LONG LIFE INTERVIEW: DAVID PASCAL on the CRYONICS SOCIETY

LL: Some of our readers may not know about the Cryonics Society. Could you give us a little background?

DP: Gladly. The Cryonics Society is a nonprofit organization funded by tax-deductible donations. It was incorporated in 2005 by Nick Pavlica, Bruce Waugh, and myself. Its goal is to gain public support for cryonics and for cryonics-related research. We hope to do that by educating the public about its benefits.

What sparked us to start the Society was our awareness of the real threat that negative press coverage posed to cryonics. In particular, the events that followed the media circus surrounding the suspension of Ted Williams. Williams’ suspension led to anti-cryonics legislation being proposed in Arizona by state representatives Bob Stump. Michigan legislators soon followed suit and passed a Cease and Desist order forbidding the Cryonics Institute from providing suspension services during an investigation that eventually led to the Cryonics Institute being regulated as a cemetery. Suspended Animation’s plans to build a facility at Boca Raton were shut down by a City Council ruling. Things looked pretty grim.

It seemed clear to us that an effort was needed to counteract media hysteria and misinformation and replace it with the facts. Cryonics had to present itself to the public in a more positive way. If it didn't start doing a better job of promoting itself, it could cease to exist. And so could we.

And there was more. Cryonics has a long history of promoting itself badly. After forty years of receiving more publicity than the moon landing, not even 1500 people have signed up. Companies that can’t make much more than a thousand sales after forty years of trying aren’t doing it right. Cryonics is still viewed by many people as little more than science fiction or a scam. Existing cryonics promotional efforts were a tragic record of failure – and the Ted Williams case showed how easily it could put an end to cryonics totally.

We figured it was time for professionals to give it a try. Nick is a successful direct-mail marketing specialist. I'm a marketing consultant by profession. Bruce is a retired Canadian attorney who’s represented successful and prominent business organizations. We all felt that if standard marketing practices could successfully market everything from pet rocks to fundamentalist churches, it could successfully market this new form of life extension.

So we formed the Cryonics Society. To better safeguard and promote cryonics.

Q: And what exactly does the Cryonics Society do?

A: We provide positive accurate information about cryonics to the media and the public. We serve as an unaffiliated non-profit resource for responsible journalists. And we work pro-actively to make a clear non-technical case for supporting cryonics to members of the general public, which we do in a variety of ways.

Q: Could you give an example?

LL: Do you promote cryonics providers like Alcor and CI directly?

DP: We direct both journalists and interested members of the public to providers. We had an email the other day from a television producer called Myrna Everett who was interested in doing a program segment about cryonics out West.  I put her in contact with Jennifer Chapman, Alcor’s Marketing Director.  A radio producer wanted to interview cryonics supporters in New England.  CI has several members in that area, so I directed her to Ben Best, and mentioned Alcor also.  A woman called Lisa Ely is planning a documentary series on cryonics. We directed her to both organizations.

Will these projects pan out? Will they get attention, memberships, funds, for CI and Alcor?  We hope so. We've reached a lot of people with a good strong pro-cryonics message. It's a safe bet that some of those people have gone on to join providers and become members.

Do we receive any financial support from cryonics organizations for doing it? No – unfortunately. We might be able to do more if we did.

We’ve managed to do what we’ve done so far only because of support from people in the cryonics movement. There’s an iron law in marketing: you can't do it if you can't fund it. What we do is possible only because people that care about the survival of cryonics support us with their contributions.

LL: And yet there hasn’t been a lot of talk about you on Cryonet and other cryonics discussion groups.

DP: There’s no need to go to the cryonics community and get them to support cryonics. They do that already. It's people who are hearing the wrong things about cryonics that we need to reach.

Doing all that takes time and effort. We’d rather do it than talk about it on Cryonet. After all, we need to take our message to the public, not to each other. Making cryonics work isn't just a technological problem. It's a social problem. We need to face and solve that social problem if we want to survive.