X-Message-Number: 17630
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 12:06:12 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #17616 - #17623

Ah, this is how I like to start the day. Two pseudonymous posts making
allegations calculated to agitate rather than illuminate, Trygve Bauge
waxing lyrical over permafrost, and a post from David Pascal that exceeded
the byte limit and was bumped off the list.

Who could ask for more?

One comment to Trygve about your quest for a freezer:

Perhaps you should read some cryonics history. To my knowledge, just about
every case where a relative has promised to make monthly payments to
preserve a loved one has quickly led to an unpleasant situation where the
payments stop and the company or person in possession of the loved one is
faced with an impossible situation, of either unfreezing and sacrificing
the patient, or maintaining the patient on a "charity basis." It happened
to Curtis Henderson, it happened at Chatsworth, and there has been some
risk of it happening at CryoSpan. As CUrtis Henderson has said so many
times (to the point where it becomes a growled mantra): "No third-party
payments!" (Meaning, only accept money that was set aside up-front, by or
on behalf of the patient himself, or herself.)

Evidently we are hardwired, as a species, to recover from the loss of a
loved one during a period of a year or two, and "get on with our lives."
This syndrome has obvious survival advantages for the species, so, its
existence should not be a surprise.  But it always _is_ a surprise to
naive, well-intentioned, pig-headedly obstinate people such as Trygve (or
Bob Nelson) when a grieving relative who will do "anything, absolutely
anything" to preserve the loved one loses interest a year or two later and
stops making payments.

I realize that Trygve never listens to advice from anyone; but this is an
historically proven principle in cryonics (of which there are few). Accept
or facilitate a patient who is paid for on an instalment plan by a
relative, and you will end up in deep shit.

There are VERY good reasons why all cryonics organizations, since the
Chatsworth scandal, have demanded enough money up-front to preserve the
patient indefinitely. They don't insist on this because they are mean or
unnecessarily conservative. They have seen the awful consequences if the
principle is violated.

--CP

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