, "Death is just the point of current technology when the doctor gives up. It is a legal definition not a medical one".
We are now at the advent of one of the profound discoveries of human existence. Perhaps the most profound discovery since Copernicus replaced the earth with the sun as the center of the universe. If death becomes life then eternal youth will surely become mankind's next quest. In fact we are already heading there. More on that the next time.