X-Message-Number: 16648
From: "Trygve Bauge" <>
Subject: Trygve's response to Charles Platt
Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:58:51 +0200

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In Message #16629 Charles Platt <>
wrote:


>Trygve, since you are posting so much, perhaps you should include a
>description of your own experience in do-it-yourself cryonics. Am I
>correct in recollecting that when your local community learned of your
>activities, there was an uproar which led to your relocation from the
>United States back to Norway? 

You got both the cause and effect and the chronology wrong:

I was deported from the United States on May the 7th 1994 after having lived 14 
years in the United States without a passport, visa or greencard, and after 
having fought for freedom of travel and trade in the federal court system for 6 
years.


A few days later the local town board in the small mountain town of Nederland 
Colorado decided to use this opportunity to try to shut down my local cryonics 
facility, by passing a town ordinance that on its face value also would have 
made it illegal to store frozen broccoli.
They failed to shut down my facility. 

Yes there was an uproar in the town: by the 70 percent of the population that 
supported me and my facility.
The old down board was thrown out and replaced by a new.
Since then the town board has not attempted to shut me down.

The storage of my grandfather is kind of grandfathered in, legally speaking, if 
you understand what I mean. 

Bo Shaffer has been taking care of the facility and adding dry ice on my 
grandfather for the last 5 years or so.

We have received and still receive a lot of positive media coverage, and one 
award winning short movie was made about the case. Leading to positive media 
coverage on national TV programs in The United States, Brazil and Norway and 
world wide on the National Geographic channel.

>Wouldn't it be appropriate to tell Elizabeth
>Kostadinova about this, before you continue to encourage her to follow a
>similar path?

I am not asking her to follow a similar path.


I am actually putting together an overview over what it would take to establish 
a liquid nitrogen based cryonic facility here in Norway, and posting the efforts
to the cryonet in the hope that the knowledge might be useful for others 
attempting to create new cryonic facilities elsewhere.


I still hope that she and other cryonisists in Australia will get together and 
create a facility there, so that I don't have to create one here.

>And would it also be appropriate to consider that the credibility of
>cryonics is not enhanced by do-it-yourself procedures, with the attendant
>risk of bad publicity--especially when the "patient" has been dead and
>buried for weeks? What possible justification is there for encouraging
>anyone to do this, if you want cryonics to be taken seriously?

Let us clear up a few things:
Cryonics and its reputation is not the ultimate goal here:
Individual life-extension is the goal, cryonics is just the means.

I would do the most life-extending anytime, even if it were to give bad 
publicity.

Second: bad publicity is not my experience at all.

I have had enormous amount of positive publicity for as long as I have been 
involved in cryonics.


When we first froze my grandfather, we got serious and positive coverage by the 
Colorado media, even a front page article and colour picture in The Denver post.
And the Colorado and Norwegian media has followed up ever since.


Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am not hiding the adversity of
the cases I am involved in, and that I don't try to keep anything secret from 
the media.


For eksampel: Many think that my cryonic facility was discovered after my 
deportation. But that is not true at all: I had mentioned it  in a press release
to most of the Denver/Boulder media several months before. However the press 
release was quite long and the media focused first only on my deportation case 
which was the main topic of the press release.

Anyway the local media has been supportive in maintaining the cryonic facility 
ever since.

A local radio station has held several fund raisers and where instrumental in 
getting my grandfather the nice Tuff shed that  he is presently stored in.


Of course it helped and helps that I have several world records in icebathing 
and has had enormous amount of positive world wide media coverage for my 
icebathing both before and after I froze my grand father.

As to whether or not cryonics is enhanced by do it yourself procedures..


It clearly is.  Most cryonic ventures I know of started out as do it yourself 
procedures.

I haven't seen any cryonic venture that so far has been initiated by and spun 
off from any established fortune 500 company.


The existing cryonic facilities know very well that they all the time get a lot 
of requests that they either do not want to or are unable to follow up. 


These people are then left to their own devices, and some then select to start 
their own ventures.


Every so often there are people, even such that have joined the 3 big cryonics 
companies, that are not satisfied with what they are offered at existing 
facilities, and we have seen and will continue to see that some will select to 
create their own organizations.

>when the "patient" has been dead and
>buried for weeks? What possible justification is there for encouraging
>anyone to do this, if you want cryonics to be taken seriously?

Once again the goal is individual life-extension.

Cryonics is just the means,  and I am not going to stop doing what I see as 
right, just because someone is afraid that it might hurt the reputation of 
cryonics.

Furthermore I don't see that what I do in any way hurts cryonics, rather to the 
contrary.


Life-extension is much more than just freezing the dead under the most ideal 
circumstances.


Life-extension is a question of survival to the highest possible degree. Ideally
one would want to go on as a 100% continuation of oneself. But that is not 
always an option. 


I am open for other levels of survival, e.g. through cloning, or through 
attempts at repairing some of the body, while rebuilding from other sources what
that can't be restored from the corpse itself.


If one is open about what one is trying to accomplish and is not misrepresenting
what one is offering, then the media usually responds favourably.

At least that is my experience.



> just as backyard freezings, Bauge-style, have undermined the credibility of 
cryonics.


I designed a state of the art cryonic facility and residence that could survive 
forest fires, earth quakes and storms. I got traditional bank financing for it. 
The facility got very positive newspaper and TV coverage while I built it.
I started building it. I set aside a two story area for a big foot dewar.
I moved in my grandfather, for temporary storage in dry ice. 
I had started to line up clients that could run the facility without me.
We had ordered an electrical freezer.

We were about to order a big dewar, when the INS kicked me out of the country 
(in a freedom of travel case that had nothing to do with cryonics and),
while my appeal was still in court. Common principles of justice were violated.

I had every reason to think that due process would be respected and that I would
have ample time to complete the facility and leave this to others before I 
eventually were deported, even if that would be the outcome, something I 
doubted. (I qualified for the amnesty that Ronald Reagan offered, and for 
amnesty under the 7 year rule, but was kicked out anyway, inspite of never 
having been convicted of any criminal wrong doing whatso ever, not even a 
misdemeanor. It was all a matter of principle: Traditional rights like freedom 
of travel and trade, freedom of contract  and due process lost out to the 
protectionist police state that the USA has deteriorated into.)


As a result I never got to complete my facility in Colorado, and my grandfather 
is still on dry ice there.


I am now in Norway, (and after breaking out of a 5 year relationship with a 
beautiful girl that was vehemently opposed to cryonics, I am presently becoming 
active in cryonics again) and I am putting together an overview over what it 
would take to build a state of the art cryonics facility here.


Anyway one has to start where one is, and from what the present situation is, 
and from what one can afford.

Freezing under less than ideal circumstances is one means of starting the 
process towards establishing a still better facility and still better routines. 
When we froze my grandfather, the main pupose was to start the process so that 
we hopefully would have better procedures in place and available to us before my
mother and I eventually die.

As to the present situation in Australia and Norway:

It seems reasonable to start out with one dewar in a rented facilty, and then 
over time move up to still better facilities like most other cryonic 
organizations have done.


I am not at all basing my Norwegian project on Elizabeth in Australia. As a 
matter of fact I have enrolled in a national venture plan competition and is 
working on a venture plan for creating a local state of the art cryonic 
facility, and have already got positive national TV and magazine coverage for 
this in Norway, long before I heard of Elizabeth.

Personally I think she should spend her money on securing her own and her 
mother's and sister's cryonic suspension by all signing up with CI or Alcor.

But as long as she insists upon freezing her father, I am willing to assist her 
in that.
Whether or not he will be frozen, is still very much up in the air.

It would help a lot if the existing cryonics facilities would let us know where 
(from what sales reps. and manufacturers, names and phone numbers please?) they 
have bought their own dewars so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel. 

sincerely,

Trygve Bauge
(47)22-14-80-78


As to me posting alot to cryonet lately, well now that I am single again, it 
leaves me much more time at my hands. So much for girl friends being the worst 
threat to cryonics. ):
 

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