X-Message-Number: 6960 Date: Sun, 22 Sep 1996 12:07:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: Alcor/CC combination, and other topics Peter Merel asks for an "Alcor/CryoCare combination." I'm not sure exactly what he means, but CryoCare has certainly asked Alcor if Alcor would be willing to accept CryoCare patients for storage. The answer at that time was "no," and I believe the answer would still be "no" now (which I regret, because I would like CryoCare members to have as many options as possible). One problem from our point of view is that CryoCare believes a member should be able to appoint a patient care advocate who would have some authority to move a patient if the patient seemed to be receiving substandard care. Alcor's point of view has always been that it must maintain complete and exclusive control of its patients. Even if CryoCare was willing to surrender on this issue in specific cases (which might require changing our bylaws, I'm not sure) I believe that Alcor has its own reasons for refusing to store patients perfused by any team other than their own. As I recall, they cited legal liability issues. ----- Re Ms. Visser's complaint that I am not willing to trust my cryonics organization to put money into its research "on faith": first of all, Alcor is not my organization. Secondly, Ms. Visser made her contractual arrangements with Alcor/CI without even ASKING CryoCare for money. If she had approached us as openly as she approached them, maybe CryoCare would have been willing to contribute. As it is, however, she has confided the details of her work to them but not to CryoCare, which makes me wonder why she now feels angry that CryoCare and its members are not immediately willing to subsidize the work. Surely trust should be a two-way street? ----- Re sheep hearts: yes, it would be an impressive demonstration. But I doubt it would be publishable as research without proper experimental controls, and I don't see that it is a necessary prerequisite to research on the brain, which is obviously the #1 priority. I may have spoken too harshly about the idea of applying the Visser protocol to sheep hearts, in which case I apologize. But I do find it maddening that many of us are still thinking in terms of an impressive demo instead of the detail work that real research entails. --CP Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6960