NEWS & VIEWS

Update From Suspended Animation

This is the first of what we hope will many updates from Suspended Animation, Inc. over the next six months or so.

Suspended Animation, Inc (SA) got operationally underway in February of 2002 on a nine-day standby, transport, and vitrification effort in conjunction with Alcor. Significant capital infusion arrived in May, 2002. We were only able to move into a facility in November. Immediately thereafter we moved our equipment from Rancho Cucamonga, only to put much of it in storage to make room for the facility build out. Only one municipality in all of south Florida would permit our animal research activities. Finding a similarly friendly landlord in that one small town proved difficult. Fortunately for us the facility is within about two miles of the Florida Atlantic University, which has just welcomed its first freshman medical school class this past month. Our address is:

Suspended Animation, Inc.

1082 South Rogers Circle

Boca Raton, FL 33487

Phone: (954) 997-4062 (primary and emergency),

David Hayes cell phone is (561) 703-2388

David Shumaker cell is (954) 557-8760 and his home is (941) 743-9584

We are at: www.suspendedanimationinc.com (crude that it is)

Since our beginning, we have been busy with patients. We have participated in three standby/recovery/transports followed by patient neuro vitrification / whole body freeze and three standbys that were terminated with patient survival. One case was groundbreaking, with the patient stored at intermediate temperature after vitrification. All of these activities have been made possible by Alcor who has enabled us to work on cases that we could not have done by ourselves due to our lack of facilities.

As many already know, Mike Darwin quit last July, leaving us at a critical moment. After a somewhat trying period following Mike's departure, SA completely released him from his employment contract. Significantly, four of our patient activities occurred after Mike quit. In fact, Dave Hayes, our COO, is clearly one of the most experienced per sons in standby/transport of those now active. While Mike had an immense amount of experience that we will miss, his departure in some ways opens the door for a new generation of cryonics personnel.

In November of 2002 we hired Mike Quinn, a 25 year veteran of animal research and emergency response medicine. Chris Dougherty, PhD (Molecular & Cellular Pharmacology), who has been doing research on ischemic and reperfusion damage to cardiac tissue, starts work with us this month. Together Chris and Mike will lead our future research. We are interviewing additional medical and technician personnel for our staff. If you know of someone, please get in touch with us. We anticipate being able to provide high quality standby and transport for anyone within about 90 days. Patient cryopreservation at our facility is still at least 4-7 months away, depending upon how fast we can assemble and train personnel and fabricate equipment.

While we have been involved only with Alcor patients during our first year, SA wants to emphasize that it is dedicated to providing cryopreservation services ecumenically. As promised from the beginning, our services and our technology will always be available to serve anyone, irrespective of organizational association. We are equally anxious to pursue developments in conjunction with others. We were engaged with Alcor because Alcor, their patients, and facilities provided us an opportunity to perform work, where otherwise we could not. have. These efforts have provided us a jump start in learning critical details of the overall cryopreservation process that will help us support the entire community earlier than we would have been able to do otherwise.

Thanks to Dave Shumaker for the SAI update.
Concerning relations among CI, its members, and SAI or others, our aim is to allow the widest range of options to our members, including preparation elsewhere and storage at CI, or vice versa, if the member perceives a rationale for the strategy. Such division of responsibilities has, in fact, occurred more than once.

Concerning research strategies--sharing of plans, information, and benefits--that is a much more difficult area and likely to bog down in legal or administrative quicksand.

There is added complication in that SAI, TransTime, 21CM, and Cryospan are organized for profit, while CI, ACS, and Alcor are nonprofit. However, we are always open to suggestions, and we will always keep in mind the needs of members of all organizations.

Robert Ettinger

Ben Best Addresses Transhumanists

On February 26, 2003, the Toronto Transhumanist Association hosted a talk by Canadian cryonics expert, Ben Best, titled, "Can Cryonics Save Your Life?"

The talk was held at the Parliament library from 6:30 until 8:15 PM. Interest and attendance was very good; we even had one attendee fly in from Montreal to attend the talk.

Ben Best is the President of the Cryonics Society of Canada and President & Secretary of CryoCare Foundation. Ben was also involved in the very first cyronics case in Ontario last year. We were honoured to have a speaker of

Ben's caliber come out for a TTA event.

Ben spoke for nearly 2 hours and addressed a wide variety of topics. He spoke of the science behind cryonics, the state of the industry, recent innovations, and the battle against aging. Ben also tied in a number of Transhumanist themes into his talk, including posthumanism, his optimistic view of the future ture, and the eventual goal of ending aging. He also fielded some challenging questions, and dealt with a number of difficult issues head-on.

After the talk a number of us relocated next door to the local pub where we had a few pints and discussed cyborgization, wearables (including recording devices), the nature of the human mind and consciousness, and life-extension.

All in all, it was an excellent and stimulating evening. The TTA would like to sincerely thank Ben for volunteering his time and expertise.

George Dvorsky

Vice-President, Toronto Transhumanist Association

Deputy Editor, Betterhumans

Another New Scientist Competition

John de Rivaz announced on Cryonet that New Scientist will hold another "weird competition." This time the winner will have their genome sequenced. The competition opens on 15 March, when details can be found in the magazine or on http://www.newscientist.com/competition

Previous contests have concerned the invention of a device to walk on water, and of course cryonics.

The other competitions don't seem to have produced anything like as much news coverage as the cryonics one in September 2002. But unfortunately this resulted in the winner, Helen Tibble from Congleton, Cheshire, choosing the alternative prize of a holiday in Hawaii.

Nevertheless nearly 30% of entrants would have chosen cryonics. The number of voters in a New Scientist poll timed to run with the competition produced a similar ratio.

There were three times the number of voters as entrants in the competition although it is likely that everyone who went in for the competition also did the poll. Translated over the population of the UK this suggests about 17 million UK citizens would opt for cryonics if the government offered it on the National Health, ie free at the point of use but paid for by general taxation.

Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan,

Option Two Members Can Vote

Cryonics Institute's Board of Directors has voted to grant voting rights to Option Two Members if they have paid dues for at least three years and have fully executed and funded contracts. This applies to voting held at the Annual Meeting at CIHQ

CI Orders New Cryostat

CI has placed an order for an additional cryostat. They’re using the same supplier they used for the last one.

Another CI Visitor

Gigi Nicolas, a reporter for the SHOWTIME channel recently interviewed David Ettinger at the CI facility The interview was scheduled to run while the credits for VANILLA SKY were rolling.

Laughlin, Nevada, meeting

By Jim Yount

Approximately seventeen cryonics activists, members of diverse cryonics organizations, met in Laughlin Nevada on Thursday, February 27, at the invitation of California attorney H. Jackson ("Jack") Zinn. Edgar Swank and John Day attended on behalf of the American Cryonics Society ("ACS"). David Ettinger of Cl, was also in attendance. I was not present, but got a report of the meeting from Jack and Edgar Swank. I am familiar with the circumstances that prompted the call for a meeting,

Early this year, a Northern California man was placed into suspension at the Cryonics Institute's Michigan facility, in accordance with provisions of his will and his longtime wishes. This individual, a Califoraia attorney, was a Cl member, as well as an ACS Associate. He, working with Jack Zinn has assisted ACS and Trans Time in a number of legal matters related to cryonics over the years. Since I don't know his desires concerning privacy I will not use his name in this report.

In making his suspension arrangements, the man established a cryonics trust, but did not nominate a trustee. At the meeting in Laughlin. Jack Zinn explained the circumstances of the suspension, the current status of the estate, and the fact of the trust to meeting participants. Jim Bianchi, Esq. the California attorney who wrote the model wills and trusts for ACS has agreed to assist with preparing trust documents, but much additional work must be done. Currently the executors are busy gathering information for probate, a considerable task in this case.

Jack Zinn, himself a long-time cryonics activists is the attorney for the executor, was a friend of the decreased, and was called on to assist in getting the patient released bv the Medical Examiner so he could be shipped to Michigan for cryogenic preservation.

Partly because cryonics is still fairly new and not widely known, each cryonic's case presents its own unique challenges. I accompanied Jack when he called on the Alameda County Medical Examiner to "spring" the patient. This success followed many hours where Jack and Cl personnel and volunteers were on the phone with relatives of the patient, with relatives attorneys, or with representatives of the Medical Examiner.

There are just two attorneys I know of, here in Northern California, who knew how to quickly get a patient away from the Medical Examiner and on the plane to our Suspension Facility, and one of them (the subject patient) was lying on a slab in a refrigerated morgue in downtown Oakland. Jack was a God send in this case. as he has been in a number of other such circumstances.

The purpose of the meeting was to brief representatives of the various cryonics organizations on this case, and the substantial trust to be established which could benefit cryonics research considerably. Various ideas to further cryonics research through the proposed trust were discussed as well. The meeting also considered administrative aspects of the trust such as the various individuals who may be available to work as advisors or in the capacity of trustee,