X-Message-Number: 8
From: Kevin Q. Brown
Subject: reply potpourri
Date: 5 Aug 1988
Roy,
I have appended below replies to the first six of your seven questions.
I'll post a reply to your seventh question soon.
- Kevin Q. Brown
...{att|clyde|cuae2}!ho4cad!kqb
> 1) ALCOR was raided by a coroner's office. On balance the raid and
> persecution of ALCOR seems to be politically/publicity oriented.
> Could legal harassment freeze cryonics in its tracks? As a
> suspension member, are you worried whether the organization you
> chose will exist long enough to perform the procedure (may that be
> a long way off!) and long enough to provide many years of
> refrigeration?
ALCOR won a major legal precedent for cryonics by obtaining a permanent
injunction against the Riverside County coroner that prevents him from
thawing out (for autopsy) any of the people in cryonic suspension at ALCOR.
This is an accomplishment unheard of elsewhere. To obtain that injunction,
ALCOR enlisted several influential scientists/technologists, including Eric
Drexler, to testify on behalf of the reasonability of cryonic suspension.
They convinced the judge that people in cryonic suspension have a chance for
recovery and that they therefore have some rights that the coroner, in
particular, is not allowed to violate.
Local and state government authorities still do pose a considerable threat.
A bad law could make cryonicists pack up their bags and begin again elsewhere.
Worse yet, authorities could use their power to continually harass cryonics
organizations and "grind them down" by causing them enormous financial hardship.
In fact, my major concern about the likelihood of revival from cryonic
suspension is not the technical feasibility of reanimation, but rather the
difficulty of creating an organization that will successfully preserve a person
long enough to be reanimated.
Yet, it would take a lot to "freeze cryonics in its tracks". My optimism is
based mostly on my experience with the members of ALCOR. The ALCOR
people are quite determined to do whatever it takes to ensure that suspension
members are safely suspended and preserved. This last January, in the case of
Dora Kent, they were literally quite willing to be hauled away in handcuffs
rather than tell the Riverside County coroner where they had stored Dora Kent.
(The Riverside County coroner had threatened to thaw her out to get an autopsy.)
Some weeks after the raid on ALCOR, Mike Darwin (then president of ALCOR) wrote
in the (late) Jan. 1988 issue of Cryonics:
"The past seven weeks have been sheer hell -- but they have also been an
amazing, positive adventure as well. I am confident now that Alcor has
leaders other than Mike Darwin and Jerry Leaf who are capable of taking the
helm and steering the ship successfully. I am also confident that we have
a fierce and dedicated suspension membership. The incredible loyalty and
support that has been shown cannot even begin to be characterized here."
If this makes you think that the members of ALCOR are very stubbornly
determined to survive, you're right.
> 2) I don't have $20,000 or $100,000 in cash lying around. I under-
> stand that one means of providing the funds necessary for
> suspension is life insurance. I was told that "Universal Life"
> was far preferable to "Term" because Universal, though initially
> more expensive, has relatively constant payments as the policy-
> holder grows older. Whereas Term is initially cheaper (by 50%?)
> but gets prohibitively expensive as you get older. Perhaps a
> shrewd "suspender" could 1) buy term insurance, 2) invest an amount
> equal to his/her premiums in a vehicle returning more than the
> paltry percentage offered by Universal Life policies, and 3) wind
> up with $50k well before the Term policy get prohibitive. I am a
> novice at all of this and am curious about how you financed your
> suspension.
I do not have a strong recommendation for how you should obtain financing for
cryonic suspension, but I can tell you what I did. I looked at the tables of
"death benefits" for whole and universal life policies of a couple of insurance
companies and wrote a small computer program to find how badly these policies
suffered from various rates of inflation. When I saw that these particular
policies were not at all inflation-proof I switched to a (cheap) 10-year term
life policy (from The Midland) and a plan to invest my money and prepare a
trust within 10 years to replace my insurance policy. This requires more work
and discipline than getting a universal (or whole life) policy. I also have
to pay tax on my earnings (unless I buy only nontaxable investments). But at
least I have control over my money and have the opportunity to do a lot better
financially than I would with universal (or whole life) insurance.
> 3) What paperwork was involved with your suspension?
Legally, cryonics is in a gray area; the laws do not have any category for
cryonics. Thus, several kinds of forms need to be completed to take advantage
of whatever legal mechanisms are available.
ALCOR publishes a document called SUMS (Signing Up Made Simple). The required
documents are (1) a will or codicil to a will, (2) Application for Cryonic
Suspension, (3) Authorization for Anatomical Donation, (4) Consent for Cryonic
Suspension, (5) Cryonic Suspension Agreement, and (6) Patient's Directive to
Physician or Health Care Provider. Several other forms are available, which
offer further legal protection, including affidavits for relatives, the
executor, and the physician, Agreement to Hold Harmless to go with the
affidavits, Power of Attorney, Certificate of Religious Belief, etc.
Doing all this paperwork is a real pain. For me, the stress associated with
getting my cryonics paperwork done was comparable to the stress of buying a
new house. And I'm someone who almost enjoys doing his income tax (provided I
get a refund)! The hard parts for me were: (1) getting insurance that didn't
look like a waste of money and (2) communicating my involvement in cryonics to
my family (see my answer to question (7)).
Better information on insurance is available now than it was when I signed up.
ALCOR has some area coordinators who can help. Also, Charles Hartman (see
question (5)) can help.
The American Cryonics Society (ACS) and (probably) the Cryonics Institute (CI)
also have some assistance for obtaining insurance.
> 4) What is Trans-Time, Inc.; who operates it; what is their business;
> do "suspenders" contract with them directly?
Trans Time is a for-profit corporation with public stock, and it suspends only
members of ACS. I don't know who are the current directors, employees, etc.
of Trans Time or what other areas of business Trans Time may have ventured into
besides cryonic suspension. (When you find out you can tell all of us.)
People at the American Cryonics Society (870 Market Street, Suite 368,
San Francisco, CA 94102, 415-397-3386, 800-524-4456) will be able to point you
to people who can tell you more about Trans Time.
What I can do is tell you something about how the organization of Trans Time
compares with the organization of the Cryonics Institute and ALCOR.
The three cryonics organizations are, at first glance, actually three pairs
of organizations: the (non-profit) member organizations (Alcor Life Extension
Foundation, American Cryonics Society (ACS), and Immortalist Society) and the
(for-profit) organizations that actually perform the suspensions (Cryovita,
Trans Time, and Cryonics Institute (CI)). But when you look in more detail
you see that the organizations are actually quite different. The Immortalist
Society has no official connection with the Cryonics Institute, whereas
ACS and Trans Time have an official relationship and so do ALCOR and Cryovita.
The organization of ACS/Trans Time differs in many ways from ALCOR/Cryovita.
One important difference is that Trans Time not only does the suspensions, but
is also responsible for the care of the suspended person thereafter. Cryovita
does only the suspension and then ALCOR is responsible for the care and
maintenance of the suspended person thereafter. (This difference affects the
financial structure of the patient care fund, for one thing. If you want more
details, let me know.)
> 5) I, too, am a loyal reader of Claustrophobia. I called the ubiquitous
> Cryonix C. Hartman for some information, and he sent me some fliers
> from one of the suspension organizations. Is he just playing
> Johnny Cryoseed? Or does he offer some other specific services?
I briefly met Charles Hartman at the (highly successful) Life Against Death
conference in Ontario, CA this past Memorial Day weekend. ** I haven't
seen his fliers but I did get a chance to talk with him briefly.
He offers information on insurance, and I think that he writes policies, too.
One person in the New York City ALCOR Discussion Group (Cryonics Society of
New York) is getting his insurance from Prudential through Hartman.
(This is noteworthy because a few years ago an ALCOR member was unable to obtain
cryonics insurance from Prudential on the grounds that a cryonics organization
had no "insurable interest" in the policy. Times have changed, possibly with
an assist from Hartman.) For more information:
Cryonix C. Hartman, Inc.
514 NW
Stuart, Iowa 50250
(515) 523-1116
** Another Life Against Death conference will be held by the Life Extension
Foundation this Labor Day weekend (Sept. 2 - 5, 1988) at the Clarion Hotel
in San Francisco. Also, a one-day version will be held Halloween weekend
(Oct. 30, 1988 only, changed from Oct. 29) at a hotel near LaGuardia airport.
For more information, call the Life Extension Foundation at 1-800-841-LIFE.
> 6) Is there any bad blood (or glycerol) among any of the organizations?
Relations between ALCOR and the other two cryonics organizations (ACS and CI)
are not comfortable, although ACS and CI are on good terms.
One curious result of this is that The Immortalist has been printing copies of
the affidavits from experts (such as Eric Drexler and Hans Moravec) that helped
ALCOR obtain the permanent injunction that I mentioned above. Nowhere, however,
does The Immortalist mention ALCOR's name. The people in the Michigan group
clearly see the importance of what ALCOR achieved, but are not willing to
publicly give ALCOR credit for it. Strange.
The main conflicts, however, have been between ALCOR and ACS. The April 1987
issue of Cryonics magazine outlined several issues on which they conflict:
"From the very start, there have been many differences of opinion
between ACS/Trans Time and ALCOR about how cryonics operations should
be pursued. These differences have ranged from basic structure (profit
stock company vs. nonprofit service organization) to issues such as
public promotion of neuropreservation, research pathways to be taken,
and investment and money handling procedures."
That issue of Cryonics also describes in detail several examples of "vicious
and distortive information about ALCOR" that were circulated by ACS via private
letter and word-of-mouth (not the ACS Journal). If you want a copy and ALCOR
does not have any extra back issues remaining, you can borrow mine. It's
interesting reading.
Meanwhile, ACS/Trans Time, the Immortalist Society/CI, and the Cryonics Society
of Canada (which does not provide cryonic suspension services) recently made
some agreements to share leads and merge their publications, as described in
the June 1988 issue of The Immortalist. In particular, agreement 6 reads:
"6. Rules of ethics were agreed upon. No society shall attempt to "twist"
or encourage the switching of membership from another member society.
Bashing of other member societies in the media or in our publications
will be considered unethical conduct."
I cannot resist pointing out that according to this rule, when one organization
really screws up, it is "unethical" for another organization to be the
whistle-blower.
One last note: It is rather ironic that after ALCOR voiced concern that the
promotion efforts of ACS would lead to legal problems for cryonics, that it
was ALCOR that first got raided by the coroner's office. Yet, the result of
this seems to be that ALCOR, and all of cryonics, is in a much stronger legal
(and public relations) position than before the raid.
> 7) Here are some statistics I've gathered. In all of human history,
> only about 40 humans have been suspended. Improper arrangements
> were made for some suspensions performed in the 1960s: only 15 or
> 16 persons remain suspended today (ALCOR seems to hold a majority
> of them). Contrary to public conception, suspension has never been
> a fad, never been popular. Have you had any success convincing
> close relatives to look into this alternative? What arguments
> are effective? Do you think suspension is an option which will
> only interest the technologically literate?
I'll reply to this in another posting soon.
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