X-Message-Number: 1192 From: Subject: CRYONICS Date: Wed, 16 Sep 92 23:44:36 PDT Message-Id: <> David Stodolsky wrote: > Keith Henson (1992. The negative side of growth. _Cryonics_, 13(8), 7) > observes that a majority of suspensions in the last five years have been > of people who signed up terminal. This suggests that making it easier > for people to sign up just prior to clinical death would be an effective > way to increase number of suspensions and accelerate the growth of > cryonics. And Brian Wowk replied: > Huh? Are we reading the same magazine? The point of Keith's >article was that terminal sign ups are a BAD THING. That's why the >article was entitled the "*negative* side of growth." > > Patients in suspension are a liability, not an asset. Healthy, >living, dues-paying members are what cryonics needs most, not dying >people who will soon need suspending (and burn up enormous amounts of >volunteer labor in the process). If anything, we need to more actively >*discourage* terminal patients from joining. I agree on all of Brian's posting except for the last sentence. I think there is a fairly wide consensus among the board, officers and staff of Alcor that we want to suspend all of those who want it and can meet at least the minimum requirements. Brian is certainly right in that cryonics needs the healthy ones. We are, however, going to get some with (as the old saying goes) one foot in a dewar and the other on a bar of soap. Our problem is how to keep out of trouble from the work load and the costs a significant number of terminal cases put on Alcor. The recent east-coast suspension of a member who was signed up for about a week before we went on standby is certainly a sharp lesson. All the bills are not yet in on that one, but those to date for the standby/transport phase totaled a little over 21k. That is *7 times* the allocated amount in the suspension funding. I roughly averaged the standby/transport fraction of cost for the last half dozen suspensions (all except one were in California) and the amount allocated is reasonably close to the actual cost. During the early part of standby some of the New York volunteers were there (and I can state that they were highly appreciated!) and for a good fraction of the time, some Boston locals were assisting (and they did an excellent job as well) but, as this one dragged on, we had to bring in people from the west coast who (partly because they are contractors or in one case a student) have more flexibility in the time they take from their work. (Steve Bridge also flew out from Indiana.) Of course, time off work is money lost--I don't even want to think about how much it cost our household. Shipping and airline tickets made up about half of the total. This is mainly an effect of where Alcor is located, and where the most experienced volunteers live. This suspension would have been rough no matter where it was. But even with no complications a suspension on the east coast is going to cost a lot more than a California one. The net effect at the moment is a massive subsidy in both money and volunteer labor of east-coast members by the west-coast members. I presume this will improve as more volunteers are trained and become experienced on the east coast. I would be very interested in any other suggestions about reducing the magnitude of the financial and volunteer labor drain for east coast or other remote suspensions. It is daunting to contemplate the cost of using medical professionals for this standby. My wild guess would be at least 100k or about 2 1/2 times the entire cost of a nuerosuspension. We have two recent remote standbys of signed-up-terminal cases to compare. The one which went well had the full support of the next of kin. One policy change has come out of these experiences. Before we sign up another terminal case, the family is going to be fully up to speed on what will be asked of them. Keith Henson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1192