X-Message-Number: 1476
Date: 21 Dec 92 00:58:27 EST
From: STEPHEN BRIDGE <>
Subject: CRYONICS President/elect
December 21, 1992
*** The following is an article by me to be published in the January
issue of CRYONICS. It is likely that, after spending the past week
at Alcor talking with the employees and other Alcor members, I would
make some changes if starting the article again. But the main points
would not be different and, since this is the way it will be in the
magazine, this is what you get also.
Steve Bridge ***
****************************************************************
>From President-Elect Stephen Bridge
To the Alcor membership
The history of cryonics is replete with bumps and bruises, failures
and tragedies, along with more than a few startling triumphs. The nearly
twenty-one years of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation are similarly
uneven. Alcor was started in early 1972 because of doubts and differences
that Fred and Linda Chamberlain had with Robert Nelson and the Cryonics
Society of California. This was a prescient move on their part, since a
few years later it was discovered that Nelson had failed to keep his
patients frozen.
Alcor stayed a tiny, almost personal organization for another decade.
Jerry Leaf became involved with cryonics in 1977 and, based on his
background in thoracic surgery and research, began rapidly to upgrade the
quality of suspensions. He worked with both Trans Time and Alcor to train
teams of members to do research and perform human suspensions.
Coincidentally, I also became a cryonicist in 1977, when Michael Darwin
and I started the Institute for Advanced Biological Studies in
Indianapolis. IABS never became a large cryonics group, but we did begin
many paths that have led to current Alcor successes. We wrote a 24-page
booklet that, over the years, has turned into *Cryonics--Reaching for
Tomorrow*; we became the first group to publicly advocate neurosuspension
as a suspension option; I (together with the ideas of several attorneys)
wrote a set of legal paperwork which was the ancestor of the current Alcor
suspension documents; Mike especially was able to accomplish some notable
early research and come up with several significant new technical ideas;
and, in 1981, we started *Cryonics* magazine.
Later in 1981, Michael Darwin moved to California, and in 1982 we
merged IABS with Alcor. Mike became Alcor President and, with Jerry Leaf,
Hugh Hixon, Allen Lopp, and other Southern California members, swiftly
changed Alcor into the liveliest, most technically progressive, and most
rapidly growing cryonics organization in the country. Mike was President
for 5 1/2 years, including the move to Riverside.
But in January, 1988, the suspension of Dora Kent spurred the
Riverside Coroner to attack Alcor, resulting in two raids on our facility,
the detention of several Alcor personnel, and a flurry of legal actions.
On the brink of disaster, Alcor made Treasurer Carlos Mondragon its new
President. Carlos was a gritty fighter for the rights of Alcor and of its
suspended patients. He almost seemed to grow larger and stronger as the
situation grew worse. With the assistance of Jerry Leaf, Saul Kent,
Michael Darwin, Steve Harris, Keith Henson, Arthur McCombs, and some
terrific attorneys (and other members too numerous to mention--no slight
intended), Carlos led Alcor to a series of legal victories that stunned
several local and state governmental agencies.
Interestingly, the storm of news coverage of these events eventually
placed Alcor as the heroic organization in the battle; and our membership
began to boom (for a cryonics organization, anyway). Mike Darwin was
named Director of Research, and he, Jerry Leaf, and Hugh Hixon continued
to make substantial advances in our suspension capability. Under the
Presidency of Carlos Mondragon, Alcor has placed 17 more patients into
suspension, and suspension membership has grown from 100 to about 350.
In the ten years since Mike Darwin moved to California, Alcor has
completely changed from a tiny group of friends hoping to find some way to
hold on to life, to a dynamic organization with seven employees, dozens of
volunteers around the United States (many with training in how to provide
the early stages of "transport" for a suspension patient), sets of
transport equipment and supplies in four remote U.S. locations and two
sites overseas, and assets of around $2 million.
And now comes another change in leadership. Carlos Mondragon has
resigned as President and CEO, effective January 22, 1993, and I have been
selected to take his place. While much hostility has been vented in the
various arguments of the past few months, I consider this to be a "bump,"
not a failure. Looking at the both dynamic and crisis-laden history of
Alcor, I understand that becoming the leader of this organization is an
awesome challenge. The members of Alcor not only want every positive
aspect of Alcor's recent past to continue (and to accelerate, no doubt);
but they also want every problem they point out eliminated. *Today.* In
an organization whose members overwhelmingly identify themselves as
"libertarian" (my dictionary unaccountably leaves the words
"argumentative, opinionated, stubborn, and uncompromising" out of the
definition), this means a lot of forceful "pointing out."
Not surprisingly, these kinds of members offer many solutions which
conflict with each other. It will not be easy for Alcor's Board of
Directors and me to sort these solutions out -- or even to agree on what
the problems really are. But we will give it the greatest effort we have
in us.
For those many members who do not know me, let me tell you more about
myself. I am 44 years old, and I have spent the last eighteen years as a
librarian in Indianapolis, including the last twelve years as an assistant
branch manager. After the Institute for Advanced Biological Studies
merged with Alcor in 1982, I continued to be one of the more active
cryonicists in the country. I have written many articles for *Cryonics*
and I have continued to be the main editor and re-writer for Alcor's
suspension paperwork (though if you recently worked your way through that
mass of paper, you might not call this a positive).
For several years I have been the Alcor Midwest Coordinator and I am
President of the Alcor Indiana Chapter. I was one of the first Alcor
members to get EMT training, and two years ago I also took Alcor's
Transport Technician Course. In early 1990, I took a three month leave of
absence from my library job to work at Alcor in Riverside. I have worked
on five suspensions, including three transports. During the past several
years, I have given over fifty cryonics or nanotechnology slide
presentations in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. In September, 1992, I was
elected to the Alcor Board of Directors.
The past few months have been bumpy for Alcor, although not because
of legal actions. For the first time in Alcor's twenty years, a political
disagreement became the prime topic of conversation and threatened to
overwhelm much of the good that has been accomplished. While the various
leaders of Alcor have cooperated on many projects over the years, it is
inevitable that independent-minded people under stress will eventually
clash. This year's events, like most such problems, can only be
understood in the context of five years of legal and economic turmoil that
have challenged Alcor, the differences in philosophy and style that
Alcor's leaders have had, and in their real differences of opinion on how
Alcor's goals should be reached. I am not going to speculate here about
which people were right most often or which disputes did the most harm.
But it is understandable how much of the memberships's attention has
focused on the two most visible participants: Presidents Mike Darwin and
Carlos Mondragon.
Carlos and Mike are both battlers, leaders who know what they want
(and who assume that what they want is RIGHT) and who are willing to push
and drag others along the paths of their vision. This willingness to
battle has been a great benefit to Alcor when the battles are waged
against outside forces, such as indifference, the medical and legal
problems that death throws at us, or the interference of hostile
governmental agencies. However, too often the battling has been done
against each other or other Alcor members. This is not to put the entire
blame on Carlos and Mike or to diminish their past accomplishments. Other
Alcor members have participated in, and perhaps even relished, the
conflict of the past year. It seems to be a natural consequence of
squeezing several cryonicists into the same room.
My personality and methods are much different. I think I am a little
slower to react and more steady. I prefer to become a "bridge" between
people, rather than to inspire conflict. I believe that I have the
personal respect of most of the Alcor members who have met me, although I
also recognize the level of demands which will be placed on me. While I
have a strong conviction in the need for liberty, I do not identify myself
as a pure "libertarian;" so maybe I can resist the ego-need to battle with
members over whose opinion is "right." I also recognize that Alcor
itself, as a non-profit corporation, constrained by the requirements of
government and run by a Board of nine Directors, is not properly a
"libertarian" organization, no matter what the political convictions of
its members. With a cryonics organization, where long-term survival and
stability must be an over-arching principle, I consider this situation a
plus, not a minus.
My first priority as Alcor's President will be to insure the
continuation of our primary tasks: care of the Patients already in
suspension and assurance of our ability to perform new suspensions. From
a technical standpoint, I have confidence that we can continue excellent
suspension maintenance and that the basic capability is there to handle
transport and suspensions. In regard to performing suspensions, members'
questions to me during the past few weeks could be divided almost
exclusively into "When are you going to bring Darwin back?" and "You're
not bringing Darwin back, are you?"
Many members may not yet be aware that Michael Darwin has resigned
from his contract to perform on Alcor's suspension team and from his
suspension membership in Alcor. (I should note that this does NOT mean
that Michael has abandoned cryonics itself. He is still pursuing
potentially valuable suspension research through his own company and
through Cryovita.) Michael has discussed some of his reasons for this
decision on the computer network and with the Board of Directors; but he
has decided not to begin a series of arguments in the pages of CRYONICS.
It would not be fair for me to summarize Michael's reasons; but I think it
is fair o state that they involve differences between Michael and some
Alcor staff concerning the manner (in the broadest possible sense) in
which suspensions are to be performed. While I share some of Michael's
concerns (and believe others to be exaggerated), I think that "dropping
out" is the wrong way to make improvements. Since I am one of Michael's
oldest and closest friends, it might seem obvious that I would immediately
begin pushing as hard as I could to reinstate Michael on the suspension
team. But I am NOT going to do that.
Performing suspensions is not a task that one person can do. A team
of a dozen or so members is required from transport through descent to
-196 C. Michael's resignation and the responses it has generated from
other team members show a great amount of frustration and mistrust on both
sides. It simply will not work to slam these people back together in the
super-heated atmosphere of a cryonic suspension. As much as I admire the
work that Mike has done and the talents he has, I must conclude that under
current circumstances it is not in Alcor's interest to bring Michael
Darwin back onto the suspension team. Furthermore, Michael has indicated
that he DOES NOT WANT to be on the suspension team.
We are going to have to learn to do cryonic suspensions without
Michael Darwin. Maybe this was going to happen anyway. Michael's
resignation leads me to question whether or not we could count on him if
other difficult relationships arose in the future. It may be possible
that after nearly twenty years on the front line of battle, Mike has lost
his enthusiasm for performing suspensions and prefers to pursue his
research.
I sincerely hope that Michael and I can keep the kind of friendship
that allows us to share suggestions and knowledge. I am positive that the
research he is pursuing will give us new methods to limit the damage done
to patients during suspensions. Perhaps over time some of the hard
feelings will diminish and both sides will perceive enough improvements to
motivate a higher level of cooperation. I do not expect this to happen
soon.
Yes, it WILL be harder to do this work without Mike Darwin. It was
harder after Jerry Leaf went into suspension, too; but remaining team
members renewed their commitment to Alcor and accomplished six more
suspensions. I have confidence that the current team and prospective new
team members will reorganize and forge ahead.
Obviously, one important task I have is to encourage more technical
and medical people to find out about our work and join the suspension
team. Even if we have every team position covered, we do not have much
depth and any additional loss in the future (if only for a vacation) will
make the situation more difficult. YOU can help with this. If you know
EMT's, paramedics, nurses (especially with emergency or surgical
background), medical technicians, perfusionists, or physicians that might
be interested in the frontiers of medicine and technology, don't be shy.
Talk to them about cryonics, give them our literature; and if you see
them getting excited, please give me a call.
In future articles in *Cryonics*, I will be writing about other
issues facing Alcor.
---Ralph Whelan and I will be working on methods of fund raising to
increase Alcor's financial stability (expect a phone call!).
---I want to move forward rapidly with our efforts to protect the Patient
Care Trust Fund and other Alcor accounts.
---During my short time on the Board of Directors I have led a movement to
formalize the operations of Alcor and its Board of Directors. That will
continue.
---I am interested in exploring various proposals to change the manner in
which the Board of Directors is chosen, although any such change must be
made with great care.
---The Alcor staff and Directors will make a great effort to increase
communication and cooperation between Alcor Central and remote members and
chapters. I also want to increase contacts between the members and
chapters themselves. Send us your suggestions.
---The risk of a severe earthquake in Southern California has almost
certainly increased during the past year. Efforts to find a new building
and to increase seismic protection in the one we have must receive a high
priority.
---I want to develop a business plan which will explore the essential
tasks of our organization and which will give us the basis for making the
decisions necessary to handle growth in the future.
---There are many possibilities for research which Alcor could do on its
own or in cooperation with other organizations. Alcor first made its
reputation by developing new methods in almost every area of cryonics,
including better storage protection and safety, ways to reduce ischemic
injury, immensely better cooling methods from 98.6 degrees on down, and
the first organized system of training and equipping remote agents to do
patient transports. To be effective in the future, we must keep this
edge.
None of these tasks can be accomplished by me alone or even by the
Board or Staff alone. I am asking you to commit some part of yourself to
preparing Alcor for the future. Your family and friends will need us
someday -- and so will YOU. Help us make sure we are ready.
Steve Bridge
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