环球英语 — 728：Preparing for Death
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Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Liz Waid.
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And I'm Joshua Leo. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
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The clock counts down – days, hours, minutes, seconds. But what is it counting? It is counting down your life. It is ... the death clock!
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Have you ever wondered, "When am I going to die?" Well, there is a website that helps people answer that question. It is called The Death Clock. This website uses information - like your age, weight, and sex – to estimate your death date. But it also uses information about your attitude. The website asks you whether you have a positive, negative or neutral view of life. Based on your answers, the website creates a clock. The clock shows the time left in the website visitor's life.
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The website is just for fun - of course it cannot really tell the length of a person's life. But it does encourage people to think about death. Today's Spotlight is about two people who prepared for death in unusual ways.
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It is not unusual for people to prepare for death. Many people prepare by making a will. This legal document explains how to share a person's possessions after their death. Other people prepare by writing letters to family and friends. They share words of encouragement and love that will last long after death. Some people also think about and plan their funeral ceremony.
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Many people think about what will happen after they die. What will happen to their possessions? How will people remember them? In 1905, Louis Mantin thought about these same questions. But he answered them in a very surprising way!
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For more than one hundred years, Louis Mantin's house sat empty and alone. No one entered its doors. No one looked out of its windows. Everything in the house waited. Nothing changed. The people from the nearby village wondered about the house. But today, they do not have to wonder. Finally the house of Louis Mantin is open again.
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Louis Mantin is no longer alive. But his house remains in Moulins, France. Mantin was born in Moulins in 1851. When he was 42, his father died and left him a lot of money. Mantin stopped working. Instead, he began to build his house. He filled it with beautiful art. He paid workers to create wooden carvings and statues. He also built places in his home for historic collections, including old keys and locks, ancient lights and objects from the far away country of Egypt.
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Mantin never married, and he did not have children. But he wanted his great home and collections to survive. So he left directions for after his death. In his will, he gave his home, and everything in it, to the city of Moulins. He said that after one hundred years, the city should open the house as a museum. People could then visit his home. And it would show the life of a wealthy man from the eighteen hundreds.
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After Mantin's death in 1905, the city followed his directions. The house was closed. For one hundred years no-one entered. It was almost forgotten. But Mantin's family and his city remembered. After one hundred years, they carefully cleaned and restored the house. They fixed broken things and made them like new. Today, everything looks just as it did when Mantin died. Visitors can see his collections, and learn about life in the past - just as Mantin had hoped. And of course, they remember Louis Mantin and his unusual gift.
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James Bedford is another man that prepared for death in a very different way. In fact, he hoped to avoid death completely! Bedford did this by freezing his body at a very cold temperature. This process is called cryonics. There are only around two hundred people in the world who have actually done this. They hope that freezing their bodies soon after death will keep their bodies from breaking down or decaying. They also hope that that in the future, medical technology will cure many diseases - and even cure death. Their ultimate hope is that one day their bodies can be unfrozen. And then, doctors can bring them back to life – maybe even to live forever.
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James Bedford was the first person to be cryogenically frozen. During his life, he taught at the University of California in the United States. He was a very intelligent man. He published several books about his work. But he was not well known until his death in 1967.
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Bedford died from cancer that doctors could not cure. But he believed that in the future, doctors would find a cure for cancer. So, before he died, Bedford contacted a cryonics group. At that time, this group was mainly interested in developing methods for the future. They did not have a good way to freeze bodies yet, but they decided try it anyway. They believed that they were saving Bedford's future life.
Today, a group called Alcor continues to care for and keep Beford's body frozen. In 1991, they examined his body and claimed that it was still in very good condition.
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Bedford was the first cryonics patient. But today, there are about two hundred other people around the world, frozen like him. Will doctors be able to save them in the future? This is a difficult question to answer. There is no evidence that this will be possible. In fact, freezing bodies this way causes terrible damage to the cells and tissue of the body. But people who believe in cryonics believe that future scientists will be able to cure this damage.
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At this time, none of this is possible. Scientists still cannot cure many cancers. They cannot cure death. And they cannot cure the damage caused by freezing bodies. Many people think it is unlikely that they ever will. So the bodies of the cryonics patients continue to wait.
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Louis Mantin and James Bedford prepared for death in very extreme ways. There are few people who prepare for death like them. However, the ideas behind their preparations are common to many people. Mantin hoped that people would forever remember him and his life. Bedford hoped for a time when there would be no more death! Both men shared a common hope for something beyond death. Their preparations may have been unusual, but their lives show the reality that preparing for death is a part of life.
