by Fred & Linda Chamberlain

Option 1 membership makes you part of the Cryonics Institute (CI) "for life". However, the funding for suspension arrangements still has to be paid. Prepaying your arrangements completes the picture. Minimal over funding for emergency response is a good idea (in the event you are not near CI at deanimation, due to accident or sudden illness). In any situation other than full prepayment, CI must verify funding prior to carrying out a suspension. If that funding is not there, for whatever reason, CI is powerless to help you.

That sounds a little scary, but it's just plain, common sense. For those who like things to be fully taken care of, this is the way. Fortunately, anyone who owns an average home can probably refinance it! The interest is tax deductible, and rates are still low. If you've owned the home for even a few years, the value has probably gone up enough to make refinancing possible. For the two of us, including $5,000 each for emergency response, the payments were less than some people spend leasing a second or third car.

Younger people will find insurance quite affordable, to be sure, but if you're like us, over 60 with "preexisting conditions", refinancing a home may not only be the best way, it may be the only way. Also, insurance has risks:

• If you can't keep paying the premiums, the insurance lapses.
• There's a remote chance your insurance company could fail.
• Just the brief time that it might take to verify that your insurance is still in force, in an emergency, could make a difference, where minutes count.

Other means of funding arrangements (trusts, pledged equity in real estate, stocks, etc.) are possible, but they all have complexities and could trigger verification delays.

• Will the value of your real estate go into a dive and leave you with a loan that's larger than the amount your property could be sold for?
• Will your stock and/or your brokerage house survive future financial markets? Will employment become a problem for you?
• Will a worldwide deflationary depression due to globalization make liquid nitrogen cheaper, or will the dollar crash and force those who are quick on their feet to move into foreign currencies?

Prepaying greatly reduces the chances that any lawsuit, bankruptcy, or other fiscal emergency could wipe out your arrangements. We're going to be trusting CI to weather many decades of financial storms such as these, after we're frozen. Maybe it makes sense to start doing that even earlier!

If you want additional services, such as standby from a company such as Suspended Animation, Inc., these have to be provided for also, of course. With time, there will no doubt be more advanced protocols, at extra cost. Uncertainties such as these are difficult to foresee. There's no question about that. At the same time, there's a great feeling of comfort that comes from being able to think, each night as you fall asleep, "Come what may, I now 'belong to the future'! I've done the best I can, at the basic level, to make that possible!"

If the need for standby is growing near, move as close to CI as possible. Remote standby is not just expensive, it's uncertain. As you become more and more incapacitated, picking the right time to start a standby is problematical at best.

• If standby starts too soon, you risk running out of funds before you deanimate. If you wait too long, the standby team may either not arrive in time, or have too little time to organize. One or two full days of advance preparation is not just advisable, but virtually essential, especially in a remote location, where support services are different in every case.
• Exact time of deanimation, also, is never very predictable. How can you really optimize the timing of your standby? Even if you could, how can you afford it? Except for those with substantial excess assets, it's very tough. We all need better answers.

The best choice is to move near to CI when you retire, years ahead, and join in a mutual aid 'standby community'. That is our desire and intent. Even if you plan to have the best of professional support contracted for at the very end, this can help shorten the length and cost for that part of the operation, and assure that the maximum level of local support is at hand in the event of a sudden turn for the worse.

If time runs out before that is possible, at least temporarily relocate near CI soon after you qualify for hospice. If, at that time, the local 'standby community' has taken shape, you may find that it's more like 'coming home' than 'leaving home'. In our minds, failing to do one of these two things is like 'driving too fast on a back road with no seat belt'.

Addressing a question that comes up frequently in discussing reanimation (Who will pay for it?) we suggest leaving a written pledge (notarized) in your CI files, promising to repay these costs by means of a reasonable installment plan. It is possible that in the end, CI may be able to raise the funds to provide for the reanimation of all of its (thousands, or tens of thousands, or perhaps even hundreds of thousands) of members, but this is by no means guaranteed.

• By comparison with what might be hoped for solely from charity or public funding, our earning power after reanimation, multiplied by the number of individuals involved, should be enormous.
• Payback for reanimation with future earnings on an individual basis takes the guesswork out of present vs. future currency values and rates of return needed on safe investments, as well as the uncertainties of what those costs will ultimately be.
• Pledging to pay back the costs of reanimations creates incentives both for (1) developing practical ways to achieve reanimation and (2) offering of installment plans.
• Even more importantly, this approach (3) creates a need on the part of those offering reanimation installment plans to find ways in which those who are reanimated can be most valuable in that future society, so they can make the payments.
• We often hear two main questions, from cryonicists: "Who would want to reanimate us?" and "What good would I be?" This way of thinking about how to handle the costs of reanimation ties those two questions together and answers them at the same time.
• There should be a way to document pledges to pay reanimation expenses, as part of our CI paperwork, perhaps with a notarized note saying something like: "As described herein, I agree to repay the expenses of reanimation, if need be, and authorize CI to select a financing plan for me, choosing among those commercially available at that time (the same way that we now choose among many competitive sources in financing the purchase of a home)."
• Obviously, this is a complex subject with many facets. We're now in the process of writing a follow-on article to address this, titled: "Installment Plans For Paying Off Reanimation Costs".
• Among the questions addressed will be, "What do we do about those who have memory losses, so that they border on or are like amnesia victims?" Even in future society, some will die under sudden or compromised circumstances and have the same problem. It seems unlikely that they will be "given up on"! What works for them will work for us, also!
• Using a system like this for the payment of reanimation expenses, CI's main task would be to pick the best reanimation service providers from a quality-cost standpoint, and assure that the financing plans selected for CI Members are fair and reasonable.
• By approaching reanimation financing in this way, by the time reanimation becomes feasible, on the assumption that it will be, and unless perfected anti-aging methods are developed far before that time, there could be not just tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, but millions of people "awaiting reanimation".
• CI would probably be only one of many cryonics providers, by such a time, and perhaps not even the largest. So what? If it even had a membership of about a hundred thousand or so, just a small fraction of those "signed up" worldwide with all of the organizations combined, CI should be able to do an excellent job of selecting and supervising reanimation providers and financing plans.
• In this scenario, this supervisory role could become the Cryonics Institute's main line of activity, as the rates of new suspensions fell off with extended life spans, and the primary need became helping those in suspension rejoin the mainstream of society. Other organizations, perhaps smaller, that had not so well addressed how to take care of this task, might retain CI to represent their members.

I appreciate Fred's attempts to anticipate problems. But to repeat what I have said before, I don't think reanimation funding or post-reanimation wealth are matters that we should be so concerned with. In theory CI will keep patients with maintenance funds that can be re-directed to reanimation when reanimation technology costs have dropped enough to be affordable.

Maintenance funds won't be needed for maintenance if they are used for reanimation. In any case it is better to be alive and in debt than to have suffered too much brain tissue destruction to allow for good reanimation.

I believe that a society which will be able to reanimate us will be so vastly richer and more technically advanced than anything that we can imagine that attempting to provide for future costs or wealth are a misuse of resources and energy. I believe it is comparable to "Otzi the Iceman" (the frozen mummy from about 3300 BC who was found in the Austrian Alps in 1991) trying to stash-away his copper axe for his benefit upon reanimation -- rather than using it to defend himself or obtain food and shelter.

I believe that most serious problems cryonicists face are

1. ensuring that they are cryopreserved under good conditions with minimal ischemic damage
2. ensuring that cryopreservation technology causes minimal damage and
3. ensuring their cryonics organization is strong enough to survive the social, political, legal, economic and financial challenges that lie ahead.

Millionaire cryonicists who try to squirrel away their money to cash in on a "small chance" that cryonics will work are ignoring the fact that a few million dollars spent on cryonics research and on cryonics perfusion technology would make a BIG difference in the chance of cryonics working. In fact, enough money spent on cryonics research and perfusion technology could convert a "chance" into a near certainty. They are like "Otzi the Iceman" not using his axe to save his life.

Too many cryonicists assume that their cryopreservation and maintenance is a "done deal" and they focus on their future life -- "counting their chickens before they are hatched." We must put as much emphasis as possible on ensuring that our eggs are in good condition when they are preserved and are preserved well. If cryonics is wishful thinking, doing little to ensure a good preservation and focusing on reanimation is a compounding of wishful thinking upon wishful thinking.