X-Message-Number: 17515
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 01:54:40 -0400
Subject: Re:  What funeral directors lack
From: 

In Message #17505, Mr. Paul Garfield wrote a very courteous and
substantive letter.  I'd like to respond -- respectfully -- to some of
the points in it.  Mr. Garfield wrote: 

>> In respectful response to Message #17494 there is at least one vitally
important omission in the lengthy evaluation of funeral directors as
compared to other cryonic technicians. Of supreme paramount importance it
must be noted that a funeral director is not a "blood brother" fellow
cryonicist.<<

Actually, a funeral director may very well be a cryonicist.  Why
shouldn't he be?  But that's a little beside the point.  Mr. Garfield
seems to be saying that a surgical practitioner needs to believe that his
technical practices will work, and (I think) that he needs to be
emotionally involved with the patient.  In actual medicine that is not
the case.  Emotional doctors are discouraged and sometimes removed from
practice.  One needs -- no neurosuspension pun intended -- a cool head. 
Also, a doctor does not need to believe that his techniques will work in
order to apply them effectively.  In fact, in many cases, such as cancer,
leukemia, AIDS, he's pretty sure they will not work.  But that doesn't
mean that he doesn't apply himself to the best of his ability, if he's a
trained and licenced professional.  Funeral directors are
surgically-trained and state-licensed professionals.  Their ability to
emote is not one of CI's criteria for selecting them.

>> A funeral director deals with bodies that are dead, gone, buried. <<

Er... I think you may have unintentionally misspoken here.  CI does not
accept bodies that have been buried, and I don't know that a lot of
funeral directors deal with buried bodies either.  They're already in the
ground.  There's not much call for funeral director service at that
point.  As to dealing with bodies that are 'gone' -- well, I don't think
any funeral directors at all deal with bodies that aren't there, either. 
Dealing with dead bodies?  Now on that score, funeral directors do have
frequent and extensive contact, probably more so than formal medical
doctors.  I don't call that a minus, however.   'Experience,' rather.

>>A cryonicist sees a person who will one day be a living, vibrant human
being and, above all, a friend he knows and cherishes. That's the kind of
person I want at my suspension.<<

Well, again, there are people in cryonics -- not a few in Alcor, I might
add -- that I know and cherish, and whom I believe will one day be
living, vibrant human beings.  (And I know a couple in the cryonics world
that aren't all that vibrant right now, but who knows, maybe one day...) 
However, unlike a funeral director, I don't have any surgical training,
and I couldn't suspend even the people I cherish for love nor money.  All
I could do at that point is get out of the way of less emotional
professionals, and I hope that is what I would have the good sense to do.

>> Also, at time of need it will be unknown whether the funeral personnel
will be the skilled director himself or an untrained substitute who
happens to be on duty.<<

I'm afraid this is not the case.  Under American law, a funeral director
can't just grab some high school kid off the street and say, "Go! 
Enbalm!"  Quite apart from the fact that the body in question may have
communicable diseases, AIDs, etc., no 'untrained substitute' can perform
legally funerary services.  The law mandates legal certification and
state review.  Funeral directors do use assistants, but they are trained
and certified individuals, just as senior doctors sometimes use junior
doctors to assist in an operation.  But this a bit beside the point,
because CI only uses -- indeed, *can* only use -- funeral directors whom
it has trained in its procedures.  Those who aren't so trained -- how can
I put this? -- don't know what they're doing and therefore can't do it. 
A fact would be extremely palpable once we received the patient.  No
'untrained substitute' will ever be handling a CI member under the
funeral director system.  Sorry.

>> As an Alcor member I am assured that Alcor technicians are always on
duty. I know who they are. I know they care. I know they are totally
dedicated to me and to all cryonicists.<<

Well, to you, perhaps.  And I have no doubt that Alcor personnel treat
their members with all the expertise, skill, and concern they have, and I
am certain that that is a lot.  But -- to all cryonicists?  Alcor is a
very fine organization, to be sure.  But the unfortunate fact is that if
you are a cryonicist and a European, or an Asian, an Australian, an
African, a South American, Alcor's total dedication may not mean much to
you.  If you are a cryonicist who is not insurable, or do not have
$120,000, like James Swayze (http://www.davidpascal.com/swayze; donations
gratefully accepted), again Alcor's (very sincere and genuine) dedication
may be moot.  I am also sorry to say that there has not been as much
cooperation between Alcor and other organizations as one might wish, and
I think this has been to the detriments of 'all cryonicists', as you put
it.  For instance, CI policy states that CI is willing to have members
prepared upon death by other organizations if they so wish.  We would be
more than happy to have Alcor perform suspensions and vitrifications and
deliver the patient to CI for subsequent long-term maintenance.  It seems
to me that both organizations -- not to mention the public -- would stand
to profit by such an arrangement.  We'd be happy to do it.  Alcor?  Nope.

I don't mean to accuse Alcor of hard-heartedness.  I know for a fact that
many a heart at Alcor, and many a mind and spirit too, are as large and
spacious as you could wish.  No organization can do absolutely
everything, and sometimes an organization has to make some hard
decisions.  I have no doubt that Alcor is doing everything it can for its
own members, and I have no doubt that what it is doing is very good.  But
I have to say that I wish they would be a bit more open to, as you say,
'all cryonicists'.   I sometimes think that Alcor inclines to think of
cryonics as the natural preserve of upscale American Trekkies.  Now
that's OK!  Upscale Trekkies are good folk too.  But CI tends to envision
cryonics as something almost like a human right.  No human being should
have to die, to die eternally, because of poverty.  No human being should
die because they're not located in the right place.  CI wants to make
cryonic suspension available to anyone who wants it.  It can't, but it
can try hard to reach out to as many people as possible.  And, by God, it
does try, and it tries damned hard, which is why I think so very much of
it.  It's for that reason we have certain CI policies like its deliberate
radical lowering of prices almost to cost, and its determination to offer
world-wide service, and, yes, its willingness to use unsexy, non-trendy,
but skilled, certified, and socially acceptable funeral directors --
because it allows us to reach as many human beings we can.  

And if there's one band of human beings I sometimes wish we could reach,
it's a few folks at Alcor.  The fact is, things are changing, and I
really think it's about time that the relationships between these two
organizations changed a bit too.  After all, something like one out of
five cryonics members may be with Alcor, but something like four out of
five are with CI, and we're growing a heck of a lot faster.  This
See-No-CI, Hear-No-CI, Speak-No-CI thing does seem to me to be getting a
trifle old.  I have always had the highest respect for many, many Alcor
members and I have always believed that Alcor CI could work much better
as cooperating friends than as separate islands.  Perhaps Jerry Lemler,
who's been praised for his 'inclusiveness' will bring a breath of fresh
air to this state of affairs, too.  I hope so. 

>> I know they are highly trained for their one specific job with
expertise in that one specific area. <<

Well -- yes and no.  To become a travelling team member, my understanding
is that you go through about three eight-hour sessions over a three day
period, once a year.  No medical training, educational background,
previous experience, etcetera, is needed.  I don't doubt such people are
very well trained in those three days.  But funeral directors are trained
in surgical and other techniques for two to four year periods, reviewed
by state boards, licensed by the government, periodically reviewed, and
practice removing blood and replacing it with preservative solutions week
after week somtimes for decades.  I don't really think that a comparison
can be sustained.  MInd you, I am *not* saying that travelling teams are
*bad*.  They *are* trained, they *have* performed well, and some members
of travelling teams may have extensive experience and even medical
backgrounds.  But some -- indeed most -- do not.  That's just how it is. 
Travelling teams are volunteers, and there are just not many crack M.D.'s
out there volunteering for what is a very admirable but very thankless,
tough, and ill-paying job.    

And -- to be frank -- even a medical background doesn't instantaneously
translate into competent suspension ability.  No medical school teaches
its students how to cryopreserve or vitrify patients.  No department of
neurosurgery instructs you in severing heads from bodies for purposes of
cryonic perfusion.  One of the reasons that CI decided to use funeral
directors is the simple fact that their job, in essence, consists of
reaching patients quickly, removing blood, and replacing it with
preservative fluids.  That is not a cryonics perusion by any means, but
it is *close*; it is a related technique, performed by individuals with
extensive surgical training and constant experience and quick and legal
access to recently deceased individuals.  It is *reasonable* to suppose
that they can, with some instruction, do a competent job, possibly even a
more competent one than a doctor who may never have performed an
analogous process, much less performed it hundreds of times.  I am not
saying that funeral directors are the ideal solution to the problem. 
Ideally, eventually, suspensions will be performed in hospitals by
trained cryonicist doctors on patients brought to them by trained
cryonicist ambulance attendants.  

But *right now* we don't have that option.  We have travelling team
members who are on the average not as well trained as funeral directors,
and who are in most cases not in the area when the death occurs.  The use
of funeral directors is a *reasonable* and a *reasoned* alternative. 
That is all that I am saying.  I am not faulting someone who selects a
travelling team.  Hell, CI *has* a travelling team!  Some members want
it, and if CI members want something, CI tries to give it to them.  But
we want people to have both options, because, frankly, there is substance
in both options.  

You know, there is this completely silly 'one ramp, one protocol, one
Fuhrer' attitude in some cryonics circles -- the notion that there is
only *one* right way, only *one* correct approach, only *one* perfect
path.  That's simply nonsense.  Cryonics is a field where ambiguity
reigns, and where a multiplicity of approaches is inevitable.  There is
nothing wrong with that.  Innovation and diversity could be as much a
blessing here as it is in other fields, if we gave it a chance.  New,
differing, variant approaches would only benefit us.  But to have that
benefit we have to learn to be tolerant and to understand that there be
something to both sides of an issue.  The use of a travelling team is not
wrong, and the use of a funeral director is not wrong.  Both are
solutions to a problem.  Both have their pluses and minuses.  What we
need to do is recognize that there may be value in both approaches, and
that people who adopt either may have sound reasons, and ought to be
respected for their decision.  But this, I'm sorry to say, is what we do
not see.  We see funeral directors systematically regarded as fumbling
neanderthals, and travelling teams presented as beaming down from the
Enterprise, tricorders in hand.  It's a picture that just doesn't fit the
facts.  Both approaches have their merits; both approaches should be
appreciated for their merits.

>> I know Alcor technicians have had previous experience with many
suspensions. I know a funeral director will probably have only one. I do
not want to be a funeral directors first patient.<<

Some Alcor technicians have indeed done many suspensions.  And some Alcor
technicians -- those fresh out of training, for instance -- have done
none.  Which will you get?  It depends on the circumstances.  You may get
a highly experienced crack team.  I hope you do.  As for funeral
directors, I believe our principal funeral director in the Michigan area,
James Walsh, has been involved in well over twenty suspensions.  Does
that mean CI treatments will always be better than Alcor's?  No. 
Circumstances determine how the actual situation will turn out.  There is
nothing that would give me more pleasure than to absolutely guarantee to
you that CI will always and in every case do a better job for you than
Alcor.  I can't.  Alcor can't guarantee that it'll always do a better job
than CI.  It's a matter of where you are, and how the cards fall.  All I
can reasonably say is that funeral directors likely have, on the average,
more extensive surgical and anatomical training and experience, and will
probably be closer at time of death.  

>> That's why I am an Alcor member. <<

Well, then, I have only one thing to say to you, Mr. Garfield:  good for
you!  Alcor is a fine organization.  They have a long and honorable
history, fine personnel, a record of serious commitment, and, I am sure,
provide excellent care for their members.  And what members!  Some of the
most brilliant and interesting minds around.  Drexler, Merkle, Minsky --
Jerry Leaf -- Mike Perry -- Natasha Vita-More!  Please, Mr. Garfield,
don't misunderstand me:  I have some disagreements with Alcor policies,
but it doesn't certain extend to Alcor members, or even to the
organization as such, at all.  I do think that a much stronger case than
most people are aware of can be made for CI, but you have not at all made
a mistake joining Alcor.  It's a fine organization, and I'm sure they'll
make every effort to give you the best care possible.  The only real
mistake you can make -- the only real mistake anyone reading this can
make -- is not joining anyone.  That is suicide.  Anyone who joins any
cryonics provider is making the right move, and doing the right thing,
and I congratulate you and respect you for it.  I wish more people
followed your example.  I think that in the long run, cryonics
organizations stand together, and that what benefits any of us, benefits
all of us.  So believe me, if you manage to get your family and friends
and half the population of North America into Alcor too, that'll be just
fine with me.  As I say, none of us have guarantees; but I shouldn't
worry, Mr. Gartfield.  You're in good hands.  I think you'll make it to
that 'vibrant' future of yours.  I think we all will. 

Best wishes for a long life,

David Pascal
http://www.cryonics.org

(P.S.  And thank you for the substantive, and very courteous, tone of
your post.  Like I say:  a breath of fresh air!)

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