X-Message-Number: 1707
From: 
Subject: CRYONICS Cryonic Funding Considerations
Date: Mon,  1 Feb 93 23:16:46 PST

> From: Mike Perry
> Date: Feb. 1, 1993
> Subject: Neuro and/or Whole Body Suspensions

Disclaimer: I am the patient caretaker of the Alcor Foundation, and much of 
what I have to say will concern Alcor's practices, today and as they might 
become in the future. These are my opinions only, however, and not an 
official statement of policy by the Alcor Foundation.

The idea of neurosuspension, or just freezing the head and not preserving 
the rest of the body, is an old one in cryonics, dating back at least to the 
late '60s. One of its earliest proponents, in fact, was Ev Cooper, who was 
attracted to the idea by the lower cost, the thought that doctors might be 
more willing to assist with the operation than with whole-body freezing, 
etc. However, as Cooper pointed out, people in the movement weren't 
enthusiastic about it, "for fear of offending sensibilities," which brings 
up an unfortunate property of this very sensible approach, namely, that 
people have an instinctive horror of decapitation, and associate it with the 
anitithesis of the means of salvation it really could be, when done as part 
of cryonic suspension. Recently the neuro vs. whole body issue has been 
discussed on the net, on the one hand in connection with promoting cryonics, 
on the other with the funding issue. On the one hand it is said, maybe we 
shouldn't promote neuro for fear of offending sensibilities, etc.; on the 
other, maybe we ought to greatly increase the price of neurosuspensions, to 
solve our budgetary problems. I should say here that I think these are both 
complex issues, and may not have simple "yes" or "no" answers. My own stance 
on the other hand is to strongly favor the neuro option and to lean toward a 
simple "no" to both propositions. In any case I'm not pleased with what I 
see as a lack of respect and understanding for the neuro option, and I wish 
to air some views.

To start with, I think it is worth pointing out that the majority of Alcor 
members are signed up for the neuro option. Some of these signups are really 
strongly pro-whole body but have chosen neuro for financial reasons, but 
most, I think, are mainly satisfied with the head-only option. Most would 
probably say that, if cost were not a factor at all, they would choose to 
have the rest of their body preserved too, but they don't feel such 
preservation is urgent. Some others too, have funding that is well in excess 
of that needed for whole body, but choose neuro instead because they would 
rather sink their money, whatever amount they have, into preserving the part 
that is most important. Basically, Alcor is predominantly a neuro 
organization, and that in fact has attracted many of its membership.

Now: I may as well air my personal feelings. *The brain is where you are,* not 
in the fingers, toes, or even non-cerebral parts of your head. (However, 
unless the brain is *very carefully* and probably very expensively dealt 
with, it probably will suffer damage if it is removed from the head; thus I 
favor whole-head freezing over brain only.) It seems *very unlikely* that 
the rest of the body could not be regenerated by a cloning-related 
procedure, given the technology that would be needed to resuscitate cryonics 
patients of today, or those that will be frozen in the near future. In the 
more distant future, a time could well come when freezing technology 
advances so that whole-body resuscitations can be done but neuro 
resuscitations cannot. Thus whole-body signups may find they are 
resuscitated sooner than neuros. I predict this state of affairs could 
prevail for a few years just before we attain full nanotechnology, and thus 
some whole bodies may find that they are resuscitated a few years (less than 
a decade) sooner than they would have been as neuros, but there are reasons 
to doubt this too. In all, I see little in the way of likely advantages here 
for whole body over neuro. There is some fear also that, even though the 
body may be re-creatible, the "wiring diagram" that connects brain and body 
cannot be, so that a person would have to learn to walk, etc. all over 
again. I think this is most unlikely, because the entire brain and all its 
contents should be mappable into a super computer of the future, and through 
reasonable analysis by a reasonably intelligent program (capable of 
processing at many millions of times the rate of a human of today, in ways 
that count) a reasonable wiring diagram, along with instructions for 
creating a body the brain would find comfortable in every way, could be 
worked out in reasonable time. There is some fear that the spinal cord 
should not be sacrificed, because it, being neural tissue itself, may 
contain irreplaceable information of the "memory" sort, much as the higher 
centers of the brain. This objection is harder to dismiss, but I think it is 
unlikely to be true, mainly because of the obvious retention of identity by 
quadruplegiacs, whose spinal connections are severed. In any case, addition 
of the spinal cord to the head would not constitute a great additional 
freezing burden. Some have expressed fears that, even supposing a perfectly 
acceptable body was recreated, with wiring diagram, etc., it would not be 
"original material" thus maybe not "really you." To me these thoughts are 
essentially mystical in nature and not to be taken seriously. If the 
information survives, it's you. (As for further objections involving 
duplicates, etc., supposing that "information alone is sufficient," I have 
spent enough time over these matters to be convinced many times over that 
there is no problem, but it's too much to go into now. I should have a paper 
on the subject finished reasonably soon.)

Of course, not everybody will agree with the above, and will find themselves 
favoring whole body instead. For those people, I would ask that, if you must 
preserve the body, why not preserve it separately from the head? Then the 
advantages of neuro (faster suspension, possibly more secure protection) 
would be attainable, along with storing the rest of the body. True, there 
would be a tiny information loss where the head was severed from the body, 
and maybe a little extra cost. It seems though, that the advantages would be 
sufficient that I would expect that a significant number of cryonics signups 
would favor and try to make arrangements for this "split storage" option, 
yet I rarely hear it discussed. As for its providing better protection, 
consider this. Currently at Alcor, neuros are stored in heavy concrete 
vaults while whole bodies are in unprotected dewars. This is for practical 
and financial reasons: we simply *do not have* the resources at this time to 
construct vaults for the 10-ft. tall "bigfoot" dewars that store the whole 
bodies. (A question could be raised too, of just *how much* of a vault you 
would need to provide the *same* level of protection for a bigfoot as for 
the much smaller dewars now enclosed in concrete. In particular, in addition 
to the concrete there is fire protection in the form of water-filled pipes 
that surround the smaller dewars inside the vaults.) Clearly then, the 
neuros in their vaults would be more likely to survive an earthquake, fire 
or other violence than the whole bodies. *Neuros are safer.* On the other 
hand, it is possible that neuros would eventually be stored in the bigfoot 
dewars too. This would be a cheaper storage in terms of liquid nitrogen 
requirements (the bigfoots are more efficient) and the saving in cost over 
vault storage might be passed on to the member. (In other words we could 
start charging differently for vault storage than for bigfoot storage of 
neuros.)

My feeling about the "presentability" of the neuro option is that it should 
be presented early on to prospective signups. Explaining its rationale is a 
good lesson in how cryonics ought to be workable, along with certain other 
issues relating to identity and personality. The kind of people that make 
the best cryonicists (on the philosophical, scientific and technical level 
at least) will understand quickly as a rule, and progress faster, than if a 
more roundabout approach is taken. (I'm assuming here that one is forced to 
use a "generic" approach and must choose between a few clearcut 
alternatives. In special cases more will be known about the prospective 
cryonicists and perhaps a specialized approach can be tailored to them.) An 
objection might be raised here, that certain very wealthy people will be 
turned off unless the neuro option is soft-pedaled. My feeling is that so 
far, the super-rich as a class have not been the most useful to cryonics, 
that some wealthy people are not the kind that would be turned off by neuro 
(even though they might favor whole body for the reason that cost is not a 
factor), and thus that, if the neuro idea is reasonably presented we would 
have more to gain overall even from this group. The objection might be 
raised that one reason the super-rich haven't been more enthusiastic is 
*because* the neuro option hasn't been sufficiently soft-pedaled. But that 
seems unlikely in view of other cryonics organizations besides Alcor that 
have earnestly soft-pedaled it for many years, without any vast inundation 
of the wealthy to their ranks (so far as one can tell). Basically, to soft-
pedal neuro is to cripple oneself philosophically, and discerning people 
sense a weakness and tend to be turned off, or at least less favorable. 

So now, let's consider the question of cost. I have to admit here, that I am 
not a financial analyst and thus anything I say on this subject must be very 
incomplete. I must confess that I feel very skeptical about the recent 
proposal of Dave Pizer that the neuro cost be increased but not the whole 
body. Yet viewed in one way, logic forces the conclusion that the difference 
in cost between the two options should be narrowed (whether this is done by 
increasing or decreasing either price), although this is not the only way to 
look at it. But the reasoning here runs as follows. The price charged for 
a suspension depends in part on an estimate of the amount of funds it will 
take to generate income in the future sufficient to cover the continuing 
maintenance costs. In other words, a large portion of the suspension funding 
is invested to generate income to pay for liquid nitrogen, storage space, 
etc. Included in the funding is a "safety factor" so that, assuming 
reasonable economic prosperity, a surplus of funds should actually be 
generated. This is certainly a reasonable policy, since the alternative 
would be to run an unreasonable risk that times might be hard, and the 
funding might run out. Currently both whole bodies and neuros are subject to 
the same safety factor, which works out to an assumption that the principal 
supplied by the funding will accumulate interest at a rate of only 1% per 
year (where 2% is considered a reasonable conservative rate of real growth, 
in constant dollars, over an extended period of time). This means in 
particular that the amount of this principal is required to be approximately 
100 times the estimated annual maintenance cost of the patient, whether 
whole body or neuro.
     However, if the non-cerebral portion of the body is basically 
superfluous, it arguably is not sensible to insist on the same safety factor 
for this part of the body. The brain (or for practical reasons, the whole 
head) should have the higher safety factor of 100, but the rest of the body 
could have a lower factor, say 50. Of course this policy should also be 
coupled with one of emergency neuroconversion if the funding for a whole 
body is exhausted. In this way the part that counts--the brain--would be as 
well protected in the one case as in the other. This rationale is reasonable 
from one point of view, yet it can be objected to on grounds that the whole 
bodies who are engaging services and paying for "extras" that are not really 
needed, *should* subsidize the more vital neuros to some extent. Recently 
Alcor has agreed to store non-neural tissue samples at a price that is well 
above the rate, per unit of storage space involved, that would be charged in 
the case of a suspension. If this sort of pricing is carried out to 
subsidize the more vital suspensions, why not accept an extension of this 
policy in which whole bodies help subsidize neuros? The current policy, in 
which the whole bodies are charged according to the same safety factor as 
the neuros, could be considered a modest form of such a subsidy. Whether 
this amount is best or some other is better, is an issue I won't try to 
resolve here, except to urge that the matter be given serious thought.
     The problem remains of exactly *how much* to charge. It is something I 
also don't have an answer for, except to observe that there is a tradeoff 
between setting the rate too low, so you run the risk of bankruptcy, or too 
high, so that some people who might otherwise be saved are forced to rot. 
How the organization is to be structured must be considered, in addition to 
the funding that will be asked for specific purposes. There has been an 
extensive cost analysis before, in setting the current rates. In view of the 
gravity of this problem, and especially the very serious moral issues 
involved, I would expect a further extensive analysis before any major 
changes in rates are made. *Every effort should be made to set the rates to 
the lowest, safe level possible*, given that human life is at stake, and 
*emphasis should be placed on what is most important by far, the 
preservation of the brain with as little injury as possible.*

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