X-Message-Number: 7043
Date:  Mon, 14 Oct 96 20:27:43 
From: Dave Pizer <>
Subject: Leary Report

To Cryonet from Dave Pizer

I would like to compliment Charles Platt for the great writing style in his 
article "The Strange Case of Timothy Leary" In "CryoCare Report."

There is one correction I would like to add to this story.  This is where 
Charles says "Like Alcor before us, we were willing to freeze Leary at a 
significant discount because he was the most famous person who had ever 
signed publicly with a cryonics organization."

It may be partly true that some Alcor directors approved Alcor's original 
agreement, I don't know what was in the minds of each one at the time.  But 
in my opinion, Leary's agreement was approved because Keith Henson promised 
the Alcor Board that he would raise money in donations from Leary's friends 
at Alcor to make up the difference between Mr. Leary's insurance proceeds 
and the full amount required at the time.

Keith and Arel were very close to Tim and Keith can be a *very* persistent 
person at times.  It was through Keith's hard work to get pledges from our 
members that the board was convinced that we would get most or all of the 
money for Tim's suspension.

With all due respect, I think it was this assurance that caused most of the 
directors to approve the Leary agreement and the good publicity we would 
have received was secondary.

Another minor correction is that Charles says that charges were dropped in 
the Dora Kent matter "..but only after a hideously expensive legal 
battle."
Actually after the initial damage, Alcor made the best of this 
situation in several ways.  We received international publicity that showed 
our dedication to our members.  I filed a suit with 5 other persons who 
were taken into custody and received a total settlement from them of 
$90,000 for us. Keith Henson got us another $30,000 on some little known E-
mail violation they made in the raid.  So even though allowing Ms. Kent to 
deanimate in our facility initially was bad for us, the end results were 
turned around and we made some of our largest membership gains ever from 
this.

The situation 
Charles describes seems so terrible that the question comes up as to why 
they did not call the authorities and have those bums thrown out or have 
Mr. Leary transferred to a place where he would have received better 
medical treatment. I'd like to know more about this.  

Charles says that the situation was so bad that their nurse, Carlotta 
Pengelly "... has also quit, because she would have to report to authorities 
the poor standard of patient care if she witnessed it first hand."

It seems to me that it would have been good for the situation if Ms. 
Pengelly would have witnessed it and reported it.

I am glad that Charles has written this detailed report.  It may be helpful 
to all the cryonics groups in the future when dealing with strong willed 
patients who, from a cryonics point of view, appear to be making the wrong 
choices.

Thanks.

Dave Pizer


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