X-Message-Number: 761 From: Subject: Alcor Nevada Minutes Date: Wed, 22 Apr 92 14:45:10 PDT ALCOR NEVADA MINUTES Sunday April 12th 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM Eric Klien Cindy Piturka Jerry Searcy Don Laughlin Ron Piturka An EMT for Every Toe Jerry Searcy has gone through with his promise to make a large sacrifice of his time and energy for our group. He will begin EMT training with me this August with Mercy Ambulance. He will be forced to shift his work hours earlier twice a week in order to attend the training sessions. Considering that he hates working earlier hours and considering that he doesn't like the idea of needles much more than I, Jerry has made the largest sacrifice that any member of my groups has ever made. I never told Jerry this, but if he hadn't signed up for EMT training, I probably wouldn't have either as I'm also not a big fan of such training. So Jerry's sacrifice has given us two EMTs! In addition, Cindy Piturka is already an EMT. Cindy was concerned that with level 1 training, Jerry and I would only be qualified to give injections to dead patients. Does anyone on this list consider this to be a big problem? I was under the impression that stabilization teams usually just worked with legally dead patients. Now for the big news. Don Laughlin has decided to train six of his employees to be EMTs, two for each shift. This will give us a total of nine EMTs in Southern Nevada which is pretty incredible since we only have six Alcor members in Southern Nevada. With Don's helicopter, we will have the ability to have all nine EMTs at the scene if there really was a need for all of them. I have also heard that an Alcor member with EMT training will move back into our area within a year, giving us 10 EMTs -- one EMT for each of the patient's toes! Oh, I should point out that it is likely that the employees that Don will have trained will probably already have some previous medical training. For example, the employee that Don spoke to at our meeting already had some medical training with the military. (The employee was just at our meeting for a few minutes so he isn't listed as attending the meeting.) Clark County Fire Dept. I sent a letter to Richard Dismukes, the Acting Paramedic Coordinator at the Clark County Fire Department asking him to clarify his policy of honoring or not honoring our medical bracelets. My loyal civil servant didn't bother to answer my letter. Don Laughlin suggested at the meeting that I should have sent him a certified letter with receipt requested. He pointed out that not only will government agencies often ignore non certified letters, but they will fine you if you were supposed to send them a letter and they ignored the non certified letter that you sent them. I said that I would contact Austin Tupler the following Monday and ask him for the best procedures to follow. I decided to call Austin because he is known for taking a much less litigious route with the local officials than Alcor has with theirs. Austin owns one of the three Alcor facilities in the world, the facility in Florida, and has had no legal troubles thanks to his ability to work with government officials. So I contacted Austin the next day and he said to not only send a certified receipt requested letter but to use a lawyer in drafting it. So much for hope of a less litigious route! I should point out that Carlos, Alcor's president, had originally just suggested that I send a simple letter so in this case Carlos was the less litigious guy. I contacted Don Laughlin later that day and asked for use of his lawyer so I didn't goof up things further by using a poor lawyer. He agreed and his lawyer contacted me at 9:00 AM the following day. He had a copy of the letter that I had sent Richard Dismukes (I had faxed it to Don) and thought it was pretty good so he resent it unaltered along with a cover letter requesting that the letter be responded to. And he sent it certified receipt requested. All this just to get a policy statement from the Fire Department! Oh, I should point out that Mercy Ambulance does most of the EMT stuff in Nevada. The Fire Department EMTs only come in for the hard problems, like people who need the jaws of life to get them out of their cars. I'll gradually break the news to Mercy Ambulance that there are cryonicists in the area once I begin training with Mercy Ambulance. I passed around a March 29, 1992, article from the Las Vegas Review- Journal praising the efficiency of this private emergency medical care provider. Not only does it provide some of the lowest fees in the country without any government subsidies but it has been at the forefront of industry innovations. For example, Mercy paramedics perform the advanced lifesaving technique of external cardiac pacing, which electrically stimulates the heart muscle much like a pacemaker does giving Las Vegas one of the highest outcome rates in the country for cardiac arrest patients. Our U.S. Senate was so impressed with Mercy that it took some time from its busy schedule to present Mercy with the 1991 U.S. Senate Productivity Award for Excellence. Stabilization Kits and Alcor Training It is planned to buy two stabilization kits from Alcor plus do the special Alcor training of our nine EMTs after our nine EMTs have finished their training in six months or so. Don Laughlin will buy the stabilization kit for Laughlin and the Las Vegans will buy the stabilization kit for Las Vegas. Doctors I didn't have any luck with Katie Kars' list of life extension doctors. One didn't return my call after I told his secretary that the call was about cryonics. Another had his secretary tell me he wasn't interested after I said that call was about cryonics. A third didn't return my call but he was at the same phone number and address as one of the previous doctors, so he must have learned the call was about cryonics. (I did my best not to mention the word cryonics over the phone, but it's not easy to be allowed to speak to a doctor over the phone without being a current patient.) The fourth doctor worked at a children's clinic so I crossed him off my list. The fifth doctor had a recording that he was in Texas, so I considered him too unstable to be our family doctor. I should point out that all these doctors were practicing near each other, so if any of them were interested in cryonics they would probably have learned about my calls. Don said that while his personal doctor wasn't a big fan of cryonics, he would do whatever was necessary to help Don out. Since his doctor isn't a big cryonics fan it would be unfair for the rest of us to ask him to be our family doctor. We'll have to keep looking. If anyone's family doctor shows an interest in cryonics they should let us know. Chapter Certification Rules I mentioned that these rules are being worked on and if anyone is interested in helping develop them that they should contact Tanya Jones at Alcor. Sharon Fields v. Laurence O. Pilgeram This is a case where it looks like an Alcor member froze his wife against her wishes. Alcor is not a defendant in this case and will abide by the court rulings in this matter. I passed around the court document so Alcor members wouldn't be too surprised when for the first time, Alcor let a patient die. To make a long story short, not only was a will dug up showing that his wife wanted to die via a Christian burial, but every friend and relative knew this. No one testified differently. Department of Health Services v. Alcor Life Extension Foundation Actually the full name of this case to make cryonics illegal in California is "David W. Mitchell; Kenneth W. Kizer, M.D., M.P.H.; Office of the State Registrar; Department of Health Services v. Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Inc., a California Non-Profit Corporation; Ralph Merkle; and Keith Henson." The state lost the original case and is now appealing. Here are some quotes from their appeal: "Or, even more specifically, what would happen to such estate and assets if and when cryonic suspension is successful and the decedent is restored to life? Whose identity is the person to assume or be assigned and what of the record of the person's death? ... Appellants, specifically the Office of the State Registrar, are charged with the duty to develop a uniform system of registering births, deaths, marriages, etc. In case of persons stored in cryonic suspension, the Registrar's Office is truly at loss as to how to register the status of such persons..." In other words, the state wants to kill us because we are going to ruin their pretty mortality records! I don't think the state has a chance of winning now that they have admitted such thoughts in their appeal. Here's a little more from their appeal: "Alcor argues that the right to determine the disposition of one's own body is a fundamental right based upon the concept of freedom of choice. However, such right must be balanced against the state's interest in regulating the method and place of disposition of human remains for the purposes of maintaining public health and safety and keeping proper mortality statistics." Pretty wild attitude! I passed around the suggested response that Dave Pizer and I wrote in regards to the previous quotes. This response was forwarded to our president, Carlos. Hydergine Katie Kars sent me some information about Hydergine written by Durk Pearson. This medicine is used in France for reanimation, meaning that it can be used to bring very recently dead persons back to life in conjunction with other methods. The basis for this is that, in conditions where oxygen is not adequately supplied to the brain, normally irreversible free radical brain damage begins to occur after about five minutes. However, if Hydergine can be injected into the carotid artery within a few minutes after death, the brain will not begin to suffer irreversible damage for about thirty minutes. Since Hydergine is a powerful stabilizer of brain metabolism as measured by EEG energy output, French doctors administer it to preoperative patients so that if a crisis such as cardiac arrest occurs while they are on the operating table, the doctors will have more time to handle the situation before they have to worry about brain damage. I asked everyone at the meeting if they knew anything about Hydergine. One member said that taking the FDA-approved dose of 3 milligrams a day seemed to have no effect on him. He believed that Deprenyl was more powerful. If anyone reading these minutes has any further comments, I'd be interested. I am especially interested if such a substance would be useful in stabilization procedures. Recruiting Members Once again we had less people attend than the previous Alcor Boston meeting. Once I realized that an expected couple wasn't going to show up, I panicked and did a mass mailing across Usenet. I advertised in the space, astronomy, medical, virtual reality, Libertarian, nanotechnology and religious groups. I actually found one person via the religious groups but he was in Michigan so is unlikely to attend any of our meetings. I gave him the e-mail address of the head of the Alcor Indiana group plus called Alcor and had literature sent to him. I may try advertising in Usenet again since it wasn't a complete failure. The Las Vegas Review-Journal ran my free ad this time. I made a few changes to my last ad that wasn't run including adding a specific date instead of saying the second Sunday of the month. While this ad was a complete failure, it reached hundreds of thousands of readers and was free so I will run it every month. Now I can fail twelve times a year! I attended a second Libertarian meeting, this time having a private dinner with Marrou and three other key Libertarian leaders. I had a lot more success than my first meeting as not only had one of these people heard of cryonics but he specifically mentioned that he was thinking of joining Alcor. I believe that I will have a lot more success dealing with Libertarian leaders than regular Libertarian members. It's like our luck with science fiction conventions -- we can't get the average people to join, but quite a few science fiction writers have signed up. I am very pleased that I may become one of the few people to have significant success recruiting via Libertarian groups. (I believe that the Chamberlains had some success using this method twenty years ago when the Libertarian movement was beginning.) Despite the fact that 90% of our members have Libertarian leanings, recruiting via such groups has a very poor record of success. Because of that second meeting, I have added one Libertarian leader to my mailing list. I am pleased that he wasn't one of the people who attended that meeting. In other words, the word is spreading throughout the local leadership that I'm an Alcor member. So I can just sit back and let them contact me. I do communicate with them a lot anyway, since I'm involved in the corporate tax repeal petition drive, the term limits petition drive, and the stop Marrou from being our presidential candidate movement. Guest Speakers It would increase the membership of our meetings a lot if a guest speaker attended. My friends in Arizona would be much more likely to attend a meeting with a guest speaker. And my Arizona mailing list is nearly as long as my Nevada mailing list! Patient Care Fund The Patient Care Trust Fund Advisory Committee will make its first investment decisions by the next Alcor board meeting. I'll publish our recommendations in the next issue of our minutes. Here is the current money we have to work with: $2100, $10000, and $21500 in three different bank accounts, $31000 in Symbex (owners of current building), $28000 in U.K. building, $41000 in accounts receivable, $5000 due from Research Fund, $181000 in property and equipment including stuff like dewars, $201250 in Benham Capital Preservation Fund, $453000 in Benham Adj Rate Govt Sec Fund. The first fund invests in T-bills, the second in adjustable mortgages. Carlos has been pursuing the wise move of transferring all trust assets into the adjustable mortgage fund. As you can see he has already managed to place most of our liquid assets there. Our current thinking is to do something like the following: 1) Close all three bank accounts. 2) Move from adjustable mortgages towards convertible bonds. 3) Put some money in equities. (We are allowed a maximum of about $130000 in equities according to current rules.) I should point out that my investigations show that because of various factors including the 10% rule where 10% of all unrestricted funds go into the Trust, the Patient Care Trust Fund has acted like a black hole where money enters but almost never leaves. Alcor just checks once a year to see whether or not donations into the fund including the 10% rule amount to more or less than the money needed for Patient Care. Often no money is even taken out of the Trust at this time. Therefore the Patient Care Fund has little reason to be very liquid even though the rules make it very liquid. It is the Endowment Fund that needs to be very liquid, as we need to live off the interest that it generates. Charlie Hartman asked if there was some way that members can put money into the patient care fund individually before they enter suspension. The answer is no because of legal reasons about trusts and tax free status. But members can buy Alcor property, such as a slot in our next building and pledge that as part of their suspension payment. This is a neat way to go because the property will increase in value with time, covering more and more of your suspension costs. I will eventually go this route and drop my life insurance policies. My $10000 investment in our next building will be my first step down this route. Robert Heinlein Charlie Hartman mentioned that by having people who have made money be in charge of money, we are imitating Heinlein's writings about The Howard Foundation. He suggests that we follow Heinlein's advice about an organization as a rejuvenation clinic from Time Enough For Love and the aspects of an insurance/suspension and revival company from Door In To Summer. New Building The new building has been put on hold because our competing investor bought the building one day before his hold on the building expired. We will do nothing more to look for a building in Arizona until we have received government approval to move into the state. One of our options will be to buy the building from the investor who we believe paid $50K less than we were going to pay for the building. When a building is bought, a limited partnership "Son of Symbex" will be buying the building. "Son of Symbex" will be composed of large investors plus subchapter S corporations composed of up to ten small investors per corporation. I want to emphasize that all of this is just in the planning phase as we do not yet have a building to buy; none of the corporations in question yet exist. I currently plan to name my sub chapter S corporation "Fast Forward Inc." but I am open to other suggestions. Next Meeting Our next meeting will be on the second Sunday of next month, May 10th, at 5:00 PM at the Riverside casino in Laughlin, Nevada. Take 95 south from Las Vegas, through Henderson, where it forks between 95 and 93. Bear right at the fork and stay on 95 past Searchlight until you reach the intersection with 163 a little before the border with California. Go left on 163 and stay on it until you see signs for Laughlin. You can't miss the Riverside Casino in Laughlin, Nevada. For more information, call Eric Klien at (702) 255-1355. I'll be car-pooling there with other Las Vegans. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=761