X-Message-Number: 7578 Date: Mon, 27 Jan 97 20:32:15 From: Fred Chamberlain <> Subject: Response to Visser Comments >From Fred Chamberlain, incoming Alcor President Response to Steve Harris's "Visseral Disgust" (Cryonet #7564) Alcor's only knowledge (so far) of negatives concerning the Visser's work with humans in South Africa comes by way of press reports and rumors. Earlier, Olga Visser stated: >>Dr. Steve Harris reminds me of the insurance >>salesman who believes if he talks fast enough >> and sounds intelligent, he might be believed. Steve Harris comments: >On the contrary, I can now say that I believe it is >essential that Olga Visser be put on some kind of >holiday, before she does someone ELSE a permanent >injury-- probably some black person with AIDS in a >Pretorian hospital, who has enough problems in life >without falling prey to a megalomaniac. And although >we cannot remove Visser's "M.D." credentials, since she >hasn't any, this is perhaps not a bad idea for dealing >with her South African physician-colleagues in this >pitiful affair, who surely bear some responsibility >also. Pending more reliable confirmation of misdoing, we reserve judgement. Harris's condemnation at this early point (see his full post for more context) seems more driven by the tension of his previous interchanges with Olga Visser than by any conclusive basis in fact. Steve Harris continues: > Speaking of which, we now come to that worshipful > U.S. patron of Visser, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, >which was warned by us at Biopreservation that there >was something awfully strange about Visser's claims to >be doing experiments with dimethylformamide on humans, >but which continued to fund Visser anyway, and do >nothing. I have to say I was at first a bit..... Alcor and CI have *nothing* to do with Mrs. Visser's AIDS research, human trials, or even with her transplant research. NO FUNDING, NO COLLABORATION, NO DISCUSSION. She had briefly told us that she was in human trials on AIDS research as well; but that was not part of our collaboration, and we know nothing more than what was in the newspaper articles. We did buy from Visser the right to use her technology for our own research -- a one-time purchase, no "continuing" funding. Though it will be some time before we know if her technology can be made useful for cryonic suspension, we do believe it appropriate to pay for intellectual property. BioPreservation's comments about DMF were a generality about toxicity which was already known, not about human research. >surprised in this, even by Alcor. When it comes to >basic biological science, Alcor has long lacked the >ability to find its corporate rear with both hands, so >to speak-- this many of us knew. But they were warned >in the Visser case by people who knew better, so why >again did nothing happen? When it came to ethics, >after all, Alcor has always claimed to hold the high >ground, and to be extra careful not to associate with >loose cannons of various sorts. In operations concerning our members and patients, we are cautious and will remain so. We were purchasing rights to an observable technology, not delegating any care of our members or patients to someone who might have posed a danger to them. > With a little reflection, however, I believe that > Alcor's commitment to "ethics" in cryonics will be > understood to be a rather carefully limited thing. > For the Alcor Foundation, the interests of "frozen patients" > come first, you see. The fact that what we are told are the >"interests" of the "frozen patients" just happen to >coincide exactly with the interests of the Alcor board >of directors in expanding and keeping personal control >over Alcor's monetary assets, is to be understood as... The Members of Alcor's Board of Directors *are* held personally liable for managing its assets. And almost all of those assets came into the patient care fund from those who are now frozen, i.e. the frozen patients. >a coincidence. The Visser publicity was good for the >"frozen patients," so there you have it. This >outweighs all else. As for the interests of *living* >patients, be they Visser's patients, Alcor's patients, >anybody's patients, except insofar as they represent >potentially profitable frozen meat in Alcor's dewars >(in whatever condition makes little difference for this >purpose)-- Alcor doesn't give a flying f*(% about them. > If one understands this simple principle, the >stranger-than-fiction episode of Visser, and many other >episodes in Alcor's recent history as well, all become >far less opaque. The Visser technology can do nothing to improve the state of affairs for the frozen patients, since they are suspended with other cryoprotectants. Pursuit of the Visser technology, thus, was exclusively for the benefit of the living members, paid for by *research donations* given by those living members, and by their dues. To state that Alcor doesn't care about its patients, in fact to put this in obscene terms, is to say that we do not care about our own relatives, our own friends who are among those patients, and about those living relatives of those patients who are counting on Alcor to keep them safe from the sort of destruction which could come about from taking extraordinary risks to marginally improve suspensions in a select number of cases. Alcor cares enough about its patients, both who are already suspended and those who might soon be suspended, to avoid working relationships with those who are inclined to take extraordinary risks, even at the cost of losing the services of some persons, such as Dr. Harris, who clearly have a great deal of valuable technical knowledge. Cryonics is not a one year or ten year proposition. We must see our patients through many decades ahead to a time when it may turn out that even severely compromised patients can be fully recovered by repair methodologies, or, when it may turn out that only those who have suspensions well beyond any present or near term technology will have severe losses of memory and identity. But however it turns out, we must *see them through* and provide an adequate standard of care for all patients, even those who receive less than optimum suspensions for the technology available at their points of suspension (due to circumstances, legal intervention, or non-availability of the highest possible technology). > Not unrelated to all this, Mike Darwin has recently > asked me to post something about the DSM psychiatric >classification of the personality disorder >descriptively called "narcissistic personality >disorder." I'll be glad to. Here are the diagnostic >criteria as my handbook lists them. The more one knows >about the history of cryonics, the more carefully one >should read. *If the shoe fits, wear it!* We all must answer to this dictum! Fred Chamberlain, Fred Chamberlain, incoming President () Alcor Life Extension Foundation Non-profit cryonic suspension services since 1972. 7895 E. Acoma Dr., Suite 110, Scottsdale AZ 85260-6916 Phone (602) 922-9013 (800) 367-2228 FAX (602) 922-9027 for general requests http://www.alcor.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7578