X-Message-Number: 3141
Date: 14 Sep 94 23:46:28 EDT
From: David S Pizer <>
Subject: CRYONICS

> Subject: Takeing risks and other items.

Charles Platt is right that he did a lot of work for Alcor to help with
the highly successful Alcor/Omni publicity. 

Charles, I have never said you were not responsible for a lot of the
good publicity we have received.  The phones are rigning off the wall
with requests for info packages and we have been signing up a lot of
new-comers to cryonics.

The Omni sucess has been a joint effort of a lot of the Alcor members,
but you played a key role.  If I have not said it before -- thank you
very much, Charles.   


As far as what Dr. Voelker had proposed on a sub-company within Alcor
for doing the transport/suspensions, I talked to him the other night on
this subject (he does not receive Cryonet) and after that conversation
plus just re-reading the posting, I believe that the most protection
unbundling would offer (if it offers anything at all) would be to the
Patient Care Fund.  Where the patients' money is.  

I do not think unbundling will protect the patients themselves if (as
Charles put it) some person who is doing the standby/transport "risks
his ass off."

Also, (IMHO) the downsides and risks of unbundling are way too dangerous
for my likeing.  Recently I talked to Art Quaife, president of
Transtime.  He reminded me that it is hard enough to get one group of
cryonicists to get along for any length of time, and when you form two
groups and give each one a sort of veto power over each other (as
unbundling does) you are asking for trouble.

Years ago when Transtime and ACS (Back then it was called BACS) were
operated as one company they all got along fine.  (I remember well
because I was a member of BACS/Transtime before I joined Alcor).  When
they began to run their cryonics operation as two companies (when they
unbundled) they began to fight with each other over  key issues.  Each
company needed the other one for certain aspects of doing cryonics (So
if they became angry with each other they could do things to each
other). 

Now the relationship has slipped (as most cryonicists know) to the
point that they are sueing each other.  The other day I heard someone
joke that lawsuits may be the final step in unbundling.  The bottom
line is this is all very sad because they are all nice people but they
just don't get along with each other, and when things go bad people in
mutiple companies may have a harder time getting along than people in
one company.

Another example of two companies that tried to interact but went out of
business were Cryonics Society of New York and CryoSpan.  I do not know
if that was a perfect example of unbundling as it is now being
suggested. I have tried to get Saul Kent to comment on why those
companies could not make it for years and he refuses.

Now that the theory of unbundling has come up again I think it would be
very usefull to examine what happened to those companies that got in
trouble and what can be done to prevent it from happening again.  I
know my friends in Alcor wish CryoCare no harm and they worry that if
CryoCare gets in trouble the whole cryonics organization would be hurt.
For that reason I hope we can all try hard to get along with each
other, but as I said in the last posting, I still feel that frozen
patients are much safer in a full  service cryonics company where there
is less chance for anyone to pass the "responsibility" buck.
==========

As to the risks Brian talked about that he took.  Brian, I think that
was good of you to take those types of risks. However, as you described
it, the medical people right on the scene were not opposed to what you
were doing. This not what we were talking about.

I am not sure Charles nor Brian understand what the risks were that
others were talking about and perhaps it is time to put this all to
rest.

Thanks for your clarifications, hope to see you November.
======

Lastly, I received a private request where someone asked me about my
statement about procuring a court order in a suspension.  This is not a
usual situation.  I was refering to the Dick Jones Case where the
hospital had indicated they might try to cause delays and Alcor had the
court direct them as to what they could and could not do.  The matter
was published in one of our magazine issues and if you call Alcor ( 602
922-9013) you can order a back issue with a copy of the article. Ask
for Joe Hovey or Mike Perry.

For years I have wondered what would happen if a cryonicist filed a suit
to try to have the courts forbid any autopsy or any interference with a
person's (his/her) cryonic suspension under any circumstances.  Myself,
I would be afraid to risk that type of lawsuit at this early stage of
cryonics, I hope some day it will be law.

Thank you for your interest.

Dave Pizer

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