X-Message-Number: 1861
From: 
Subject: CRYONICS Information Requests
Date: Mon,  1 Mar 93 22:14:13 PST

To:  CryoNet
From:  Derek Ryan
Re: Information Requests

Recently Mike Perry posted a message informally analyzing the types of 
information requests we get here at Alcor.  Unfortunately, Mike made his 
analysis from an admittedly small sample, and as might be expected, his 
conclusions are not quite accurate.  (Actually, I say "not quite" just 
because I don't want to give anyone the impression that I am disparaging 
Mike or his ideas.  It's just that the numbers Mike gets from his sample 
are not very close to our overall numbers.)

Mike says:

>Information requests at Alcor, usually from callers on the 800-number, 
>are initially put on a written form and then entered into our database, 
>where they are processed further. I was entering some of these I have taken 
>in the past 2 days (as an Alcor staff member), and out of curiosity 
>tabulated some statistics which may be of interest (and may suggest more 
>detailed studies to be done later). ALL of the 11 requests involved in this 
>brief sample were "students doing a report" (these are still being sent our 
>expensive-to-produce, 100+ page "Blue Book," despite less extensive 
>literature now being sent to other inquirers). 

In January we started sending a new four-page brochure (produced by 
Charles Platt) to "generic" information inquiries in lieu of the Blue 
Book, whereas, as Mike rightly says, we are still sending the Blue Book to 
"students doing a report."  I asked Joe Hovey to give me an exact 
breakdown of the number of Blue Books vs. brochures that we have sent 
since then.  It turns out that out of 619 info requests since January 1, 
1993, 253 (or about 41%) have received the Blue Book.

>The breakdown of sexes was almost equal: 5 males, 6 females. 

Alcor membership is currently about 70% male.  However, the ratio of male 
to female *student inquiries* is probably very close to 50/50.

>One question asked of callers is where they got our number (so we can 
>tell how effective our different advertising efforts are relative to one 
>another, among other things). The breakdown here is interesting. Fully 7 of 
>the callers, or 64%, said they got the number from *Omni* Feb. 92 (the 
>Charles Platt piece of a year ago). A much smaller number, 2 or 18% cited 
>*Omni* Jan. 93 (the Immortality Contest), and 2 more (another 18%) 
>cited other sources. 

Of the 619 info requests this year, Joe says that 424 are directly 
attributable to the *Omni* Jan. 93 article.  I expect that many of the 
remaining requests are indirectly attributable to the 93 issue also.  At 
about the same time that the contest was announced, the Mel Gibson movie 
came out, we started doing 5 to 10 radio interviews per week, and cryonics 
was suddenly a very hot topic.  There's no telling how many of our recent 
callers who say they got the phone number somewhere other than *Omni* 93 
were motivated to look for information on cryonics by all of the hoopla.  
Any such person who goes to his local library looking for info on cryonics 
will not find the 93 issue referenced in the Reader's Guide yet.  This 
explains why we still get a lot of inquiries from the 92 issue.  In any 
case, *at least* 68% of our info requests this year have been brought to 
us by the *Omni* 93 issue.

One of the most important results of this "hoopla" (in my opinion) has 
been its effect on student info requests.  Cryonics is becoming a very 
popular subject for students of all ages, whether they are grade schoolers 
doing science projects, high schoolers doing term papers, or college 
students doing important theses.  I have gotten many calls from *teachers* 
who want information for their classes.  Off the top of my head, I can 
think of two high school biology classes that are doing projects on 
cryonics.  One is in Tucson, the other here in Los Angeles.  In fact, the 
entire class in L.A. is coming to the facility for a tour in March.  Also, 
a graduate law class somewhere in the midwest is doing a cryonics project.

There are a few very good reasons that we still send the Blue Book free to 
those who are doing school related projects.  Any one student who does 
such a project is very likely to introduce cryonics to at least 20 other 
students.  In the short term, we gain significant value from this in that 
this a fairly inexpensive means of acquainting a large number of people 
(also known as "potential cryonicists") with our ideas.  More importantly, 
the specific people we are reaching (i.e., students) are likely to have 
open minds, at least, more open than your average adult.  A longer term 
benefit from this is that students who see a classmate's paper on cryonics 
today will no doubt be faced with a need to do many other research papers 
later on.  It is very common for students to tell us that they decided to 
do their report because a friend did one last term (or year.)

There is also a psychological factor of which we are taking advantage 
here.  That is, students do not generally feel threatened by ideas they 
encounter in school.  The main reason for this is that most everything is 
presented to them in an academic light.  If I present cryonics to an 
adult, I am asking him to alter his world view.  This is not something 
that any of us does often or easily.  If I present cryonics to a student 
in school, however, I am not so much asking him to change his world view 
as I am giving him something else to *add* to his world view.  While not 
every student will immediately latch on to these ideas, we have taken a 
huge step in presenting him with these ideas *early*.  

Envision a former student, 20+ years old, who never actually did a report 
on cryonics himself, but who sat through presentations by other students 
about cryonics a few times in school.  One day, he sees cryonics in the 
news.  He says to himself, "Cryonics?  Oh yeah, we studied that in 
school."  Stop for a second and analyze the power in that statement.  "I 
remember that from school."  If we want people to stop thinking of 
cryonics as controversial and start thinking of it as normal and benign, I 
can think of no better means than to make cryonics a regular topic of 
study and conversation in school.  This, in our thinking, is very much 
worth the $4.00 (total, including postage) it costs us to send the book.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?



After showing this response to Mike Perry, he had the following comments:

"My sample of only 11 was, again, very small, and maybe I acted prematurely 
in reporting the results of it (though it seemed to have some value).  On 
the other hand, all requests I tabulated were from one 2-day period, near 
the end of February, so there would be some expected differences with the 
larger sample extending back to Jan. 1, when the Omni issue announcing the 
contest was just coming out.  Another factor that may be significant is 
that the requests I enter tend to be in the evening or early morning, when 
others are less available to answer phones."

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