X-Message-Number: 20179 From: "davepizer" <> Subject: To profit or not to profit - that is a question. Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 19:00:01 -0500 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0012_01C264C5.C05C3B00 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" A little discussion on profit and cryonics. "Sabrina Spellman" <> asked: snip ....................." but does any one know which cryonics company makes a profit and what non-profit or not for profit or not making a profit or whatever means." I may have these two backwards (or sideways) but it is something like this ( BTW I'm not an expert on this - if its important, ask an attorney or tax expert): 1. A non-profit is the most like what we think of as a charity. It gets a special government designation like 501 c-3. That designation allows people to make contributions to it and get to deduct those contributions from their income tax (with certain limitations). 2. A not-for-profit is not quite the same. It has similar intentions and there are no shareholders in this organization (as in the one above) that get to take dividends on the profit each year. But you cannot deduct your contributions to this organization from your taxable income. Alcor presently falls under number 1. I am not sure where CI stands. As to your question about whether any cryonics company makes a profit. I'm not sure if you mean "makes a profit" or "tries to profit." At present CI and Alcor do not try to make the kind of profit that can be divided up among shareholders. The number one goal of most for-profit companies is to make a profit. They do that by various secondary means like producing a good service or product, or being competitive, or being in a good location, or whatever. Both Alcor and CI bypass the profit motive and go straight to trying to produce a good product and/or service. There is another existing cryonics company, ACS, that I believe is also not profit oriented. But they are very small and last I heard they contract with CI for storage and other services. There is still another cryonics company in the bay area, called Trans-Time. This is the only for-profit cryonics company that I know of. The players up there are Paul Segal and Hal Sternberg, long time cryonicists, and a few others. But Trans-Time is not very active right now. TransTime is owned by stockholders. They have plans of reactivating the company in the future. There have been other cryonics companies that are no longer in existence. I think all of them that went out of business were not profit orientated. There are also various support cryonics organizations, that do things to support the movement, but do not freeze and/or store patients. There is also an Alcor and/or CI cryonics building in the UK. I have lost track of who it is associated with now. I believe its present use might be to do cryonics preparations but not for storage. The only storage I know of is Alcor and CI with the exceptions of a few maverick individuals that have a relative stored here and there, most from what I have heard, under conditions that will make any revival probably impossible.???? When I was at Alcor management years ago, several potential cryonics-start-up-company people came to us to see about starting cryonics companies. The ones I remember most wanted to start for-profit companies in other countries. At that time (several years ago) I did not think there was enough interest to start a profitable cryonics company. I have since changed my mind and I think the time now is good for a for-profit cryonics company to get started. For a couple hundred thousand a year (I'll keep it low to help you get started), I'll be your advisor. But after you start raking in the billions, I'll want a bigger cut. I also understand that Saul Kent and Bill Faloon have a company in Florida that may be a for-profit company. I do not fully understand what its function is. -------------------- Does Alcor or CI make a profit even though they do not give dividends to share holders? This is an interesting question. In some ways you might want to think of these companies as profitable in that they are both growing in members, patients, amount of cash they control, techniques they use to freeze and store people, and continued improved results in the condition of people they recently froze under best possible conditions, and in the quality of research they are associated with. Although this is not profit of the kind that one turns into cash and divides up among the investors, I would say that all the members of the currently not-for-profit/non-profit cryonics community are profiting in the possible suspensions they will probably receive. Hope you can find some answers in this little piece. David Pizer ------=_NextPart_000_0012_01C264C5.C05C3B00 Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20179