X-Message-Number: 24762
From: 
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 11:59:40 EDT
Subject: "full service" and "leader"

JoeWaynick is still saying Alcor is "the only full-service cryonics 
organization in
existence."

1. To most readers, "full service" probably means the organization provides 
both preparation and storage, directly or indirectly. Today that would include 
CI, Alcor, American Cryonics Society, and Trans Time--and formerly CryoCare. 
(Non-full service or specialized organizations would include Suspended 
Animation Inc. (initial services only) and formerly Cryospan (storage only).

2. If you limit "full service" to mean no use whatever of outside help or 
subcontractors under any circumstances, then there aren't any full service 

organizations. At a minimum, law requres help of a licensed mortician to 
transport a 
body. Further, Alcor has used the help of Suspended Animation Inc. in 
suspensions. CI also used SA once. 

3. If "full service" is stretched to mean that one organization provides 

certain services that another doesn't, then Waynick's statement is still wrong.
Alcor does offer some things that CI does not, such as Hugh Hixon's crackphone 
(not that I think we need it.) But CI also offers capabilities that Alcor does 
not, perhaps the most striking example being that we can usually respond much 
more quickly in certain types of emergency. In one recent case, a non-member 

died in the morning, and before the day was over we had the paperwork in place,
the suspension fee paid, the hospital cooperating, and the patient delivered 
to CI and perfused. (No, that doesn't happen often.) 

Waynick also still says that Alcor is the "world leader in cryonics, and 
cryonics research and technology."

Clearly and verifiably wrong. 

In those things that just involve counting, Alcor leads in some and not in 
others. Alcor has more members and more money. CI has more patients and faster 
growth.  

"Research and technology" is less clear-cut, but by no stretch of the 

imagination can Alcor be considered the leader in cryonics research. If 
peripherals 
count, such as cryostats ("dewars") then CI is the leader there. Our storage 
units are better in every way except floor space. If only cryobiology counts, 

then CI alone is in there, with professional cryobiological research full time.
Alcor does have members who are cryobiologists, and works with companies that 
do such research, but the information developed by those companies is also 

available to others who want to buy it. (For that matter, I don't expect that 
the 
advances developed at CI will be kept exclusive either.)

Robert Ettinger

  

    


 Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=24762