X-Message-Number: 27201 From: "John de Rivaz" <> Subject: independent audit and review Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:32:04 +0100 I have been reading the debate on self-regulation with interest. It may well be a good idea, but the mention of audits every so many months made me wonder whether the limited resources would be severely degraded by this suggestion. Someone at each cryonics service provider would have to prepare the papers, and then answer questions, maybe having spent time travelling to the auditor's offices. In addition, the cryonics service provider would have to pay the auditor hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars an hour to so waste the time of its officers. Could this consumption of time and money actually cost lives of members or potential members? Could the additional stress be enough to cause people to resign their positions at these organisations? I think if a standard of self regulation can be developed, there has to be far more respect given to other people's time and money than with conventional "point of a gun" regulators. As far as financial audits are concerned, one solution may be to produce or acquire some accounting software that includes auditing features and generates appropriate reports automatically. This would be a one off expenditure that would also help the running of cryonics service providers. The only "regulation" would be that they use this particular software. This may well produce initial grumbles, but once overcome the process would be totally transparent to the day to day running of the organisation. -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy, Nomad .. and more Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27201