X-Message-Number: 3261
Date:  Thu, 13 Oct 94 04:05:23 
From: 
Subject: CRYONICS /CSNY


>From Mike Perry, 13 Oct. 1994
re: Saul Kent/CSNY

Recently a number of postings have addressed the issue
of what went on in the early days with the Cryonics Society
of New York, and in particular whether the principals (Saul
Kent and Curtis Henderson) were honorable and ethical
in their dealings. Unfortunately these postings have assumed
the form of a "flame war"--something that happens all too
frequently on the cryonet and which I think most of us want to
avoid, so we can use our energies in more productive ways. Some
of the assertions this time seemed rather ridiculous--maybe
more so than usual in "flaming." I didn't want to have
to address these things, and others were doing so meanwhile,
so I have remained silent on this up to now. Mike Darwin, in message 
#3247, is critical of Steve Bridge, myself and "others" for lack of 
response, on grounds that we are aware of what really went on at 
CSNY, or sufficiently so, that we ought to at least answer some of the 
more egregious misstatements in this regard. On the other hand, I 
have also been under fire, privately, for not addressing some of the 
other issues that came up. (In fact I think this is the first time I've been 
under attack by both sides for not joining in!) From this it does not 
necessarily follow that I *should* join in. But, after thinking it over, I 
feel that some response is called for, so here it is.

1. In my considered judgment Dave Cosenza (whom I have known well 
for  years) is not a tool or puppet of Carlos Mondragon, but in fact 
postings under Dave C's name are substantially his own.

2. What about Saul and Curtis? I have always felt that they acted 
without malicious intent, as well as they could, and even heroically, to 
make a success of their cryonics venture, which was one of the first 
operations to freeze people back in the 60s. That they failed in the end 
seems--to me--to be due to factors beyond their control, that they 
could not have reasonably anticipated, given the primitive state of 
things when they started, and many other problems. On the other 
hand, some I have talked to vehemently assert they *should* have 
known better, should have realized they were charging too little, 
should have modified their policies immediately, and *should be 
blamed* for their ultimate failure. I don't feel "expert" at judging what 
a person should have known, etc. but can only go by gut feeling, which 
often amounts to imagining myself in the same situation. Rather than 
spend a lot of time on this topic, which is a little beyond me, I'll quote 
from an interview of Saul Kent (by Mike Darwin) that appeared in 
*Cryonics*, Nov. 1981. (This was after all the CSNY patients had been 
lost.) Here it is Saul himself who is mainly speaking, and is willing to be 
self-critical. Perhaps that will provide some additional perspective.

MD: Do you feel your efforts with the Cryonics Society of New York 
and Cryo-Span were productive?

SK: I think we succeeded in a couple of ways and failed in some 
others. We were successful in that we certainly spread the word to a 
lot of people who had not heard about cryonics beforehand. We 
encouraged other people to become active, some of whom did. I think 
we did more than anybody else at that time to spread the word to the 
general public. I think for example we got mostly good publicity from 
the freezing of Steven Mandell. That got a few people interested.

The mistakes we made? Well, first of all, underestimating the amount 
of money it would take to freeze someone, and not reacting fast 
enough once we began to get some experience of what the costs 
were. In essence, not charging people enough for services.

We might also be faulted perhaps for not making a greater effort to do
the freezing better. Although we did make efforts in that direction. We
tried to get doctors and scientists and we couldn't. We ended up with
Fred Horn, a funeral director, because that was the best we could do
at that time. Perhaps we could have made greater efforts and found
other people who would have done it in a more professional manner.

Our problem in one respect was that we hoped that the initial 
freezings would just be the beginnings of a groundswell of support 
leading to improvements in every area, including perfusion.

Another thing we should not have done was to get the relatives of
the patients more deeply involved in matters. The reason we did that 
was that there were so few people we could count on. We figured, 
"These are the relatives of the patients, let's see if we can get them 
involved in more than just being customers." That was a mistake. It 
might not have been a mistake if the people were different., but it is 
probably a mistake in general.

Of course, we had to go to these people after quoting them a certain
price and say, "Well, we've got to charge you more money because 
this is costing us more than we thought." That inevitably led to them 
becoming more involved. Of course, if we'd quoted them the right price 
in the first place most of these people wouldn't have been frozen or 
would have been frozen with an adequate amount of money.

MD: Why weren't you charging enough money?

SK: The reason that we didn't was that we were looking, for numerous
reasons really, to charge as little as possible. We felt uncomfortable
asking for a huge amount of money. We said, "Let's find the cheapest
price that we can do it at." I think that's been one of the problems with
cryonics all along. You have to ask people for a whole lot of money and
people don't like to come up with a whole lot of money.

We may have made a mistake in freezing anybody who didn't have
insurance. I say that because the great majority of people who have
been frozen by relatives have subsequently thawed for one reason
or another. There's no doubt that it's far more effective if you've got
money that the person left for his freezing. But there are several 
reasons why we didn't wait for that kind of case. First of all, there 
were relatively few people signed up and most of them were young 
and in good health. We were really anxious to freeze somebody and it 
turned out that all of our opportunities were cases which presented at 
time of need.

If everybody had waited for the other kind, there might not be anybody
frozen to this day. Who knows, this might have been good. But I 
suspect not. At that time interest was high and we had reason to 
believe that if we started freezing people it would lead to bigger and 
better things. I really can't fault us for acting as we did on that point. If 
someone were to have said, "You might have to wait 10 years for a 
responsible freezing," we would have said, "That's ridiculous!" We 
couldn't have waited that long.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3261