X-Message-Number: 1342
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Subject: CRYONICS Response to Mike Darwin by Ralph Whelan
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 23:27:04 PST
A Response to Mike Darwin's "Au Revoir. . ."
by Ralph Whelan
I hardly know where to begin this reponse to the article you
just read, and truly I've never opened my word processor with
more reluctance. Throughout my tenure as Editor of **Cryonics** and
as an Alcor employee in general, I have done my level best to
stand apart from the politicking, infighting, and mud-slinging
that pervade cryonics history. However, a document as pernicious
and fallacious as Mike Darwin's "Au Revoir. . ." cannot go
unanswered. Please try to understand, as you read this, that
only a sense of moral obligation to the patients and members of
Alcor could compel me to write a piece such as this. May it
never be necessary again.
Before I address any of the specifics of Mike's article, let
me help you decide whether or not you should listen to anything I
have to say. I have been an Alcor employee for a bit less than
two-and-a-half years; certainly not the ten years that Mike or
Hugh Hixon have put in, and yet I **do** feel qualified to comment in
detail on the content of Mike's article. When I arrived on the
scene in mid-1990, Mike quickly "took me under his wing," and
worked hard to convince the other employees--as well as some
well-to-do members--that I was worth scraping together $10,000 a
year to keep around. In a few short months I was co-editing
**Cryonics** magazine with Mike and Hugh--and then suddenly I was
the Editor, as Mike quietly disengaged himself from that
production, very happy to find relief from a decade's relentless
deadlines.
In December of 1990, five months after becoming an Alcor
employee, I became Alcor's Membership Administrator, largely as a
result of Mike's success in convincing Saul Kent, Jerry Leaf, and
eventually Carlos Mondragon that I was the man for the job. I
retained my duties as Editor of **Cryonics**, and worked both
positions for the next twenty months. During that period, I
took the Transport Training Course under Mike, and began training
as Suspension Team Perfusionist. With Mike's assistance and
direction, I went on be perfusionist or assistant perfusionist
for nearly half of the patients Alcor now cares for. Less than a
year after I became Membership Administrator, and shortly after
Jerry Leaf's suspension, Mike worked very hard to convince a
majority of the Board of Directors that I should be Jerry's
successor on the Board. During this period, he told me expressly
that he wished strongly to see me in the Presidency eventually.
A few weeks after my appointment as a Director, Mike's employment
with Alcor terminated.
That brief history lesson is aimed at a very specific
audience: those of you who believe the words of Mike Darwin
implicitly, and trust his judgment as a cryonicist and as a man.
treat them as fact, placing your trust in his judgment as you so
often have done in the past. I am aware that the words I have
written here aren't likely to destroy your trust in Mike Darwin.
They aren't intended to. Instead, I mean to point out that if
you are to trust Mike's judgment as displayed in that article,
you must trust his judgment of **my** **character** as well, for his
judgment of **my** judgment is painstakingly described in his
determination to see me as an employee, and then as Editor of
**Cryonics**, as Membership Administrator, as Suspension Team
Perfusionist, and eventually as a Director of Alcor. And it is
**my** judgment that "Au Revoir. . ." is the product of an intellect
too road-weary and too wounded to understand that his methods and
his actions had deleterious flaws, some so egregious that certain
persons and organizations are alienated beyond any hope of
repair, and that the noisy nuisance of the rest of us buzzing
around is in many respects an act of salvage. So you have a
conundrum: to trust Mike is to trust me, at least to some
degree, and I emphatically deny almost every cut and corner of
his article. And keep one thing clearly in mind: either Mike is
wrong about Alcor, or he is wrong about me. Either way, he
displays faulty judgment on rather a large scale, and you must
factor that in to your assessment of his article even if you
reject **my** judgment completely.
Those of you who do **not** trust the words of Mike Darwin
implicitly may have no reason to trust mine either, and to you I
say you owe it to yourself--and to the people who are working so
hard to make Alcor what it is--to **form your own opinion** of the
way Alcor is run. Mike Darwin's article should indeed be a
factor in the forming of that opinion, as should this article.
But I suggest that you treat hearsay (both from Mike and from
myself) with no more blind acceptance than do the courts of this
country. Visit the Alcor facility, call up the employees and the
Directors, examine the results of the impending audit, monitor
our progress as we meet the challenge of cryonic suspensions and
strive to improve the state-of-the-art. Then decide.
One last thing before I get to the specifics of Mike's
article. I feel that I should clearly delineate the difference
between my opinion of the things that Mike says in "Au Revoir. .
been stripped from the context of the speaker's past, his present
situation, and his motives, and to make broad pronouncements
about the character, integrity, or reliability of the speaker.
It seems to have become the trend in recent months to grasp onto
a passage from an e-mail message or a memo or a snatch of
conversation and use those words to club the speaker ruthlessly
for the ensuing weeks and months. I wish to make clear that it
is not my desire to defame or decry Mike, or to create ammunition
for those who plan to do such things. Mike has written an
article that is a gross travesty of half-truths and selective
memory, but knowing Mike as well as I do, I know that he felt
justified in doing so. I do not believe that he is evil. In
fact, probably I have never so respected a man while
simultaneously disagreeing with him so thoroughly on so many
I now believe that Mike is incapable of seeing the good--or even
the good **intentions**--of the words and actions of the people that
now manage Alcor. Yet as one of those people, I can say that the
departure of Mike Darwin has **not** transformed the lot of us into
despicable ogres. Rather, we are more determined than ever
before to deal with the numerous obstacles to our success in
strengthening Alcor--this article of Mike Darwin's among them.
I will now do my best to address the accusations, innuendo,
and misrepresentations of Mike's article, using indented
paragraphs to indicate quotes from Mike's article. I will also
do my best to **avoid** accusations, innuendo, and misrepresentations
of my own. I apologize in advance for those instances when my
anger shall outweight my diplomacy.
"Over the past 5 years I have watched as principle after
principle was compromised. As decisions increasingly became
made on the basis of interpersonal dynamics, politics, and
compromise. I have watched as Board meetings became
exercises in public showmanship while the real issues were
debated in secret behind closed doors so that both the
issues and the bitter acrimony that surround them are hidden
from members' view."
First off, anyone who knows Mike at all must laugh aloud
upon reading that he has "watched" as decisions "increasingly
became made on the basis of interpersonal dynamics. . . ." As
far as interpersonal dynamics are concerned, working at Alcor
when Mike was employed here was often like taking part in a
surreal soap-opera, with all cameras on Mike. His actions, his
decisions, and his moods in general were wildly unpredictable,
and he had a knack for sucking the whole staff into whirlwinds of
accusation and innuendo. Frequently I would act as moderator,
asking or even insisting that Mike and others deal with each
other **through me**, to minimize the "bitter acrimony" that seemed
to follow Mike like a cloud of dust. Since Mike's departure, the
staff is **much** closer to functioning as a unified team.
As for the Board meetings, they are becoming more
businesslike and professional every month. I too wish that
private sessions were unnecessary, and maybe when Alcor was tiny
and uncomplicated by intense government scrutiny, the private
personnel matters that accompany a larger staff, and **requests** for
private audience by members (such as Mike, two months ago!), they
**were** unnecessary. Those days are gone. It is now essential to
our survival that we do not broadcast our tactical decisions for
dealing with obstacles such as oppression from the state. To
pretend that this is not so is to live a fantasy, and eventually
die with it.
"Alcor has lost the serious commitment it once had to
research."
No Mike, what Alcor has lost is its Director of Research
(you), and Jerry Leaf (now in suspension), the man who made our
best research possible. We are as committed as ever to research,
even though it took a temporary backseat to recovering our
suspension capability in Jerry's and then your absence. Alcor is
funding research into the survival of memory after freezing that
a prominent cryobiologist is performing **right now**. What's more
(and here I get a bit indignant), when you separated from Alcor
and formed Biopreservation, your research company, I explicitly
told you in **no uncertain terms** that all you had to do was write
down one page, **or one paragraph**, describing any relevant research
you planned to do, and** **I would get you the money **no matter how
much, no matter what**. I promised you that, and you said to
expect such a proposal shortly. I'm still waiting, **and I'm still
willing**. In the meantime, we are pursuing other avenues.
"Instead, Alcor spends its approximately $325,000 a year
budget on other things -- most of them coming under the
heading of administration and the recruitment of ever more
members with promotions and contests and slick literature in
a never ending quest to stay one step ahead of a Ponzi-style
day of reckoning."
Here follows the harsh reality that Mike has never been able
to face, even when his own actions were the crux of the paradox:
Alcor is no longer two employees, twenty members, and a souped-up
garage. What's more, **we don't miss those days**. More than once
Alcor has been **just barely **strong enough to withstand the attacks
of coroners and other representatives of the state. Strength
requires growth--**requires it**, at least until two grenades and a
bulldozer are insufficient to completely obliterate the
organization. And the paradox that I accuse Mike of embodying is
this: from 1987 to 1991, Mike was Director of Research for
Alcor, but almost no research got done. If you ask Mike about
this, he will tell you (as he told me) that he was too busy
sweeping, cleaning, editing **Cryonics**, preparing for suspensions,
and otherwise dealing with **administrative tasks** that completely
monopolized his time. That our Director of Research decries the
money that is spent on "administration," but had neither the time
nor the patience for any research when he was in charge of it, is
the paradox I describe.
Now I'll try to apologize for all the money we're blowing on
"promotions and contests and slick literature." In a fit of
greed and power-lust, I managed to establish "promotion" as an
actual budget item for 1993, and somehow convinced my fellow
Directors to allow me a yearly $250 for this purpose (see last
month's Budget Report). Yes, I realize that this is fully 7.6
hundredths of a percent of the operating budget, but I just
couldn't restrain myself. See you in Maui.
Money spent on recruitment: **Nothing**, thanks to the gobs of
volunteer recruitment work by Brenda Peters and many other
Money spent on contests: **Nothing**, although this impending
**Omni** contest is sure to cost us something, perhaps even a tenth
of what it gains us in long-term membership growth and favorable
exposure to the entirety of the English-speaking world. What
were we thinking. . . ?
Money and/or time spent on "slick literature": Next to
nothing, since all the slick literature Mike created when he was
employed here has been more than sufficient. However, I don't
promise to refrain from coming up with something, should the well
run dry.
"Cryonics magazine, which once was the bulwark of hard and
gritty truths about anything Alcor or cryonic, has been
reduced to a bland political instrument designed to put the
best light on any information that escapes."
As I mentioned early in this article, the initial changes
(i.e., almost all of the changes) made to the format of **Cryonics**
were arrived at jointly by Mike, Hugh, and myself. If anyone
opposed the changes it was Hugh. Mike, as I said, was busy
quietly disengaging himself from that production, meanwhile
complimenting me on the many changes and improvements. If he was
unhappy with the direction in which I was openly and confidently
taking **Cryonics**, he hid that unhappiness well.
As you might guess, I do **not** believe that Mike was unhappy
with the changes to **Cryonics**. On the contrary, we spoke quite
explicitly about the changes that would be necessary before
**Cryonics** could find its way onto newstands and bookstore shelves
around the country. Ironically, I received Mike's sudden
condemnation on the same day that I confirmed the first-ever
shipment to distributors of 600 copies of the latest issue. The
irony, of course, is that I have reached our goal just in time
for Mike to abandon it--and indeed condemn it, in a convenient
and unfortunately characteristic (for Mike) example of making
treason out of reason.
Of course, I expect Mike would respond to this by saying
that it isn't the addition of regular columns or new features
that bothers him, but instead it is the absence of candid,
blow-by-blow reports of our every pit and hurdle, with personal
commentary on our likelihood of successfully navigating every
turn we approach. To that I respond that this is not a result of
the disappearance of openness and honesty from the **Cryonics**
editorial staff, but instead is the result of the disappearance
of **Mike Darwin** from the **Cryonics** editorial staff. I am doing the
best job I can of relaying meaningful information to the readers
of **Cryonics** in a timely fashion. I often disagree with Mike
about what is newsworthy, and in general I don't have the time or
the inclination to publicize intimate accounts of my daily
activities. At some point in the future, **Cryonics** will stop
magazine and a private (members-only) newsletter. But until we
have the money and resources to accomplish this, it will remain
somewhat inadequate in both respects.
"It is my honest assessment that for me personally, Alcor,
in its current form and with its current management (some of
whom are both well-intentioned and even close personal
friends) offers **no chance at all**."
I probably won't be the only one to point out that the only
significant difference between "Alcor in its current form and
with its current management" and the Alcor of one year ago is
that **Mike no longer works here**. And while I don't want to
undermine the importance of the role he held in Alcor, how could
I possibly refrain from highlighting the arrogance of such a
statement? There's so much I could say to refute him on this,
but his position is so absurd and so void of rationality that it
seems an exercise in futility.
"Every day the seismic risk to patients increases and yet
the kind of solid precautions required to give the patients
a fighting change [sic] at making it through a seismic event
languish undone."
**Wrong**. A preliminary support structure--more of an
adjoinment structure, actually--was constructed by Hugh several
months ago. We have refrained from doing more than this because:
a) We (the staff) are unable to agree on what would protect
the dewars more: massive restraint mechanisms, or the
freedom to move somewhat as a form of shedding seismic
inertia. As a compromise we have (as I mention above)
secured them to one another, so that they cannot damage each
other.
b) Our attempts to get professional advice on the matter
have been fruitless so far.
c) We are very near to the point where we simply **must move**
from this facility, and we will likely be leaving the
earthquake zone entirely.
What's more, Mike is fully aware of all of this, as well as
the fact that more has been done in this regard **since he left**
than when he was here.
"The 10% Rule has been all but gutted, long ago (and in
secret) got round by billing exhorbitant fractions of staff
member's salaries to the Patient Care Fund (PCF). did you
know for instance that 50% of Tanya Jones' salary is billed
manages to spend 50% of her full-time job on administrative
matters related directly to care of the patients in
suspension!"
For starters, Mike has his numbers wrong. It is 40% of
Tanya's salary that is billed to the Patient Care Trust Fund, and
that is as much as it has ever been. However, Mike's essential
point remains the same, and there is actually some merit to it.
For the first few months that Tanya worked here (she's been an
employee for less than 9 months, but she was doing a huge amount
of per diem and volunteer work prior to that), she probably spent
**more **than 40% of her time on patient-related activities.
However, when things began shifting around here, she concentrated
more and more of her efforts on Emergency Response activities,
and that 40% should have been adjusted accordingly. I am taking
care of that now, and I'm grateful to Mike for bringing this to
my attention, although his method leaves something to be
desired.
"Ultimately, the quality of cryogenic care that patients
currently receive is due to the diligence and incredible
dedication of a single individual (who operates largely
unsupervised), Mike Perry. When he leaves, is disabled, or
is suspended I have no confidence that the current
administrative framework is set up in such a way as to
insure that the job will be done as well (or at all!) by his
successor(s)."
The compliment to Mike Perry is well placed. If and when he
departs, he will be sorely missed both as an employee and as a
man.
The insult to the intelligence and dedication of the rest of
us does not even merit a response.
"The longer I live the more I am becoming convinced that our
cryobiological and other scientific critics are quite right
in asserting that cryonics is not good science or even
science at all. . . Permafrost burial, "suspending" people
who are partially decomposed. . . At what point do we look
at ourselves and ask whether what we are doing is rational
or purely a religious exercise? At what point do we wake up
to discover we have become a cult?"
This infuriating passage serves mostly to
emphasize how irrational Mike has become. Permafrost burial?
Alcor has never once either arranged or condoned such a
procedure, and his mention of it--with the **clear** implication that
we are somehow involved in it--is what I can only describe as
**filthy** politics. As for suspending persons who are "partially
decomposed," we suspend our members as soon as humanly and
legally possible, without exception. If Mike wants to start a
speak, he is welcome to do so. I will stick with the cryonicists
that will suspend me **no matter what**.
Is this a cult, or a "religious excercise?" I can barely
imagine the state of mind that has brought Mike to ask these
questions, but I for one am in this business for the same reason
Mike was when he worked here beside me: to **save lives**, not
"souls."
"The reality is that cryonics leads to financial ruin,
bitter interpersonal disputes, increased anxiety, and above
all a stultification of technological progress."
The above quote is one of the most telling points in Mike's
entire article. Not because of what it says, but because of what
it **reveals**. It reveals that Mike is unable to recognize--or even
remember--that the vast majority of cryonicists **by far** are **not
employed as cryonicists!** In many respects, I must agree with
Mike that often cryonics **does** lead to "financial ruin, bitter
interpersonal disputes," and "increased anxiety," **for those of us
employed as cryonicists**. This is a choice we've all made for
ourselves, however, and we're all free to step outside of the
"inner circle of suffering" and simply benefit from the service
as provided by others. I for one have no desire to do that.
As for the "stultification of technological progress," all I
can say is. . . "Huh?"
"It has become unbearable for me to continue my
participation on any level in a program that promises people
research on suspended animation while it pours hundreds of
thousands of dollars down legal and administrative rat
holes."
It is odd that Mike has refused continued participation when
the sort of participation we wanted from him above all others was
**research**. I've already given my impression of why Alcor's
administrative expenses are essential to its survival. As for
the pouring of money down "legal rat holes," I would like to see
Mike, Alcor, or anyone else do cryonics research (or find funding
for same) with no cryonicists left in this country because it has
been **outlawed**. Has he forgotten that this was the stated purpose
of the California State Health Department from Day One of our
litigation with them? Has he forgotten how adamantly he
supported that litigation, and the articles he wrote encouraging
financial support for these battles?
I emphatically agree with Mike that research **must** be
afforded a higher priority, **now that we seem to have emerged from
the battle for our very survival. **I will be the loudest advocate
for research as we move into 1993.
"Since my return as a consultant to Alcor I have been
repeatedly told by almost all of current management that
they feel fully capable of doing suspensions without me, and
what's more that they think they can do suspensions as well
or better than they could with me."
This fabrication is so outrageous, I can barely contain
myself. Here, Mike would have you believe that the majority of
the current directors and officers--that's at least six out of
the ten of us--have "repeatedly" explained to Mike that, now that
he is gone, our suspension capability is improved (or at least
unhurt). Certainly there is not a one of us who believes this.
If, in a fit of anger, one or two of us informed Mike in no
uncertain terms that there are aspects of his participation that
most definitely **will not** be missed, I am either among them or
wish to be. If I have not done so, I do so now.
"Over the past year I have witnessed what I believe to be a
steady deterioration in Alcor's readiness and physical
capability. . . . During the course of my in-service I
discovered that several critical items were missing from the
cart--including tube occluding forceps--items which are
absolutely essential to being able to place a patient on
cardiopulmonary bypass.
"The response of Tanya Jones, Alcor's "Suspension
Administrator" was vigorous protestations to the effect
that the cart had "just been inventoried a short time before
and the occluders were there at that time." If this were
the only such incident it might be overlooked. But it is
not. Rather, it is typical of a facility which is
increasingly disorganized and technically unaccountable.
There is no adequate inventory of suspension critical
supplies and equipment, and there is no lockdown on supply
cabinets to insure that what has bee stocked is kept in
place."
This entire passage is half-truth and hypocrisy. First off,
thanks to Tanya Jones, Alcor's Emergency Response system is more
organized **by far** than it has ever been before. The "steady
deterioration" that Mike refers to is pure fiction. There was a
**rapid** deterioration when Mike left last year; the ensuing months
have seen improvement after improvement in our overall readiness
and organization, thanks to the **relentless** work of Tanya, and
**despite** the utter lack of organization that she inherited from
Mike. The lack of an "adequate inventory of suspension critical
supplies" and the lack of a "lockdown on supply cabinets" are
shortcomings Mike knows plenty about, since he formalized them.
We are now **well** on our way to having a **thoroughly** organized
inventory and supply system, again thanks to Tanya.
And how can I not mention Mike's snipe at the missing
occluders on the cart? Yes, that is **very** serious, and yes,
people make mistakes. Mike should know, since I'm relatively
participated in with Mike, the point would come where Mike would
gasp and despair because **something** was not where it should be, a
situation that, ironically, he could have avoided by
implementing an inventory system and cabinet lockdowns. Hey wait
a minute. . . .
"The Suspension Administrator is a 24-year-old woman with no
medical or technical background who's approach to cryonic
suspension can best be described as flowcharting and
knob-turning."
My immediate response to this snide remark is that
flowcharting was one of the first projects Tanya undertook
because the entire Emergency Response system was so **thoroughly
**unorganized, she hardly knew where to begin. She then moved on
to a massive S.O.P project, both to acquaint herself with the
various aspects of the position, and to prevent the sort of utter
confusion that Mike left in his wake from resurfacing when and if
she leaves the position. Since then she has spent a huge amount
of time re-organizing--or rather **organizing**--the entire Emergency
Response system, creating an inventory control process,
attempting to standardize the the procedure for both, and in
general educating herself about the various aspects of her job
through the study of various medical texts, examination of
relevant software, and research into global improvements to the
suspension equipment and data acquisition process. It's
infuriates me that Mike has the gall to attack a woman who was
willing to take on position that no one else wanted, that she was
not trained for and did not desire, and that was a disorganized
mess.
In Closing. . . .
I have refrained from responding to many of the charges and
opinions in Mike's article because I expect that persons closer
to those issues will be doing so. Also, there are aspects of his
article that I agree with, but in general his mode of
presentation is so prejudiced and warped that I refuse to dignify
his article by listing them.
I also wish to point out that it is my **sincere hope** that
both Alcor and Mike Darwin make the changes and improvements
necessary to facilitate a productive working relationship
sometime in the future. I also hope that Mike realizes that
martyring himself by withdrawing his membership and facing the
associated risk is accomplishing nothing save making it plain
that he is not thinking clearly.
Lastly, I wish to formally recognize and thank the staff and
board members who are struggling to improve Alcor and maintain
its integrity despite the various hardships and attacks of the
past year, some warranted, some not. It's now more important
than ever that we all remember why we are here. I am confident
weather this storm, as well as those that are sure to follow in
the years ahead. Our number one priority is **life**. Let us never
forget that.
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