by Cam Christie
The New Zealand Cryonics Society, (NZCS) is the newest addition to our list of Cryonics Support Groups World Wide. (CSGWW) Cam was kind enough to send us this background information on their organization.
The current Society was formed back in 1992, when as a newly affirmed cryonaut, I, due to a recently acquired medical condition, decided to seek any like minded New Zealanders to form a Soc. That group having a support structure to assist any persons who may have had a terminal medical condition or may have considered the intention to suspend with any of the major American Cryonics groups.
I had read up on some of the ways of providing information for possible members by way of some of North American groups published magazines. One was to attend Science fiction conventions, which were held annually in NZ, and in 1993, in this case, at the bottom of our South Island, a small city called Dunedin. A friend & I provided a talk & table there, with perhaps not too bad an attendance, however the conference did not result in any obvious recruits.
Over the years we’ve received enquiries from a Govt Fisheries freezing department, the occasional publicised newspaper report and enquirers, however like myself, they had not done anything immediately about joining. They were perhaps waiting until old age or a terminal illness came along. Well, I continued to operate as a one man band until I noticed that Alcor had on it’s registered subscribers list another New Zealander. So I wrote to Alcor to see if they could release Aaron Holroyd’s address. After several months I established contact. For those that know anything of the Geography of NZ , I live in the capital city of Wellington, where I was born & bred, Aaron is up the top of the North Island, in a small city called Whangerei, where they enjoy fairly tropical weather, year round.
Anyhow I continued my foraging with remnants of past assn’s & contacts that had been in NZ. I wrote to the Australian organisation & established modest contact. I had read somewhere that Paul Segall had been down in Dunedin in the previous decade talking to a group of cryobiologists in that city. That really interested me & I eventually rang Paul & got a contact there. I then wrote & rang a Zoology Professor down there at that University, who I thought would be very useful for assistance in perfusion procedure, however unfortunately to no further avail.
So Aaron & I have maintained our belief in the concept for over 10 Years, we meet up when we are in each others part of the country. I have just recently been corresponding with Ben Best, who visited the Australasian Association in 1999, & I believe brought a lot of us together as a networking group. He has written a paper published on the internet on remote location transportation of a body to it’s place of rest. It is the main function of the New Zealand Assn to facilitate this process, and in my opinion, a matter of life and death..
Where do I see NZ’s Assn heading? Well perhaps it’s indicative of what a small country can do, if you become an active part of your sustained life procedure. However it was my hope to have a small team established to perform perfusion to the point of a ice cooled transportation to CI or Alcor, where I believe our No.s should rest. To me, cryonics is not just an interest, it is a passion.