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

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