X-Message-Number: 29941
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:54:38 -0400
From: "Charles Platt" <>
Subject: Alcor Conference Report: Part 1

Someone on CryoNet asked for a report describing the Alcor
conference. Because I have been on vacation for the past
week, and because I obviously have no life, I had the time
and inclination to prepare the following text.

The opinions stated below are entirely my own. Although I
continue to work as a consultant for Suspended Animation, I
am not an employee and do not speak on behalf of the company
in any way.
_____________________________________________________________

Alcor Conference Report by Charles Platt: Part 1
_____________________________________________________________

Summary
_____________________________________________________________

I felt that the conference was very well run. The staff were
friendly and eager to help. The hotel was well staffed and
had a large patio at the rear that allowed socializing
outdoors, coinciding fortuitously with beatific sunny autumn
weather in Phoenix. Saturday's lunch in a shaded area by the
pool was especially pleasant, and the food was better than at
most conferences. I enjoyed seeing many old friends. The only
person I had hoped to see, who didn't show up, was Melody
Maxim.

The conference program was extremely broad. More than one-
third of the program items (5 out of 14) dealt with aspects
of aging or life extension that seemed to lack direct
relevance to cryonics. Since other conferences on aging
already exist, I was surprised that Alcor would share their
topic area instead of focusing more narrowly on cryonics,
where the organization has a unique status.

I assume that the Alcor conference should serve at least two
purposes: To promote Alcor to potential new members, and
inform existing members about the state of the organization.
The facility tour on Sunday satisfied these requirements, but
I felt that the conference program did not, with the
exception of presentations by Tanya Jones, Steve Van Sickle,
and Steve Bridge.

While the quality of many presentations was good, I felt that
the allocation of 40 minutes to each individual speaker
(including question time) was insufficient. Ideally I would
have preferred two tracks of programming, one for newcomers,
the other for attendees who have more prior knowledge. This
would allow more time for each speaker, and would also
resolve the complaint I heard from several people who had
attended prior Alcor conferences and didn't want to sit
through a rerun of introductory-level presentations that they
had heard before.

The meeting room was spacious. There were problems with the
audio during the first half of the first day, reminding me of
the problems we had with the audio at the Suspended Animation
conference in Florida. One sound channel didn't work, and
Brian Wowk's lapel microphone appeared to have been badly
placed, making some of his speech inaudible from where I was
sitting. However, the sound was fixed by the second half of
the first day.

Attendees were given shoulder bags for conference materials,
and a small summary of the program was printed on the back of
each person's badge, which was very helpful. An evaluation
form was distributed to every conference attendee.

Wireless internet service was provided free during the
program items. I appreciated this, since I am in the habit of
going online during conference proceedings so that I can
supplement the speaker's information with material that I
find via the Web.

Each presenter had been encouraged to embed his PowerPoint
slides in a background image featuring the Alcor corporate
logo. For those who followed this guideline, their slides
were reduced in size to accommodate the Alcor background as a
border around the edge. Because the screen was already quite
small compared with the room, many slides became too small to
read. To me this was the only annoying aspect of conference
production.
_____________________________________________________________

Saturday
_____________________________________________________________

a) Barry Aarons

I missed the opening remarks by Barry Aarons, who serves as
Alcor's lobbyist.


b) Steve Bridge

Steve seemed to have been given the mandate to explain "What
is cryonics?" or perhaps more specifically "What is Alcor?"
and he answered the question by giving an historical
overview.

Steve speaks well and has the added advantage, when talking
to newcomers, that he "seems relatively normal," as one
person put it to me. Still, I wondered if an historical
perspective made an ideal starting point. Since cryonics is a
dynamically evolving field, a more forward-looking opening
speech might have been appropriate.


c) Brian Wowk

Brian's talk included basics about cryobiology that he has
presented before. Since Brian is immensely well informed and
is one of the most impressive scientists I have ever met, I
wonder if this presentation constituted the best use of his
talents. There was a feeling of "deja-view" when I saw those
old pictures of fractured cryoprotectant in a conical flask
and diagrams depicting the organization of water molecules
during the freezing process. I guess someone has to provide
this kind of orientation, but again a second track of
programming would be helpful for people who are already
familiar with the basics.


d) Steve Van Sickle and Tanya Jones

After a midmorning break, Steve Van Sickle and then Tanya
Jones gave talks about developments at Alcor. Both Steve and
Tanya tend to deliver very upbeat presentations. This is a
problem for me, because if the last 15 years of involvement
in cryonics have taught me one thing, it is that all cryonics
organizations have significant problems. I find it useful to
admit and examine these problems as a first step toward
solving them. I also feel that this is a field where an
inspirational approach may be more appropriate than the kind
of bland progress report one would expect from a conventional
company.

When I first became interested in cryonics at the end of the
1980s, Mike Darwin was in the habit of standing up and
delivering an opener that went something like this:

"You are all going to die. In fact, because time seems to
pass faster as you grow older, most of you have already
experienced more than half of your lives subjectively. The
bad news is that cryonics procedures, as they are performed
now, may not save you. These procedures inflict numerous
forms of brain damage, some of which may be irreparable. The
question is whether any of you will bother to do anything
about this appalling situation."

I still think that this is how cryonics should be presented.
You don't attract a lot of people to participate in a great
adventure if you make it sound as if the organization is just
chugging along, making incremental progress on a daily basis,
with only a little hiccup now and then. Some drama is
necessary. Cryonics, after all, truly is one of the most
dramatic initiatives in all of human history. If you downplay
this, you sacrifice one of the most important aspects of the
field.

A corporate culture tends to be revealed in its publications.
Therefore I find it instructive to compare _Life Extension_
magazine (which has promoted impressive growth at Life
Extension Foundation) with _Cryonics_ magazine (which has not
functioned as an effective growth engine for Alcor during the
past ten years). LEF's Bill Faloon has a genius for creating
drama, whereas _Cryonics_ contains no drama at all. When my
significant other reads _Life Extension,_ she always ends up
feeling that she absolutely, positively has to pick up the
phone immediately to buy a new related product. When she
opens _Cryonics_ magazine, she seldom finishes reading it,
and has become apathetic about her Alcor membership.

Of course, she may not be typical.


e) Ralph Merkle

After a 90-minute break for lunch, Ralph began his talk by
asking how many people in the audience had heard him speak
before. Almost every person raised a hand. Ralph responded by
assuring everyone that he would be varying his usual talk
with "a couple new slides near the end." Since I have heard
Ralph's basic presentation many times, I decided I wasn't
willing to wait for those two new slides, and I opted out.
This may have been a mistake on my part since I heard later
that Ralph did conclude with important new information. I
regret that I missed it.


f) Mike West

Mike West, of Advanced Cell Technology, gave a talk that was
not very technical but was very eloquent, dwelling initially
on historical attempts to understand the aging process, in
particular the gradual understanding of the significance of
specialization of organisms into somatic cells and germ
cells.

While this was not news to many people, Mike's exposition was
so good, I could have listened happily for twice as long. I
especially enjoyed the visuals that he used, for example
showing the traditional concept of an egg being merely a
means to grow a new chicken in a chicken-and-egg cycle. He
literally turned this slide upside-down, since of course the
reverse is true: The chicken is just the mechanism enabling
the code inside the egg to survive. We serve the purposes of
our DNA, not the other way around.

Mike talked about political and religious barriers to his
research, and also included some brief information about
near-term applications such as treatment for macular
degeneration. This was fascinating, although it had limited
relevance to cryonics.


g) Aubrey de Grey

After a break Mike was followed by Aubrey de Grey, who (like
Ralph Merkle) was obviously conscious of the risk of
repeating himself at an event where he has spoken before.
Aubrey addressed this problem by taking a vacation from his
usual role as evangelist. He addressed the issue of whether
scientists will damage their careers by revealing that they
have made arrangements for cryonics, and described the
reactions he has received when he makes this admission
himself. Since Aubrey is a good speaker he was entertaining,
although personally I would have preferred a presentation
that offered a little more informational content.


h) Alcor Directors Panel

The final program item on Saturday was a panel that should
have included all of the Alcor directors who were at the
conference. Since Carlos Mondragon and Michael Riskin did not
attend, the potential participants were Steve Van Sickle,
Brian Wowk, Michael Seidl, Ralph Merkle, and Saul Kent.
However Saul declined to participate, prompting one member of
the audience to ask why. "I prefer not to," he said. No one
pressed him for a more illuminating explanation.

I was interested to hear what Michael Seidl might say,
because I had never seen him speak before, and because he
said something truly memorable during a board meeting in
2002. I had just started working for Alcor at that time, and
was requesting an allocation of funds to improve standby
procedures and train more personnel. Michael objected to the
amount of money because, he said, he didn't see why more than
one person is needed to perform standby, stabilization, and
transport procedures. This was like a director of an
ambulance company saying that he doesn't see the need for
more than one paramedic in an ambulance, or a director of
Boeing questioning why more than one person is needed to fly
a 747.

Presumably Michael has become more knowledgable since then,
but we never really found out, since few of the questions
pushed the directors very hard. There were just two
exceptions.

Steve Van Sickle was asked if he experiences a conflict of
interest as a result of serving as a director at the same
time that he is President of Alcor.

While he was responding, I found a document online at
http://www.blankrome.com/index.cfm?contentID=37&itemID=205, a
web page maintained by a firm of corporate attorneys. This
warns against a dual role for the President or CEO since it
"may blur the separate roles of governance and management and
the independent oversight that governance is expected to
provide of management. This risk is especially significant in
the nonprofit context where a strong dynamic CEO often mixes
with a voluntary board of directors."

Also, at Foley & Lardner's sixth annual National Directors
Institute conference scheduled for March, 2008, I see that a
session will be titled "Nonprofit Board Best Practices." The
preliminary briefing for this event draws on IRS guidelines
and states, in part, that "Nonprofit organizations should put
certain mechanisms in place through which each board member
is involved in evaluating the company's president or chief
executive officer. . . . At every board meeting, board
members should then verify whether the president or CEO is
performing the way he or she should in order to accomplish
pre-set goals." Evaluation of the President or CEO by the
directors may become a bit delicate if the President or CEO
is a director himself.

In defense of his dual role Steve said that in the nonprofit
world it is quite common for a CEO to be on the board of
directors, and he has experienced no conflicts of interest
personally.

The moderator of the panel read a question that had been
submitted by email, asking why Alcor members do not have the
right to vote for Alcor directors. Under Alcor's bylaws, the
directors have the exclusive right to re-elect themselves.

At the URL cited above I found this intriguing statement:
"Typically, the role of the membership in a nonprofit will be
limited to selection of the board of directors. However, the
role may be more expansive with certain functions reserved to
the membership such as approval of fundamental changes
including mergers, acquisitions, amendment of organizational
documents and other extraordinary changes." Thus, apparently,
a member of a typical nonprofit might assume that the *least*
he should receive would be voting privileges, and perhaps a
lot more.

The reason usually cited for giving voting rights to members
is that a nonprofit does not have shareholders to provide
oversight. Members are supposed to take over that function.
When I checked some nonprofits at random, all of them allowed
voting rights for their members, including ACLU chapters,
Greenpeace, the National Rifle Association, and the Authors'
Guild.

However, Steve Van Sickle suggested that nonprofits commonly
do not allow voting privileges to their members. He justified
Alcor's policy because it encourages "long-term stability."

I found this suggestion intriguing, since anyone familiar
with Alcor's history might conclude that the organization has
been anything *but* stable. I'll list just a few random
examples that come to mind. I'm not saying whose fault these
problems were, only that they all occurred under the current
system of a self-elected board.

--Severe internal strife leading to a splinter group and the
loss of about one-sixth of Alcor's membership. After a very
contentious year-long period during which many members raised
numerous issues which they felt were not being addressed,
almost all the directors re-elected themselves while other
candidates were ignored. This caused such anger among a group
of activists, they quit Alcor and started CryoCare
Foundation. If the Alcor board had not been self-elected and
self-perpetuating, a democratic process might have helped to
avoid this hugely expensive and disruptive split.

--An unusual number of employee problems, including thefts in
the book-keeping department (one of them major), a scientist
who left after he turned out to be participating in a web
site that was judged to be exceptionally unsalubrious,
numerous lawsuits by ex-employees against Alcor, and an
attempt to destroy the organization by employee Larry
Johnson. I believe it is customary for Alcor directors to
approve all hiring decisions.

--CEO problems. The turnover in CEOs seems to have been about
one every two years. One of them hired his daughter, his
wife, and his son-in-law to work at the company, all of whom
presumably were approved by the directors.

--Problems associated with last-minute cases. As I understand
it, all directors agreed to accept the Ted Williams case,
even though Alcor's own financial and other guidelines
regarding last-minute cases would have mitigated against this
decision. There have also been problems collecting fees.

--A serious threat of hostile legislation to regulate
cryonics. Motivated by a tsunami of adverse publicity, an
Arizona legislator made persistent efforts to regulate Alcor
in ways that could have interfered seriously with procedures.

--Financial difficulties. Alcor has always required donations
to function at more than a minimal level.

--The Dora Kent case, in which three or four directors were
taken away in handcuffs, although no charges were ever filed.

I have great admiration for the determination and
resourcefulness of the people who have overcome these
challenges. I have seen instances of courage and tenacity
that were exceptional. Clearly, though, it has been a rocky
road, and anyone who describes it as "stable" must be
applying an unusual definition of this word.

Would an elected board of directors have done any better?
Maybe not. Maybe they would have done even worse! All I'm
saying is that past history does not validate the claim that
the current system encourages stability.

For a good historical record of stability, I cite the
Cryonics Institute. It has been around for almost as long as
Alcor and has experienced none of the upheavals, with the
exception of a run-in with local regulators that caused the
Institute to be classified as a cemetery. However this
appears to have been provoked by the furor surrounding Alcor
in the Arizona legislature.

Interestingly, CI directors are elected by a subset of the
organization's membership. Somehow this democratic process
has not created any of the harmful effects predicted by Alcor
directors.


i) Banquet

The directors' panel was the last program item on Saturday.
Everyone reconvened a couple hours later for the banquet. The
food was good and the service was excellent, but there was no
keynote speech. While keynote speeches may be boring, they
may also help to emphasize a theme and a sense of purpose. To
me, the lack of a keynote speech seemed to reflect the lack
of focus of the conference.

I often enjoy keynote speeches, myself, because they give
free rein to the idiosyncracies of the speaker. I will always
remember a speech by Fred Chamberlain in the 1990s when he
spoke of the pendulum of change in cryonics and said that as
he and Linda were taking over at Alcor, their objective would
be to make the pendulum swing farther and farther until it
started to rotate, like an aircraft propeller, driving
cryonics ahead at an ever-accelerating pace.

Fred's talent for mixed metaphors was legendary, and his
contributions to Alcor turned out to be mixed. Still, he did
inject enthusiasm into the proceedings.
_____________________________________________________________

End of Part 1 of 3

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