X-Message-Number: 9565
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 19:48:49 -0400
From: Paul Wakfer <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9557 The Failure Of The Cryonics Movement - Part II
References: <>

> Message #9557
> Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 22:17:56 -0400
> From: Saul Kent <>
> Subject: The Failure Of The Cryonics Movement - Part II
> 
>         In our denial of the truth and our evasion of
> reality, we go on and on about irrelevant or imaginary
> things.  Among the myths cryonicists have developed
> are the following:
> 
>         1)  That all we need is for some billionaire
> to bail us out with a barrel-full of money. This myth has
> been with us since the inception of the movement and
> shows no sign of disappearing, despite strong evidence
> that it is absurd.  Rich people, even rich cryonicists, aren't
> fools. They aren't going to bankroll a movement of wild-
> eyed dreamers and rigid ideologues.  They'll put their
> money up (with caution) when they see persuasive
> evidence that the money will be used wisely, with a
> reasonable chance of success.
> 
>         I say this as someone who has been
> responsible for putting more money into cryonics than
> anyone in the history of the movement, and who has
> been accused frequently of being a wild-eyed dreamer
> myself.  Well, the truth is that I *have* been a wild-eyed
> dreamer at times, and *have* wasted some of the money
> I've put into cryonics. But, for the most part, I've put my
> money on horses who had produced evidence that
> they had a shot at reaching the finish line.  Moreover,
> now that I am older, wiser and more desperate, I am
> becoming more and more realistic about where I
> put my money and what I expect to get from it!
> 
>         2) Another myth that has permeated cryonics
> from the beginning is that there has never been a really
> good effort to promote cryonics by a professional
> promoter/publicist/sales person, and that if we had
> the right promoter and enough money to do the job
> right, there would be rapid, accelerating growth in the
> movement.
> 
>         I contend that this is the exact opposite of
> the truth.  While it's true that there has never been a
> multi-million dollar campaign to sell cryonics, there's
> never been enough evidence to support the investment
> of that kind of money in the promotion of cryonics.
> 
>         On the other hand, there is a long history of
> competent promoters, entrepreneurs and sales people
> comitting themselves to the growth of cryonics, with little
> or no success.
> 
>         First, there is Bob Ettinger himself, whose
> book (The Prospect of Immortality) persuaded a number
> of people (including me) to become cryonics activists.
> In the 1960s, Bob appeared on many local and national
> radio and TV shows, including several appearances on
> the highly popular Johnny Carson show.
> 
>         On one of these appearances, Bob held up a
> color rendering of a beautiful cryonics facility designed by
> a company called CryoLife in Kansas City, Missouri.  Bob
> said that he had been told that CryoLife expected to see
> 30 of these facilities built across the country over the next
> few years.  In October 1966, while on a cross-country
> cryonics trip with Curtis Henderson, we met with the man
> behind CryoLife, a successful funeral director, who was
> the slickest, most persuasive promoter I've ever met.
> However, CryoLife never got off the ground.
> 
>         A couple of years earlier, two fast-talking
> promoters with good track records in other fields--Leonard
> Gold and Steve Milgram--put considerable time and money
> into developing a cryonics company (Juno, Inc.).  Gold
> purchased a bankrupt business (the Patton Machine
> Works) in Springfield, Ohio; raised substantial capital from
> local businessmen; persuaded a cryogenic equipment
> manufacturer in Columbus, Ohio (Cryovac) to build the
> first cryonics storage capsule free of charge; persuaded
> the local Springfield newspaper to give his company free
> publicity through regular news stories; and gathered a
> stack of letters from funeral directors around the country
> stating their desire to work with Juno.
> 
>         In May 1965, Juno was involved in the near-miss
> freezing of a woman in a hospital in Springfield that generated
> a tremendous amount of worldwide publicity.  When Curtis
> Henderson and I met with Gold near the Whitestone bridge
> in late 1965, shortly after starting the Cryonics Society of
> New York, we asked him what he thought we should do:
>  "Nothing!", he replied, " I've taken care of it all.  The first
> person will be frozen in a few months on international TV
> with the Pope and other celebrities in attendance.  After
> that, Juno expects to be freezing thousands of people a
> year, with the company going public right after we freeze
> a Nobel-prize winning scientist."  Suffice it to say, none of
> this happened.
> 
>         Among the other people who tried to
> promote cryonics in the early years were banker and
> oil speculator Harlan Lane, real estate speculator and
> politician Don Yarborough (who came within a few
> votes of becoming Governor of Texas), businessman
> Forrest Walters (who formed ContinueLife); business-
> man and biophysicist John Flynn (who formed the first
> incarnation of BioPreservation), and businessman and
> real estate speculator E. Francis Hope (who formed
> the first incarnation of CryoCare).  All these people
> were successful in other ventures; none were
> successful in cryonics.
> 
>         The most impressive team I met with in those
> days was a group of well capitalized businessmen and
> scientists from Cleveland, headed by the Vice-President
> of a major cryogenic equipment manufacturer.  This group
> had developed specialized equipment, including a multiple-
> body storage device that had been patented, and included a
> Prof. of Biophysics from Case Western Reserve University
> whose research team had frozen pigs at Case Western.
> Despite all this, they went nowhere with cryonics.
> 
>         In later years, a number of other competent
> people, with track records of success in other business
> ventures, tried their best to promote cryonics. These
> included, Irving Rand, a crack insurance salesman,
> who spent a great deal of time and money attempting
> to sell cryonics, without success.
> 
>         Then there is what I consider the best and longest
> standing campaign to promote cryonics...the efforts at Alcor
> in the 80s and early 90s, which led to a growth rate of 30% a
> year for a number of years until Jerry Leaf's sudden and un-
> timely death, which destabilized Alcor and led to its breakup,
> resulting in the formation of CryoCare in 1993. I'll get back to
> what Ralph Merkle has deemed "The Golden Era of Cryonics"
> later, but first I want to discuss another of the myths that has
> plagued the cryonics movement for years.
> 
>         3) This myth is that the biggest thing holding back
> growth in cryonics has been the continuous and persistent
> attacks on us by cryobiologists...in newspaper and magazine
> stories and on radio and TV shows.
> 
>         I don't deny that a less hostile attitude towards
> cryonics on the part of the cryobiologists would have helped
> the movement, but I completely disagree with the notion that
> the hostility of cryobiologists has been a major reason for
> the failure of the cryonics movement to grow.
> 
>         I say this because history shows that it is possible
> to achieve major growth in an industry in spite of hostility from
> the authorities in the field.
> 
>         A good example is the growth of the vitamin
> supplement industry.  In the 1950s, virtually every medical
> doctor and nutritionist in the United States contended that
> "supplemental vitamins are worthless" and didn't hesitate
> to voice this opinion to their patients and to the media.  At
> that time, the relatively small number of people who took
> vitamins were considered "health nuts".
> 
>         However, in the 1960s and 70s, the use of
> vitamins grew rapidly in spite of continued opposition
> from the medical profession and little scientific evidence
> to support it.  By the 80s and 90s, the growth of the vitamin
> industry had accelerated dramatically, in large  part
> because of an avalanche of scientific studies in favor
> of taking vitamins.
> 
>         Another example is the practice of birth
> control in the United States among Catholics in spite of
> continuing opposition to the practice by the Pope and
> the upper echelon of the Catholic Church.  Surveys
> have shown that just as high a percentage of Catholics
> practice birth control in the U.S. as non-catholics.
> 
>         The common thread in these two examples
> is that it has been possible to generate tremendous
> growth in two industries despite the opposition (and
> hostility) of the authorities for one critically important
> reason: the products work!
> 
>         In the case of vitamins this became
> apparent to regular vitamin takers long before
> scientific studies confirmed the health benefits of
> vitamins. It didn't take rocket science for vitamin
> takers to discover that they felt better and got sick
> less often when they took vitamins.
> 
>         Similarly, Catholics defied their Church
> by using birth control because it stopped women from
> becoming pregnant far more effectively than the
> rhythm method advocated by the Church.
> 
>         I'm very confident that many people who
> believe in the religious concept of an afterlife will opt
> for cryonics as soon as they believe it will work better
> than the notion of getting to heaven, which brings me
> to the final cryonics myth I want to discuss:
> 
>         4) That the failure of the cryonics movement
> to grow is some kind of mystery.  The only mystery I find
> difficult to fathom is why--after 33 years of failure--anyone
> in the movement remains puzzled in any way about *why*
> cryonics has failed to grow.
> 
>         To put it in a nutshell: cryonics hasn't grown
> because nobody thinks it will work!  After 33 years of
> failing to convince people that cryonics can work, you'd
> think we'd all agree that, except for a handful of people,
> it's difficult or impossible to sell cryonics, and that "a
> handful of people" cannot be translated into
> significant growth.
> 
>         But all I hear about is other reasons for
> our failure to grow:  that signing up is too hard; that
> religious beliefs stop people from signing up; that
> people find it hard to confront their own mortality; that
> people don't want to confront the opposition to
> cryonics of family members and friends; that young
> people don't think they'll need to be signed up for
> years....etc., etc.
> 
>         I'm well aware of all these reasons and
> more and there's some validity to all of them, but
> the truth is that all of them together don't compare to
> the simple fact that we've got a terrible product that
> virtually no one wants!

Comment: And what is more, that all those reasons would
quickly disappear if we *had* a proven product!

>         Now it's time to get back to Ralph Merkle's
> "golden era of cryonics" when Alcor's growth rate was
> 30% a year.
> 
>         First, I want to say that the growth rate in Alcor
> at the time was the result of a tremendous amount of effort
> and energy on the part of a number of dedicated people,
> which began to dissipate after one of these people
> --Jerry Leaf--died suddenly.
> 
>         Second, I want to say that, although there were
> strong promotional efforts carried out during those years to
> increase membership growth, the critical heart of Alcor's
> program that, I believe, was most reponsible for its growth
> was the research program carried out by Jerry Leaf, Mike
> Darwin, Hugh Hixon and others, which led to advances in
> the methods by which we freeze our patients.
> 
>         This research effort was the core activity around
> which everything else revolved.  It was the major source of
> energy that lent vitality and excitment to all Alcor activities.
> Anyone who doubts this should understand that if it hadn't
> been for Alcor's research program, the "golden era of
> cryonics" would undoubtedly have been known as the
> "dark ages of cryonics" and the movement would be
> even closer to extinction today.
> 
>         I say this because I know beyond a shadow of
> a doubt that four of the key people in Alcor at that time
> would *not* have been activists if it hadn't been for the
> Alcor/Cryovita research program.
> 
>         They are Jerry Leaf, who brought professional
> research and cryonics services into the movement, who
> played a major stabilizing political role in Alcor, who funded
> virtually all of the initial research through his company
> Cryovita Laboratories, and whose presence at Alcor
> attracted a wide variety of competent people.
>
>        Jerry's primary interest was research.  He
>agreed to head Alcor's cryonic suspension team reluctantly,
>and thought it unlikely that current methods of cryonics were
>preserving enough of the brain to permit future reanimation.
>His dream was to achieve suspended animation, and he 
>would never have considered becoming involved in Alcor
>without being involved in research.
>
>        One of the people that Jerry attracted to Alcor was
>Mike Darwin.  Mike was living and conducting research in
>Indianapolis, Indiana when Jerry Leaf started Cryovita. It was
>Jerry's experience in conducting research at UCLA Medical
>Center, his desire to conduct research at Cryovita, and his
>willingness to invest substantially in that research that caused
>Mike to move to Southern California.  Shortly after Mike moved
>to SoCal  he became President of Alcor and the "golden era
>of cryonics" began.
>
>        Another person who came to Alcor because of
>Jerry was Brenda Peters.  Brenda interviewed Jerry about
>his interest in suspended animation around the time that 
>Jerry was beginning to get involved in Alcor. Brenda then 
>became involved herself, eventually becoming a member 
>of the Alcor Board of Directors. She participated in and played 
>a significant role in Alcor's research, and played a major role in 
>recruiting members to Alcor and in raising funds for research.
>
>        The fourth person who played a signficant role in
>Alcor's growth, but would not have done so if not for Alcor's
>research program was me.  When I stopped being a cryonics
>activist in 1971, a major reason for doing so was that, after
>6 years of intensive efforts, the cryonics movement had failed
>to fund or promote any signficant research.  I vowed never to
>become an activist again unless the organization I was part of
>had a significant commitment to research.  In the 1980s, I donated
>significant funds to Alcor, wrote and developed promotional
>brochures and other mailing pieces, organized and directed
>conferences, and helped promote the research program.
>
>        Without the active participation of Jerry Leaf, Mike
>Darwin, Brenda Peters and myself, Alcor would have remained
>a tiny backwater cryonics organization or would have disappeared
>into the night.  Certainly, Alcor would *never* have made the research,
>legal, medical, public relations and administrative strides it made in 
>the 80s and early 90s. In fact, I think it's highly unlikely that Ralph 
>Merkle and hundreds of others would have joined Alcor if Jerry,
>Mike, Brenda and myself had not become activists.

Comment: This is certainly true for me. Alcor's scientific commitment
of the 80s (and hearing/reading about it) is what attracted me to
cryonics.

>        Throughout most of the 33-year-old cryonics movement, 
>I was almost as guilty as others in denying the truth about cryonics. 
>I, too, put less money and time into research than I could have.  I, too,
>pursued tactics aimed at cryonics growth rather than the improvement 
>of cryopreservation methods. I, too, became involved in internal 
>political conflicts within the movement.  I, too, castigated the cryo-
>biologists for their attacks on cryonics.
>
>        But, in comparison with most other cryonicists, I was 
>enlightened.  Despite my myopia over certain issues, I have been 
>investing money and promoting research since the 1960s.
>
>        At the time of Jerry Leaf's death, he and Greg Fahy were
>well into the planning stages of a brain cryopreservation research
>project, which I had already raised some money for.  We had also
>planned to continue the full-body washout hypothermia research 
>we had conducted for a number years, and had other research 
>plans as well.
>
>        When all this was derailed by Jerry's death and subsequent
>events at Alcor, I made up my mind to work harder than ever to make
>enough money to support a research program that would not be so
>dependent on one person (such as Jerry Leaf).  For a number of 
>years, I (and Bill Faloon) were not able to make enough money to 
>achieve this goal because of a long-standing legal and political 
>struggle with the FDA.
>
>        Fortunately, Paul Wakfer, who had come to SoCal in large
>part to help out with the research program, began to put in substantial 
>amounts of his money, time and effort to help Mike Darwin put together
>a research facility in Colton, California, which was the precursor to the
>21st Century Medicine facility in Rancho Cucamonga, which Paul also
>played a major role in creating.
>
>        Finally, in February 1996, Bill and I were able to win our war 
>with the FDA and, as a result, were soon able to increase our funding for
>research dramatically.  Today, we are investing about $1 million dollars
>a year in 21CM research, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars
>more per year for anti-aging research, while Paul Wakfer continues to
>raise money for brain cryopreservation research through the Institute
>For Neural Cryobiology (INC), which has taken over what was formerly
>known as The Prometheus Project.
>
>        Over the last few years, I've come to the conclusion 
>that major research advances leading to better and more credible 
>cryonics services is the *only* hope we have of salvaging the failed 
>cryonics movement and preventing its extinction. I think it would be
>a huge mistake for us to keep on trying to sell an inferior product that 
>almost nobody wants to buy.  That's what we've tried to do for the
>past 33 years.  Our failure can be seen in a rapidly aging move-
>ment whose principals are dying off without being replaced.
>
>        I believe that the *only* way we can attract young
>people to our movement is to provide them with irrefutable
>evidence that we are improving cryonics methods and moving
>towards suspended animation.  Research will not only attract
>scientists who can contribute to it, but will also attract young 
>people from all disciplines, who will see cryonics as a vital,
>growing, dynamic movement that's going to change the world!
>
>        Research is also the only means of improving the
>credibility of the movement.  It will not be possible for us to win
>over mainstream scientists, physicians, media leaders, 
>politicians, attorneys, businessmen and professionals of 
>all kinds in any way other than through research.        
>
>        We now have an unprecedented opportunity to make 
>major progress in cerebral resuscitation, organ cryopreservation, 
>and human vitrification, which will lead to great improvements in 
>cryonics services, greater credibility for cryonics, the ability to raise
>capital to develop even better services, major profits which can be 
>reinvested into research, and the transformation of cryonics from a 
>tiny, dying oddball movement into an integral part of mainstream 
>21st century medicine
>
>        What we need to acquire legitimacy for cryonics
>from young and old alike, is hard, published evidence that
>major organs such as the kidney and heart can be cryopre-
>served effectively; that the information in the brain can be 
>cryopreserved effectively; that apparently "dead" people 
>can be restored to life, health and vigor, that we can convert 
>laboratory breakthroughs into advanced human cryopreser- 
>vation services, and that we can deliver these advanced 
>services to consumers at affordable prices.
>        
>        Once we develop a product that people really
>want, they'll be "breaking down our doors" to get it, and we'll 
>have more growth than we can imagine..
>
>        However, if we do *not* conduct the research to 
>develop cryonics and gain credibility in mainstream science 
>and medicine, the movement will grow weaker and weaker, 
>and will likely, in my opinion, become extinct within the next 
>20-to-30 years!
>
>        The choice is ours!  Unless we invest our money 
>and time in research, I believe we are doomed to oblivion...
>both individually and collectively!
>
>        Anyone who wishes to donate money to research
>can do so through the non-profit Institute For Neural Cryobiology.  
>INC is funding a hippocampal brain slice cryopreservation project 
>at a mainstream medical center that is an important step towards 
>suspended animation. You can find out more about this project on 
>INC's web site: http://neurocryo.org.  You can donate to the project 
>at http://neurocryo.org/funding.html.
>
>        21st Century Medicine (21CM) is a for-profit company
>that occupies two buildings in Southern California.  One building is
>devoted to cerebral resuscitation research, the other to cryopre-
>servation research.  21CM has an ambitious research program
>that features kidney, heart, brain and whole-body vitrification.
>Later in the year, 21CM will be offering stock in the company 
>to investors.  Anyone who wishes to be put on a waiting list to
>receive a 21CM Prospectus should send their name, phone 
>number and postal address to:  Joan O'Farrell, Chief Financial 
>Officer, 21st Century Medicine, 10743 Civic Center Drive, Rancho 
>Cucamonga, CA 91730; or call her at:  909-987-3883 or contact 
>her via email at: 
>
>        I've written this essay to provide evidence for my 
>contention that--at this time in history--we should devote most of 
>our attention, time and money to suspended animation research.  
>I invite comment, criticism and discussion of the ideas in this piece. 
>
>---Saul Kent, CEO
>21st Century Medicine

Thanks very much, Saul, for writing this essay.

-- Paul --

 Voice/Fax: 416-968-6291 Page: 800-805-2870
The Institute for Neural Cryobiology - http://neurocryo.org
Perfected cryopreservation of Central Nervous System tissue
for neuroscience research and medical repair of brain diseases

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