Alternatives, Funding, and Membership

[jordansparks]

I will accept your statement that you cannot afford cryonics. You are not alone. Even $30,000, while cheap compared to some medical procedures, is simply out of reach for some people. My philosophy is that we should find very inexpensive alternatives so that we exclude nobody. I think chemical preservation can be done for $1500, $800 of which would be used for long term storage. We're talking about maybe 2 cubic feet of shelf space here with no required maintenance. Since the $700 is mostly labor, and the $800 might generate only $25 per year, it can even be reasonable to accept charity cases because it does not create a financial burden on the cryonics provider. Charity cases would not put current patients at risk. We're talking about an approach that truly excludes nobody.

If I remember correctly, you are only middle aged, right? So keep watching, keep learning, and keep planning. If a company does begin offering storage of chemically preserved brains, plan to take advantage of it. Until then, your best chance is to somehow convince a funeral director in your area to embalm you. The immersion is important, because without full immersion, the embalming fluid will stop working in about a few weeks. If the funeral director won't store you in perpetuity, perhaps a family member will take on that responsibility. You could later be transported to another facility, although someone would have to be assertive because of the complexity of shipping toxic liquids across international boundaries. You might research that to help lighten the burden for your caretaker.

Immersion in embalming fluid would be far better than any of the 3 alternatives you are currently considering.

[robomoon]

Chemo suspension including storage in embalming fluid cannot be for later retrieval of many memories in detail. However, some essential parts of the mind may be still functional after reanimation. Blended with new parts, a brain should very well qualify for Life Extension. Even plastination is acceptable when better alternatives are unavailable. So it's bearable for me to predict that procedures for the retrieval of memories will turn into a memorization much different than the memories during my actual life.

A head in embalming fluid is hard to maintain for the purpose of Life Extension. In the EU, people who aren't well-informed about chemo suspension may find longterm storage of a human head in embalming fluid unacceptable. German legislation makes longterm storage of corpses and their organs unlawful, except those which are organ transplants or for education and science. So it's likely that the authorities will confiscate the head and bring it to cremation. Next to this, German legislation makes decapitation of corpses by untrained surgeons unlawful. Morticians who purposely remove a head from the body must fear for their professional licenses.

By the way, a note from the below paragraph and my other messages including summaries about your replies from this thread on the Cryonics Discussion Forum are now included in my report http://shintoist.com/chemsusproblems.htm named Chemo Suspension Problems. If there is something wrong in that report that should be changed or removed, please let me know.

Keeping your method of embalming in line with EU law requires excellent knowledge and utilization of the relevant legislation. Otherwise, expenses would barely be on a lower level than expenses for other medical services like surgical intervention and storage of organ transplants.

[vogbank]

New to this forum and have been using the "Cold Filter" cryonics chat more recently. I am still unfamiliar at finding my way around such sites and hope I will follow the "rules" and will be helped along if I don't. I see most of the posts, (except mine) have the year 2008 on them. Is this not an active forum?

Needing a way to introduce myself here....
I am currently a member of Alcor Life Extension Foundation and living in Scottsdale AZ. I dislike the extreme hot and sunny desert climate here. To me, it's very important to enjoy living during the remainder of this animation. I have a sort of pathetic "memoirs" I've composed to be used as a way for myself to recall details of my life, but now am finding it also useful, if embarrassing, as a kind of social introduction and to allow others to read it. Please ask and you shall receive (21 page, MS Word doc.).
I would like to see more cryonics alternatives in various geographic locations. I myself have been jaded by living in many of this planets mildest and finest climates....Marin County Calif., S.F. Calif, Island of Hawaii, coastal Oregon between Brookings and Gold Beach (actually between Smith River Calif. and Reedsport). If possible I would gladly relocate to Oregon to be closer to the coast there again. My alternatives currently are either Scottsdale/Phoenix or Clinton Township/Detroit, and I am not comfortable with either of these locations or climates.

Now, to get on to some more relevant Oregon Cryonics subject now....
I am observing a lot of disturbing conspiracy theory chat, and lack of trust concerning the cryonics facilities we now have available to us. Living currently with other long time members of Alcor, I am learning more about it's history. One issue seems to be the safety of the facility itself from malicious intruders and negative government meddling. I've given some thought to this and it seemed one (not perfect) solution might be to have a cryonics facility (lab.) attached to some large university medical center. I worked for years at U.C.S.F. and can imagine one being tucked away in that complex, for instance. If it was somehow associated with a medical center, then it might be seen and accepted as a research facility, even used by med. students perhaps. I think we are at a point where the technology is very relevant to medicine and the preservation of life as practiced today by physicians. Along with some bureaucratic problems I may be ignoring, there might be some very useful financial and seucrity benefits from such an association. To achieve anything like this we would need excellent public relations, of course.

Finally, I am wondering how I might relocate myself to Oregon and also best assure myself that I will receive cryonics services somewhere when I deanimate. Does this mean keeping my Alcor membership or switching to C.I.? Any help or ideas on this would be very much appreciated. Although I am of no use in funding the start up of a new facility (living on s.s. pension of merely $999.00 a month), I do have many skills and copious spare time to offer as a volunteer. This is a long rambling post and so I apologize now. Thanks for your patience.

[jordansparks]

I'm terribly sorry I didn't reply sooner. My email notification wasn't working. As I told you in off-list communications, living near either Alcor or CI will work. Anything else is just a gamble, and the risks must be carefully considered. It is a very natural human emotion to not want to just sit in one spot for years waiting for a planned event. Clearly, you need to keep yourself very busy with something meaningful. I don't know you well enough to be able to suggest what you might do. I do know that I already have enough to keep me busy for two lifetimes.

[robomoon]

Now it really should be OK to care about other things than cheap suspension. People want an expensive suspension, that's what cryonics providers and their financial advisers mostly recommend them to purchase. So there were some professionals in law, PR, insurances, etc. and various companies doing business with cryonics providers who earned a decent amount of money and their customers are even convinced having signed up for a set of high quality services and useful products, just because of higher costs.

Big cash is what people are living for and I cannot do much about it but keeping cool while trying to avoid anything totally stupid like becoming a devotee of a religion that promises eternal life or taking self-prescribed antiaging pills/powders which very unpredictable side effects are probably likely to shorten a life expectancy eventually.

One idea to avoid some very stupid alternatives of life extension could be Teenagain. It's just another concept against aging, but it's easy to understand. So Teenagain will be for the elderly who have at least reached a common retirement age, let's say 70. The goal is rejuvenation making them mentally as vital as a person who is younger than 20. Of cause, also the body has to look younger from this, although not much younger than 50. Let's say, a drug as powerful and efficient like this must be administered by gene therapy.

Despite of efforts in research on rejuvenation drugs it's quite possible there might be no drug available like this during the next 20 years. But for young people who are planning to have family and children in more than 20 years from now, it's not too late. When such gene therapy works and it's available in 30 years, parents will be able to purchase this drug for their children, similar to a vaccination. They will make their children resistant against various genetic diseases which older mothers are more likely to transmit than younger mothers.

This way, cryonics wouldn't gain more disadvantages from being high-priced, because better rejuvenation drugs will keep cryosuspension relatively seldom in use for the purpose of life extension.