X-Message-Number: 3598 Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 01:01:32 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: CRYONICS:Rich People I was delighted to see the post signed "Robin" (full name withheld?) tackling the perennial questions of funding and professionalism. I was especially pleased in that Robin actually has solid, practical experience in his (her?) field. Cryonics has traditionally been a magnet for "gifted amateurs" (myself included), and we dearly need all the professionalism we can get. Robin is smart enough to admit his own relative naivety re the history of cryonics, but alas not prescient enough to avoid some temptations which have proven, over the years, to be dead ends. Let me quickly summarize my own limited knowledge of the marketing/financing strategies which have been attempted unsuccessfully so far, and some reasons why, statistically, rich people are less likely to sign up for cryonics. As I recall, when Robert Ettinger first conceived of cryonics, one of his strategies was to visit the local library, pull 500 names out of Who's Who, and send them his self-published monograph (which was later expanded and professionally published by Doubleday as THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY). Ettinger didn't succeed in rousing any real interest from the famous people and millionaires whom he wrote to. Subsequent attempts to sell cryonics to an "elite" audience have been equally disappointing. I seem to remember Bill Faloon telling me that he tried to market cryonics to wealthy people in his area of Florida--again, with dismal lack of success. There is a theory to explain this. (We always have theories to explain why cryonics, which offers a chance of a vastly extended lifespan, is almost impossible to sell to anyone.) One theory holds that highly motivated individuals who are extremely wealthy or powerful have played by a certain set of rules all their lives. Their success is real and meaningful ONLY WITHIN THAT RULE FRAMEWORK. Suppose I am a multimillionaire, a political figure, there'll be a statue of me someday, and a building has already been named after me. I become a "grand old man" receiving respect from younger men. I am also keenly competitively aware of my standing relative to other successful people. Now you tell me that the game isn't going to end as planned. It becomes ... open-ended. I can "return" at some point in the future, when things will be totally different in ways which are totally unpredictable. My fortune may have doubled, or it may no longer exist. The people I spent my life competing with will be dead. There will be newcomers who will seem formidable, because they'll understand the world of the future, and I won't. This is supposed to sound like an inviting prospect? On the contrary, I have every incentive to say, "Don't bother me with that bullshit, it'll never work." In real life, speaking now as Charles Platt, I am not at all wealthy, so I am only speculating, here. But we do know that "average" people go through unexpected, severe upheavals in their outlook on life and their personal value systems when they sign up for cryonics. I think it is reasonable to assume that this kind of upheaval could be potentially much greater for people who are more highly driven and have a lot more at stake. I am slightly more willing to believe that wealthy famous people could be better prospects for cryonics than wealthy businesspeople, because fame is a quixotic quantity afflicting a wider range of personality types. Also, we have seen cases where famous people have sometimes spoken out in favor of cryonics. (Stanley Kubrick, Peter Sellers, and--allegedly--Elvis Presley.) But they have hardly ever followed through. Again, it seems to me that someone who possesses a lot (even of an intangible commodity such as "acclaim") will be very unhappy about the idea of losing it. A future in which there is the possibility of extended life might seem unappealing if it brings with it the threat of personal obscurity. Here are some other random observations. When I instigated the "Omni Immortality Contest" (win yourself a free freeze by writing a short essay) I found that almost all the entries were from people who were NOT wealthy. In fact, I would say, on average, the entrants were LESS successful and LESS wealthy than a hypothetical well-educated white-collar professional. Many of them liked the idea of cryonics because it promised a "second chance" in which they hoped to achieve MORE than they had in this lifetime. In other words, they had relatively little to lose by experiencing renewed life, so it seemed a more appetizing prospect. (I must add that some of the entries to the contest did not follow this model and came from people who seemed highly talented and successful in their fields... but they were a small minority.) The only extremely wealthy cryonicist I have met personally is Don Laughlin, the well-known casino owner who is an Alcor member and openly talks about his faith in cryonics. I once interviewed Mr. Laughlin for a nonfiction piece that I was writing, and his comments to me were therefore made on the record and can be quoted here. I asked him why he had opted for cryonics, and he said with a laugh, "I like the odds." I then asked him what he thought the odds actually are. "Well, it seems like almost a sure thing at this point, doesn't it?" he responded. Here is another problem. Wealthy people are usually cautious with their money. They will want to feel that cryonics is a "sure thing," relatively speaking, before sinking a fortune into it. I'm not sure why Mr. Laughlin came to his conclusion about the odds in favor of cryonics, but I do know that he is in a tiny minority. But this raises yet another problem. Anyone who feels that cryonics is virtually certain to work will have very little motivation to donate or invest money on research whose purpose is to improve the procedures involved. So: if it doesn't seem a sure thing, we don't attract much interest, and if it does seem a sure thing, we don't get the money we need to make it more reliable. I could go on at much greater length about the problems of selling this seemingly desirable "product to cheat death," but I'll just add one more observation, which is that I absolutely agree with "Robin" re the need for a financial setup which enables the rich cryonicist to keep his money in some form of trust which is administered INDEPENDENTLY of the cryonics organization where he will be frozen. Also, though Robin doesn't touch on this point specifically, it is natural for wealthy people to want "separate accounting": i.e. their cryopreservation funding is THEIR funding, not pooled with other patients' funding. We followed both of these principles when we set up CryoCare, and we now have the Independent Patient Care Fund to satisfy these requirements. The structure which Robin asks for does now exist. Unfortunately, there is no sign as yet of billionaires eager to put their money into it. Traditionally, cryonics organizations lose money. In fact, cryonics has been a wonderful way for many people to spend their entire lives and savings, merely in an effort to assemble personnel and equipment that can achieve the minimal objective of a safe, benign standby, transport, perfusion, and cooldown. With this kind of track record, I don't see why anyone would want to invest money in, or loan money to, a cryonics organization, in the hope that the money would eventually generate sufficient new business to justify the outlay. I wish this weren't so, but it seems to be so. Therefore, cryonics PR and advertising remains badly underfunded. The Omni contest was estimated (by Omni's PR department) to reach about 16 million people, because it generated so much secondary publicity. The total number of entries was around 500. The total number of people who were induced to sign up (according to Steve Bridge) is around 20. That's not a very promising ratio. If Robin has some ideas on how to make it work better, I'd love to hear from him (or her, as the case may be). PS. None of the above should be construed as an argument that we should *give up* trying to promote cryonics. I still believe that growth is inevitable in this field, and we should do all we can to encourage it. I also think that there must be some self-made mavericks out there who might be willing to sink real money into cryonics if they only understood how close we are to success. My purpose in spelling out all the difficulties is merely to establish what has not worked in the past, so that we will be able to make properly informed decisions about deploying our limited resources in future. ############################################################ Charles Platt, 1133 Broadway (room 1214), New York, NY 10010 Voice: 212 929 3983 Fax: 212 929 4467 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3598