X-Message-Number: 3198
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 1994 00:05:50 -0400
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <>
Subject: CRYONICS: Life Extension Society News (Washington DC area)
LIFE EXTENSION SOCIETY 990 N. POWHATAN ST. ARLINGTON VA 22205 703-534-7277
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1994 No. 4 LIFE EXTENSION SOCIETY NEWS Oct 1994
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Society Airs Proposals for Local Cryonics Services
The deanimation of a cryonicist is a cryonic emergency, and reliable,
rapid-response cryonic "stabilization" services are needed on-site to
maximize the likelihood of the patient's restoration to life and health.
The Life Extension Society has developed five proposals to foster the
development of rapid-response stabilization services in this area and
elsewhere in the country.
* Proposal to local cryonics organizations: Cooperate on a regional
basis to realize economies of scale in stabilization services.
* Proposal to all cryonics organizations: Set up a rotation system for
organ-preserving perfusate to maximize availability and minimize cost.
* Proposal to local cryonics organizations: Finance stabilization
equipment and training by selling shares in local, cryonicist-owned
companies.
* Proposal to national cryonics organizations: Sign contracts with
local organizations to replace materials consumed in stabilizations
and pass through savings attributable to the use of local
stabilization capability.
* Proposal to national cryonics organizations: Vary suspension fees
among locales based on the cost of service.
For details, see the guest article on page 3.
Society Opens Fund-Raising Drive
The Board voted at its September 18 meeting to seek donations of seed
money to advance its proposals for local stabilization capability.
The Board's goal is to raise $1,000 by December 31.
Treasurer Joel Finkleman stated, "The first part is the hardest. We
will have more stable funding once we have deals with New York, Boston,
and the national organizations."
Donations of up to $100 are welcome. Please help. If not us, who?
If not now, when?
Society Consults with Regional, National Cryonics Organizations
Society members have begun discussions with regional and national
organizations on its five proposals to foster local cryonic
stabilization services.
On October 16, President Mark Mugler will discuss the proposals with the
Cryonics Society of New York. Mugler also will provide information on
the proposals to the cryonics group in Boston.
In November, Mugler will attend the Cryonics and Life Extension
conference in Ontario, California.
Mugler will present the proposals in a panel on "New Models for Cryonics
Organizations." While in California, Mugler will have the opportunity
to discuss the proposals with officers of Alcor, CryoCare, and
BioPreservation, among others.
In early September, Keith Lynch traveled to Winnipeg, Canada to
participate in the World Science Fiction Convention and distribute
literature on the proposals. Officers of Alcor and CryoCare also were
in attendance.
Local Seminar to Focus on Interventive Gerontology
On October 30, 1994, the Society will sponsor a seminar on interventive
gerontology from 2:00 to 4:00 at Exhibits, Inc., 4929 Wyaconda Rd.,
Rockville, MD. The guest speaker is a scientist member of the American
Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine and a Board member of the American Aging
Association. The seminar will describe examples of reversing aging
processes that illuminate the causes of aging and possibilities for
eliminating aging altogether. Most of these examples can be applied
right now by anyone. There will be plenty of time for questions.
Admission is free. Call the Society for directions.
Cryonics Sign-up From A to Z
The July 31, 1994 meeting featured a presentation by President
Mark Mugler on the cryonics sign-up process, based on his personal
experience. He reports that once you get your financial affairs in
order -- which you should do anyway -- signing up is easier than
you think.
Contact Mark at this address if you want a copy of his handout, a
cryonicist's advance medical directive, or a cryonicist's will.
Alcor, CryoCare to Attend A4M Conference
Both Alcor and CryoCare will contribute exhibits at the American
Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine conference in Las Vegas this December
4-6. The Mayor of Las Vegas, both Senators from Nevada, the Governor
of Nevada, and various media will participate. For details, call
312-528-1000, ext. 17.
AGE Comes to DC in October
AGE (the American Aging Association) will hold its annual conference
at the Capitol Hilton on October 14-18. The theme is the free radical
theory of aging. AGE is the pre-eminent organization of scientists
working to understand and control aging. For details, call
610-874-7550.
Corrections to 1994 Issue No. 3
Courtney Smith will oversee the managers of CryoCare's patient care
fund. He will not manage the fund itself.
The Extropy Institute is a futurist organization that supports cryonics.
It is not a cryonics organization. Its address is 13428 Maxella Ave
#273, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292.
The following additional sources of nutritional supplements have been
suggested:
Beyond the Century
P.O. Box 713
Greenville, ME 04441
Indiana Botanic Gardens
P.O. Box 5
Hammond, IN 46325
L&H Vitamins
37-10 Crescent St.
Long Island City, NY 11101
Local Cryonic Stabilization Services:
Everything I Need to Know About Cryonics I Learned in Kindergarten
Guest Article by Mark Mugler
Local cryonics groups have a checkered history of fits and starts, of
good intentions gone awry, of high hopes cruelly dashed. It's not just
that there isn't enough money. Not enough people are cooperating or
playing fair.
_The Service Gap in the Hinterlands_. Because cryonics in the United
States is an infant industry with a market of 400 or so suspension
members nation-wide, it suffers from terrible diseconomies of scale.
400 widely scattered cryonicists can support only so much investment
in cryonics technology and expertise.
The compromise adopted by the national cryonics organizations offering
cryonic suspension services is to perform the first phase of a
suspension -- on-site stabilization -- with a mobile team, and the
second phase -- cooldown, perfusion, and storage -- at a home base.
To minimize warm ischemia and maximize the patient's chances for
recovery to life and health, a stabilization kit and trained personnel
are needed on-site when the patient deanimates. For a patient
deaminating far from the home base, sufficient notice of the impending
deanimation is needed; otherwise the mobile team and its kit won't get
there in time.
Should the national organizations invest in on-site stabilization
technology and expertise to ensure reliable, rapid-response
stabilization service? The initial costs of stabilization equipment,
supplies, medication, perfusate (organ preservation solution), and
training can reach $20,000. Recurring costs (including replacing
expired perfusate and medications) are on the order of $4,000 or $5,000
per year. However, if perfusate and medications are financed from
suspension fees rather than expiring, annual unfunded costs are reduced
to $1,000 or so per year.
With a local kit and expertise in place, a national organization can
save thousands of dollars, primarily in equipment air freight and the
mobile team's air fares. For example, a national organization in the
West saves about $4,000 per cryonic suspension in the East if two mobile
team members and all stabilization equipment and materials stay home.
The national organization can save additional dollars if there is a
"false alarm."
The national organization has no financial incentive to acquire
and maintain a local presence until the deanimation rate among its
suspension members in the locale is so high that the annual savings
outweigh the initial and recurring costs. In the East, the deanimation
rate would have to be one and one-half or two persons per year. In
other locales closer to the home bases, the savings are less, and an
even higher deanimation rate is required. The service gap is widened
where competing national organizations have split the local suspension
membership.
_Bridging the Service Gap_. To bridge this gap, local cryonics
organizations in the hinterlands have to provide local stabilization
technology and expertise themselves. They have to drive down initial
and recurring costs, find ways to finance those costs, and recruit
additional suspension members.
The local organizations need not provide full stabilization services.
For instance, a local organization could acquire and maintain all
necessary equipment and supplies, train all personnel needed for standby
and "initial stabilization," and rely on the national organization's
perfusionist to fly in and lead the local team in "total body washout,"
which follows initial stabilization.
Cost reduction, service improvement, and membership growth are mutually
reinforcing, and should be pursued concurrently. Cost reduction creates
the opportunity for additional investment in service improvements.
Effectively advertising service improvements attracts new suspension
members. Membership growth leads to economies of scale: as the number
of suspension members in an area increases, the cost of providing given
technology and expertise also increases, but not as quickly, and costs
that are indivisible do not change at all.
_Economies of Scale from Regional Cooperation_. Two forms of
cooperation create economies of scale that accelerate the cycle
of cost reduction, service improvement, and membership growth.
The first form of cooperation is among cryonicists in a region.
Certain services can be regionalized through inter-local agreements,
the expansion of an existing organization, or the creation of a new
organization.
Tapping a regional membership base in this manner creates two economies
of scale. The first type of economy is more effective use of, and
greater continuity in, leadership, talent, and stabilization expertise.
A larger group would be less vulnerable to fits and starts brought about
by deanimations and changes in personal status.
The second type of economy is a decline in the cost of service per
suspension member. The Northeast offers an example. Cryonics groups in
New York, Boston, and Washington, D.C. have operated independently up
to now. Without regional cooperation, each group needs a complete kit,
which includes a package for initial stabilization and a package for
total body washout, including perfusate. With regional cooperation,
three initial stabilization packages might still be needed, but the
entire region could get by with a single total body washout package and
pagers or some other emergency notification system. The Life Extension
Society has suggested the creation of a company, the Cryonic Rescue
Service, as a means to institutionalize regional cooperation in the
Northeast.
_Economies of Scale from Perfusate Rotation_. The second form of
cooperation is rotating perfusate among national and local cryonics
organizations. The purpose of perfusate rotation is to ensure that
all supplies held by cryonics organizations are used, thereby reducing
perfusate cost and increasing perfusate availability. At a cost of
$2,500 and with a shelf life of only one year, a perfusate supply is
too precious to waste.
Let's use an example. Each of two national organizations performs two
suspensions per year, for a total of four suspensions per year. The
shelf life of new, improved perfusate is two years. Using the equation
INVENTORY = DEANIMATION RATE x SHELF LIFE
the maximum inventory of perfusate supplies is eight. Each national
organization could keep a supply for its mobile team to use, and up to
six local organizations could keep supplies on hand as part of their
service.
An independent organization would operate the rotation network. The
perfusate supplied would meet the specifications of both national
organizations. The supplies closest to expiration would be rotated
to the most frequent users. Immediately after a stabilization by a
frequent user, an infrequent user would overnight mail its spply to the
frequent user on dry ice, at a cost of about $150. The network operator
would replace the infrequent user's supply within a few days.
In this example, perfusate rotation prevents three supplies per year
from being wasted. Total cost, including the cost of overnight
delivery, is cut by one-third or more, depending on perfusate cost,
and a new supply is just an overnight package away.
Savings and the availability of perfusate would increase with an
increase in the deanimation rate nation-wide. Perfusate rotation will
continue to make sense unless the cost of perfusate drops dramatically.
_Fairness in Financing Initial Costs_. Cryonicists far from the
national organizations' home bases have an incentive to invest
in stabilization technology and expertise long before a national
organization would find it feasible to do so. On the other hand,
national cryonics organizations save when local organizations provide
stabilization services. A way must be found to equitably share the
initial and recurring costs of local stabilization services.
To finance initial costs, a local organization must rely largely on
living suspension members. One problem is that some members seek to
obtain a "free ride," that is, to benefit from others' investment of
time and money. However, with so much at stake, a local group is loath
to withhold service from the free riders, so free ridership persists.
By maximizing the participation rate among living cryonicists, a local
organization can reduce the cost per participant, contain the free rider
problem, and maximize investment.
The key to widespread participation is to give investors something for
their money and/or enable investors to liquidate their investments.
One mechanism for obtaining widespread participation is the sale of
shares in a stock corporation owned and controlled by local cryonicists.
Purchase of shares brings ownership and voting rights. An investor may
liquidate the investment by selling his shares. The local organization
may desire to limit shares per person in order to maximize participation
and minimize inequities. The Life Extension Society has suggested the
creation of one such company, the Cryonic Rescue Service, to finance and
provide stabilization services in the Northeast.
_Fairness in Financing Stabilization Readiness_. Where a local
organization has developed rapid-response stabilization services,
a national cryonics organization will agree readily to pay for the
replacement of supplies, medications, and perfusate consumed during
a stabilization. (It also will contract with individuals for their
services during standby and stabilization.)
Simply replacing consumed materials is not enough, for two reasons.
First, the fixed, recurring costs of local stabilization services are
ignored. These costs include the costs of replacing obsolete durable
equipment, replacing expired perfusate and medications, retraining, and
administration. Without a stable funding source for recurring costs, a
local organization will suffer a financial hemorrhage and die.
Second, a national organization's savings in suspension costs (air
freight, air fare, patient shipment, etc.) that are created by the
availability of local stabilization services are ignored. At the
expense of local cryonicists, the savings accrue as a windfall to the
national organization, the suspended patients, suspension members in
the area, or suspension members nationwide, depending on whether and
how the savings are reflected in the national organization's fees.
Most revenue sources that a local organization might explore are
unreliable or unfair. For instance, contributions are unreliable. If
suspension members are charged annual local readiness fees or patients
are charged one-time local stabilization fees, the members or patients
simply are sharing the pain (or seeking a free ride) while the national
organizations retain their windfalls.
The fair thing to do in this circumstance is to pass the savings through
to the local organization, not to keep the savings or pass the savings
through to patients or suspension members. The pass-through could
be in the form of an equipment rental fee. Presumably the national
organizations would rather pay after stabilizations take place (since
that is when the savings are realized) than pay an annual readiness fee.
With a contract or contracts in-hand for savings pass-through, the local
organization can assure prospective local investors that it will be able
to stanch the financial hemorrhage over time, thereby triggering the
cycle of service improvement, membership growth, and cost reduction.
Savings pass-through seems to be a "wash" at best for each national
organization. However, each national organization is under competitive
pressure to provide the best service possible, and a national
organization that fails to contract with a local organization to
offer rapid-response stabilization service may lose market share in
that locale.
_Fairness in Pricing of Suspension Services_. As things currently
stand, each national organization charges uniform prices across the
nation for cryonics suspension services. Since far-off services cost
more in air freight, air fares, and patient shipment, among other
things, this practice creates cross-subsidies between nearby locales and
far-off locales, with the national organization making money in nearby
locales and losing money in far-off locales. In locales where one is
losing money, it is tempting to cut corners or take risks that adversely
affect the quality of service.
If cost differences were reflected in suspension fees, the fees for
far-off suspension members would rise and the fees for nearby suspension
members would fall. Cost-based pricing eliminates cross-subsidies and
the temptation to cut the quality of service in far-off locales. All
other things being equal, a national organization that adopts cost-based
pricing plus pass-through of savings is able to enhance its competitive
position by reducing the price of suspensions in nearby locales and
by improving the quality of stabilizations in far-off locales, where
quality of service is a key consideration.
_A New Model for Local Stabilization Services_. Local cryonicists
have an incentive to invest in acquiring and maintaining stabilization
technology and expertise long before a national organization would find
it feasible to do so. They can drive costs down and maximize investment
and membership growth through the economies of regional cooperation
and cooperative perfusate rotation. They can distribute initial costs
equitably through the sale of shares in a local, cryonicist-owned
company. They can reach agreements with national organizations to repay
the costs of materials used in stabilizations. However, their efforts
be wasted if they cannot stanch the financial hemorrhage of recurring
costs. For this, they need to capture the savings that the national
organizations, their clients, or deanimated patients otherwise would
obtain as a windfall from the local investment. For its part, each
national organization can enhance its market share and competitive
position by pricing its service fairly and passing through cost savings
to the local organizations that create the savings.
It all seems so clear now. To succeed in saving lives, we need to
cooperate with each other and to play fair. Everything I need to know
about cryonics I learned in kindergarten.
LIFE EXTENSION SOCIETY 990 N. POWHATAN ST. ARLINGTON VA 22205 703-534-7277
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