X-Message-Number: 23001 Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 08:32:23 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: ideas that don't work References: <> Mr. Mole wants us to go after the millionaires. A little study of cryonics history might be helpful. Bob Ettinger tried to find support for The Prospect of Immortality by doing a mailing to names chosen from Who's Who in America. This was--what, fifty years ago? The response was not encouraging. Of course this could be tried again, and it's a task that one person could certainly tackle on his own. Maybe Mr. Mole should go for it. Or maybe not. Don Laughlin, founder of the town of Laughlin, Nevada, is an Alcor member and has made no secret of this. He is said to be worth about half-a-billion dollars. I have seen various attempts to get him to donate or invest in cryonics- related initiatives, and I think $10,000 was the most he ever contributed. And he _believes_ in cryonics. I was at an alternate-energy conference several years ago where a lot of highly speculatives proposals were discussed, i.e. wacky ideas that almost certainly wouldn't work. I spoke to a man who was coordinating investment in research, using funds from a consortium of investors that he had set up. When I described the need for investing in cryonics-related research, he was dismissive. "It's much too far fetched," he said. "I could never raise any capital for that." Ask Saul Kent some time about the lack of response for investing in anti-aging research that looks as if it has an excellent chance of working. Again and again I see participants in this forum urging other people to do what seems obvious. For reasons that I can never understand, no one pauses to think that if it seems obvious, someone else has probably tried it. In 1992, CryoCare Foundation tried to obtain tax-exempt status as a cemetery organization (not a cemetery; a cemetery _organization_). Since CryoCare was merely an administrative organization, it would not have incurred any regulatory burden restricting the treatments applied to patients. Courtney Smith pursued this through the accounting company Ernst and Young. Ultimately he received a hearing in the office of an IRS official in Washington DC. The appeal was turned down because the IRS official said that CryoCare was working on the basis that its patients were not really dead and could be resuscitated one day. Therefore it could not be a cemetery association. Did this mean that the IRS was endorsing the feasibility of cryonics? The IRS official chose not to address that question. He turned down the appeal anyway. All of this information--and many other accounts of initiatives that didn't work--are available online for anyone willing to go looking. Of course this requires a little bit more initiative than making CryoNet posts that tell other people what they should do, because it's all so obvious. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23001