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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17630