X-Message-Number: 33174
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 12:38:46 -0800 (PST)
From: Luke Parrish <>
Subject: Re: Cryopreservation since 1990

Ben Best wrote:
>
> Actually, Luke, the typical signed-up Cryonics
> Institute (CI) patient is simply packed in ice by
> a funeral director and shipped to Michigan for
> cryoprotectant perfusion and controlled cool-down
> in a computer-controlled cooling box. No extra
> initiative is required for CI Members with pre-mortem
> funding and contracts in place to be perfused with
> CI's vitrification solution.
> 
> Some CI Members arrange for a funeral director
> or friends to do standy. Jack Zinn, CI's 91st
> patient, received standby from a team of volunteers:
> 
> http://www.cryonics.org/reports/CI91.html
> 
> Standby/Stabilization services for CI Members
> is an optional extra which some CI Members arrange
> on their own. Some CI Members in the United
> States arrange by contract with Suspended Animation, Inc.
> at an additional cost of about $60,000 on top
> of CI's usual fees. As of the end of December, 2010
> there are 94 CI Members (including myself) who
> have arranged for Standby/Stabilization/Transport
> from Suspended Animation, Inc. in addition to
> the usual contracts with CI.
> 
>   -- Ben Best, President, Cryonics Institute

Interesting. I guess I was mentally failing to distinguish
stabilization from cryoprotectant perfusion, because
stabilization involves perfusion (with a washout solution)
and helps prevent perfusion impairment later (by removing
the blood and ensuring more rapid cooling).

What percentage are like Jack Zinn and arrange stabilization
services? If most patients are being shipped in ice by funeral
directors without washout, that might somewhat support Doug's
contention that CI is devolving into a cemetery.

Robert Ettinger has suggested hiring and training local
morticians as an alternative to the use of lay volunteers or
Suspended Animation. Given that morticians come with skills in
cannulating patients without a heartbeat, it seems the amount
of training needed for stabilization to go off without any 
surprises would be reduced. Further, there's the more subtle
issue that morticians have broad pre-existing societal
permission to operate on "dead" bodies and get paid for it.
Are there any particular disadvantages to this approach?

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