President's Report

This issue of THE IMMORTALIST (as with the previous issue) is being sent gratis to every CI Member (one per household) in the United States. This policy will continue at least until the end of 2004. Postage costs outside the United States makes the expense of regularly sending free issues prohibitive, but the last issue of 2004 will be sent to all CI Members everywhere (one per household).

This policy is being implemented on an experimental basis -- in 2005 we may either resume with fully paid subscriptions or switch to online publication. CI Members who have been subscribing will have their subscriptions extended in 2005 if paper-publication with paid subscriptions resumes, or can receive a refund if paper publication does not continue.

Since writing my last President's Report CI has had three more patients bringing the total for the first half of 2004 to five, about as many as we have ever had in any full year. I wish the quality of patient care had been better.

CI’s 63^rd patient suffered a heart attack at home on Monday. He was not discovered and pronounced dead until several hours later. He was refrigerated at the morgue and soon released to one of our funeral directors who held him at water-ice temperature for over a day while it was determined whether financing was available to cryopreserve. Then he was cooled in dry ice for at least another day.

The Patient is a big man: 6' 3" and weighing nearly 300 pounds, he was too large for an insulated Ziegler (steel shipping coffin). Laying on an air tray he used a prodigious amount of dry ice. He is currently being cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature.

It is not feasible to perfuse after several hours of warm ischemia because of clotting and vascular damage. But neurological damage is slower and takes much longer. Dry ice cooling should have been initiated immediately upon discovery.

In the hope of reducing the number of losses of members living alone I have been testing two alarm systems with Robert Ettinger and plan soon to test a third. I will be reporting on my investigations in a forthcoming issue of THE IMMORTALIST.

CI's 64th Patient deanimated shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, May 16^th. The event caught too many people by surprise. Knowing he had cancer, the member's paperwork and funding were in order. But he was living at home and apparently getting better thanks to his new Erbitux treatments.

His deterioration was very sudden -- he was in the hospital only about a day before his deanimation. The hospital staff was not informed of his cryonics arrangements, nor was many in his family, although his wife had signed a next-of-kin form. The funeral director had been forewarned and responded fairly rapidly. CI only learned of the deanimation from the funeral director.

The Patient's family should have understood the importance of contacting CI immediately when the member went to the hospital, the hospital staff should have been informed and persons willing to stand by to render immediate CPS should have been found. My commitment as CI President is that CI Members/Patients will benefit as a result of my being President. I am not proud of my role in this case. Complacency about apparently recovered cancer patients can be hazardous.

I have resolved to have more personal discussions with CI Members who are cancer patients, their family and their funeral directors.

Patient 65 was a "last-minute" case which demonstrated many of the things that can go wrong for people who sign-up at the last minute. We were initially contacted about 8pm Eastern Standard Time and the patient deanimated at about 4am EST the next morning.

The patient was a cancer victim living in the Los Angeles area. Both her son and brother were intent on having her cryopreserved, but did not have much familiarity with cryonics. They chose a funeral home and hospital well before the time they contacted us. They were unaware that we use cryoprotectants, but agreed to a credit card charge for us to express courier our perfusate to their funeral home.

We will not accept a full cryopreservation fee on a credit card and it takes the better part of a day to wire funds or express-courier a cashier's check. Too late we learned that the funeral home refused to do the perfusion, refused to allow anyone else to do a perfusion on their premises and objected to having two boxes of perfusate couriered to their address.

Our funeral directors' network cannot be utilized unless there is a commitment that a paid-up Member is at immediate risk. Without cash-in-hand we cannot be certain that a last-minute case will not result in a last-minute change-of-mind, so we had to find another funeral director outside of our usual network.

I contacted my friend Russell Cheney, who was in Florida. Russell has been a local response coordinator for Alcor in the Los Angeles area. In addition to his recommendation of a funeral director Russell gave me a list of phone numbers for Alcor volunteers in the LA area. I was reluctant to contact these people, thinking that there might be "political" ramifications to circumventing official Alcor approval. Later I decided I would try to contact them the next day -- which proved to be too late. I think a number of them would have agreed to stand-by and apply ice and CPR upon pronouncement of death. I would not have been circumventing official approval, either, because an agreement for such co-operation had been made at the CryoSummit, although renewing the discussion with the new Alcor administration would be a good idea.

Arrangements were made with the second funeral director and the courier was instructed to redirect the perfusate to his premises. The first funeral home was still responsible for the patient, however, and they phoned us at 4:30am informing us that they were removing the patient from the hospital. Incredibly, the hospital told the funeral home that they had no ice. We instructed them to get ice at a convenience store. The patient was transported back to the funeral home and placed in refrigeration.

After having initially agreed to take the patient, the second funeral director changed his mind and decided he didn't want to do it. Because we still did not have cash-in-hand we decided to work with a funeral director in San Diego who had done a previous case for us. We called the courier company and told them to redirect the perfusate to San Diego.

The first funeral home drove the patient to San Diego. When the San Diego funeral home opened two boxes from the courier company to begin the perfusion they discovered computer parts. The parts had not been expected, although they did belong to the funeral home (were correctly addressed) and were delivered by the same courier company. The courier company found the boxes of perfusate in a Los Angeles warehouse and sent them to San Diego. In their defense they said that good service cannot be expected when re-directing shipment twice en route.

As the general public learns more about cryonics I hope they also get the message that cryonics arrangements are not to be made while on a deathbed. Unfortunately, there are also many people who know a great deal about cryonics who think that last-minute arrangements are preferable for economic or other reasons. I think such people are making a big mistake.

A huge difference could have been made to patient care if one of our Members could have been on hand to render assistance. It would have helped even to get ice at a convenience store. Someone willing to stand by could have immediately packed ice on the patient and encourage hospital staff or a funeral director to inject heparin. If the Member-volunteer did not want to do chest-compressions, a hospital staff person might have been encouraged to do it.

I have created a column in our database that will indicate CI Members who may help in a cryonics case. We will not phone Members who do not give permission to be contacted and we will recognize that circumstances in your life may often mean you are unavailable. Cryonics is not an established industry and Members cannot afford to have a passive consumer-mentality. We are building our own lifeboats. We are few and far between. If we want others to help us when we need cryonics we should think of offering help to others.

If you may be willing to sometimes help in a cryonics case, please let Andy Zawacki (our CI Facilities Manager) know that you can be called. Send him an e-mail at CIHQ@aol.com -- CIHQ (at) aol.com -- or phone

(586) 791-5961 or write 24355 Sorrentino Court; Clinton Township, MI 48035 with instructions to list you as a possible volunteer.

Elsewhere in this issue should be my review of available personal emergency response equipment, which could help reduce the time between deanimation and cryonics rescue -- or perhaps save lives. Those with a cell phone who can call an emergency number with the push of a button might get-along without these devices (although the situation may change when vital signs monitoring becomes available in 2005) -- as long as the phone call results in a reliable human connection.

Otherwise I recommend the Magnavox MobilePal+GPS which provides instant access to a live operator who can locate you for a monthly fee of $19.95. A drawback is the bulkiness of the device, which should be worn on the belt. For those who are house-bound a pendant or wrist-watch type "panic button" may be more convenient, but a product with a lower monthly fee than the Pioneer unit we have been testing might be as good.

I had been hoping to report on deployment of Dr. Yuri Pichugin's vitrification formula, but we received a setback. We were very encouraged by the fact that potassium/sodium ratios (a measure of viability) were as good for rat brains perfused with vitrification solution and cooled to -130oC and rewarmed, as for brains perfused without cooling. Even better, the less expensive commercial grade reagents are as good as the expensive grades.

The setback came when we tried to make electron micrographs (EMs). The results were terrible -- as bad for the samples cooled to -130oC as for the samples held at freezer temperatures. Based on the viability measures and gross appearance of rat brains and sheep brains perfused with vitrification formula, we believe the bad EM results were artifacts. In preparing EMs the brain is perfused with Karnovsky's solution in addition to the vitrification solution. They were stored for a long time at freezer temperature while we sought a good university lab to do the EMs. They were shipped at ice temperature, because we had no good way to ship at freezer temperature. We are uncertain of the quality of work at the university we chose.

Dr. Pichugin has now had to devote himself to studying how to better prepare EMs. He prepared another batch of samples, and this time he cut millimeter cubes from the brains and fixed them in osmium tetroxide.

We have sent these cubes to a Canadian lab which did good work for us before and are awaiting the results. EMs are frightfully expensive and it is a harrowing experience to be learning from EMs on a trial-and-error basis. Contributions to the Research Fund are always welcome and are tax-deductable. E-mail CIHQ@aol.com or phone (586) 791-5961 if you have questions. Credit card payment is accepted.

Dr. Pichugin will be taking the month of July for a vacation in his native Ukraine.

He is preparing samples for EM work in Ukraine, which would be less expensive

-- although they must be carried at room temperature. He also hopes to find an inexpensive Russian light-microscope which he can buy for use in our Research Facility.

I myself will be spending much of July "on vacation" in China. I expect to attend the annual Society for Cryobiology Conference which is being held in Beijing this year (http://128.163.148.84/cryo2004/). With Robert Ettinger as Vice-President and Andy Zawacki as Facilities Manager, CI will be in good hands while I am away.

I remind all CI Members of the Cryonics Institute and Immortalist Society Annual General Meetings which are being held on Sunday, September 19, 2004 at the CI Facility in Clinton Township, Michigan. This will be an excellent opportunity to visit the Facility, meet other CI Members (along with Staff, Officers and Directors) and get a lively experience of the issues that face our organization. A buffet dinner is served to all who attend. Please notify us in if you do plan to attend. The AGMs are open to the public, but we must have advance notice of who is attending to plan for seating and buffet.

As announced on March 23 the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Cryonics Institute will be Sunday, 19-Sept-2004. There are currently 12 Directors and 4 of the 12 are elected to their positions every 3 years. The 4 Directors up for re-election this year are:

Any CI Member who is an Option One Member or has been a paid-up Option

Two Member for at least two years is eligible to be a Director and to vote for

Directors. A Director candidate must be nominated by another CI Member who

is qualified to vote, either at the AGM or beforehand (nomination in this forum

would be acceptable). A candidate need not attend the AGM to be elected.

An important qualification for a Director candidate is active use of e-mail insofar as most decisions are based on discussions held by e-mail. There is no requirement for physical presence at any meeting, so geography is not a limitation. (Two of our Directors currently live in the UK.)

It is not too early to be giving thought to who might make a suitable Director

or who might want to run for the office.

It seems likely that all the existing Directors will be candidates.

The AGM will be held at the CI facility in Michigan.

Male 337

Female 118

USA 334

Non USA 111

Option One 339

Option Two 116

The eleven "lost" Members I reported earlier have mostly been found, but we have changed the definitions slightly. By our current definition a "lost" Member is someone for whom we do not have a current address, but for whom we have a good prospect of getting a current address. We have two "lost" Members based on the fact that we are getting a message on their answering machine and we are expecting to eventually make contact.

Not counted as Members are those in our "inactive" file. This includes people who have renounced their membership and who say they want to be cremated or buried rather than cryopreserved. Such people may change their mind again, in which case they can be activated again upon request if they are Option One. Option Two Members who have stopped paying dues must pay an initiation fee and resume dues to be activated again.

Member we have inactivated is a man we believe is now living in South Africa who has not contacted us since five years ago when he was living in Michigan as a University student doing a PhD thesis. His e-mail address and mailing address are defunct. If he contacts us and gives us an address, we will reactivate him.

Ben Best

The controversy surrounding the suspension of Ted Williams by Alcor continues

The latest development is that an Arizona paper has entered the fray. The Arizona Republic has joined the daughter of Ted Williams in a court battle to view documents held by a cryonics lab where Williams has been frozen to determine if he legally consented to have his remains stored at the facility.

The newspaper filed a motion late last week in Arizona Superior Court to unseal documents filed by Alcor Life Extension Foundation in response to a civil suit filed by Williams' daughter, Bobby Jo Ferrell, seeking to force Alcor to produce documentation proving that her father's remains were legally given to the Scottsdale cryonics lab.

`They claim to be in compliance with the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act but they want to hide everything they've done and they want to hide everything in the court file,'' Ferrell's attorney, John Heer, said of Alcor yesterday.

Ferrell has long wanted to claim her father's remains and have him cremated

based on his original will, but the body went to Alcor after his death in 2002.

Ferrell's half-brother, John Henry Williams, who died of leukemia in March,

reportedly obtained his father's approval to be placed at Alcor after his death.

John Henry's will states that his remains be kept at Alcor.

Although Ferrell gave up her right to claim her father's remains as part of a $215,000 settlement with his Florida estate, Heer is seeking to examine her father's contract with Alcor to see if it conforms with the Anatomical Gift Act.

If Ferrell’s attorney can prove Ted Williams was sent to Alcor without his written permission, he hopes to circumvent Ferrell's agreement with her father's estate and lay claim to the baseball Hall of Famer's remains.

Attorneys for Alcor have filed their responses and an affidavit opposing

Ferrell's motion under seal. The Republic, citing public access laws, has joined Heer's effort to have the Alcor court filings unsealed. ``Alcor has taken steps that are absolutely unheard of to seal the entire court file,'' said Heer. ``This is not your normal court situation so it's going to be interesting to see what happens." Just before we went to press, the Ferrell’s announced they were stopping all legal action. Stay tuned!

The American Association of Anti-Aging Medicine is planning two conventions this year. The first will be in Chicago on August 20-22. The second will be in Las Vegas on December 3-5.

Some of the subjects covered will be Stem cell therapy, Cosmetic office procedures, Brain aging, Laboratory biomarkers of aging, Nanotechnology, Obesity drugs and minimally invasive obesity surgery, Anti-Aging therapies, Heavy metals/environmental detoxification and Hyperbaric oxygen treatment.

The events are billed as "attracting 5000 physicians, scientists, exhibitors and key members of the industry and media."

For information call 1-800 558-1267

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An hour after a 22 month old boy was pronounced dead, a hospital nurse who was preparing the body for funeral home pickup noticed movement in his chest. He was submerged in a canal for 30 minutes after wandering away from his babysitter. An officer gave him CPR, and emergency workers tried to revive him, with no success.

He was subsequently removed to a local hospital in Boise, Idaho. A few days later his condition was still listed as critical.

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