X-Message-Number: 12596
From: 
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 20:54:51 EDT
Subject: another physician frozen

Cryonics Institute has placed another patient (#31) in cryostasis. The 
patient was a physician (M.D.) who had practiced as a specialist in kidney 
disease. 

It was another emergency case. Most of those are lost, because of the usual 
bad circumstances combined with the lack of full information by the family. 
In this case, however, it was a little different.

The patient had expressed his intention of being frozen, but like so many 
others had not actually made preparations. When he died, the family had 
enough information and presence of mind to instruct the hospital personnel to 
apply ice immediately, which was done. Then they called Alcor, whose people 
referred them to us. Thank you, Alcor.

The problem in such cases is to somehow avoid undue delay and deterioration, 
while still allowing the family time to reach an informed decision. In this 
case, the location happened to be one where CI already had a mortuary trained 
and equipped. I therefore suggested that the family might have the local 
mortuary do washout and perfusion immediately, cool the patient to dry ice 
temperature, and then there would be a window of a few weeks during which 
deterioration would probably be minor, and the family could do their research 
and counseling. If the final decision were negative, a relatively minor 
amount of money would be lost.

This was done, and the patient was washed out and perfused hours later, after 
having been iced since death, and then cooled with dry ice.

At least one other physician is a patient, one of Alcor's. So while the 
numbers are too small to have much statistical significance, I repeat that 
physicians are represented in cryonics in numbers much greater than one would 
expect on a population-proportionate basis. In terms of members the number is 
at least nine to one, and in terms of patients roughly twelve to one. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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