X-Message-Number: 33454
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:38:08 +0000 (UTC)
From: Melody Maxim <>
Subject: A Layman's Perspective (Thanks to Chris Manning)


Mike Darwin wants to pretend I am making "much ado about nothing," in regard to 
what I perceive as attempts to deceive laymen into believing the services of 
Alcor and Suspended Animation are far superior to what they actually are. Mr. 
Darwin writes:
> It is only necessary to look 
> at CryoNet, to  look at Cold Filter, and to look at the reams of internal 
> criticism of cryonics  BY cryonicists TO other cryonicists, to understand 
> that the vast majority of  people signed up simply don't care. They are 
> informed of the screw-ups, the  incompetence, and the often grotesque 
> errors, and 
> THEY SIMPLY DO NOT CARE. One  of the really good things about Ben Best's 
> nightmarish CI case reports, are that  they constitute due diligence 
> documentation to CI members, to prospective  members,and to the public, of 
> just what a 
> mess they can expect to have made of  their care.

In response, Chris Manning wrote: "I do read every CI case report, with the same
layman's approach as described 
above for reading the posts made here. I would not describe them as 
'nightmarish', I certainly would care if I thought they were, and I don't 
get the impression that they make a 'mess' of members' care."


What Mr. Darwin refers to as "Ben Best's nightmarish CI case reports," are a lot
more "honest" than those of Alcor, or SA, in my opinion. CI's reports are, for 
the most part, much more simplistic than Alcor's or SA's reports, and here's a 
layman saying he doesn't see the "messes" Mike Darwin claims are "glaringly 
obvious" in the more simple CI reports? Did Mr. Manning read SA's case report, 
for the Curtis Henderson case? I'm a medical professional, familiar with 
vascular cannulations and perfusion, and it was easy for me to read between the 
lines of SA's nonsense. It was also VERY CLEAR to me that a layman, such as Mr. 
Manning, would look at that report and think real medical professionals 
competently carried out SA's procedures, (services they try to sell, with a 
price tag of $60,000.00, I'm told), when nothing could be further from the 
truth. Would Mr. Manning, (or any other layman), have read that report and 
realized the person doing the procedure was NOT a surgeon, as she described 
herself? Would a layman have recognized that Ms. Baldwin struggled for MANY 
HOURS, attempting to perform a procedure that would have taken a competent 
person MINUTES to carry out? All those hours, leaving Mr. Henderson at much 
warmer temperatures, than he would have been, had Ms. Baldwin been capable of 
performing her duties? Would Mr. Manning, or any other layman, have recognized 
that, in the SA report? NO, THEY WOULD NOT.


Would a layman have recognized that Ms. Baldwin did not understand the medical 
terminology she used in her own report? (She described searching for the femoral
blood vessels in the femoral capsule (the location of the hip joint), when the 
femoral vessels are located in the femoral sheath (an area in the groin). Would 
a layman realize how absolutely ridiculous it is, for someone pretending to be a
surgeon and spewing out all that medical jargon, to not be able to find some of
the largest blood vessels in the human body? If Mr. Darwin knows ten percent of
what he THINKS he knows, he will read that SA report and he will know it was a 
bold attempt, by SA, to deceive someone. That "someone" may very well be their 
benefactors and/or peers, but as a result, members of the general population 
(anyone who reads the SA report) are also deceived. If SA's intentions were to 
honestly describe procedures performed by laymen, why didn't they just write the
report in laymen's terms, rather than fill it will medical jargon, some of 
which even Ms. Baldwin did not understand? If their intention was not deception,
why was Ms. Baldwin falsely identified as a surgeon? In my opinion, it was just
another charade, in a long line of many.


While we're on this topic, why is Mike Darwin identified in so many Alcor case 
reports as a "surgeon"? How about the times he was referred to as a "Chief 
Surgeon"? What is the excuse for that? Does Mr. Darwin expect me to believe that
verybody who reads those reports on the Internet knows Mr. Darwin isn't really 
a surgeon? Seriously?? The only reason I can think of, for doing something like 
that, is to deceive people into believing Mr. Darwin is something he is not.


As for Mr. Darwin's remarks about professional perfusionists being present for 
recent SA cases, do laymen realize that SA might as well have a chimpanzee 
behind the pump, if no one is there to do the cannulation?


I don't think the majority of people who are signed up for cryonics are 
"informed of the screw-ups, the incompetence, and the often grotesque errors" 
and "simply do not care." I think they are being lied to. I doubt most of them 
even read CryoNet, or Cold Filter, and if they do, they've been exposed to no 
small number of lies, which have been posted on those sites, a portion of those 
lies courtesy of some who have a lot of experience writing cryonics case 
reports.


As Mr. Manning stated, he reads those case reports with a "layman's approach," 
as do MOST cryonicists, (and anyone else who happens to stumble upon SA and 
Alcor's case reports, while investigating cryonics on the Internet). Mr. Manning
didn't see what Mr. Darwin thinks should be glaringly obvious to anyone, and 
more than that, Mr. Manning CARES.

Melody Maxim

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