X-Message-Number: 2607 Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 00:02:30 From: Steve Bridge <> Subject: CRYONICS Alcor move coming soon (Via unlicensed copy of UGATE) To CryoNet >From Steve Bridge, Alcor February 14, 1994 Following is a preview of my article for the Alcor Phoenix (Member's newsletter) which should be in the mail to Suspension Members, signups, and a few subscribers tomorrow. This gives you most of the detail on the Arizona situation. There may have been another word change or two in the final text as proofread for the newsletter, but this is 99.9% correct. Except that I don't have the two letters referred to on disk; so you'll have to wait for the newsletter for the text, unless Ralph Whelan will (please) post those in a separate message. Several added points to summarize. 1. Yes, we are moving. The move should be completed before March 15. As we have said before, for security reasons we are not releasing the date of the Patient move until after it occurs. 2. Finally, today, after 5 years of struggling with a leaden and malicious California bureacracy, ALL ten of Alcor's whole body patients have certified death certificates and disposition permits. Even Dick Jones. 3. 9 of the ten needed transit permits for the whole body patients have been signed by the Arizona DHS, and I will submit the final one (on the patient whose Cal. disposition permit I just obtained today) on Wednesday. 4. I wish I had time to answer the recent Cryonet questions about Alcor patient storage, but I don't right now. There were some errors in the answers given. If someone will remind me in a few weeks, I will try to get back to it. Steve Bridge **************************************************************** SHOWING GOOD FORM(S) IN ARIZONA By Steve Bridge, President After five months of aggravating conversations and typing various forms, Alcor finally has been given formal permission by the Arizona Department of Health Services to move its operations and suspension patients to Arizona. We accomplished this by patient, steady pressure from Directors Dave Pizer and Mark Voelker, thoughtful advice from several Arizona members, especially Ted and Bobbi Kraver, insights from staff members, especially Tanya Jones and Ralph Whelan, and a tremendous amount of work on the part of our Arizona attorney Ronald Carmichael. While I don't say this often, I'm also willing to pat myself on the back for this accomplishment. Since last June, it seems I have worked on little else. I've written dozens of letters, flown or driven to Arizona several times, and made uncountable telephone calls, all to make sure that Alcor could legally perform suspensions and store suspended patients in Scottsdale, Arizona. Now that set of challenges is done -- and the next, larger set looms ahead. Reproduced below are two letters that sum up the legal and logistic issues that caused so much tension during the past few months. I will caution some of our newer or more sensitive members that the letters are written from a legal viewpoint and discuss "human remains," "interment", "disinterment," and "anatomical gifts." While we refer to members in suspension as "patients" -- and fully consider them as such -- we cannot yet make a legal case for them being "alive." Therefore we are constricted to use of laws dealing with anatomical gifts in order to acquire legal custody of the patients. This legal requirement then plunges us into a thorny bramble of statutes and regulations for dealing with legally dead humans. We have no choice but to work within this framework and to attempt to use it to the advantage of ourselves and our patients. Over the past two decades, we have achieved an extensive understanding of the legal requirements in California and have discovered many hidden advantages in the law. (These advantages will still apply to California Alcor members even after Alcor Central moves to Arizona.) Learning these same tricks in a new state has been complex; but our California experiences left us well able to point our Arizona attorney in the right direction. The real educational experience has been received by the Arizona state officials. They had never read the laws with frozen people in mind before. We think it is important for you to read and understand these two letters. They point out the kinds of problems that the Alcor Directors and staff must deal with every day. And they are the kinds of problems that will exist in *every* state as more people choose cryonics. Eventually many of you will want to understand these issues and begin researching similar laws and regulations in your home state. Later in the year I will write a detailed article about what to look for. Attorney Ron Carmichael's letter (written with a lot of input from one of Ron's assistants, Claudia Resnick, and from Dave Pizer and I) was the product of a long series of direct and indirect negotiations. As we learned more about the laws dealing with "human remains" and anatomical donations, we realized the law tended to be *in our favor*. The Department of Health Services had actually been ignoring several important legal points. While this process took longer than we wanted, it also gave us the time to convince the Attorney General's Office that we were right. So two of the Assistant Attorney Generals and a key economic development advisor in the Governor's office began helping us apply pressure to the DHS to get this settled. In late January we began to hear verbal statements that the AG's office had convinced the DHS to complete the Transit Permits for our patients. But since we weren't getting any confirmation in writing, we didn't get too confident. And then suddenly we found all communication with the DHS disrupted by a State Senate Committee's attempt to reorganize the Department. Apparently this "reorganization" was going to cost a lot of jobs, although we still don't have many details. Still, we kept up the pressure for settlement (our attorney was a *very* squeaky wheel) and finally succeeded. The second letter is the reply from Gregg Jacquin at the Department of Health Services. You can see that it is grudging and that Mr. Jacquin still doesn't agree with all of our points. But he DID authorize the forms to be signed. Also, there is a suggestion that we may have to work with the DHS to develop regulations which DO apply to cryonics in the future. While at first glance that might seem to be harmful for cryonics, it might not be. Let's face it: some state will eventually regulate cryonics. That's what bureaucracies DO. But regulation also implies some level of *authorization and legitimization.* If the DHS really does want to work toward regulations (which several of our advisors strongly doubt), this may actually become an opportunity for greater acceptance, especially if we have a lot of input. Right now I can see that we have gotten several potential benefits from the long delay. Primarily, we *have met a lot of important people* - - our opportunity for input has increased. In all of this haggling, we have discovered only this one man who really had a strong problem with us. Others were disconcerted, confused, or concerned; but they were not *hostile.* And we found several officials who were actually friendly. The exposure we have gotten in Arizona government and in the press has forced us to spend a lot more time being "political." Sure, this aggravates a lot of us; but *that's the way life works.* Once we move to Arizona in the next few weeks, the staff and local members will have to spend a lot of time meeting elected officials for the State of Arizona, Maricopa County, and the City of Scottsdale. Having grown up in a political family, I know that an organization which seems a part of the community will be treated differently from one that tries to maintain bounds of separateness. For years in Fullerton and Riverside, we went out of our way NOT to be noticed. So when we inevitably *were* noticed during the Dora Kent affair, we looked a lot more strange and "cultish" than we actually were. We had a lot of catching up to do before the press and local officials were forced to think of us as real people, rather than as a indistinct mass of weird aliens. It's a lot easier to discriminate against a group than against an individual you have grown to know. We are heading into Scottsdale in a completely different way. Many of our Arizona members are already politically involved and have many friendly relations with public officials. While we have been living in California, with its 30 million residents and with its capital an 8-hour drive away, it has been much harder to even *meet* public officials, much less be friendly with them. Arizona has a population of only *FOUR* million and we are less than thirty minutes away from the capital. Just mathematically, our numbers have a greater opportunity to be influential, and we already start with some good contacts. If we handle ourselves appropriately, we have an unprecedented opportunity for some of these people to see us as potential *good guys.* All changes bring danger, but they also provide opportunity. The crises surrounding Dora Kent and Dick Jones could have destroyed cryonics in California and weakened it severely everywhere. But seven years later cryonics and Alcor are stronger than they ever were before, and our ideas have taken hold in a significant percentage of the American public. (Acceptance isn't the same thing as enthusiasm, of course; but the trend is definitely in the right direction.) Successful people and organizations will always be those which recognize and take advantage of the opportunities which rise out of chaos and danger. Arizona is a great opportunity for us. **************************************************************** Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2607