X-Message-Number: 1332
Date: 18 Nov 92 07:10:42 EST
From: Paul Wakfer <>
Subject: CRYONICS Mike Darwin Cancels Suspension Membership
Au Revoir, But Hopefully Not Goodbye: A Communication From Mike
Darwin
Over the years I have written many articles for Cryonics
magazine. But I never, even in my wildest imaginings, thought I
would be writing the one I am writing now. Life is very strange
and it is also often very harsh.
On Wednesday, 4 November, 1992 I terminated my contract to
provide suspension services and consultation to the Alcor Life
Extension Foundation. On 15 November, I also terminated my
Suspension Membership with Alcor.
Since many of you are Alcor members either directly or
indirectly as a result of contact with me or my work product, I
feel a sense of responsibility to explain to you why I have
chosen these courses of action. The decision to end my
participation in Alcor as both a Suspension Team and Suspension
Member was a surprisingly easy one. The years of pain and grief
which lead up to it were not so easy -- either to live through or
to explain.
In a way these two decisions come as a great relief, a
positive thing: much like the relief often experienced by those
who have watched a lover, a parent, or a child, suffer a slow and
agonizing decline, when death finally comes. It is a terrible
analogy, but also a very true one. Yes, there were
"precipitating" events. But they were not the only reasons. I
will do my best to share with you my reasons and feelings, in
large measure so that you might be spared some of the pain I have
experienced. And also in the hope that perhaps this
communication will motivate some of you to try to change a course
of events I have been powerless to effect even though I bear no
small measure of responsibility for setting them in motion.
As I think back to over a decade ago I can see in my mind's
eye a vision of Alcor which I, and others working with me, sought
to turn into reality. For most of that decade I felt confident
of success and confident that Alcor was on the path to being the
pillar of integrity, openness, fiscal responsibility, and keeper
of high principles that I dreamed it would be. I was an idealist
in love with an ideal, and perhaps the outcome is as it always is
for idealists who dare to dream their dreams aloud and try to
fashion them into a living breathing thing. Today, I am
experiencing the same grief that many of you experience when
surveying what the dream of our constitutional forefathers has
become in the form of the United States as it exists today. I am
truly thankful that Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington
never lived to see it.
Yes, it may still be one of the freest and richest countries
in the world. But what does that mean, and how does it compare
to what would have been, could have been, should have been had so
many of the first principles of the Founding Fathers not have
been corrupted by a body politic of cowards and scoundrels who's
only allegiance is to their own short-term interests rather than
to the principles which they were charged with preserving and
implementing?
And so it goes with Alcor. Over the past 5 years I have
watched as principle after principle was compromised. As
decisions increasingly became made on the basis of interpersonal
dynamics, politics, and compromise. I have watched as Board
meetings became exercises in public showmanship while the real
issues were debated in secret behind closed doors so that both
the issues and the bitter acrimony that surround them are hidden
from members' view. There is more than a passing similarity
between the woes of Alcor and the woes of the United States of
America, or of Great Britain, or half a dozen other nations for
that matter.
Alcor has lost the serious commitment it once had to
research. I am still trying to recover from the shock and anger
I felt upon reading Keith Henson's words on Jerry Leaf and
cryonics research in the September issue of Cryonics: "I think
that a substantial part of the reason Jerry did not do a lot of
research in the last few years is that he simply did not have any
really good lines of research (which fell within available
budgets) to follow. He was about to repeat and extend some very
old work on hamsters at the time he went into suspension." The
thrust of the rest of Keith's article is that true suspended
animation may well require nanotechnology and that the costs and
problems associated with suspended animation research are
probably insurmountable for cryonics organizations in the
foreseeable future. This from a Director of Alcor, and a
technically sophisticated one at that! (And they let this guy
remain on the Board?!) Keith's remarks are pure nonsense. There
are literally dozens of projects that might be profitably pursued
by Alcor in literally every area of cryonics research. I list
but a few below:
* Development of cryoprotectives (single agents and
mixtures) in a rabbit brain slice model to reduce ice formation
and thus greatly reduce or even eliminate the tremendous
mechanical injury current patients are experiencing. This is
relatively straightforward, inexpensive and incredibly valuable
research.
* Elimination of cracking injury. This requires
straightforward studies, initially with bulk solutions of
cryoprotective mixtures and eventually with perfused animals.
This is more of an engineering problem than anything else and is
well within the reach of a small budget.
* Demonstration of the viability of memory in mammals
following conversion of 60% of brain water to ice. This is the
"hamster" work which Keith mentions in passing. And it is not
reduplication of old work since the work done almost 50 years ago
never evaluated whether the animals retained memory of learned
tasks following freezing.
* Additional ultrastructural studies to determine at what
point, during freezing or after thawing, the tremendous
ultrastructural damage to brains is occurring. If a rabbit model
is used this work could easily be done for $10,000 (and that's
budgeting it at 4 times what the first project cost in the mid
1980's using cats!). Additionally, the use of helium gas
perfusion of the circulatory system during freezing could be
investigated to determine if this would reduce vascular injury to
the brain as it has been shown to do in some studies with kidneys
and small intestine.
* Improvement in TBW solutions and pre-medication of
suspension patients so that they do not experience as much cold
and warm ischemic injury. This is a more ambitious project in
terms of costs and personnel. But in this case I know it can be
done because I am already doing it, and doing it independent of
Alcor with far less resources at my disposal!
I could go on and on. The point is, Alcor has become an
organization that has lost its research vision, lost the
commitment it takes to do serious cryonics research and lost the
lead to other cryonics organizations who, however crudely, are
doing real cryonics research! Instead, Alcor spends its
approximately $325,000 a year budget on other things -- most of
them coming under the heading of administration and the
recruitment of ever more members with promotions and contests and
slick literature in a never ending quest to stay one step ahead
of a Ponzi-style day of reckoning.
Alcor has lost its once serious commitment to keep its word
when making promises such as not invading the Endowment Fund. It
has even lost its ability to maintain the confidentiality of its
member/patient records. It has become an organization operating
not at a cash surplus, but rather at a deep deficit. It has
become an organization that delays paying many of its bills until
its creditors all but scream (and sometimes until they actually
do scream).
Watching these things happen has been agony beyond words for
me. Watching my dreams, and hopes, and much of the labor of ten
years disintegrate before my eyes has been like watching my child
or my spouse die. My Alcor bracelet has become a source of pain
and humiliation every time I glance it. There are no words for
the grief I have felt.
For a long time I have been patient and even optimistic in a
perverse kind of way, telling myself that things will get better
tomorrow, that things often get worse before they get better.
Sadly, this has not been the case. With each passing year, and
more recently, with each passing month, I have watched the
situation deteriorate. Cryonics magazine, which once was the
bulwark of hard and gritty truths about anything Alcor or
cryonic, has been reduced to a bland political instrument
designed to put the best light on any information that escapes.
And through its pages damned little real information escapes
these days. For many of you, relative newcomers to Alcor, you
will not remember when Cryonics was otherwise. However, for many
long-time members there is, I believe, the same sense of loss
that I feel.
In short, a major reason for my deciding to take the course
of action that I have is that I no longer believe. At least not
in Alcor anymore. I no longer trust or believe that Alcor is
capable of caring for and aggressively defending the patients it
now has in it care, and I also believe that Alcor can no longer
deliver the quality of suspension services it once did, and more
to the point, I believe the current staff and much of the
management at Alcor is either consitutionally unable to
acknowledge that fact, or in some cases to even appreciate that
it is so!
An example of this erosion of trust which was a significant
"precipitating" event for me was the failure of the Alcor Board
to take any action to discipline a Director who has repeatedly
violated both patient and member confidences -- in one case
making deliberate, unauthorized, prohibited disclosures about a
patient's medical history and suspension membership status,
boasting about it afterwards and then stating to his fellow
Directors (in my presence), that he has every intention of "doing
it again if he feels the situation justifies it."
Some will argue that staying signed up with Alcor offers
some chance, certainly a better chance than nothing at all. I
suppose there is merit to to this argument. However, there must
be a belief that there is some chance. It is my honest assessment
that for me personally, Alcor, in its current form and with its
current management (some of whom are both well-intentioned and
even close personal friends) offers no chance at all. Yes, I
acknowledge that positive change can still occur. But I have
come to the decision that the personal pain of remaining a part
of something I hold in contempt and which sickens me to
contemplate, is a higher price than the slim probability that
Alcor will save my life in its current form should I need
suspension tomorrow. When you no longer trust, you no longer
believe. And when you no longer believe, you no longer have the
motivation to pursue a course of action that causes you pain and
reminds you of a dream that has exacted a heavy price in dying.
Many will call me a coward. Some have told me that I have a
duty to try and set the situation right. Some of my dearest
friends and colleagues, like Curtis Henderson, whom I love as I
love my own father and mother, have raged at me for my "cowardice
and inaction." What they fail to understand is that Alcor is now
in the control of a political process and political processes can
only be affected by politicians -- or revolutionaries. I am
certainly not the former. And I am no longer the gun toting
version of the latter ready to go off and form another cryonics
organization at the drop of a hat.
I grieve mostly for the patients, but there is nothing I can
do for them beyond what I am doing here. Many who question
Alcor's management have said that the patients are in no
immediate danger, that they are being well cared for. And yes,
it is true that the liquid nitrogen is being topped off, the
records being kept. But it is not that which is seen that is the
problem, it is that which is unseen. What is not being done is
the issue. Every day the seismic risk to patients increases and
yet the kind of solid precautions required to give the patients a
fighting change at making it through a seismic event languish
undone.
Inefficient financial operation has cost the patient care
fund tens of thousands of dollars in lost interest -- money that
may someday make the difference between survival and failure.
The 10% Rule has been all but gutted, long ago (and in secret)
got round by billing exhorbitant fractions of staff member's
salaries to the Patient Care Fund (PCF). Did you know for
instance that 50% of Tanya Jones' salary is billed to the PCF. I
would be most interested to see how Tanya manages to spend 50% of
her full-time job on administrative matters related directly to
care of the patients in suspension!
Ultimately, the quality of cryogenic care that patients
currently receive is due to the diligence and incredible
dedication of a single individual (who operates largely
unsupervised), Mike Perry. When he leaves, is disabled, or is
suspended I have no confidence that the current administrative
framework is set up in such a way as to insure that the job will
be done as well (or at all!) by his successor(s).
I am also distressed by the pattern that this current crisis
represents. Every cryonics organization that has ever existed
has suffered from this kind of problem: poor management,
technical deterioration, and political infighting. I am coming
to believe that this problem may be one inherent in cryonics.
That it may be a function of the lack of feedback inherent in an
enterprise where the customers don't know what happened to them
for decades or centuries and it is all but impossible for others
to sort out what was or was not important in what was done to
them today. Is an hour of warm ischemia a total disaster, or a
trivial problem? Does pulsatile flow really make a difference?
Is 20% ice formation vs. 60% really going to affect the ultimate
outcome?
The longer I live the more I am becoming convinced that our
cryobiological and other scientific critics are quite right in
asserting that cryonics is not good science or even science at
all. At the very least I am coming to understand their deep
discomfort at a practice that markets hope without tying its
promise to a proven path of feedback. Permafrost burial,
"suspending" people who are partially decomposed... At what
point do we look at ourselves and ask whether what we are doing
is rational or purely a religious exercise? At what point do we
wake up to discover we have become a cult? With no objective
benchmarks people of little or no experience and even less skill
and knowledge end up in control of suspension programs for
political, rather than technical reasons. And I wish to make it
clear that this is by no means a problem confined to Alcor or
merely to the cryonics groups now extant.
And speaking of cults, the hallmark of any cult is a
constant and unrelenting demand for member conformity and
agreement with leadership and the penalty for noncompliance is
expulsion or even execution. I have witnessed Keith Henson, an
Alcor Director, with the support of Carlos Mondragon, Alcor's
President, and Joe Hovey, Alcor's Manager of Information Systems
seriously propose terminating a member's suspension membership
because he said things of which they did not approve and further
proposed creating an institution framework to expel other
suspension members who speak their mind in the future. More
recently I have seen Keith Henson try to "censure" Eric Klein
merely for speaking his mind. Dear God, what has Alcor come to
that these kind of men are running it, and what's more are
continuing to run it after exhibiting such behavior?
To my growing horror I am discovering that cryonics, much
like communism, promises to improve peoples' lives through
science, give them a future of abundance, increase camaraderie,
make them better human beings, redress many of the deep
injustices of life, and above all speed scientific and technical
progress. The reality is that cryonics leads to financial ruin,
bitter interpersonal disputes, increased anxiety, and above all a
stultification of technological progress. It seems that inherent
in believing that today's techniques are good enough to rescue
patients treated with them is a corollary decrease in any
incentive to improve them.
Instead of "Comes the Revolution" the mantra has become
"Comes Nanotechnology." So deep is this corruption that a
Director of Alcor actually has the nerve to say that the
development of true suspended animation may well have to await
the development of full-blown nanotechnology. It's a lucky thing
the idea of nanotechnology wasn't around in medicine or
engineering in the distant past otherwise we would still be
waiting on antibiotics, vaccines, blood compatible surfaces, and
flying machines. We are doomed to failure when any "really
difficult" problem becomes a task beyond our means and an
achievement we must wait for "Our Friends In The Future" to
deliver to us.
The above notwithstanding, I have not given up on cryonics,
or on the patients in Alcor's care, or on the ideals of
integrity, full disclosure, fiscal responsibility and above all a
commitment to quality patient care that provides objective
feedback. Without these things, without all of these things
cryonics becomes merely another exercise in mysticism. However,
I have come to understand that cryonics organizations as they are
currently structured will be unable to deliver these ideals.
I have seen the gross and ultrastructural damage being done
to cryonic suspension patients' brains: massive ice crystals
displacing structures, cutting neuronal connections, and stirring
the debris ahead of the growing ice fronts. In my opinion it has
always a 50-50 proposition at best as to whether or not patients
could (biologically) be recovered from such massive injury. The
only thing which made such damage "acceptable" was the certain
knowledge that nothing better was available and that everything
possible that could be done was being done to improve the
situation. That is the only thing, the only thing that made
inflicting that kind of injury bearable.
When Alcor had no money, it was understandable that research
was limited -- and yet still research went on, including
pioneering ultrastructural studies which disclosed just how bad
the situation was -- in addition to the incredible achievement of
recovering dogs from 4-hours of bloodless perfusion at a few
degrees above freezing. That is hardly the situation now. Now, a
bloated administration consumes tens of thousands of dollars of
money and virtually no research relevant to improving brain
cryopreservation is being conducted.
To me, this situation is totally unacceptable. It has become
unbearable for me to continue my participation on any level in a
program that promises people research on suspended animation
while it pours hundreds of thousands of dollars down legal and
administrative rat holes.
Since my return as a consultant to Alcor I have been
repeatedly told by almost all of current management that they
feel fully capable of doing suspensions without me, and what's
more that they think they can do suspensions as well or better
than they could with me. I have been told bluntly that the
reason I have been "hired" is purely political and that I will be
let go as soon as it is politically tenable to do so.
Even with this situation as unpleasant and as painful as it
is, I would probably have continued to tolerate it and try to do
the best job possible. However, the situation is such that I
have virtually no control over any aspect of Alcor's suspension
program -- except my own performance. And my performance is
critically dependent upon the facilities and staff I have to work
with. Over the past year I have witnessed what I believe to be a
steady deterioration in Alcor's readiness and physical capability
(much of it as a result of poor management, political squabbling,
and the alienation of Cryovita). The situation is such that I
have come to actively fear the possibility of being involved in
an Alcor suspension. As a case in point, I recently went over to
Alcor to in-service personnel on the use of the Mobile Advanced
Life Support Unit (MALSS). During the course of my in-service I
discovered that several critical items were missing from the cart
-- including tube occluding forceps -- items which are absolutely
essential to being able to place a patient on cardiopulmonary
bypass.
The response of Tanya Jones, Alcor's "Suspension
Administrator" was vigorous protestations to the effect that the
cart had "just been inventoried a short time before and the
occluders were there at that time." If this were the only such
incident it might be overlooked. But it is not. Rather, it is
typical of a facility which is increasingly disorganized and
technically unaccountable. There is no adequate inventory of
suspension critical supplies and equipment, and there is no lock-
down on supply cabinets to insure that what has been stocked is
kept in place.
The Suspension Administrator is a 24-year-old woman with no
medical or technical background who's approach to cryonic
suspension can best be described as flowcharting and knob
turning. Hugh Hixon, the only staffer at Alcor with technical
sophistication is both disorganized and incapable of either
understanding or implementing a comprehensive program of
readiness or teaching. Both he and the Suspension Administrator
are also regrettably weak on theory and, in my opinion, lack a
comprehensive understanding of the cryonic suspension process.
These things in and of themselves are not crimes or lethal
errors. However when they are coupled with an attitude of
arrogance and unwillingness to learn they are.
These words may seem harsh. They may seem bitter or
resentful. They are not. All those emotions have been burned
out of me long ago (and yes, I felt them once, felt them in
spades!). Rather, they are the unvarnished expression of the
truth as I see it. The only emotion left in me is revulsion at
the whole ghastly situation and a strong desire to be free of it
at almost any cost. In short, there comes a point when enough is
enough. I have reached that point.
I am still spending my time on cryonics. I am still as
deeply committed to the success and growth of this idea as I ever
was. To this end I am working in the laboratory to develop a
reversible method of suspension. A technique that can serve as
an objective, irrefutable standard and benchmark against which
all suspensions, past, present, and future can be measured. No
doubt the odds are heavily against me and my colleagues. Perhaps
it is very likely we will fail. Thus it has always been. I am
sorry I cannot do more directly to "fix" Alcor. However, rest
assured I am doing everything I can to improve cryonics in the
way I feel most capable -- by working in the laboratory.
A change in the leadership of Alcor will be a good beginning
towards the other changes that need to be made. But it will be
only just that, a beginning. Alcor and cryonics both need major
work. Some of things which need doing are straightforward, if
not easy to carry out. Other changes will require solutions not
now in evidence.
In the meantime I have chosen to "take my chances." If
death comes for me in the interim, then I can only hope that my
actions here will have served to facilitate much needed change
and that my end will serve as a sober reminder to all of the
price of failure. It is a price I was prepared to pay from the
start (and which I still sincerely hope to avoid having to pay).
If and when a cryonics organization emerges that has my
trust, my faith (yes faith) and above all a serious commitment to
brain cryopreservation research then I will join the ranks of
those signed up again, and breathe a happy sigh of relief. I
fervently hope with all my heart that that day will come soon and
that that organization will be Alcor.
Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1332