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

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