X-Message-Number: 3126 Date: 13 Sep 94 00:26:54 EDT From: David S Pizer <> Subject: CRYONICS Replying to Charles Platt's (Vice President of CryoCare) posting titled "Risks, good and bad" where Charles describes the "happy situation" CryoCare now has with BioPreservation. By David Pizer Charles: If I wanted to jest, I would say something like: "Dear Charles, I want to thank you for your posting representing CryoCare's policy on allowing risks which sums up what you feel is your moral obligaton to your members and patients. I think it very clearly expresses your position and I think you should make it a part of your information package that goes out to all your new prospects. This aspect of unbundling is one I had not considered where the transport/standby/perfusion folks can do most anything they please and then rush the patient to the storage company where there is no way any bureaucrat, official or officer can ever get access to them. By the way, where do you store them, on Mars?" ----- But this is way too serious to jest. Charles you apparently did not pay enough attention on remote standbys or else you would realize that you do not disobey the hospitals while they have POSSESSION of a patient. If while they have possession of the patient, the hospital says not to pack the patient in ice and you put some ice on the patient, the hospital may elect to not release the patient to you for another 24 hours. Or if they get angry at you they may ask for an autopsy. One thing that Mike Darwin taught us (in the old days) in the transport course I partially attended is not to offend the hospital. It's ok to argue strongly for the benefit of the patient but when you start packing ice on a patient that they told you not to touch, they are going to call security and you are going to be thrown out of the hospital at once. At least that's the way it is at the hospital I worked at, Barrow Neurological Institute, in Phoenix. I want to add that we have had several situations where it was touch and go and our experienced personel, especially Tanya Jones, has had good cooperation by negotiating with the hospital personel, not fighting with them. In some situations we have secured court orders for our members ahead of time. By the way your record is not better than most of the other cryonics organizations. You have only done 2 suspensions and both of them were not with a lot of additional complications that occasionally occur. Don't you think you should get a few years under your belt and several suspensions before you start claiming perfection? But Charles your dangerous reasoning goes beyond that. In my opinion, hiding your patient behind the veil of a unrelated storage company would offer NO protection from authorities if the perfussion/standby/transport company did something that caused the authorities to want to look at that patient. This is a perfect example of why your unbundling may be dangerous. Each individual company may think it can take risks and then pass the patient on to another company and the risks are now gone. Or they may think their responsibilty is over when the patient is transfered over. This is a perfect example of why a FULL-SERVICE cryonics company like Alcor offers more security to a cryonics patient. We have to be responsible for our members from the time they deanimate until we can reanimate them. We can't pass the buck. The buck stops at a full service cryonics company. That is why, in my opinion, the majority of the Alcor members refused your solicitations to leave Alcor and join you. That is why a large amount of new persons coming into the cryonics movement are choosing Alcor. Sincerely, Dave Pizer Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3126