X-Message-Number: 2991
Date:  Tue, 16 Aug 94 20:01:21 
From: Steve Bridge <>
Subject:  CRYONICS liability insurance

To CryoNet
>From Steve Bridge
August 16, 1994

In response to:  Message: #2988 - Insurance & Financial Risk
                 From:  (Nick Szabo)
                 Date: Sun, 14 Aug 1994 02:34:42 -0700 (PDT)


>I am also quite dubious of patient care
>organizations and trust funds that are exposed to the liabilities
>of the deanimation and suspension process.  I look forward to more
>progress in unbundling and (where possible, even at great cost)
>obtaining liability insurance.  I'm curious about the prospects
>of liability insurance for the various phases of the cryonics
>operation that are exposed to risk of lawsuit, and welcome more
>experienced comments about that topic.

>Nick Szabo              

     Nick, Alcor has checked into the possibility of liability insurance 
several times over the past decade.  We do have standard fire insurance 
for the building and "slip and fall" liability insurance for visitors; but 
when we discuss liability insurance to protect against damage to the 
patients or to protect from lawsuits about malpractice, the agents just 
laugh.  We only have 27 patients in suspension.  The patients are legally 
dead and the odds they might be relabeled as alive someday is completely 
unknown.  What are the lives of "dead people" worth?  What is an insurance 
company's risk that a small company doing highly experimental work in a 
highly emotional, unproven, and unaccepted are of our culture would be 
sued for malpractice?  Certainly not zero.  Maybe pretty darned high. 

     An insurance company insuring a doctor against malpractice has the 
records and history of tens of thousands of physicians to make a 
reasonable guess at level of risk and how much to charge.  There is no 
such history for cryonics.  

     And if we can't prove our patients are either dead or alive, can't 
prove whether this will ever work, can't even define what short-term 
success might be (since we don't know what level of fidelity -- if any-- 
is sufficient for future reanimation), how could a company insure against 
failure?  Maybe ALL of the suspension ever performed up until now will 
someday be labeled as "failures."  Insurance companies don't like to gamble 
unless they have house odds.

Steve Bridge

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