X-Message-Number: 3240 Date: Tue, 11 Oct 1994 14:54:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: CRYONICS:Addendum re Dave Pizer I now gather, from various sources, that when Dave Pizer accused CryoCare of accepting patients who are paid for on an installment plan, what he really meant was to accuse CryoSPAN of this. The last time Dave rushed his opinions onto the net (as usual, without bothering to call anyone to check the details), I explained yet again that CryoCare employs independent providers for stabilizing/perfusing patients and for storing patients. This has been mentioned here so often, I should imagine everyone is sick of reading about it. But it obviously needs to be mentioned again--for Dave at any rate. So, repeat after me, Dave: My company, CryoCARE, takes legal responsibility for its members after legal death. CryoCARE then uses an outside storage provider (which was chosen by the patient), such as CryoSPAN. CryoCARE retains full responsibility for the patient's wellbeing. CryoSPAN will be employed to take care of the daily tasks of storage, under our supervision. The CEO of CryoSPAN is Paul Wakfer. It is his company. Those of us who work for CryoCARE are in no way affiliated with CryoSPAN. In fact, our bylaws prohibit any officer or director of CryoCare from being an officer or director of any other cryonics-related organization, because of potential conflict of interest. This fact has also been mentioned here. Therefore, Dave, if you hear a vague rumor about CryoSPAN, the obvious thing for you to do is call Paul Wakfer on the phone and check it out. Why didn't you do that, Dave? You know Paul well. You know his phone number. Why do you prefer to throw mud at us? Moreover, when you sent your post in to CryoNet yesterday, I gather that Kevin Brown sent you a note warning you that the post contained a major factual inaccuracy. Why didn't you respond to that, Dave? Why did you allow your post to appear unchanged? Did you simply not care that it was spreading a rumor that was totally untrue? I realize that some people at Alcor persist in believing that the legal separation between CryoCare and CryoSpan is a fiction. I hope they will reach a new level of enlightenment when, in the very near future, we start offering our members a choice of being stored by CryoSpan OR being stored by Cryonics Institute. At that time, our members will be able to choose for themselves whether they prefer CryoSpan or CI for the long term. (ACS, incidentally, already offers this choice.) Regarding CryoSPAN: I believe that Paul Wakfer runs a financially sound and ethical company. Our agreement with him has some built-in safeguards, so that we will be able to check on his operation and on the state of any CryoCare patients who are stored with him. Currently, of course, WE DO NOT HAVE ANY PATIENTS AT CRYOSPAN. All our members are alive and well. None of them are in cryopreservation--which makes Dave's accusation all the more inaccurate and uncalled-for. Plus, as I have already stated, our own documents show that we do not accept members who want to pay for their storage on an installment plan. If, in the future, we should ever decide that CryoSpan is NOT being prudently managed, we will have the right to move our patients elsewhere (under some rather complicated terms and conditions which are spelled out in our standard paperwork). This is a major advantage of "unbundling" cryonics services. If a service provider fails to perform to specification, we are able to switch to a different service provider. Dave Pizer's close friend and co-director, Mark Voelker, was a major architect of this concept, which is simple and easy to understand. Therefore, Dave, it seems very mysterious that you persist in "misunderstanding" it. ############################################################ Charles Platt, 1133 Broadway (room 1214), New York, NY 10010 Voice: 212 929 3983 Fax: 212 929 4467 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3240