X-Message-Number: 5 From: Kevin Q. Brown Subject: Alcor Date: 28 Jul 1988 This is the third of three postings describing the three organizations that provide cryonic suspension services. All three postings are transcribed (with permission) from interviews published in the Winter, 1988 issue of Venturist Voice. (Write to The Venturists, 1355 E. Peoria Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85020. Venturist Voice is currently free, but donations are gladly accepted.) This posting is on Alcor Life Extension Foundation. The previous two were on the Cryonics Institute and the American Cryonics Society. - Kevin Q. Brown ...{att|clyde|cuae2}!ho4cad!kqb ----- Alcor Life Extension Foundation 12327 Doherty St. Riverside, CA 92503 800-367-2228 714-736-1703 Information supplied by Carlos Mondragon, President, March 14, 1988. Alcor was founded in 1972, and currently has 100 full members. Full members are those who are signed up for cryonic suspension with Alcor. We also have a category, "associate member", for the relatively rare individual who wants to pay slightly reduced dues ($40 rather than $50 per quarter) and does not want to sign up for suspension. Currently we have about 25 associates. Members and associates receive our newsletter, and additionally we have about 100 non-members who subscribe. Organizations associated with Alcor include Cryovita, a private, Subchapter-S corporation which provides services to Alcor from time to time in research, and for patient suspension, and Mizar Limited, an English cryonics organization, some of whose members are suspension members of Alcor. Our facilities are located in an industrial park. We have a building with approximately 5,000 square feet of floor space, including a lower floor of 3200 and an upper floor of 1800 square feet. We have the two options for frozen storage, whole body and head only or neuro. The cost for the neuropreservation option is $35,000; the cost for whole body is $100,000. Additionally, suspension members pay a starting fee of $300 for paperwork assistance and $200 annual dues (or $50 quarterly). The dues cover the expenses of our emergency response system. With both the neuro and whole body options the fees are designed so that after the initial cost of suspension, the remaining funds when conservatively invested will provide enough income to pay for indefinite storage in liquid nitrogen, and enough additional income to be added to capital to offset the effects of inflation. The costs of suspension alone are approximately $7,500 for neuro (leaving about $27,500 for investment) and anywhere from $10,000 - $20,000 for whole body (leaving $80,000 - $90,000 for investment). Costs of suspension are significantly reduced because all suspension team members (who are required to be suspension members of Alcor) are volunteers and are not paid for their services. Funds that remain after a cryonic suspension are allocated to our Patient Care Fund. This is meant to provide an indefinite income to keep all patients at liquid nitrogen temperatures until they can be reanimated, however long that may be. The fund is very conservatively managed under guidelines established by the Board of Directors and with the advice of a Patient Care Fund Investment Committee. The portion of that income that is not spent on patient care directly is added to capital so we can offset the effects of inflation. Additionally, it is Alcor's policy that ten percent of all income received by the organization is diverted to the Patient Care Fund, another means of enriching that fund and mitigating the effects of inflation. An Alcor member must provide the minimum funding for his or her suspension and storage to Alcor directly, and it then goes into the Patient Care Fund and is not maintained as a separate account. Funding above the minimum, however, can be administered by relatives or outside organizations, or in any manner the member wishes. It is also Alcor's long term policy that we will make every possible effort to avoid the thawing of any patient. We require authorization from our whole-body members for conversion to neuropreservation if for financial reasons they cannot be maintained as whole-body patients. As a service to suspension members we will suspend their pets on an at-cost basis. Our suspension protocol involves (after death) replacing as much blood and water from the body as possible with cryoprotective agent. This is accomplished through the use of a heart-lung machine. If a patient dies in a hospital and is pronounced dead by a physician we do cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and oxygenate the blood to stabilize the patient. We also have an ambulance service for transport of the patient to the faciliity, as well as the MALSS (multiple advanced life support system) which uses an EMCO cart (extracorporeal membrane oxygenator). We also have suspension facilities in South Florida which would enable us to do a cryonic suspension there, after which the patient would be transported to the Riverside facility for permanent storage. Suspension team members must go through a training program which includes testing, and must attend regularly scheduled experiments to keep their skills honed. Our suspension team includes a cardiopulmonary perfusionist, a hemodialysis technician, and a physician in addition to volunteers who have acquired their skills through our training program. We accept suspension members in remote locations, and service for them is really not much different than for people close by. Once we know that somebody is dying we send our team out to their locale -- this of course requires our assessment of whether death is imminent, for which we have experts who can make this judgment. It is possible, of course, that someone would deanimate unexpectedly, in a remote location, with no team members present, and then we'd have to negotiate as best we could with the local hospital or mortuary for proper procedures for them to follow until we could get somebody there. In general we encourage members to consider moving near one of our facilities (in Southern California or South Florida) if death appears imminent (and also on general principles). As for our management structure, we have a Board of Directors and the four offices of President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer. Officers and Board members are selected by the Board of Directors. Directors are suspension members of Alcor who are generally chosen because of long-standing commitment to Alcor and cryonics, as well as their projected contributions while on the Board. Basically our structure is the same as most nonprofit, charitable foundations, who elect Board members the way we do. Alcor has an ongoing research program to develop better techniques for cryonic suspension, to assist in training our suspension team, and to gain knowledge that could have applications in areas outside of cryonics, such as general medicine. So far we've had a series of total body washout experiments using large dogs, which have been successful, and have completed a study of postmortem changes in brain structure using electron microscopy. We provide a free information package on request, publish a monthly newsletter, Cryonics, and whenever possible accommodate the press through interviews. Officers of Alcor on occasion make speaking appearances at schools or civic organizations. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5