X-Message-Number: 6821
Date: 30 Aug 96 03:16:32 EDT
From: "Steven B. Harris" <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS:Cosenza Alternate History
In message #6817 (Wed, 28 Aug 1996) writes:
>>The "funny" message from Steve Harris ND (I guess that stands
for nattering dolt) wasn't the least bit ammusing. I think my
sense of humor is as broad-minded or even moreso than most, but I
just can't figure out why anyone associated with CryoCare would
be doing anything other than keeping a low profile after the way
Timothy was treated.<<
Comment:
Timothy Leary was treated the way he wanted to be treated,
actually. For instance, I personally set him up with the hospice
program that kept him mostly pain free on good narcotics for the
last months of this life. For this he thanked me, his family
thanked me, his friends thanked me. As for cryonics, I couldn't
convince Tim to stay signed up at the end. He was bored with the
concept by that time, and at the end of his life didn't feel much
obliged to do anything he didn't want to do, and which wasn't fun
any more. Speaking of which, Tim actually thought he was looking
at a lot more time for fun than he was to get in reality, BTW. I
told him differently, but he didn't believe me. It's the
privilege of patients not to believe their doctors about such
things, but it's usually not terribly wise.
Cosenza: >>Dignifying the tabloid stories with redistribution
in places where those stories will be read by friends of their
victims is utterly classless.<<
Cosenza is figuring that friends of Leary will read this AP
press release on the net in sci.cryonics, but miss it elsewhere?
Sure they will. And that then, even knowing what an ultimate
publicity hound Leary was to the very core of his being, Leary's
friends will be offended by the natural outcome of this bit of
theater which Leary himself undertook in life? Sure they will.
What can I say to this chain of concepts, except that it appears
that Cosenza's elevator does not go all the way to the top?
>> But, I guess this isn't surprising coming from a man who
apparently still sees nothing wrong with talking terminally-ill
people into spending their suspension funding on pointless
medical care so that they end up in ashes or buried in the ground
(as he did a few years ago with one particular Alcor member). By
comparison, I don't think anyone at Alcor has been "unkind".<<
Cosenza then goes on to elaborate on this incident in sci.cry-
onics post <>:
>>... one of the "minor" controversies just before the Alcor
split involved an AIDS patient in Flordia who ended up cancelling
his suspension arrangements after interaction with Harris. As I
remember the argument, Harris at the time was in disagreement
with Alcor people over the value of getting this man frozen
versus getting him medical care. I think any good competent
non-cryonicist doctor should have such an attitude. But from the
perspective of cryonics, a few months of extra quality life in
exchange for the chance at immortality is a pretty harsh
deal. This is just a difference of opinion over values. <<
------------------------------------------------------------
Comment:
First, let me be first to note that the idea of D. Cosenza
expounding on *values* is sort of like the idea of Herr Joseph
Goebbels holding forth on the benefits of a kosher kitchen. It's
such a brain-stretcher that it puts one in mind of certain
alternate universe stories.
Be that as it may, those non-space cadets who share planet
Earth with Yours Truly may be interested in the facts of what
happened in the incident referred to above, since it does bring
up what has potential to be a very difficult situation in
cryonics. To wit: what if one does have to choose between paying
for a suspension *now* (yours), VERSUS using the same money to
escape an acutely deadly medical situation, perhaps betting on
being able to recoup finances later if you survive? And always
remembering that a later suspension, other things being equal,
will be a better suspension, as technology improves?
Of course there is no single right answer in such situations,
for the decision matrix depends on the odds of all kinds of
events, plus all kinds of personal value judgments about the
desirability of such events. It's even more difficult in the
case of what you do if you are acutely ill and can't think
straight, or are comatose. In this case you might want to take
legal steps to leave the decision in the hands of someone you
trust. In that case, your *decision,* according to your VALUES,
would be to leave the *deciding* to someone else you have chosen
in advance.
Which is what the man with AIDS in Florida had done, as it
turns out, having taken the trust fund that was supposed to be
left to Alcor for his freezing, and signed it over (in relative
secrecy) instead to his mother. All this in strict violation of
his agreement with Alcor, and with Alcor policy.
Thus it was that when it came to the point that this man was
dying in the hospital of a quite treatable (but untreated)
bacterial infection, Alcor did not know that it would not likely
be paid if he died and they froze him, and so they sent a
cryonics team across the country to stand by. Since the patient
was incoherent, a representative of Alcor asked me, as a then-
member of Alcor, to talk (long distance) to the man's doctors and
then to his mother. I did this. After which I told the mother
the truth, which was that the Florida doctors (no connection to
Alcor) were doing nothing for her son, and that if she wanted her
son to leave the hospital alive she would have to make changes in
his care. Which she then did, allowing him to survive the
episode. It is not my fault that when the Alcor representatives
arrived at the hospital after a cross-country flight, the mother
concluded that they were vultures in cahoots with the do-nothing
doctors. I, as an Alcor member at the time, didn't say or imply
this. Had the mother years ago had any way to read Cosenza's
1996 post about me being "at the time in disagreement with Alcor
people over the value of getting this man frozen versus getting
him medical care," she would perhaps have been more justified as
to what she did. In reality, nothing close to such disagreement
came until later, and that in hindsight. At the time, Alcor was
merely embarrassed at being thrown out of the hospital room (and
vaguely angry at me about it), and still later even more embarra-
ssed that they had almost frozen a man with no funding (something
they've done by mistake several times). If the truth were told,
at the time the AIDS patient under discussion was in the hospit-
al, Alcor did not know enough to push for better medical care of
this man, or worse. They were simply out of the loop.
This is not to say that Alcor ever thanked me, even though it
was they who had asked me to find out the truth and assume the
role of physician. But the mother did thank me, and the patient
later did also, after he got out of the hospital, both by phone
and in a long letter critical of Alcor's behavior. This man was
an author who was grateful to have the chance to see his book
published, a book which he thought would give him some money and
some life. When Alcor later naturally demanded that he fix his
funding so that they would not have to deal with his mother in
the future, he dropped his cryonics policy entirely. I advised,
even begged, him to stay signed up with Alcor (CryoCare not being
in existence then), but he said that he had quite a while more to
live, and that there would be lots of time for that. I told him
as a doctor that this was unrealistic, but he didn't believe me.
So it goes. He died something like a year later, and wasn't
frozen.
Certain parties at Alcor, just as Cosenza does, blamed *me*
for the fact that the AIDS man had dropped his Alcor membership
(nevermind the fact that there is no good evidence he ever had
any reasonable chance to be, and stay, frozen). And they blamed
me the more later when he didn't get frozen. Deja vu-- it's the
Leary case all over again. The problem is that as a physician--
cryonics physician or not-- it's my ethical job to give people
choices, and Alcor sometimes has not liked the choices these
people have made. That kind of thing more than three years ago
was part of what ultimately let me know that I, and those who ran
Alcor, had come to a philosophical parting of the ways. It had
become clear that we could never look at cryonics in the same
way, and would have to be part of different cryonics
organizations so long as any of us had any say about cryonics at
all. And that's part of the story of the founding of CryoCare in
the Fall of 1993, which happened many months after the incident
we speak of (and incidentally, at a time when the man with AIDS
spoken of by Cosenza was still alive and feeling well, and
enjoying his book-signing parties).
Steven B. Harris, M.D.
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