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Date: Fri, 27 Jan 89 17:09 EST

From: "(Roy R. Beatty) Keane, Inc. [BEATTYR] 302-774-0335 B-10217" 
<BEATTYR%JLCL01%>
Subject: CRYONICS - Alcor vs ACS?
To: ho4cad!kqb%
X-VMS-To: @BWINE:[BEATTYR.MAIL]CRYO,BEATTYR
Status: R

Kevin,
       The latest issue of _Cryonics_ contains a letter from 
H. Jackson Zinn, president of the rival American Cryonics Society
expressing his "all-out support for Alcor in the suit against the 
Department of Public Health Services... ."

       A cryonically cool Mike Darwin replies, "If ACS is sincere..."
and he continues on a course inevitably leading to zero degrees Kelvin.

       1) What cause does Alcor have for thinking that ACS's offer of 
            support (moral or substantial) is insincere?

       2) Was there a single incident precipitating this falling-out?
            Or has there been a history of snub and counter-snub?

       I don't want to litter this conference with schizmatic melodrama,
but these organizations are among the few practitioners of cryonic
preservation.  I guess bonds become brittle at low temperatures.

       Roy

[ First, some background for the other readers.  ALCOR is filing suit against
  the California Department of Public Health Services because it will not
  issue to any cryonics organization a VS-9 form, which is needed for
  disposition of a person's "remains" after a doctor declares the person dead.
  Since the California cryonics organizations, ALCOR and ACS, do not have VS-9
  forms for any of their frozen members, they are, according to the DHS,
  violating the law.  Two things that make this especially frustrating are:
  (1) the laws do not provide any mechanism whereby a cryonics organization
  can qualify to receive a VS-9 (because the California legislature never got
  around to passing the law specifying how one can qualify), and (2) many
  organizations, such as tissue banks, routinely store body parts without
  having a VS-9, yet are not harassed by the DHS.  What makes this issue
  especially important is that if storing a person (who was recently declared
  dead) in cryonic suspension is, according to the DHS, an illegal act, then
  suspension organizations may find themselves unable to get access to their
  members to place them into cryonic suspension!  The suit that ALCOR has
  filed against the DHS thus is important to all cryonics organizations in
  California.  It is also important to all other cryonics organizations
  worldwide because it establishes an important precedent.  If an organization
  of the quality of ALCOR loses and cryonics becomes, in effect, illegal in
  California, then all other cryonics organizations worldwide will likely have
  a much tougher time staying in business.
  As for Mike Darwin's reply to Zinn's offer of assistance, I think that
  except for the initial phrase ("If ACS is sincere ..."), his reply was not
  as cold as you suggest in your message.  (He mainly stressed the amount of
  money and time required and the need to fully inform one's members of the
  implications of the suit.)  ALCOR and ACS have long had numerous differences
  (several of which are described in the April 1987 issue of Cryonics) and I
  think it is clear that Mike Darwin has not forgotten them.  I do not,
  however, know why he worded his reply the way he did.  - Kevin Q. Brown ]

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