X-Message-Number: 6156 From: Brian Wowk <> Date: Wed, 8 May 1996 01:59:58 -0500 Subject: Timothy Leary and CryoCare A few points about the Timothy Leary Case. BPI's removal of equipment from the Leary home last week was NOT a withdrawl from the Leary case. Mr. Leary was told that BPI would (upon notification of impending death) wait with equipment and personnel in a vehicle down the street until death was declared. Alcor has provided this same (reduced) level of service to some of its members in cases where circumstances did not permit on-site remote standby. Why was this necessary in the Leary case? Because Mr. Leary and his staff refused to permit 24-hour nursing care (which would have been paid for completely by Mr. Leary's insurance). Leaving equipment and staff inside the house in the absence of disinterested licensed personnel to hold the liability would have irresponsible and indefensible because of: a) lack of basic, decent levels of medical care for the patient. b) the danger of intentional or accidental drug-mediated death which could cause the home to become a crime scene and result in implication of BPI personnel and impoundming of BPI equipment and vehicles. c) possible criminal prosecution of BPI personnel for complicity in homicide, assisted suicide, providing lethal drugs, or felony practice of medicine without a license. d) possible loss of licensure for BPI staff who are medically licensed for failure to report patient welfare status to appropriate government agencies based on actions or failures to act observed in the course of being in the patient's presence. e) an open-door policy in the home where BPI equipment and medications were unsupervised, could NOT be locked down, and were accessible to anyone who walked in through the unlocked front door which was left unlocked 24 hours a day, often with no one present capable of responding to, or taking responsibility for, the actions of persons entering the house. Subsequently, as a result of continued lack of cooperation by Mr. Leary and his staff in his cryonics arrangements (including changing his life insurance to leave insufficient funds for cryonics) BPI asked to be relieved from the Leary case, and suggested another service provider be found. CryoCare agreed (by majority Board decision) and Alcor was asked if they were still interested in the case, in anticipation that long-time friends of Mr. Leary in Alcor might have more success in persuading him to arrange his affairs to allow for proper cryopreservation than CryoCare or BPI did. Finally, I want to emphasize that BPI's service on this case was almost completely donated. The dynamics of this case were thus considerably different from what would occur during the cryopreservation of an "ordinary" CryoCare member. CryoCare has been granted broad written permission by Mr. Leary (permissions beyond those granted in our Cryopreservation Agreement) to publicize details of his case, and we will do so in due course because of the many lessons to be learned by all cryonics organizations. *************************************************************************** Brian Wowk CryoCare Foundation 1-800-TOP-CARE President Human Cryopreservation Services http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6156