X-Message-Number: 1298
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 10:48:19 EDT
From:  (Perry E. Metzger)
Subject: CRYONICS unbundling

>From: Thomas Donaldson <>

>Dear Perry Metzger:
>Switzerland also has a rule against perpetuities, which means that
>any arrangement you make with them will ultimately fail. That is ONE
>purpose of a cryonic society.

Of course, you could simply have the money held by a company in a
place like Liechtenstein (sp?) or a similar place that has no rule
against perpetuities.

>As for professional management of a trust fund, I would suggest (and I
>do think this would be an improvement) that Alcor's Suspension Fund be
>managed by a normal trust fund manager (Union Bank of Switzerland?).
>But ultimately Alcor would be responsible for it.

>As for unbundling, the problem isn't with unbundling ESSENTIALLY. It's
>with the currently small number of cryonics activists. Unbundling would
>cause a LARGE increase in workload. As I said before, if you want to
>become a cryonics activist, go to it. So issues comparing us to Chrysler
>just aren't relevant.

Would it actually cause a large increase in the workload? Why?

>From what I can tell, there are only a few real sources of work in
cryonics -- suspensions, maintainance, handling administrative
details, and managing funds.

Suspensions are already being contracted out by Alcor, at least
partially. There is no reason why having a suspension organization as
part of a cryonics organization would reduce workload.

Maintaining people in dewars is not exactly a taxing task -- it mostly
just requires physical security and a steady supply of LN2.

Administrative details of signup is a biggie, but I don't see that
this in and of itself justifies having a monolithic organization --
certainly organizations like Alcor could handle just this and contract
out every other detail of what they do.

Managing funds is done on a routine basis for large individual trusts
without the money having to be part of large pools, and banks seem to
handle this without any real problem.

The point about small numbers of patients is correct, but I would
argue that the number could grow dramatically if we started to look a
lot more professional. Contracting out services to pro organizations
or unbundling would add to our appearance of professionalism. "No, you
aren't giving your money to crackpots -- you are putting it in trust
for yourself with a famous bank. You are going to be suspended by a
professional emergency medical services organization." This sort of
thing will do a lot more for people's confidence than anything else
you can name...


Perry

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