NEWS & VIEWS

These include Ben Best, Gary Tripp, Christine Gaspar, and Keith Henson. (Apologies to any I may have forgotten.) David Pascal helped as well, and of course our Michigan personnel at this end. In Canada death can be pronounced only by a physician or a registered nurse. Before this the cryonics procedures cannot be initiated. Paperwork for transportation can take up to two days or more, depending on time of day and day of the week and other factors.

Obviously, these conditions pose problems for timely care. In this case, there was a registered nurse on hand to pronounce death, volunteers with equipment began cool-down and related procedures immediately, the mortuary responded promptly with its own equipment, and a physician came quickly to sign the death certificate.

Some of the CSC volunteers had a chance to become somewhat acquainted with the patient, a brave and intelligent lady. 1 think this acquaintance, brief and limited as it was, benefited both the patient and the volunteers in terms of morale.

Robert Ettinger

21CM STOCK FOR SALE

Kitty Antonik Wakfer recently posted this message on cryonet: The following, which has also been posted to sci.lifeextension and sci.cryonics, is being posted here for my husband, Paul Wakfer.

Kitty Antonik Wakfer Associate of Tom Matthews (Paul Wakfer)

To whom it may concern:

As one of the three founders of 21 st Century Medicine, Inc. which later split off a new corporation called Critical Care Research, Inc., I am the owner of 32,038 shares of stock in each corporation.

21CM has a website at: http://www.2 1 cm.com CCRI appears to have no website. Both companies have made presentations at the Alcor Conference on Extreme Life Extension which took place on Nov 16 and 17

This message is to inform interested parties that all of my shares are now for sale in blocks of 500 or more. Except as stated below, it will be up to the buyer to make the necessary arrangements to register his/her purchase with the secretary of the corresponding company and to receive issuance of a share certificate.

A copy of this message is also being sent to the secretary of each company to inform them of my desire, my intent and my action. If either of these companies should balk at this sale of shares and the issuance of individual certificates (because of its potential increase in the number of shareholders and government regulations pertaining thereto), I plan to setup a holding company (and induce one of the share purchasers to be its CEO) which can itself then be the holder of all the shares. In any case these legalities and formalities will be all taken care of before anyone needs to part with any money.

Anyone who has interest in owning shares in these companies is invited to send me a message making an offer for 500 or more shares in either company.

Both are California for-profit corporations.

Here is the California registration record for 21 CM:

http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowAllList?QueryCorpNumber=C1721221 and here is the similar record for CCRI:

http://kepler.ss.ca.gov/corpdata/ShowAllList?QueryCorpNumber=C2141050

Both companies have somewhat over a million shares already issued. The exact number is not regularly disclosed even to the shareholders.

As of a year ago, the Florida Cryonics Association - FCA - (which appears to be the 501(c)(3) corporation behind the Life Extension Foundation) held all but 213,127 of the shares of each company. Since the founding of the companies (in 1993 for 21CM, and in 1999 for CCRI) no one else has ever been allowed to purchase shares from either company.

During that time, all the investment in these companies has come from FCA which as of a year ago continued to receive stock at the rate of 1 share for each $5 of investment.

I have been sitting on them for years waiting for a new share offering to be

made by the companies involved so that I could sell them at that price (one had been promised in the past). A week ago, I finally capitulated to a completely unjust (but legal) US$6500 judgment against me and began looking into reclaiming some of the assets (including long outstanding debts by others) which I had but which were going nowhere. These shares are one of those assets. Basically, I am cleaning up and reorganizing my financial life to make things as simple as possible and to be able to concentrate on those things which are most important to me at this time.

If you mean that there has been little squabbling, perhaps that is simply because all those with ideas which don't fit the general mold have left, or being silent. This is certainly the case for me, and for Kitty.

These are R&D companies. No profits are going to accrue until they develop some highly marketable products. Any investment in them should be considered venture capital. It may all be lost or it may multiply itself many times over.

Shares are continuously being sold to the Florida Cryonics Association as and when it invests money in these companies to allow them to continue their operations. I am not aware of the share price ever being different that $5.00 per share in the past.

The more important question is what do *you* think they are worth to *you*. That is the price you should offer. To not do so is tantamount to trying to get something for nothing, which is not something that a self-respecting person would want to do.

*You* are the one who offers, I am the one who accepts or rejects the offer.

I am considering setting up a website section to house this information. However, it is of little real value in assessing the companies. Neither of them currently produces anything much of value or has any income. All that they have is continual research expenditures, but that is the nature of R&D until it is complete.

I already gave you the URL's for official information on the corporations; this California Business Portal site contains the name and address of the "Agent for Service of Process" for both companies -the legal contact. More information on both companies can be obtained through this same site. I do not know who is the secretary of either company at the present time.

Over the years occasional inquiries were posted on whether people could buy shares in 21 CM. These inquiries were generally ignored. Were the primary shareholders thereby doing individual shareholders a favor by ignoring them, because they knew the actual share value would be eaten up by capital expense not compensated by income?

That is up to you to decide. Except at the launch of 21CM in 1993, shares have never been for sale from either company (as opposed to shares resold by a current stockholder).

Why the "Tom Matthews" subterfuge when you worked at LEF? There must be an interesting story behind that. Why wouldn't 'Paul Wakfer" do?

This has been explained in detail elsewhere on the web (search for it) and has no relevance to the current sale of shares.

kitty@morelife.org

HAWAII BEATS OUT CRYONICS!

It was announced last week that the winner of the much-publicized competition offering a Cryonic Preservation had opted for the holiday. Sadly, it all turned into just another holiday competition. We all knew it was a marketing ploy to sell more magazines but we were disappointed that the usual integrity of this publication has taken a severe knock.

Nobody in the media would been interested in someone offering a holiday, whereas cryonics raised issues and publicity quite unprecedented in the history of the magazine. At least a little judicious manipulation would have resulted in the result we all hoped for. We also know that 27% of the entrants are interested in cryonics. Potential members?

One good thing that came from it all, is a much enhanced understanding of what is being offered by cryonics. I am still receiving a large number of calls and there are several future possibilities in the pipeline.

In fact I have spent much of this weekend working on a short documentary with a group of postgraduate media students from the local university. Though there is no measurable advantage to either cryonics or myself at this point, who knows what the future holds?

Maybe some seeds have been planted and at the least, one of them could become a major TV or film producer in the future ... or even turn to cryonics!

Chrissie de Rivaz

NATASHA VITA MORE REVIEWS THE ALCOR CONFERENCE

Alcor's conference was an excellent example of both substantive talks and festive community atmosphere. The quality of this conference was impressive, in regards to the meals (beautifully prepared and served), conference room was just the right size, the gifts for participants were well thought out, and the reception to attendees was welcoming.

My favorite talks were Michael West -who invests much of his speaking capital on issues that are socially inclusive as well as core science/tech facts that are often exclusive. He included an historical account of myths and images of a quest for extreme life over the eons.

Rob Freitas also gave a spell binding talk. Beautiful exhibition of video clips showing the possible future of nanomedicine. These visuals were a highlight at the conference.

Max Mores talk covered a more social understanding of issues that keep us

nestled in a point of stasis that inhibit our ability to adapt to change. His key point is that we must be willing to stretch our experiences and get out of one frame of mind. He afforded the audience with light mirth and laughter - as Max has that special sense of intellect and humor.

Ray Kurzweil's first talk was a multimedia piece and we were able to experience him talking to his electronically simulated female and voice. Very clever. We learned about kurzweilai.net website and the "Big Thinkers" located there. His second talk focused on nutrition and his new book.

David Kekich's talk reflected ideas that are easily transferable. He had a chart of boxes and 2/3rds of them were filled in. These filled in experiences represented his life experiences - how many boxes he had already used up in his life. Then the empty boxes represented the number of experiences he had left to fill in his life. OOps! Not too many. So, he increased the number of unfilled boxes.

I liked this because it was so direct and made sense. Let's add more years - more life experiences.

So many of the speakers were pivotal -Aubrey de Gray showed a no-nonsense

approach to his work which was refreshing. Congratulations to Jerry Lem ler and Alcor for a successful conference!

Natasha Vita-More

NEW YORK TRANSHUMANISTS MEET