X-Message-Number: 3264
Date: 14 Oct 94 02:49:54 EDT
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: CRYONICS  CSNY

I am continuing to post here on the main net about this subject (objections

noted) because I believe the issues at hand, issues first raised here, go beyond
politics.  They concern mens' reputations, the very fabric of cryonics, past
present and future, and the history of what happended to human beings who, like
us, hoped for a future life.  I regret if some of you find this unpleasant.


Since Steve Bridge responded to me in the political forum, I will respond to him
there, and I urge those interested in this matter to look there and read what
both Steve and I have to say.

At the outset I would like to thank Mike Perry for his response and for his
quotes from the interview with Saul.  I would point out that (as Pizer and
others should be aware) there were other interviews with the principal figures
in CSNY/Cryo-Span including an interview with Curtis Henderson  (CRYONICS July,
1981 Issue #12) which covers some of the same ground gone over in the interveiw
with Saul Kent.  Both men  candidly discuss what happened and what they feel
were errors they made that, with hindsight, they would not make again.

I also wish to thank Charles Platt for his exposure of Dave Pizer's duplicity
with regards to this issue.  I have personally (and repeatedly) had long
conversations with Dave over these matters and have referred him to both the
CSNY archives, Curtis Henderson, and previously published interviews of both
Kent and Henderson.  Indeed, the CSNY archives are currently under Alcor's
control (a very bad move on Curtis' part in my unsolicited opinion) and Dave
has the luxury which I (and also Saul and Curtis)  no longer have: to just walk
right up and help himself to the facts that are recorded there.

I echo both Charles' remarks and my own when I again say that Dave has no
interest whatsoever in the "truth" but rather is interested only in seeding

doubt and smearing people. Dave's accusation that Saul will not talk about these

matters is patently absurd.  Saul has talked about Cryo-Span and CSNY publically
and privately on many occassions.  He has only refused to talk about it on
Cryonet in answer to the kind of garbage Dave is throwing out.  And what is

more, I don't blame him.  Furthermore, Dave has known and had access to Saul for
many years.  Saul tells me that at no time during that period (up until the
split in Alcor) did Dave express the slightest interest in the past.
Furthermore, Dave has at his disposal both Mike Perry and the CSNY archives.
Mike has made a long project out of studing the history of cryonics.

I would also point out that to my knowledge neither Curtis or Saul was ever
involved in any civil or criminal litigation regarding the cryopreservation of
CSNY/Cryo-Span patients.  Thus, where do these accusations of malfeasance come
from?  From the next-of-kin?  From whom?

And, more to the point, WHY and why NOW!


Unfortunately enough, it is not Saul Kent who stands to be smeared or injured by
this inneundo or (in Cosenza's case) outright accusation of bad business
judgment or malfeasance.  Rather, it is Curtis Henderson.  This is both
unfortunate *and* ironic in that Curtis has suffered so much for what he did.
Indeed, assuming he *was* liable of some malfeasance in cryopreserving the
CSNY/Cryo-Span patients he has suffered more and paid more (in my considered
opinion) than had he served a four year sentence for manslaughter for each of
the six patients who were ever directly in his care.  I  say this about Curtis
because of the following facts which I either know and/or have good reason to
believe to be true:

a) The primary caregiver and the primary operator of Cryo-Span was Curtis
Henderson.  Saul's role in both care and administration was almost nonexistent
after the first few patients were frozen.

b) The primarly contractual relationship was between Cryo-Span and the next of
kin in all but one case (and ultimately even in that case by court ruling).
CSNY and the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act were used as a legal mechanism for
carrying out cryopreservation.  The relatives clearly paid the bills and called
the shots and, *most importantly* that was understood by everbody on both sides
and at the outset.

c) After the first few feezings Curtis and later Gillian Cummings (nee' Beverly
Greenberg) ran Cryo-Span and made all decisions as to who would or would not be

accepted for cryopreservation.  I would note here that after the first flurry of
"suspensions" (5 in less than two years) only Gillian's father and Mrs. Dastal
(who DID have a trust with "long-term" funding) were accepted.  In Gillian's
case she paid in substantial amounts of money, became an Officer of Cryo-Span
(and defacto shareholder) and worked ceaselessly to keep her father and the
other two patients (Hurst and  Dastal) frozen.  In fact, she died in the
facility a few feet away from her father's dewar while sleeping in her car in
the unheated facility; she was working during the day on an ice cream truck to
scrape together enough to pay the rent and LN2 bills.

However, I hasten to add that I do not think Curtis was responsible in the way
Cosenza et al. wish to imply.  Here I quote Cosenza:

>Your post (i.e., Mike Darwin's)was quite literate as always, and further
sustained my >contention 
>that the principals (at least of CSNY & CryoSpan) KNEW ahead of time that 
>the costs of storing a patient over the long haul would be exorbitant. As 
>you said, they depended on future business revenues to bail them out since 
>they knew nobody had lots of money to put into cryonics, which leads me to 
>believe that they must have contemplated disaster at the outset at least as 
>a possibility.

The above statement echoes earlier ones Cosenza made essentially accusing Saul
(and thus Curtis) of operating a Ponzi racket.  Let us spend a little time
defining a Ponzi racket and see if the behavior of anyone at CSNY or Cryo-Span
qualifies.  Further, let us deal with the accusation in Cosenza's statement
"that they must have contemplated disaster at the outset at least as a
possibility."

First, the Ponzi racket:  A Ponzi scheme (named after the fellow who invented
it) is not simply a pyramid operation (by that broad definition Am-Way is a

Ponzi operation).  Rather, it is a conscious and intentional scheme to *defraud*
people by promising them a return on their investment, or goods or services for

their payments, which cannot be delivered, and then using some of the subsequent
investors' or customers' money to pay off the interest or deliver the services
to the first group of suckers while using the principal for personal gain.
Obviously, someone at the end get's left holding the bag since the principal is
being spent for personal gain by the Ponzi racketeers.

How does a Ponzi scheme differ from a legitimate business which borrows capital
or offers services at a price contingent upon gaining future customers?  Here I
will have recourse to an example I often use with regards to cryonics.

Let's say you want to open a McDonalds to sell food.  You will have substantial
capital and overhead costs before you sell your first hamburger.  Indeed, my
guess would be that an average McDonalds today costs well over one million US
dollars to franchise and construct.  Now, when the first customer comes in the
door and orders a hamburger, fries and a coke s/he does not expect that the
smiling attendant in the paper hat will say "Here's your food, that will be
$1,675,000.00!  

Of course, s/he could say that and could quite rightly say to the customer,
"Listen lady (or sir), that's what it cost us to make this food for you.  My
God, do realize our construction costs were over $300,000 and a grill, well
that's nearly $5,000 alone.  And you expect us to give you a hamburger, a coke
and an order of fries for a mere $4.00!  Absurd!  Why lady, don't you realize
that would be a Ponzi racket since for all we know we'll never have another
customer!?"

And, believe me, *at those prices they never would have another customer!*

So what's the difference?  The McDonalds owner has to spread his costs out over
time and to make a profit  both so that he can live and so that he can pay his
shareholders or leinholders.  This is known as capitalism.  It differs from a
Ponzi racket in that:

a) The businessman has a reasonable expectation of delivering a product or
service which will generate a real return in terms of capital growth.

b) The businessman and his shareholders and even his customers know that they
stand to lose their capital (all or some) or access to the service if the
businessman is  mistaken (for whatever reason) about his ability to operate his
business profitably.

c) I include customers above, because customers are often severely
inconvenienced, damaged, or put out of business by the failure or another
business.  By way of example (Alcor pay attention) Dow-Corning no longer makes
Silastic pump shoe tubing which is used in human cryopreservations.  In fact,
they don't make Silastic adhesive, antifoam A, or any other silastic medical

product.  I know this 'cause I just bought up the last of the pump shoe material
available anywhere in the world.  The absence of this product has caused me a
severe inconvenience and, had I not also found an alternative, could have shut
down my research program and effectively put me out of business.  (In the
meantime I got a big education about peroxide vs. platinum curing, protein
adhesiveness, etc, etc. vis a vis silicone rubber medical grade tubing).

Curtis, Saul, Fred Horn, Richard Vingiello (the attorney) and the other

investors in Cryo-Span knew these business risks.  Furthermore, and much more to
the point, *so did all of Cryo-Span's  customers (the next of kin of the
patients).*  Indeed, the CSNY paperwork and the Cryo-Span contracts that I saw
were all at pains to point out the following:

a) cryonics was new, experimental, and unproven.

b) no guarantees could be made about revival or storage duration.

c) no guarantees could be made about long-term costs.

In fact, some of the original language from those first documents survives
almost intact in the CURRENT Alcor paperwork!

The customers may have been unhappy when the prices rose, but nowhere were they
promised perpetual storage for a fixed fee.  Furthermore, in both THE PROSPECT
OF IMMORTALITY and in subsequent CSNY newsletters and literature the importance
of providing long-term funding was again and again pointed out.  In particular,
I personally spoke with Nick DeBlasio, Pauline Mandel, Gillian Cummings and
Claire Halpert about the need to provide long term funding -- even going so far
as to suggest that they take out added insurance on their own lives if they did
not currently have liquid funds to use in the manner required by common sense
and prudence.  I never met or spoke with Paul Hurst so I cannot attest to his

personal knowledge of the advisability of this tack, but it would be hard for me
to believe he was unaware of it.

Now, let's go back to Pizer and Cosenza's arguments and look at the hidden
agendas (and assumptions) and see how they stack up to reality in consideration
of the foregoing:


1) To my knowledge neither Curtis nor Saul promised to keep ANY of the patient's
frozen long term.  In fact, to my certain knowledge they engaged in brutal
frankness about the problems and repeatedly advised the next of kin about the
likely outcome if long-term funding *as well growth in customer base* did not
occur.

2) As far as I know neither Curtis or Saul ever coerced, lied to, or otherwise

encouraged the next-of-kin to freeze their loved ones.  In fact, in the cases of

Cummings, Dastal, Mihok, and Hurst I have either direct knowledge (from personal
communication with the principals) or indirect evidence that they actively
discouraged these people from pursuing that course of action.   Indeed, as I
have often pointed out, I learned this approach (and practiced it at Alcor) in
dealing with last minute cases from both Curtis (primarily) and Saul.

3) The above indicate that the next-of kin of these patients were informed, as
best they could be, about the uncertain nature of what they were getting
involved with.  Certainly a quick trip to the Cryo-Span facility would have
disabused them of any notions of grand profits to be made or of any idea that
Cryo-Span was a thriving operation headed for profitability and success.

4) Neither Curtis nor Saul ever made any money from freezing these people.
*Further, they never defrauded anyone by taking money for these people's care
and spending it on themselves or for something else.*  

5) Implied in Pizer's and Cosenza's positions is that "having frozen someone it

is somehow immoral to thaw them out and bury or otherwise conventionally dispose
of them WHETHER THEY CAN PAY OR NOT OR WHETHER THEIR RELATIVES CAN PAY OR NOT."


While it may not be very good business, I can see nothing wrong with the
following: Person A comes along and says: " I have $10,000, please freeze my
dad".  Company B says: "O.K., we can do that, but it will cost you 10K just to
get your dad frozen and then you'll have to pay 3K *each and every year to keep
him frozen.*  And, if you can't come up with the 3K (an amount which may,
incidentally go up at any time for any reason) then Dad get's thawed out."

As long as everybody agrees to this transaction there is nothing morally or
legally wrong with it.  In fact, it's done in medicine all the time.  Many

lifesaving procedures are not covered by insurance or Medicare/Medicaid.  I have

personally seen patients start a course of treatment like a heart transplant and
then DIE because they could not subsequently afford the 20K or so a year for
cyclosporine and follow-up medical care.  Before ESRD (End-Stage Renal Disease)
legislation this used to happen with dialysis (artificial kidney treatment)
patients all the time.  People would run out of money for dialysis and they
would die.  Period.

Is such a set of circumstances unreasonable in cryonics?  Well, yes and no.  A
lot depends on the circumstances.  In most cases the answer is no.  But let's
look at three real cases.  Alcor patients A-1142, A-1056 and A-1057.  In the
case of 56 and 57 a more irresponsible course of action could hardly be mapped
out.  The son froze the parents, provided no long-term funds, did not sign up
himself, and spent his estate down to the point that it would have been
problematic to have kept all three of them cryopreserved. He then got killed in
a car accident! But, lucky break!  Dick Jones, Mike Darwin and Jerry Leaf step
in, spend their own money, Alcor throws in some more, and these patients are

still frozen and are as likely to remain so as any other Alcor patients. The son
was paying year-to-year.  Here also he was warned to set-up long term funding
and provide for his own cryopreservation repeatedly by both me and Art Quaife.
He was also warned of the consequences of not doing so.  Lucky him.  Lucky for
his parents.  His irresponsibility could in some perverse sense be said to have
"paid off."  Who's the fool here?  (Well, cetainly the son doesn't get a lot of
points, but you gotta hand it to him, Mom and Dad are still frozen!)

Similarly, someone with no immediate hope of long term funding for a loved one
may still get him or her frozen in the (reasonable or unreasonable) hope that
they may GET the long term funding in the future.  If you turn out to be a Don
Laughlin or a Steve Jobs, you're OK.  If you turn out to be poor schmuck who
never get's the "big break" and works the rest of his life in a Taco Bell you
may still be OK if you buy the winning lottery ticket.

The only reasons it it is (in my opinion) *wrong* to freeze people under such
conditions are:

1) It is bad for the cryonics organization and its staff (psychologically) to
thaw such patients out.

2) It creates an opportunity for litigation by next-of-kin and this has
demonstrably happened in at least one case in the past and been threatened in
others.

3) If the cryonics organization reasonably believes that the person pursuing
cryopreservation cannot afford it or really come up with the long term costs
then it is prudent from both a business and ethical standpoint to refuse the
case. (It is not however immoral to NOT refuse it, as long as both parties have
been reasonably informed; if the customer foolishly persists in believing that
he is going to strike it rich or win the lottery and pay for Dad's long-term
care that way, then s/he is entitled to that belief and it is not necessarily
the responsibility of the cryonics organization to enforce their skepticism

except insofar as its effects the cryonics organization's business interests and
obligations to its members/clients/patients.


4) It doesn't do cryonics as whole any good (I've had second thoughts about this
due to arguments from Jim Yount; maybe it DOES do cryonics as a whole some good
if irresponsible or financially incapable people get thawed out!)


So, how do Curtis, Saul and CSNY/Cryo-Span stack up?  Did they use patient money
for personal gain?  No, in fact they used personal money for patient benefit.

Did they promise to keep everybody in storage indefinitely for "X" dollars?  No,
in fact they repeatedly emphasized the financial uncertainties.  Did they
operate a Ponzi racket, promising unrealistic fees and rates of return based on
future growth? No, they did not.

And finally, and most importantly, DOES THE FACT THAT THEY FROZE THOSE PATIENTS
MAKE THEM MORALLY OBLIGATED TO SACRIFICE THEIR OWN LIFE, WELLBEING, MONEY, AND
THE LIVES OF THEIR DEPENDENTS TO KEEP THEM FROZEN IN THE ABSENCE OF ANY
PROMISES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED TO DO SO?  The answer is a resounding NO!

Like any reasonable business people, Curtis, Saul and the others (including
Ettinger and most other cryonicists) expected cryonics to grow.  In fact, after
freezing 5 people in less than two years Curtis and Saul (and others) were
cautiously optimistic about the business future of cryonics and many reasonable
people at the time might have agreed with that assessment.  Furthermore, Nelson
was busy freezing people steadily during this period although, unbeknownst to
most, he was doing so without collecting the money and was misrepresenting that
he had money in trust and so on.  Thus, Nelson created, to a very real extent,
the belief that cryonics could be a viable business.  Indeed, he created this
impression in me until I found out otherwise. In fact, Nelson went so far as to
publically accuse Cryo-Span of price gouging and bad business practices and
lured Mandel, DeBlasio and Dastal away from Cryo-Span by *promising* to charge
less and deliver more secure storage.

By contrast, after the first rush of freezings, Curtis and Saul were
increasingly pessimistic and in fact only froze Cummings (Greenberg) and Dastal
in the subsequent years. Further, they did so only after trying STRONGLY to

dissuade these people (I know this personally because I was there when the calls
went through to Claire Halpert (Dastal's daughter) and I talked with both
Gillian and her mother many times about how Curtis tried to dissuade them!)  I
consider this quite a testimonial to their learning ability, to their humanity,
and to their responsibility.


While Cryo-Span may not have been a business success  neither was it a  fraud, a
Ponzi racket nor an immoral operation.  It conducted its business openly,
honestly and with full information to all parties involved.  When charges were
found to inadequate they were revised upward and relatives were informed and

given options. Mandel, DeBlasio and Halpert (Dastal) went with Nelson.  Had they
remained at Cryo-Span, paid the true costs (instead of listening to Nelson's
lies) and stuck with it, Cryo-Span might have continued to care for these

patients long enough to either remain in business or hand off care to others who
came later.


Curtis Henderson and Saul Kent deserve not blame, but rather thanks for teaching
us so much and suffering so long and hard trying to do the impossible.

Mike Darwin

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