X-Message-Number: 27217
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 19:21:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: standards

Re Steve Bridge's post, it's important to distinguish between
different types of self-regulation. I wasn't aware that
anyone was going to try to set financial guidelines. Surely
the first step is simply to agree on "optimum" procedures for
standby, transport, perfusion, cooling, and storage, and for
reasons previously stated, we have an excellent opportunity
to pursue this right now. Issues such as how to arrange
patient funding are much more difficult (impossible to
resolve in the foreseeable future, in my opinion).

Regarding Brian Wowk's comment about the CI web site, this
has been a contentious issue for a very long time. But I
don't see that any standards body would attempt to control
such a thing (in the way that the American Medical
Association used to control, or prohibit, physician
advertising). The most one would require is that any
organization adopting the "optimum care" standards would
place an icon or logo on its site, linking to the independent
body that establishes standards. Buyers would then be free to
make their comparisons and their choices accordingly.

I don't see any of this as a tool for selling cryonics, or
for making one organization look better than another. I
simply believe that self-regulation is the best possible way
to pre-empt hostile, inappropriate, troublesome, expensive,
and potentially nightmarish legislation from official bodies
where the regulators will not be sympathetic to, or even
aware of, the all-important distinction between people who
are dead, and people who have been cryopreserved with minimal
injury and good cryoprotection. Enshrining this concept
officially, for the whole field, would be very helpful.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27217