X-Message-Number: 17580 Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 13:22:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: reply to "Fair4Us" "Fair4Us" (another name which I think hides someone who knows more than he implies) asks about the fate of CryoSpan and BioPreservation, the two service providers that used to store and perform transport/perfusion for CryoCare members. The question is stated as: "this seems to implicate the founders of the group of organizations (one nonprofit and the others for-profit) which were set up by essentially the same set of people (those who at the time did a mass exodus from Alcor), who then are we to believe suddenly one day turned on themselves and stopped providing services to themselves?" My answer, basically, is yes: That is a fair summation. Here's the history. Anyone who isn't interested in cryonics history can skip it. BioPreservation was founded basically by one person, and CryoSpan was founded by one person. Therefore it is incorrect to say that these two entities were created by the "same set of people" who founded CryoCare. There was absolutely no overlap of personnel, because our bylaws strictly prohibited it. In other respects, your analysis is correct. Mike Darwin was more interested in research, was disillusioned with cryonics, and ceased providing service. He is now a member of Alcor. Paul Wakfer was angry that CryoCare had not grown fast enough to support his business at the level he had anticipated, and quit. Indeed, he "stopped providing service for himself." Fair4Us continues: "But then, in the next sentence, blame seems to be falling on Fred Chamberlain, and I assume this refers to his attempts to get BioTransport going. I am equally puzzled regarding what happened to BioTransport, which sounded like it was going places, then all we heard was Alcor was continuing to run their own teams." This is a sensitive issue which I did not want to address while we were counting on goodwill from Fred and Linda Chamberlain to accept our patients. Since this transfer has been concluded, the patients are safe in Alcor dewars, and Fred and Linda have disassociated themselves from any controlling roles at Alcor, I feel freer to talk. My sense of the situation was that Fred wanted 21CM vitrification technology, and offered to provide transport services to CryoCare members, via a new independent organization, as a gesture of goodwill. There was no formal quid-pro-quo. However, after Alcor established good relations with 21CM, Fred seemed to lose interest in his plan to provide transport services to CryoCare. Internal memos from Alcor, which were leaked to me at that time, suggested that Fred had some contempt for CryoCare, expected it to go out of business, and looked forward to its dissolution. Certainly he had the means to prevent this: He could have fulfilled his pledge to provide service via BioTransport. But that never happened. Michael Riskin was in favor of saving CryoCare, and was kind enough to come to our AGM, where he spoke about BioTransport. He said that it would be a good idea to maintain competition in cryonics, and a bad idea to drive any cryonics organization out of business. He urged us to be patient. (Since he made these remarks at a public meeting, I hope he won't object to me quoting them here.) Well, we were patient. We waited for many months. But I had the impression that Fred was dragging his heels in the sure knowledge that the longer he delayed providing service, the more restless CryoCare members would become, and the more likely they would be to switch to Alcor. In the end, we felt an ethical duty to warn our members, in the strongest terms, that they should switch to _any_ other organization, because we had lost hope of BioTransport filling the vacuum caused originally when Mike Darwin gave us a 2-year warning that he would quit offering service. At this point we were subjected to abuse from both the Chamberlains and Bob Ettinger! (There's never any shortage of criticism in cryonics, when you try to do the right thing.) The Chamberlains accused us of being accessories to the possible death of our members, because we did not force them somehow to join Alcor, and some of them (including myself) chose to have no cryonics coverage at all. Ettinger was furious because we refused to give our members a promotional flier that he had written, advertising the virtues of CI. We refused because we believed the promotional text was misleading and contained false claims; and we did not want to favor any organization over another. The current situation re BioTransport appears to be that it is billing Alcor for more than $100,000 in "expenses" incurred by BioT on behalf of Alcor patients. This topic was explored in some detail at the Alcor AGM, where Michael Riskin expressed great discontent with accounting procedures which had been followed by BioT. In addition, just to make things more complicated, Fred is now dedicated to promoting Cells4Life, a separate entity that cultures cells and stores them for possible future cloning. Cells4Life was set up in the hope that it would make a huge profit, a percentage of which could be returned to Alcor. Only one problem: The ability of Cells4Life to turn a profit remains rather speculative. One BioT investor, who had put $100,000 into that company because he wanted it to provide service for CryoCare, believes his money was used to help establish Cells4Life. He is not too happy about it. (I don't know whether Fred Chamberlain would dispute that the investment was used in this way. This channel is open if he wishes to respond.) At the Alcor AGM, Michael Riskin complained that Cells4Life had been renting space in Alcor's building but had not actually paid the rent, while Fred had continued to draw a salary from Alcor after he had quit most of his Alcor duties and became CEO of Cells4Life. Michael suggested that Cells4Life owes Alcor more than $40,000. (Again, this was all stated in a public meeting.) Thus, instead of helping to subsidize Alcor, Cells4Life apparently has drained some Alcor resources--so far, at least. My own comment: Cryonics activists can be amazingly naive. This explains why Bob Ettinger and Steve Bridge trusted Olga Visser, and why we, at CryoCare, trusted Fred Chamberlain to assist us. Also, cryonics activists have an unfortunate history of trying to address their problems by starting a new company, or establishing a new building. This explains why we have almost as many companies as cryonics activists, and why the Timeship Project has attracted support. But don't get me started on that. --Charles Platt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17580