X-Message-Number: 21117 Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 09:23:11 -0500 From: david shumaker <> Subject: Update from Suspended Animation UPDATE FROM SUSPENDED ANIMATION (February 2003) This is the first of what we hope will many updates from Suspended Animation, Inc. over the next six months or so. Suspended Animation, Inc (SA) got operationally underway in February of 2002 on a nine-day standby, transport, and vitrification effort in conjunction with Alcor. Significant capital infusion arrived in May, 2002. We were only able to move into a facility in November. Immediately thereafter we moved our equipment from Rancho Cucamonga, only to put much of it in storage to make room for the facility build out. Only one municipality in all of south Florida would permit our animal research activities. Finding a similarly friendly landlord in that one small town proved difficult. Fortunately for us the facility is within about two miles of the Florida Atlantic University, which has just welcomed its first freshman medical school class this past month. Our address is: Suspended Animation, Inc. 1082 South Rogers Circle Boca Raton, FL 33487 Phone: (954) 997-4062 (primary and emergency), David Hayes cell phone is (561) 703-2388 David Shumaker cell is (954) 557-8760 and his home is (941) 743-9584 We are at: www.suspendedanimationinc.com (crude that it is) Since our beginning, we have been busy with patients. We have participated in three standby/recovery/transports followed by patient neuro vitrification / whole body freeze and three standbys that were terminated with patient survival. One case was groundbreaking, with the patient stored at intermediate temperature after vitrification. All of these activities have been made possible by Alcor who has enabled us to work on cases that we could not have done by ourselves due to our lack of facilities. As many already know, Mike Darwin quit last July, leaving us at a critical moment. After a somewhat trying period following Mike's departure, SA completely released him from his employment contract. Significantly, four of our patient activities occurred after Mike quit. In fact, Dave Hayes, our COO, is clearly one of the most experienced persons in standby/transport of those now active. While Mike had an immense amount of experience that we will miss, his departure in some ways opens the door for a new generation of cryonics personnel. In November of 2002 we hired Mike Quinn, a 25 year veteran of animal research and emergency response medicine. Chris Dougherty, PhD (Molecular & Cellular Pharmacology), who has been doing research on ischemic and reperfusion damage to cardiac tissue, starts work with us this month. Together Chris and Mike will lead our future research. We are interviewing additional medical and technician personnel for our staff. If you know of someone, please get in touch with us. We anticipate being able to provide high quality standby and transport for anyone within about 90 days. Patient cryopreservation at our facility is still at least 4-7 months away, depending upon how fast we can assemble and train personnel and fabricate equipment. While we have been involved only with Alcor patients during our first year, SA wants to emphasize that it is dedicated to providing cryopreservation services ecumenically. As promised from the beginning, our services and our technology will always be available to serve anyone, irrespective of organizational association. We are equally anxious to pursue developments in conjunction with others. We were engaged with Alcor because Alcor, their patients, and facilities provided us an opportunity to perform work, where otherwise we could not have. These efforts have provided us a jump start in learning critical details of the overall cryopreservation process that will help us support the entire community earlier than we would have been able to do otherwise. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21117