From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Tue May 22 2001 - 07:38:26 MDT
The lesson from the past decade in cryonics appears rather dismal. Not
only is the product intrinsically difficult to sell, it is technically
demanding, and under current framing conditions difficult to deploy in the
field, especially rapidly (when little forewarning if any is given) and
with adequate geographic coverage. Quality control and documentation is
either absent or patchy at best. As a result, consistency in application
of even existing well developed protocols vary widely. Self-selecting
personal dynamics result in general unreasonability if in not in flakiness
of all aspects of behaviour of all parties involved, business practices
included. I do not exclude myself from this assessment. Advanced methods
do exist, yet there is no significant demand from the parts of the
customers to lobby for a better product. This pattern is easily visible
and extremely off-putting to any potentially interested establishment
professional practicioners, who immediately back off and do not come back
to reinvestigate the field, which stagnates as a result. Peer review is
absent. As a result, criminally negligent service providers continue to
exist (this means you, Robert Ettinger/CI) and to operate, severely
damaging and potentially killing patients in their care.
Reluctantly, I've decided to take the (personal, your mileage *will* vary)
consequences and for time being am going to stop participation in all
cryonics-related activities, whether at the service or the client side.
I'm betting on the mainstream medicine on the long run to eventually
realize the feasibility of reversible cryosuspension using the emerging
techniques of bulk molecular-scale imaging and reconstruction, and to make
it an integral part of last-resort emergency care, profiting from
economies of scale, infrastructure and synergisms. Given current and
accelerating rate of progress in a number of relevant fields as well as
changing world demographics, this does not appear at all unlikely, 30-40
decades of such ongoing developments assuming. If this does not occur, or
I happen to die before, so be it.
I think I still owe any potential customers and current customers of CI a
fully listed disclosure of what is technically wrong with CI, and why I
consider it to be improbable, that CI -- miracles excluded -- will ever
fix it. Not that this is going to matter very much, but I'll put my name
under it, and the archives will get it. Running into this information may
prevent the one or the other signup. Having this said, I strongly
discourage litigation against CI, since if successful, it will endanger
the patients under their care, which might or might not be still
salvageable.
In closing, I would very much like to express my admiration to all the
technical people out there in the field who're pulling in their full
weight, against above odds. You know who you are. Especial thanks go to
Saul Kent and Bill Faloon, may their commitment continue unwavering.
I'll hang around for a few days here before firing off the CI assessment
piece (mostly assembled from freely available information, Cryonet
archives included), to catch your comments, if any.
Apart from that dangling end, I'm almost out of here. I hope you all make
it.
-- Eugene
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Message #16306
Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 11:28:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <cp@panix.com>
Subject: UK situation
While not wanting to hammer this topic till it becomes as boring as, say,
the discussions of human vs. machine intelligence, or identity, I did find
the following material interesting. It's a copy of some email that was
sent and signed by about a dozen British people, to Alcor, a couple of
months ago. I think it sheds light on the situation. So far as I know, the
request in the letter was denied.
--Charles Platt
-----------------------------------------
We the undersigned UK residents have experienced delays & difficulties
with Alcor Membership. Some of us have been waiting since 1999 for Alcor
to complete our paperwork.
We have all been encouraged to join Alcor. For example in a document
entitled "Towards Autonomy-a Proposal for Alcor UK- dated 16th. August
2000, Linda Chamberlain states:
1. First Stage of Conversion-Split Program Years 2000-2002. In this
period you should pursue greater membership as rapidly as possible.
Acting on this advice & in good faith many of us have spent thousands of
pounds taking out UK Life Insurance Policies, putting them in Trust,
paying Solicitors, Public Notaries & others.
In a letter dated February 12th. 2001 Linda says " I'm afraid we will have
to make the international membership requirements apply to the UK as
well (no longer being able to offer Scottish Amicable as an exception with
the UK)"
However some of us have taken out Life Insurance before applying for
Membership(as Alcor advises) If we cancel or even just re-assign these
Policies we would face considerable financial losses through no fault of
our own.
We therefore request that Alcor accepts all such Policies arranged before
the Feb.12th. announcement & allows us to proceed with our Membership.
Signed: [names withheld]
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