X-Message-Number: 1535
Date: 02 Jan 93 16:37:46 EST
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: CRYONICS

To: Kevin Brown
 
 
 
In response to Scott Herman:
 
Thanks for your kind words re the competition in Omni. I do 
appreciate the conciliatory gestures that you are making. 
 
Re your previous posting, asking for general clarification of 
facts about Saul Kent, the Cryonics Society of New York, the 
Dora Kent case, and so on: I regret that Saul does not plan 
to provide this clarification online, but the sheer magnitude 
of the task makes it impractical. 
 
In 1992 I interviewed a lot of people, including Saul, Curtis 
Henderson, and Bob Nelson, in connection with a book that I 
still hope to write about cryonics. In the course of these 
interviews, I accumulated material which answers most of the 
questions you have presented. Unfortunately, I have not yet 
written those parts of my book. In fact, in some cases, I 
have not even transcribed the interview tapes. 
 
To take just one example: the full story of the Cryonics 
Society of New York took literally hours to narrate. 
 
All I can tell you is that I entered this field with an open 
mind, and I have not found anything at all to suggest to me 
that Saul or Curtis acted foolishly, irresponsibly, or 
improperly at any time in the past. On the contrary: they 
have been more resourceful than I would have been myself in 
similar situations. 
 
-------------------
 
Reply to Thomas Donaldson:
 
So far as I know, I have never suggested that Alcor should 
pay money for public relations. Clearly, it would be an 
unjustifiable expense. Therefore, I can't quite see the point 
of your posting. 
 
When I suggested that Alcor could send out a press release 
once in a while, I assumed someone at Riverside, or a 
volunteer such as myself, would be able to handle this. There 
are many cryonics advocates who have writing skills--
including you, for that matter. With so many talented 
amateurs around, why even think of hiring a "professional" PR 
person to promote cryonics? 
 
What we really need is a policy. Is PR a good idea or a bad 
idea? Does Alcor want more publicity, or not? Perhaps our 
incoming president has views on this. It would be nice if the 
issue could be clarified. 
 
--Charles Platt 

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