X-Message-Number: 17514
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 22:32:33 -0400
Subject: A Thorny Reply
From: 

I have always liked and respected Charles Platt.  No, really.  Is it not
clear to anyone reading his posts, that here is a keen intelligence, a
vivid prose style, a serious critical commentator?  Charles has a long
and extensive history of serious commitment to cryonics.  He's served it
by his writing, by active membership, by taking part in ill-paid and
time-consuming organizational and patient care activities.  Cryonics can
be a trying activity, and perhaps some of the stress has been reflected
in some of Charles' harsher turns of phrase now and then.  But even
Charles' invariably discerning eye for what is weak in cryonics has had
its value:  he has quite rightly drawn attention to abuses and weaknesses
in the field that deserve attention.  Reading him has often been
enlightening to me.  And - I confess - often pleasurable too.  Like
Charles, I am a writer myself, though hardly as exalted in my skills as
Charles, a working journalist and published novelist.  But I know the
craft well enough to spot, and delight in, good writing and sound
thinking.  Charles has contributed his share of both to Cryonet.  Indeed,
more than his share.

It's because of that that I am especially sad to see the direction that
some of his most recent posts have been taking.  It is kind of like
seeing a bright and respected colleague eat something vile, and
repeatedly twitch and soil himself in public.  

What is one to make of Charles' performance in this recent 'rosewater'
nonsense, for instance?  Charles receives, he says, an anonymous email
claiming a CI-affiliated funeral director uses 'rose water' in lieu of
standard cryopreservative solutions.  What does Charles, a journalist,
do?  Does he contact the funeral director in question and ask him?

Charles:   "Obviously there is no point in my telephoning Barry Albin at
this point myself, because CI has had ample time to do damage control."

'Obviously'!  What's the point in asking someone who would know?  Did
Charles at least bother to read what the funeral director actually said
in the public statement that I quoted in my response?

Charles:  "... personally, I don't care whether Barry Albin uses rose
water, distilled water, tonic water, or tap water. But I do have a sense
of humor, which is tickled by this whole topic and only marginally
diminished by David Pascal's characteristically lengthy and humorless
response (which I did not read in its entirety, because I knew already
what he was going to say)."

He doesn't ask Mr. Albin, and he doesn't bother to read Mr. Albin's
comments, nor mine.  Why read, when your psychic abilities are such that
you already know what people are going to say beforehand?  If he doesn't
ask, and he doesn't read, how does he get his information at all then? 
Answer:  he gets anonymous - 'but credible' (!) - posts in the mail, when
he then rushes to share with the world, adding fresh ridiculous charges
to the old ridiculous charges.

Says Charles:  "Yet another anonymous but credible source tells me that
(s)he communicated personally with Mr. Albin some time ago, and was told
by Mr. Albin that while the British undertaker understood and followed
CI's procedures with due diligence, he also took the initiative of
pumping a proprietary suspension of lanolin in rose water through the
patient, before the glycerol... This procedure was followed, allegedly,
more than a year ago. It may have been discontinued since then."

The problem with this credible anonymous revelation is that there *was*
no suspension done by Mr. Albin a year ago, not two years ago, nor three.
 I believe Mr. Albin has done only one suspension some four years ago. 
Mr. Platt's anonymous 'credible' source must have been thinking of some
other remarkable experience with lanolin that he/she/it must have had at
the time.

Now normally one discards anonymous posts -- particularly when they
contradict easily verifiable facts -- as being unfounded and doubtful and
rather cowardly rumor-mongering.  And I expect Charles would have too, in
his better days.  These days, however, he posts not one, but another, and
then another.  Whether they make sense, or contradict easily available
fact, just doesn't seem to matter. 

Ladies and gentlemen.  Can we please show some common sense?  Why in the
world would *any* legally established state-certified funeral director go
to the time, trouble, and and expense of adding unnecessary and worthless
rose water - and now 'lanolin'! - to cryonics patients?  Would he really
go to the extra trouble and expense, would he violate his contractual
obligations, and very possibly the law, all for the great and grand
purpose of making a patient 'smell better'?  How in the world would he
manage to do so without CI, which receives and examines the patient,
noticing?  How in the world did he manage to do so around someone who,
just by a wild quirk of fate, happens to have Charles Platt's email
address?  How is it that this mystery spy sits on his/her/its dark
revelation for years but with astoundingly perfect timing manages to
bring it this extra 'evidence' to light just at the exact moment when
Charles elects to bash Mr. Albin for the offense?  What does Mr. Albin
stand to lose by such a supposed action?  Clients, money, professional
standing, reputation, and the threat of probable legal action.  What does
he gain?  Nothing.  Charles, good grief, give it up!  Barry Albin has no
more put 'lanolin' into patients than Fred and Linda Chamberlain perused
Walt Disney with guacamole.  I can't prove they didn't!  But if any nut
sent me an email claiming they did, I would merely hit the delete button
with more a trace of pity, and get back to more serious work. 

What happened is very simple.  Barry Albin, who uses and mentions rose
water in conventional funeral services, was speaking about his services
in a casual radio interview, and automatically, and mistakenly, used a
word, 'rose water', that he often mentions on such occasions.  A simple -
and obvious - slip of the tongue.  Which, when asked, he honestly
acknowledged as just that:  a slip.  A simple verbal slip.  Period. 
Everyone's done it, many times.  Mr. Albin did it, said so, and expressed
his regrets.  Adding that, like all funeral directors in CI service, he
keeps to CI protocols exactly and uses CI solutions only, adding nothing.
 End of story. 

Ah - but the story touched the nerve of Charles' obsession with the House
of Frankenstein that is his out-of-date notion of CI, and suddenly, bang:
 anonymous - 'but credible'! - mystery revelations follow one after
another after another.  No names, no dates, no proof, and clear
incompatibility with known facts, but - so what?  Journalistic standards,
facts, proof, sources?  Out the window!

Folks, suppose I were to lose it and breathlessly mount the podium of
Cryonet and blither, "Hey gang!  Guess WHAT!  An anonymous - but totally
credible! - email in my box says that Jerry Lemler confessed that he
poured a can of Pepsi-Cola into the vitro-goop on that patient Alcor did
yesterday?  -- What?  They didn't do a patient yesterday?  They have done
one for months?  Well, um, um - HA!  That's just Alcor's lightning-fast
Damage Control Squad engineering the COVER-UP!  - Wait!  Another email: 
'I saw Carlos Mondragon outside the Texas School Book Depository!'  Wait,
wait, another one:  'Eric Drexler on the Grassy Knoll!' "

Absurd.

If *I* posted rubbish like that, I would be laughed off Cryonet.  And if
there were justice in the world, I'd be out of the journalistic
profession too.  Charles?  He gets hired to write Alcor's monthly
newsletter and to do a column for their magazine.  Another demonstration
of their high standards of excellence, I suppose.  Poor Alcor.  And poor
Charles!  All mention of leprous CI is censored in Alcor publications, so
he'll probably have to find some new obsession to flay to death.  I
wonder what it'll be?  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?  
 
Clearly Charles Platt thinks that what he is posting is an embarrassment
and an injury to CI.  It is an embarrassment and an injury - to Charles
Platt.  From being someone distinguished on this list by journalistic
standards and critical intelligence, he has descended to posting
uncritical, unprovable, anonymous slander that is not only transparently
absurd but demonstrably in conflict with the facts.  He sees himself as a
voice crying in the wilderness; but, to paraphrase Malcolm Muggeridge,
increasingly he has become the wilderness crying in a voice.  It is - or
was - an intelligent and serious voice, and I dearly wish he would bring
its unarguable finesse to bear on intelligent and serious matters, and
not on such rubbish.  A man of his gifts and intelligence could certainly
do cryonics and the cryonics community a great deal of good.  I wish he
would direct his fine abilities to that admirable goal, and not to these
shabby and silly ones.

David Pascal
http://www.cryonics.org

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17514