X-Message-Number: 2004 Date: 21 Mar 93 20:04:44 EST From: Charles Platt <> Subject: CRYONICS Funding To: Cryonet March 20, 1993 I think "Clarissa Wells" makes a better point than she may realize, re the recent suspension of the person who committed suicide. From lengthy conversations with Curtis Henderson, and from studying the history of Bob Nelson's Cryonics Society of California, it seems to me that under-funding has been, and still is, a very serious threat to any cryonics group. Nelson froze many people who lacked money. Sometimes relatives said they would pay for storage; sometimes Nelson just hoped for the best. His motive may have been noble, or he may have just wanted to LOOK noble. Either way, he ended up with bills that he couldn't pay, and the result was catastrophic. Curtis Henderson did his best to manage his cryonics business in a fiscally prudent fashion, but he too ended up with frozen patients whose relatives abandoned them. Fortunately, he was resourceful enough to resolve the problem ethically, so no one was left to thaw while in his care. But as I understand it, there were years of worry along the way, and enormous personal and financial sacrifices. I have never been in the position where I have to decide whether to freeze someone, or say "no." I imagine it must be pretty tough, especially if one feels some degree of responsibility for the person's death, which may have been the case recently, since the suicide case did make his intentions known in advance. However, the impulse to do a "charitable" freeze seems very dangerous to me. It encourages us to think of cryonics more as a benediction, "free" in certain circumstances, than as the expensive service that it really is. Each person who is frozen without proper financial arrangements endangers the cryonics organization to some small degree, and reduces the security of other patients who have paid the full cost. This is the way it seems to me. Maybe others with more experience in cryonics can put forward points that I have missed; in which case, I urge them to do so. --Charles Platt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2004