X-Message-Number: 21316
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 02:34:16 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: various CI/Alcor issues
References: <>

John de Rivaz:

> How Big is CI?
> and find your answer as of September 2002 to be "mid-400s"

I have been very impressed by David Pascal's ability to find new members
for CI. The trouble is, "member" doesn't mean the same thing at CI as it
means at Alcor (or used to mean at CryoCare). CI has "members" who made
their onetime payment and may or may not still be interested in the
organization. I hope David will correct me if I am wrong in saying that
there is no ongoing attempt to verify the existence of all CI members.

Other cryonics organizations historically have charged dues. If the member
doesn't pay his dues, sooner or later he is removed from the list. Thus it
is hard to know how to compare the CI numbers with those of other
organizations, past and present. Of course it is conceivable that all the
people who joined CI with a one-time payment are still members; but we
just don't know. Or at least, I don't.

Bob Ettinger writes:

> It will usually take at least a full day after notification to get
> the team to the patient, even if the patient is already a member with all
> paperwork and funding in place.

Apparently Bob hasn't been reading Alcor News (www.alcornews.org). If he
had, he would have seen that in our case in December, standby team members
reached the patient within less than an hour. In the case last Monday,
team members were setting up equipment at the mortuary within 3 hours,
while the patient was collected about 4 hours after cardiac arrest. Note:
Both of these cases were totally unexpected and allowed no preparation
time whatsoever.

Last year we had a local case, which still entailed a short standby until
the moment of arrest. I was beside the patient when he stopped breathing.
One could say the response time in this case was zero.

In Houston last year we deployed a huge amount of equipment about 12 hours
after being summoned, and I was visiting the patient while the rest of
the team were fitting out a cargo van as a makeshift ambulance.

It is grossly misleading and almost defamatory to say that our response
time is at least 24 hours. Moreover, since the whole idea of a standby is
to be present at the time of legal death, and since this goal is usually
achieved, the initial response time is irrelevant. The important issue is
whether people who know what to do are available to do it when the patient
is pronounced. Since Alcor currently has a fulltime paramedic on staff, an
RN who works for us part time and is available for all cases at a moment's
notice, half-a-dozen very well trained standby team members in California,
other standby team members with varying experience in other states, a
former director of suspension services (Tanya Jones) who participated in
two cases last year, plus myself and the people at Suspended Animation,
and a pool of 12 Phoenix paramedics who are on call for us, our standby
capability has never been better. Tomorrow we will begin a 6-day training
course which will be attended by more than 25 people, and I hope this will
yield still more standby team members.

> CI's policy is to try to make the widest options available to its members. If
> a member wants someone else to do the initial preparation, our contract
> allows that.

But this has been done in how many cases? One, or more than one?

> 2. Funeral Directors--Randy suggests they may be unreliable and unethical,
> with no motivation for timely and effective response.

I don't think this is what Randy said. I think it is an exaggeration of
what he said. Personally I find that funeral directors are almost always
very helpful, very interested in cryonics, willing to cooperate, but they
seldom share our sense of urgency. This is understandable: They spend
their entire professional lives dealing with people who are no longer
alive.

> circumstances, but in our experience the local mortician washout/perfusion
> option is often the best.

I believe the washout is done with Ringer's solution.

> Next best, circumstances permitting, is for the
> local mortician to start cool-down and related steps

I assume this means surface cooling. So far as I know, CI does not have
any kind of transportable perfusion kit containing a heat exchanger.
Therefore it cannot cool the patient via femoral bypass. Unfortunately
surface cooling is not very efficient.

The above statements should not be seen as an attack on another
organization. They were prompted by Bob's remarks, some of which were
uninformed or untrue. The core of the matter is that CI offers a service
which costs a fraction of the amount that Alcor charges. This price
differential is a big selling point. On the other hand, at such a low
price, obviously the organization cannot afford (for instance) to pay
paramedics to do standbys. Why not admit that this is a simple matter of
economics, instead of trying to pretend that standbys are unnecessary?

--Charles Platt

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