FORGET the offer of a free alarm clock or steak knives, the British weekly New Scientist has come up with a sales promotion that beats all others hands down; the chance of life after death.
The subscriber who wins a magazine competition will be cryonically frozen after he or she dies, and, if all goes well, will wake up in the future, at a time when medical science will be able to revive them and fix what caused their demise.
"The prize means that when the winner of the New Scientist promotion is pronounced legally dead, he or she will be prepared and cooled to a temperature at which physical decay of the body stops," said the magazine yesterday in a media release.
"The person will then be suspended in liquid nitrogen, in a state known as cryonic preservation.
"When and if medical technology allows, he or she will then be healed and revived and awakened to extended life in youthful good health."
The magazine says it will run poster and cinema ads in Britain to promote the competition.
Entrants need to collect three tokens from the current and subsequent four issues of the magazine and complete a competition entry form.
Alun Anderson, New Scientist editor-in-chief, said: "We think that the cryonics promotion is a way of making science interesting to everyone, not just scientists, which is exactly the same message we are trying to communicate about the magazine itself.
"We also realise that the idea of cryonic preservation is not for every-one, either because people may not believe it could work or because they may be opposed to it on religious grounds.
"But it does get people talking about science and that is what the magazine aims to do."
(c) 2002 Nationwide News Pty Limited.
Sources: GOLD COAST BULLETIN 20/09/2002 P19