X-Message-Number: 26722 Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:18:06 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: boasts I find the recent exchanges regarding membership numbers embarrassing for both of the organizations involved. All three cryonics organizations attract minuscule numbers of clients compared with other special interest groups, especially considering that the procedure has been available for four decades and has received huge amounts of publicity. I don't think anyone is going to be very impressed when one tiny organization claims that it is slightly less tiny than another tiny organization. Low numbers are rooted in the same old problem: Our technology is not mature. If higher membership figures are desirable (which is not necessarily true--see below) organizations would benefit much more from factual, properly documented reports of procedural improvements than from feature checklists which are obviously contrived to present each group in the most favorable light. I believe Alcor has been making substantial progress in areas such as transport and perfusion, yet the only information I have seen consists of brief, nontechnical reports with no pictures or diagrams. Similarly the Cryonics Institute claims to have developed vitrification capability, yet has not supported that claim with technical disclosure. So long as people are asked to accept cryonics to some extent on a basis of blind faith, even early adopters will be reluctant to make arrangements. In any event I must point out that the absolute number of members alone does not mean much. Each new member represents a very significant future liability, in much the same way that life-insured people represent a future liability for an insurance company. The ratio of members to future resources is far more pertinent than the number of members alone. Alcor has more than 10 times as many living members as cryopreserved patients. Therefore, cryopreserving its current members in the future will require at least 10 times the already monumental effort that has been expended to cryopreserve all existing patients over the past 30 years. I believe Alcor will cope with this one way or another, but it will be a major endeavor. Since Joe Waynick is no stranger to the use of spreadsheets, quite possibly he has done the numbers on this. If so, they would be more enlightening than a raw membership count. As for CI, it does not face such a heavy future burden, simply because it doesn't commit itself to providing standby service. While some people may regret that the basic price excludes standby, others may feel that this is "not a bug, but a feature," to use a phrase familiar in the software industry. To sum up, all the numbers are embarrassingly low, and the numbers themselves don't mean much on their own anyway. Instead of the recent self-congratulatory posts I would be far more impressed by a list of problems in each person's organization, especially if each list was accompanied by commentary suggesting how the problems may be overcome. --Charles Platt speaking for myself, not Suspended Animation Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26722