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From att!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!rburns Sat Jul  7 14:36:09 1990
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Subject: Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaws public Comments on Alcor
Date: Sat,  7 Jul 90 11:19:44 PDT
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Recently Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw were speaking at Mountain View.
One of my housemates (who is signing up with Alcor) was there and asked 
Durk what he thought of Alcor, his response (according to my housemate) was 

1) that he thought their were some good folks at Alcor and that they
are sincere about cryonics

2) he thought that an Alcor policy was a poor investment at this time,
 a) because of Alcor's organizational "instability"
 b) because he thought that Alcor was "comingling funds"
 c) he thinks something else better will be available later
    either from Alcor or a derivative organization

Basically, he is advocating his approach of incremental life extension via
vitamin therapies etc. - which one might well expect him to do. Here is the
problem as I see it:

Durk, whatever else you and I might think of him,does
have a message with wide popular appeal.

Durk is one of the people most likely to be perceived by the public as 
someone who "ought" to be sympathetic to Alcor.

His first two complaints are  basically legal and organizational in nature
(and may even be obsolete)-These should be addressed. If he is mistaken in
his information, he should rather gently be informed of this, preferably by
someone at Alcor who knows him.

His last argument, I rather strongly disagree with. He is basically saying, let
someone else do the work, and then reap the benefits. While it is possible 
that certain people should wait until things are a  bit more mature in the 
industry (basically because they lack the sophistication to avoid being taken
in by con-artists around at this point). What I personally tell people, is that
an Alcor policy  is an extremely high risk, high return investment that makes
sense as part of a balenced program of life extension and other life
improvement activities. I probably wouldn't suggest an Alcor policy to 
someone who had real trouble supporting themselves or was unhappy, but
I would suggest it to someone who is getting along well and has surplus
resources in their life.

I'm supporting Alcor now, because it is the best thing around at 
the moment, and in the belief that only if I do my part now, will there be  a
good cryonics organization around in 30-60 years when I do need it.

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