CURTIS HENDERSON - Alcor Life Extension Foundation

3 rd Quarter 2009 • Volume 30:3Cover StoryImpressionsof CurtisHendersonpage 3CurtisHenderson:Cryonics Pioneerpage 12Member Profile:John Schloendornpage 16CurtisHenderson[1926 - 2009 - ...]ISSN 1054-4305$9.95

Improve Your Odds of a Good CryopreservationYou have your cryonics funding and contracts in place but have you considered othersteps you can take to prevent problems down the road?þþþþþþþDo you keep Alcor up-to-date about personal and medical changes?Does your Alcor paperwork still reflect your current wishes?Have you executed a cryonics-friendly Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care?Do you wear your bracelet and talk to your friends and family about your desire tobe cryopreserved?Do you have hostile relatives or supportive relatives that are willing tosign a Relative’s Affidavit?Do you attend local cryonics meetings or are you interested in startinga local group yourself?Are you interested in contributing to Alcor?Contact Alcor at 1-877-462-5267and let us know how we can assist you.Take a look at the Alcor Blogwww.alcornews.org/weblogYour source for news about:Cryonics technologyCryopreservation casesTelevision programs about cryonicsSpeaking events and meetingsEmployment opportunities

3 RD QUARTER 2009 • VOLUME 30:33 rd Quarter 2009 • Volume 30:3Cover StoryImpressionsof CurtisHendersonpage 3CurtisHenderson:Cryonics Pioneerpage 12ISSN 1054-4305$9.95Member Profile:12 Curtis Henderson: Cryonics PioneerCharles Platt lets Curtis Henderson speak in his own wordsabout the early days of cryonics and explains what Curtis hastaught us about the importance of honesty and the dangers ofthird party funding.page 16John SchloendornCurtisHenderson[1926 - 2009 - ...]15 “There is no such thing asfeel-good cryonics”Cryonics editor Aschwin de Wolfremembers the late Curtis Hendersonand notes that his struggle with diseaseand aging should inspire us to continuehis legacy.COVER STORY: PAGE 3Alcor staff member andcryonics historian MikePerry remembers CurtisHenderson and hisimportant role in theshaping of the early andmodern cryonicsmovement. Mike Perry’saccount is followed by arare 1987 interview withCurtis and somefascinating historicalphotos and documents.Contents16 Member Profile:John SchloendornMeet John Schloendorn,Alcor member andupcoming young antiagingresearcher.18 Book Review: Jill BolteTaylor – My Stroke ofInsight19 Membership ReportThe state of Alcormembership at theend of July 2009.20 Tech NewsTech News editor MikePerry reports on thereversal of Alzheimersymptoms in mice, theimaging of a singlemolecule, advances ingenome sequencing andnew treatment optionsfor oxygen-deprivednewborns.www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 20091

FROM•THE•EDITOREditorAschwin de WolfArt DirectorJill GrasseContributing WritersR. Michael Perry, Ph.D.Charles PlattAschwin de WolfChana de Wolf________________________________Copyright 2009by Alcor Life Extension FoundationAll rights reserved.Reproduction, in whole or part, withoutpermission is prohibited.Cryonics Magazine is published quarterly.To subscribe: call 480.905.1906 x101________________________________Address correspondence to:Cryonics Magazine7895 East Acoma Drive, Suite 110Scottsdale, Arizona 85260Phone: 480.905.1906Toll free: 877.462.5267Fax: 480.922.9027Letters to the Editor welcome:aschwin@alcor.orgAdvertising inquiries:480.905.1906 x113advertise@alcor.orgThursday morning, June 25 2009, 04:14 am. Cryonics Pioneer CurtisHenderson goes into cardiac arrest. The Florida-based cryonicscompany Suspended Animation promptly starts cardiopulmonarysupport, surface cooling and administration of neuroprotective medicationsand anti-coagulants. After stabilization procedures are completed Curtis istransported by van from New York to the Cryonics Institute in Michigan forcryoprotective perfusion, cooldown to cryogenic temperatures, and long termcare in liquid nitrogen.This issue of Cryonics Magazine is a tribute to Curtis Henderson. Curtis(b.1926) was one of the founders and President of the Cryonics Society ofNew York (CSNY) and remained a vocal and colorful advocate of cryonicsuntil his cryopreservation. As a particularly outspoken opponent of “thirdparty funding” Curtis contributed to one of Alcor’s fundamental buildingblocks; members should be fully funded prior to the start of cryonics proceduresand long term care should not be dependent on the ongoing goodwill ofrelatives and friends.Mike Perry starts off this tribute with his personal recollections of the man.This piece is followed by an interview from 1987 and some unique historicalcryonics materials. Charles Platt also dug into his archives and transcribed sometaped recordings in which Curtis recalls some events from the early days of cryonics.In his important afterword, Charles Platt offers some pungent, briefcomments on the perils of third party cases.My own little contribution is titled “There is no such thing as feel-good cryonics,” aslogan of Curtis’ that has become the motto of those who are painfully awareof the challenges, limitations, and failure-modes that characterize contemporarycryonics.There are few things that could please Curtis more than a new generation ofenthusiastic cryonics activists. This issue features a profile of Alcor memberJohn Schloendorn. John is a committed researcher who is devoting his life toovercoming aging. John has not only engaged in meaningful experimental workfor Aubrey de Grey’s SENS project, he has also launched his own organizationto support other anti-aging researchers to accomplish their goals.In 2010 Alcor will be raising its membership dues. We are aware that the financialmeltdown and its aftermath have created difficult times for many, includingour members. Alcor is making great efforts to complement the increase inmembership dues with sensible cost savings in our organization to limit theburden. More information about the membership dues increase can be foundon page 19 of this issue and the Alcor blog.ISSN: 1054-4305Visit us on the web at www.alcor.orgAlcor News Blogwww.alcornews.org/weblog2 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

ImpressionsOFCURTISHENDERSONBy Mike PerryCurtis Henderson at an early cryonics conference:April 1969, Ann Arbor, Michigan.(Reference: Cryonics Reports 4(4) 10,Apr.-May 1969).____________________________________________I’m not sure when I first heard of CurtisHenderson but back issues of Cryonicsthat I read in the early 1980s were animportant source, particularly the interviewwith Mike Darwin (July 1981, pages 23-29). Inthe preface Mike says, “Curtis Henderson hastaught me much of what I know about cryonicsand has saved me an incredible amountof grief with good advice and stern admonitions.He has also taught me that sometimesyou have to stand up like a man and say whatyou think regardless of what the timid tellyou.” What follows is my best recollectionwhere written sources are lacking; quotationsmay be approximate.I first met Curtis in 1987, in connectionwith an Alcor “Facility Dedication and OpenHouse” held over the Memorial Dayweekend, May 22-25. Alcor had recently occupiedpremises on Doherty Street in Riverside,California, and I had recently arrived as a fulltimevolunteer, with support from a generousbenefactor. (Two years later I would become apaid employee, which I still am today.) Thisfirst encounter would be followed by othersover the years, both in Riverside and inScottsdale, Arizona, after Alcor’s move therein 1994. (As background: in the 1980s Curtiswas an Alcor member, then changed toCryoCare in the 1990s, and finally joined theCryonics Institute, where he was cryopreservedlast summer.)I remember Curtis as a short, stout, feistybulldog of a man with a matching voice butwise and kind-hearted underneath. He hadnumerous entertaining tales to tell about theearly days of cryonics and much earlier thanthat. One incident in his boyhood concerneda toy submarine he had his heart set on, onethat had some mechanical apparatus so itcould dive and travel underwater all by itselfand simulate the real thing. But his dadwouldn’t buy it for him because it was “madein Germany.” This was about 1936 whenCurtis was nine or ten years old. (His parents,Donald and Eleanor [Curtis] Henderson,were labor organizers and members of theCommunist Party.)On to another topic, there was anamusing incident connected with an interviewI taped on May 24, 1987 (elsewhere in thisissue). Afterward I was transcribing the so-soqualitycassette and there was some expressionCurtis used I couldn’t quite make senseof. It sounded for all the world like “FrenchHall’s Ball”—some sort of proper name evidently—soI left it at that. (I should havecalled him up; somehow I didn’t.) Anyway,when the article came out in the Venturistnewsletter I edited he called me up and com-www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 20093

Curtis Henderson at Alcor’s facility, Oct. 5, 2008.________________________________________________________________________________plimented, only noting an error in that oneplace, where his New York accent, itappeared, had caused confusion. No, it wasFrank Charles Bar, the place in Jamaica,Queens, NYC, where he or his buddy KarlWerner in 1965 dreamed up the term “cryonics”for the new organization they wereforming. (The correction was duly noted inthe next issue of the newsletter and is silentlymade here.)Curtis had a severe stroke a few yearsago, as well as other health issues. Anyway, hestruggled back from that precipice andresumed a part-time nomadic lifestyle, travelingcross-country and even piloting hismotorcycle as he’d long been doing. (I understandhe also had once been an airplane pilot,starting in the military, but I don’t think heresumed that hobby.) Curtis had two marriagesthat ran their course and several children.“Don’t have kids,” he once admonished—againwith irony and humor, but nodoubt some seriousness. Mixing married lifeand cryonics was tough for him, and not justbecause of the kids; in the end he stuck it outwith cryonics.Cryonics has always been a challenge,and it was especially so in the early days when,as a rule, arrangements were not made inadvance and relatives attempted to arrange afreezing after the prospective donor had died.These relatives themselves were often eitherdisinterested in cryonics or for other reasonshad no arrangements themselves. Their willingnessto continue payments to keepsomeone frozen was correspondingly limited,but if things didn’t go to their liking, as oftenhappened, they might take legal action. Anearly cryonics newsletter (of Evan Cooper ofthe Life Extension Society in Washington,D.C.) had the title Freeze-Wait-Reanimate. Curtissaid a more appropriate expression, in view ofthe legal troubles, would be Freeze-Wait-Litigate. In fact, though, no lawsuits were everbrought against Curtis’s own organization,Cryonics Society of New York, Inc.; Curtisused his attorney skills to good advantage aswell as trying to be fair in all his dealings withprospective donors and their relatives. (Theorganization nevertheless had to close downin the 1970s due to lack of funding. A rivalorganization, Cryonics Society of California,Inc., under Robert Nelson, also failed butlegal recriminations followed and a mortician4 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

Snowball, Curtis Henderson’s dog._______________________________________who assisted Nelson paid a large fine throughinsurance. Since that time the practice hasbecome nearly universal in cryonics ofdemanding a full up-front payment at the timeof preservation. Interest income from thisprincipal then covers costs of maintenance sothat further monetary input is unnecessary.)I last saw Curtis in 2008, when hestopped at Alcor’s facility accompanied by hiswhite, blue-eyed dog Snowball (some calledher Snowflake). Peppery and high-spirited asever, if still a little inconvenienced by effectsof the stroke, he attended the monthly transhumanistmeeting at the facility on Oct. 5,then came back the next day. I scanned somehistoric cryonics photos he’d brought alongthen went with him and showed the way to aWal-Mart where he bought groceries. He paidat the checkout counter and discarded thesales receipt, which I promptly retrieved,sensing somehow it wasn’t just an ordinarything. Watching, he seemed a little nonplussed.“You save everything!”I will mention that he sometimes showedacts of special kindness such as(around 1988) gifting me a subscriptionto Newsweek at a timewhen my own finances weremeager. He wanted to write abook and wanted me to help,which I was willing to do butsomething always intervened.Fun-loving, feisty, andfocused on a limitless future,Curtis helped start the cryonicsmovement and didwhat he could to furtherthat cause for the rest ofthe time—some fourdecades—that natureallotted him. Not contentto leave it at that, he restsin liquid nitrogen wheresomeday, if all goes well,he will emerge to takeup where he left off,and we can enjoy hiscompany once more(and maybe get thatbook finished!). ■Sales receipt from Wal-Mart, Oct. 6, 2008._______________________________________I thank Robert Henderson for supplying early documents pertaining to CSNY—MP. (see next pages)www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 20095

Cryonics Society of New York, Inc., signature page from Certificate of Incorporation__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________6 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

CSNY Purpose, from Bylaws.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 20097

Interview withCurtis HendersonMay 24, 1987By Mike PerryIn July 1965 Curtis Henderson, together with Saul Kent, Karl Werner, James Sutton, and Harold Costello, founded the CryonicsSociety of New York (CSNY). It was one of the first organizations devoted to the “freezing idea,” and was the first to use the newlycoinedterm “cryonics” which eventually became generic in the field. Though CSNY was eventually disbanded due to financialproblems Curtis remained active in cryonics until last summer when, aged 82, he was cryopreserved at the Cryonics Institute,Clinton Township, MI. The following interview, lightly edited, is from Venturist Voice #6 (Fall, 1987) 15-20. By way of further background,Robert Ettinger in 1964 had published The Prospect of Immortality, which introduced the idea of freezing the newlydeceased to a large public. Ev Cooper meanwhile had organized the Life Extension Society (LES) in Washington, DC, and started anewsletter. Though Cooper was interested in setting up a cryonics facility, this important goal eluded him and the task was left toothers.MP:CH:Tell me about your early background,where, how long ago, and so on.I always maintain that I’m 39. It getsharder. I was born in New York City,as far as I know (I don’t reallyremember). I went to several elementaryschools—my parents movedaround a lot. I went to different highschools too. I was in my third year inhigh school—during the Secondworld War—and desperate. If youjoined the Air Cadets when you were17 you got your high school diplomawithout even going to school for thelast year, which I did. After the war Itook advantage of the GI bill. I wentto college, though to be perfectlyfrank I think college was an extensionof a playboy-type existence. Mygrandmother sort of semi-financed it,a u g m e n t i n g t h e g o ve r n m e n tallowances. I managed to get a convertibleand a motorcycle. Then I wentto law school, graduated and passedthe Bar, but I guess I was a dilettantein many ways. By the ‘60s I wasMP:CH:MP:working for an insurance companyand was making enough money tolead a very comfortable existence.How did you get involved in cryonics?I read constantly. In the New YorkTimes I saw a review of Ettinger’sbook, The Prospect of Immortality, andthe idea just intrigued me. I thinkmaybe everybody, but certainly thekind of people that end up in cryonics,have an idea in the back of theirminds that somehow they’re going tocheat this death thing. Maybe everybodyhas that idea. When you’re youngand healthy certainly you have a veryhard time thinking of yourself asgrowing old and dying, and if you dothink about it you push it out of yourmind. But you see old people and youjoke about it, and it gets harder andharder to hide from.How would you describe your lifestyleat this time?CH:MP:CH:I had a boat and a very pretty youngwife and a kid. (The second kid, whenhe came along, was actually namedRobert, after Ettinger.)So now tell me more about cryonics.I read the book [Prospect], and I didsomething I almost never do. I wroteto the author. He sent me the name ofa man in Jamaica in Queens, NewYork City. I think like everybody else Iexpected to find somebody, a semiscientist,a well-educated individual, anintellectual, a college professor, somebody,almost, in a white coat. I foundexactly the opposite, but this manintroduced me to Saul Kent and KarlWerner. The three of us were almostlike three parts of a puzzle comingtogether. At the time I didn’t thinkabout it, but when I think back I’mreally struck by how remarkable it was,considering all the infighting, splittingand fractionation that went on withthis whole movement since then, howeasily we worked together. Saul was8 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

MP:CH:MP:CH:great with writing and organizingthings, and the three of us just fittogether.What action did you take?We started the Cryonics Society ofNew York because nobody was happywith the Life Extension Society for awhole bunch of reasons. BeforehandSaul and me had taken a trip across thecountry and visited all of the peoplewho had been interested in life extension—withEv Cooper, with all thepeople who claimed they had facilitiesto freeze people. With the exceptionof Ed Hope in Arizona they all turnedout to be total fabrications, nothing.The end of that trip was coming backthrough Michigan and having ahearing with Ettinger, whose grouphad become the Cryonics Society ofMichigan [as it eventually was called].Tell me more about forming your owngroup, the Cryonics Society of NewYork.After we got back from the trip, wehad to file papers in Albany to get anon-profit corporate certificate, andstatus, and start working on a tax-freestatus, so we had to come up with aname. Karl Werner and I were in theFrank Charles Bar one night and madethe name “cryonics” up out of theblue. I don’t know whether he suggestedit or I suggested it but it justclicked. Saul wanted to get thisnewsletter out and he needed a nametoo. I remember meeting at the FrankCharles Bar mostly because I had a jobin the city, I lived out in Sayville and Iused the Long Island Railroad once aweek to go back and forth once aweek. I had to change trains inJamaica, and the Frank Charles Bar isonly about two blocks from the railroadstation. So we formed theCryonics Society of New York, but wenever dreamed we’d have anything todo with physically freezing bodies.Our idea was for more or less a discussionclub. It was totally in the realm ofMP:CH:speculation. Our first real act was Saulputting out the newsletter.What problems did you encounterwhen you decided to go beyond merespeculation and really do cryonics?We found out that no big companywas going to make storage tanks, andno medical people were really interestedin the idea. We seemed to be theonly ones interested, in fact. We hadno idea of the complications or thecost. I think Ettinger’s first figureswere in the neighborhood of $5,000to freeze and store somebody indefinitely.Ettinger was always talkingabout freezing the first man. Whenthey froze the first man all sorts ofmagical things were going to happen.The world would see that you wereright (I had doubts about that) but hewas so adamant in his concept offreezing the first man. He would havethese people contact him but hewould never go through with it. Therewere several people he was going tofreeze when they died but for somereason—we never got the details onit—they weren’t frozen. Since then Irealized that when it came to push andshove and you actually had to dealwith morticians and doctors and soon, he was quickly discouraged.Robert Nelson was impressed with uswhen, on our trip, we visited him inCalifornia, because we were from outof state and had some very goodlookingbrochures for the time, andwere putting out a newsletter. Hethought we were the big hotshotsfrom New York with a big Buick andplenty of money. As I said, though,the people we saw were mostly justindividuals with a passing interest incryonics. The only one who wasmaking any kind of a tank was Hopein Arizona. At the time I knewnothing about cryogenic tanks—infact, that’s where I learned aboutthem. We spent a couple of weeksliving and sleeping there at Hope’sfacility. It was just a warehouse, just anMP:CH:industrial bay. At that time he had atank with a woman in it, and it washolding liquid nitrogen though notwell—he had to keep the vacuumpumps going. He was making othertanks. He had hired a couple of engineers,and he was spending quite a bitof money, more than everyone elseput together, on developing some sortof tank that would work. After that wecame home, and it was several weeksafter that that Nelson froze Bedford.Tell about your early experiences actuallyfreezing people.First of all we realized that you had tohave the cooperation of a mortician,because you had to get into thelicensing system of handling a deadbody. You couldn’t just pop up andsay, “hey, we’re a cryonics society,somebody just died, now give us thebody,”—they won’t do that. So wewrote letters to every funeral directorlisted on Long Island and we got noanswer. One man however, Fred Hornat St. James, called us and he said hewas interested. We gave him what literaturewe had, and because he’dbroken his leg skiing he took the timeto read it. That’s literally the truth—headmitted it many times. He neverwould have read any of it if he hadn’tbeen sitting there with his leg in a cast.But he became interested in it, andwhen Steven Mandel died he more orless put all of us on the spot: Now,this was it, either put up or shut up. Atthat moment we had somebody whohad made the preparations, who’dsigned papers indicating he wanted tobe frozen, and had an insurance policythat had been signed over to hismother with the proviso that it wasgoing to be used to freeze him. Hismother called us when he died, sonow it was put up or shut up time.We’re gonna do it or not. And we didit. And of course from then on itceased to be a discussion group.From the pressures of keeping himfrozen and Mrs. Deblasio and thewww.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 20099

MP:CH:others who wanted to be frozen, whoput us in the position of do it or not,we became familiar with the real costs.We’d bought a tank from Hope, thenanother tank, which didn’t work verywell. A search for an efficient tankstarted. We more or less were caughtup—we had to go on with it, to turnback was to give up the whole project.Most of what happened after that iscommon knowledge.No doubt many are aware that all thecompanies freezing people in the ‘60sultimately went out of business,including your own, and that nearly allthe patients from those early dayswere lost, for one reason or another.The tragedy was not all in vain,however, because other organizationswere formed who tried to avoid theearlier mistakes and as a result cryonics,while not a large movement, atleast has a devoted circle of followerstoday, and no suspension failure hasoccurred in over five years. But muchhas been written about the ill-fatedefforts of Robert Nelson inChatsworth, California, in which allthe dozen or so people in storagethere were allowed to thaw out anddecompose. Can you comment onthat, in relation to your own efforts?MP:CH:The fight with Nelson started, really,over his intolerance of the existenceof Bay Area Cryonics, in SanFrancisco. Nelson’s later problems,I’m certain, evolved out of the samekind of problems we had. He didn’thandle them nearly as well as we did.The costs of keeping people in liquidnitrogen went way beyond anything heestimated, way beyond anything hewas getting from the people he wasfreezing, and he insisted on undercuttingour prices to get people. And ourprices were way too low. In the meantimehe was carrying on this strugglewith the people who had started BayArea Cryonics, three or four peopleincluding Jerry White and MicheleNavarette. The basic problem wasalways the same—we had way underestimatedthe cost of storage. Towardsthe end there, Mike Darwin got into it.He was interested in perfusion, andhere was a whole area of technologywe had no idea about, and yet it probablywas the most important area. Andof course the costs of doing a goodjob of perfusion, to keep records of itand so on, were astronomical comparedto anything we had estimated. Ihad sort of a nightmare, because ifanybody sued us and took us to courtwe were going to be in the position ofjust taking a body and perfusing it—ifyou want to call it that—at some pointwithin hours or days after death, withan embalming pump which hasabsolutely no way of recording pressuresor pH or anything. You weren’treally doing much more than taking afish and throwing it in a bed of ice,and saying, “well the fish is preserved,it’s frozen.” That’s about the quality ofthe early freezings. The cost of doingit properly with qualified people wassimply out of the question.What finally happened to your organization?Saul went to Florida. Everybody hadto keep earning a living. A fellow inFlorida offered to finance Saul and hisLife Extension Magazine that he wasputting out. I stayed there in NewYork because that’s where I wasworking and where my home was. Itjust sort of faded. We stopped takingon any new people. Still it was costingus four or five hundred dollars amonth, and most of the time thatmoney came out of our pockets. Onerelative, a Mr. Hurst, always paid.Another fellow froze his father, and hewanted to take care of his fatherhimself, which I was only too glad to lethim do. (He eventually let his fathermelt.) We had the people buy their owntanks—we never owned them. I’m gladwe did it that way, because when theystarted saying they were unhappy withthe way things were I could say fine,take the tank.MP:CH:MP:CH:So in the end the relatives all tooktheir people away?Yes. The last one, Hurst, went toNew Zealand, wrote to the city andsaid “I can’t carry it any more, I wantmy father buried,” and we went alongwith his wishes. You see, almost noneof these people had any inkling ofcryonics before they died. It was theirrelatives who wanted to freeze them.We had all-night discussions withMike Darwin when we were goingthrough all these troubles, and we literallyforged the policy that you havenow of not freeing people off thestreet, of freezing only those youknow want to be frozen, who havemade arrangements, and who havesigned papers expressing their desireto be frozen. We had people who hadnever heard of cryonics. Dostal andSteve Mandel were the only exceptions.(Steve’s mother got unhappy,said Nelson was Mr. Cryonics, andthat she wanted to take him there.The tank ended up in Chatsworth.She wasn’t paying us, and I don’tknow how she paid Nelson.)What do you see for the future of cryonics?There has been a lot of discussion anda lot has happened historically asidefrom cryonics. The advent of ourpresent age of “pulling the plug” washardly hinted at back in the ‘60s. I wasvery surprised recently, when I took afriend of mine to the hospital, to learnthat over half the deaths involved thisbusiness of stopping the life-supportsystem, once they’re in the hospital,and that the staff gets permissionfrom the relatives to do that. This isquite a wild thing when you thinkabout it. Now death is a matter of anact, a decision by somebody. But, toget to the point, I think that the healthindustry—as they like to call themselvesnow—is faced with this horrendouscost which is now almost a significantpart of the national budget, ofkeeping these people alive with nohope of recovery. They’re going to be10 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

forced either to look to alternativeslike cryonics, where instead of pullingthe plug you give them at least a palliative,or just making it official that at acertain point a board or your doctoror somebody will decide that’s itand—that’s it. They do this unofficiallynow, I hear, dose someone upwith morphine and put him on hisway.As cryonics increases its technicalability it increases the promise ofcoming back. As medical scienceincreases its ability to extend life underthe worst of conditions, at some pointI can’t see how they can avoid theobvious: “Are we going to keep thisman on these machines at five or tenthousand dollars a day, eating up ourmoney if he’s indigent, eating up hisfamily’s money if they have any, eatingup his estate’s money if he’s rich, orare we going to take this chance ofcryonics?” I would think that theappeal of cryonics would be hard toresist because to some degree it getseverybody off the hook. It gives anemotional and economic way out forwhat is becoming a major problem.I don’t think suspended animation willever be totally eliminated as a medicalprocedure. Some form of suspendedanimation has been desired for a longtime, and even if you had indefinitelyextended youth some form of suspendedanimation would be verydesirable. So I don’t think any of thistechnology is ever going to be wasted.Right now I think cryonics is going tocome along the way most things do. Ithink it will attract more and moreinterest. The pressures to use it willmount and the desire to use it willmount. The line between life anddeath will get hazier and hazier, andthe legal response to that is going tohave to come. There’ll have to be awhole different approach to when aman is alive and when he is dead.They’re already having problems withthat. It used to be that the heartstopped and that was the end of theMP:ball game, but not anymore. The morecryonics becomes a viable choice, andthe more people accept it as a viablechoice, the more people will do it andthe more support it will get. Andprobably, when it starts to come intofavor and really get support, for mostpeople it won’t be needed anymore—like most things [laughter].Thank you. ■www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 200911

CurtisHendersonCryonicsPioneerBy Charles PlattCurtis Henderson could be a difficultman, especially during meetings ofAlcor’s New York chapter in the1990s, when he was loud, irascible, and confrontational.I used to look forward to thosemeetings with a mixture of weariness anddread. But even when I was exasperated byCurtis, I never lost my great affection andadmiration for him, because I knew I couldnever have done what he did.In the late 1960s, after helping to establishThe Cryonics Society of New York withfour others, Curtis took on most of the workassociated with obtaining and building equipment,managing cases, and maintaining cryopatients.Merely obtaining a functionalstorage tank in those days was a major challenge.Curtis was a genuinely dedicatedpioneer who was relentless in the face ofadversity.“I was raised as a person with a cause,”he told me during one of my attempts tointerview him for a cryonics book that I wasnever able to sell. “My parents were bothmembers of the Communist Party. So emotionally,I was always geared to a cause.”He became predictably disgusted withStalinism after the Soviet Union turned intoa totalitarian state. Subsequently, his parttimework as an insurance adjuster may havedeepened his cynicism about humanbehavior, as he liked to say that his job basicallyrequired him to confront a successionof deadbeats, fakers, and cheats. Still heretained an idealistic need to dedicatehimself to something, and cryonics becamethat something, even while his skepticalnature made him uncomfortably aware of itsfailings. Thus the same man who dedicatedhis life and much of his money to cryonicswas always one of its strongest critics. I thinkhe felt that if cryonics couldn’t withstand acritical examination, it wouldn’t be worthmuch—and I always felt that he was right.I’m not going to try to characterizeCurtis in any more detail than this, becausemy words cannot convey the essence of theman. His own words are more effective forthat purpose. They also give just a hint ofwhat it must have been like to pursue thedream of human cryopreservation on a do-ityourselfbasis, when only a handful of peoplein the world could take the idea seriously.The following paragraphs are excerptedfrom the many hours of tape that I accumulated.I’ve omitted a lot of digressions andhave reshuffled some of the material, but theremaining text is pretty much verbatim. Ithas been reviewed by one of his contemporaries,who suggested some detail corrections,but has not been subjected to truly rigorousfact-checking.12 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

Curtis Henderson in his own words:In the BeginningEttinger’s book, I thought, was apenance, like reading Das Kapital when you’rea communist. I think it was terribly written.But the idea was what mattered. I wrote tohim, and he gave me the names of two otherpeople who had written to him. One was SaulKent, and the other was a man named JimmySutton, who lived in Queens, and told me tocome and meet him at the Frank Charles bar,under the El [the old elevated subway line].It was like, I guess, a thousand bars inQueens. A blue-collar kind of thing, with aTV, endless football games. They had a roomat the side where there were booths, and that’swhere we [Henderson, Kent, and Sutton]would meet each week.At that time, there was no such thing as acryogenic tank big enough to hold a humanbody. But the assumption was that all we hadto do was explain the idea to the powers thatbe, and obviously Rockefeller and all theseother people would want to live forever,would jump on the bandwagon, and UnionCarbide would make the tanks for us.So it came down to this: shall we formour own society? I said I would incorporateit, because I was a lawyer. Karl [Karl Werner,who invented the word “cryonics”] wantedto design the stationery, and Saul wanted towrite letters on it, so we had to have a name.One of us said Cryonics Society, it just cameout.It slowly came into our consciousness thatthe world out there didn’t think this was such agreat idea at all. In fact the vast majority ofpeople thought it was a grotesque idea, aridiculous idea. And certainly when somebodyhad died, talking about freezing them was likespitting on the flag, even worse than that. Soour perceptions started to change.The Road TripEttinger would go on TV, and he’d holdup pictures that people had sent him, and he’dsay, “These people in Kansas City are buildinga giant facility, freezing bodies.” He was suchan optimist. The fact was, all these peoplewere basically just looking for money. Andthere was no money. In our organization, itwas basically my out-of-pocket money andSaul’s brains. And I was getting into my firstdivorce. My wife went away to Florida andtook the kids, the usual crap.In those days for about $12.95 you couldget a credit check. I used to do it all the timewhen I worked for the insurance company.And amazing things came back. There was aguy named Gold, in Springfield. He saidthings like, “In two weeks we’re going to havethe first freezing, on color television, and thecapsule’s going to be consecrated by thePope.” The two weeks would come and go,and nothing would happen. So Saul wanted toget in the car and go to each of these placesand check them out.We went to Springfield, Ohio, and I puton my old clothes and went in looking for ajob as a welder. And there was no evidence ofany bodies. We broke into the factory at night,we even had some Polaroid pictures. Andthere was an old tank in there covered withdust. No facility at all. So, we went on withour travels, and we found nothing genuine tillwe got to Ed Hope’s place in Phoenix,Arizona. He was actually building tanks,although his main business was selling wigs.He had two wig shops in Phoenix.We spent a couple of weeks there, actuallyworking on these tanks, learning abouthigh vacuum and helium-leak detectors, andall the rest of it. This was evolving away fromthe idea of having people do things for us. Wecould see that if we were going to do something,it was going to be a do-it-yourself, backalleykind of thing.After we left Phoenix we went toCalifornia and met [Robert] Nelson, who hadstarted the group there. He said he had thiselectronics business—he’s telling me thesethings, but I’m sitting there with his creditcheck!The fact was, his wife was supportinghim, working as a teller in a bank. He carriedon about all his technical knowledge, and solong as he was talking to someone who knewnothing about it, he could get away with it.But already I was building up a body ofknowledge. Essentially I taught myself cryogenics,hands-on.Nelson was full of energy, willing to grabthe flag and charge the enemy, regardless ofthe consequences, regardless of anything. Hewas the leader of this group, very enthusiastic,and we were the people from New York inour big Buick, we did a very good job ofputting on an image, of course. Even now westill have the same kind of situation, cryonicsis a stage show, and we don’t really have verymuch substance.In Phoenix we’d ordered one of Hope’stanks, nothing could stop us now. We cameback bathed in glory. Now we were going toreally do it. It was the dawning of a new age,and so on and so forth.But, of course, it wasn’t.The First New York CaseWe had written to every funeral parloron Long Island, and got literally no response,except from Fred Horn at St. James funeralparlor. We went over to see him, and the onlyreason he was interested was he had brokenhis leg skiing and he had nothing better to do.[Later] we were having this big partyover at Paul Segall’s, it was early in themorning on a Sunday morning, and thephone rang, I remember getting up off thefloor. It was [a female relative of] StevenMandell calling, he had just died, she said doyou intend to freeze him? So I went over toFred’s, there was a lot of excitement, and hesaid go ahead, we’ll do it. The perfusion wasdone with a Porter Boy embalming pump. Abig glass dome, looks like a big juicer. Wedidn’t have any money, but Fred said hewould cover the initial expenses. He got thebody in his station wagon from the hospital.Fred supposedly perfused him with glycerol,I don’t know how well, because he’d beendead a day or so.Fred Horn was a playboy. He got out ofthe air force, he’d been assembling nuclearweapons. He took the mortuary sciencecourse, he borrowed money, Long Island wasbooming, he built the funeral home, he hadhis apartment above it. He was always gettinginto trouble, went through a series ofdivorces, a real adventurer type. There was abar across the street, he got in a fightbecause the bikers would come and raise hellwhile he was having funerals. So he boughtthe bar. He also had a boat. We chopped thetop off and moved it into the bar. I think it’sstill there.Money TroublesI used to have five people stored in tanks.Look at the photograph of this tank, this iswww.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 200913

the same one that’s lying out there [in the backyard] now. We used it in a show we did forWalter Cronkite, right there in that garage.There’s been so many radio shows, somany TV shows, that’s why I don’t expectanything anymore. You get a lot of phonecalls, maybe a thousand, but out of that, youonly get one person to sign up.Here, look at this picture. Death Valley. Iwent out to get the tank from Arizona—Ididn’t trust the shippers, I went to get itmyself. Here’s my wife, see? And she used tocomplain I never took her anyplace.Complained all the time.We bought the second tank for $3,000.Me and Saul paid it out of our pockets.I never made any money on the tanks. Wethought the remaining money would covereverything, with some further monthly paymentsfor liquid nitrogen. Thinking back now, it was aridiculously small amount of money for what wewere thinking of doing. We had to build framesand racks, there were the vacuum pumps [tomaintain the vacuum insulation of early cryogenictanks]—there was never any money.It became more and more obvious thatto do this, we had to be better funded, noneof this back-alley stuff. We were going to endup getting sued, it was going to blow up in ourfaces. So a retreat was necessary.Third-Party SituationsBasically, all my suspensions werethird-party situations. Somebody wouldcome to me and say, “Dad’s died, I want tofreeze him, I don’t care what it costs.” Sothe man in the tank, you haven’t made anydeal with, and the people on the outside,their lives change, things happen to them.Pretty soon they start thinking they neverliked that old geezer anyway. See? Nowyou’ve got troubles, because they don’t liketo admit that.I went through this with any number ofpeople. They don’t want to actually say, “Oh,I don’t want to keep him frozen, pop him inthe ground.” They start with complaining thatI’m charging too much, the nitrogen level isn’thigh enough, and why didn’t I get them on thelast TV show? That was one of the biggestcomplaints. They come here and see peoplemaking a TV show, and they complain if Idon’t get them on it.We used to sit here at night, when thingsreally got bad, and talk about the future ofhow we would do things, and out of thatcame the policy of freezing only people whowere signed up and had made preparations.Now at least you’ve got a piece of papersaying he wants to be frozen. The other way,you’ve got a man’s wife five years down theline saying, “Oh, he never knew anythingabout cryonics and I only did this in amoment of grief, and these fraudulent peoplecame along and told me they were going tobring him back—” And the woman at thatmoment has the legal say, and the cryonicscompany doesn’t have anything.I had it up to here a couple of times withcryonics. But it wasn’t cryonics, it was the waywe were doing it. This is why, when theystarted Alcor, we talked about it many times,that we would never touch anybody exceptsomebody who was prepared ahead of timeand fully understood what they were gettinginto. If it’s going to change someone’s lifestyleto have someone frozen, sooner or later,you’re going to have problems. It got to thepoint where if someone called me and saidthey had to have someone frozen and theydidn’t care what it cost—I’d hang up. ■14 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

--------------------“THERE IS NOSUCH THINGAS FEEL-GOODCRYONICS”--------------------By Aschwin de WolfIcannot say that Curtis Henderson and I go back a long time,though I had heard about him quite a bit. In conversation withpeople who did know him well he was invariably praised as a ruthlessrealist who played a key role in eliminating one of the biggest mistakesin the history of cryonics: the practice of accepting third partyfunding in which living relatives or friends take on the ongoing financialresponsibility of keeping the patient in storage. The idea of thirdpartyfunding should not just be rejected because of its naiveté, thepractice also presents a danger to other, well-funded cryonics patients.No one likes to take an existing patient out of liquid nitrogen andburn or bury that person –not to speak of the public relations aspects.We would like to think that there are no hard decisions in cryonics, butas Curtis has reminded us, “there is no such thing as feel-good cryonics.”Unlike other cryonics pioneers such as Ev Cooper and MarceJohnson, Curtis has safely made it to long term care in liquid nitrogen.But the journey was not easy. In 1974 the New York Department ofPublic Health notified him that cryonics was in violation of the lawand the bodies of three Cryonics Society of New York (CSNY)patients had to be returned to their relatives. In 1979 cryonics suffereda major, additional blow when the nine patients of the CryonicsSociety of California were discovered to have thawed as a result ofinadequate or nonexistent funding by relatives, a big strike against the“pay as you go” practice that dominated cryonics up to that point.Curtis himself, after the demise of his own organization, CSNY, eventuallybecame an Alcor member, but switched to the CryoCareFoundation in the 1990s and, after this organization became inactive,finally joined the Cryonics Institute, where he is now cared for.It was at the Cryonics Institute where I met Curtis in person anumber of times. He seemed quite eager to see me and said that MikeDarwin had spoken highly of me. Curtis believed that it is importantfor young cryonics activists to learn from history and to that purposehe took me to his car and gave me a number of bound copies ofCryonics Reports. I persuaded him to sign these volumes. Curtis compliedbut could not understand why and said: “You should go to Saul, hewas the one doing all this.”Communicating with Curtis required patience and understanding.Years ago Curtis had suffered a stroke and was painfully self-consciousof its effects. I have reflected quite often on my encounters withCurtis and the fragility of human life. Curtis was still quite fortunatein having suffered relatively mild injury to the brain and having recoveredas a self-aware person with a lot of memories. Not all cryonicistshave been this fortunate, and in some cases, it cost them their lives.We live a lot longer today but this has also increased the chanceof personality-destroying brain diseases and insults. I think it is abouttime that we not only advocate cryonics for those who are written offby contemporary medicine, but also advocate that people should havethe liberty to specify that they want to be stabilized through the use oflow temperatures in case of extreme brain insults and progressivedementia. This was not necessary in the case of Curtis, but I think thathe would have welcomed this use of cryonics in the fight against thedebilitating effects of aging. ■www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 200915

MemberProfile:John SchloendornJohn literally scours the earth in his search forintracellular junk-digesting microbes._______________________________________Cryonics is only necessary because wecurrently suffer from the plague ofdeath. Alleviating humans from sufferingthe ailments of aging and death altogetheris our ultimate goal, and JohnScholendorn is on the job.Expressing a precocious interest inavoiding death, John first learned about cryonicsby researching how to live forever onthe Internet when he was very young. He says,“Cryonics was, of course, one of the firstthings that came up. Even then, without anyscience background, I very much had theimmortalist mentality – no matter what thechances of this working are, as long as they’regreater than zero, I obviously need to take it.”And take it he has. However, he’s not ready tobet the farm on cryonics when he can try toprevent the need for cryonics in the firstplace. In fact, John would like to “put cryonicsout of business by helping to solve death inanother way.” His life has been dedicated tothis goal for several years now, first reallybeginning when John attended Aubrey deGrey’s second annual Strategies forEngineered Negligible Senescence (SENS)conference in Cambridge, England, in 2005.At this meeting, discussion among Dr. deGrey and several other scientists involved inlife extension research centered on puttingtogether the research teams to tackle Dr. deGrey’s seven proposed mechanisms of aging– particularly, the LysoSENS research team,which would be tasked with disoveringmicrobes capable of dissolving intracellularjunk. John, who had just finished his master’sBy Chana de Wolfwork in biochemistry, participated in thesediscussions and was happy to accept anopportunity to obtain his Ph.D. in molecularbiology from the Biodesign Institute atArizona State University in preparation forleading the LysoSENS team.“I spent the past 3.5 years in Tempe, AZ,getting a Ph.D.... I like the way the educationat Biodesign emphasizes ‘design’ applications,i.e. goal-oriented intervention in biology, asopposed to the mere knowledge productionengine that most science is.”John’s thesis research was funded bySENS Foundation and focused on dissolvingintracellular junk molecules. “I discovered apanel of enyzmes that may one day be used todissolve cholesterol plaques in arteries, and asecond panel that dissolve lipofuscin, a differentjunk molecule that accumulates inmacular degeneration. SENS Foundation,Arizona State University, and a new collaboratorat Columbia are now working to developthese enzymes into new first-in-class junk dissolvingbiotechnology therapeutics.” SinceJohn at BIL conference 2008.________________________________________________________________________________16 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

John is a happy-go-lucky guy on a very seriousmission to circumvent the need for cryonicsaltogether by annihilating death._______________________________________mainstream researchers now seem to be“getting it,” John is excited about the potentialfor pushing aging therapies such as hisforward more easily by passing off theirfurther development to these researchers.Most recently, John has taken this strategyto the next level with a new non-profit calledLivly. Livly focuses on enabling other immortaliststo start their own projects by makingused lab equipment available to interested individualswith ideas for potentially ultra-highimpact life extension projects.” Did you have anew idea for how to cure cancer in the bathtub, but don’t have the $100,000 to get a biolabstarted?,” John asks. “Just come over and useLivly’s gear. Human cell culture, immunology,synthetic biology – we have it all. You willremain in full control of the project and yourintellectual property; all we want is to help yousave everybody’s lives.”John joined Alcor in May 2007. He knewhe wanted to become a member for a longtime but says he needed to understand thefinancing before he decided to sign up. “Thecost quoted on the website seemed so highthat cryonics always seemed like a remotedream that I might be able to afford at theend of my life or maybe never.”But then he found out about financinghis cryonics arrangements through lifeinsurance. John felt like he was winning thelottery when he found this out. As soon ashe realized he could afford his arrangementsnow, he signed up immediately. Johntells this funny anecdote to illustrate howamazing this revelation seemed to him atthe time:“When I was very little, maybe 5 years ofage, I learned about insurance. I thoughtinsurance actually protects you – fire insurancemakes sure your house can never burn,theft insurance makes sure nobody can eversteal from you, etc. So then I heard about lifeinsurance. Great! Problem solved! When Igrow up I’ll get that to protect me from death.Mission accomplished! I proudly told myparents about this plan. They explained to methat insurance didn’t quite work that way. Iwas devastated. Now what? Decades later,when I met cryonics life-insurance agent RudiHoffman at a conference, I finally discoveredthat my parents had been wrong this one time.When used for cryonics, life insurance actuallymight just save your life directly.”But, like every cryonicist, John does havehis concerns about the challenges facing cryonicsand how they might be solved. First, hequestions how stable cryonics organizationscan be over the long run in times of technology-drivenchange or other, unforeseenchanges the future may hold. He also wondershow much time between post-legal death andsuspension is acceptable without causingunacceptable loss of personal information inthe brain, and whether cryonics as practicedtoday actually preserves enough informationto reconstruct a patient’s personality. Lastly,he wonders what we would do if cryonicssuddenly became wildly popular and 100million people showed up and demandedpreservation arrangements. These are allquestions that cryonics and cryonicists havestruggled with over the years, and there are noJohn and other young cryonicists showtheir appreciation for resveratrol-containingred wine at the Teens and Twentiescryonics conference hosted by theLife Extension Foundation.(From left: Michael Maier, John Schloendorn,Chana de Wolf, and Michael Smith.)_______________________________________easy answers. But John quickly points out thatcryonics questions can actually be addressedby research, and, of course, strongly supportsresearch efforts in the field.John says that his cryonics plans have notimpacted his lifestyle so far, simply becausehis lifestyle explicitly incorporates plans forlongevity. John feels that he’s too young to dieand hopes to survive in another way via technologiessuch as stem cell therapy oruploading. However, he acknowledges thataccidents happen and he doesn’t necessarilyknow the best way to handle that possibility.“...it does pose problems for making sure thatI die in a way that allows the most efficientsuspension,” he says. “Right now I’m more orless ignoring this problem, and that’s notgood.” He does wear his Alcor bracelet,though, and his social network consists ofother cryonicists. To further improve theirchances in case of an emergency, John and hisfriends also interact regularly with Alcorreadiness and response teams and attendtraining sessions when possible.Obviously, these days most of John’sfriends are also cryonicists or life extensionstswith no qualms about his cryonics arrangements.“Most of my friends love it,” heclaims. “The immortalist community is largeand growing fast.” In fact, it has grown so fastthat John socializes almost exclusively withthose who share his vision. “Even though it isvery pleasant, I can’t afford interacting toomuch with people who don’t share the goal –my life is at stake, after all!” John explains. “Ineed the synergy of being around fellowimmortalists.”And synergy he has found. Being anaging researcher intimately involved in thecommunity, John meets other Alcor members,immortalists, and life extensiontists all thetime. In fact, he says that almost everyone heknows wants to live forever very badly, and issigned up or has plans to sign up.Where John grew up, in Germany, hecould relate to people in terms of personalstyle and had many friends there. But, Johnlaments, “it was always hard to find a way toexperience true personally meaningful interactionwith people who wish for me andthemselves to die.” Since John has beenaround other immortalists in Arizona andCalifornia, he has finally discovered what itmeans to connect with people on this level,and he highly recommends it. “If there arereally people reading this who have never metother Alcor members,” John proclaims, “Ihave only one piece of advice – try it!” ■www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 200917

My STROKE of INSIGHTAuthor: Jill Bolte Taylor [New York: Plume (Penguin), 2009]book review by Mike•PerryMy Stroke of Insight is a brain scientist’sfirst-hand account of what it waslike for her left brain hemisphere tobe disabled by a rare form of stroke that leftmost of the affected cells intact but nonfunctional.The left hemisphere normally handlesanalytical tasks such as speech comprehensionand mathematical reasoning, while the righthemisphere handles intuitive tasks such asnonverbal communication and artistic expression.At first the problem for the author wasrecognizing the seriousness of her rapidlyworsening situation and summoning helpwhile she still able. She was living alone, andseveral harrowing pages are devoted to thedifficulties of calling someone when you canbarely speak or comprehend what a telephonenumber is. Eventually she experienced a completefunctional recovery, even training survivingneurons to perform tasks such as arithmeticcalculations for which the originalneurons had been destroyed.What was it like, then, when the left brainhemisphere was disabled? According to Ms.Taylor, not bad. She could not speak orunderstand speech and (it happened) was alsoparalyzed, yet still somehow felt fine. “I knewthat I was different now—but never once didmy right mind indicate that I was ‘less than’what I had been before. I was simply a beingof light radiating life into the world.…In theabsence of my left hemisphere’s negativejudgment, I perceived myself as perfect,whole, and beautiful just the way I was.”The road back to normalcy by comparisonwas painful and difficult. The stroke produceda massive blood clot which, whenremoved, relieved pressure on the left hemisphereand permitted gradual recovery offunction, but much effort was required tocomplete the process. It is interesting that theauthor’s self-stated motive for taking thispainful path, rather than remain in a blissfulstate of impairment, was to send a message tothe world. “… I became excited about what adifference my recovery could make in the livesof others—not just those who were recoveringfrom a brain trauma, but everyone witha brain!” Thus one did not need to beimpaired to experience the benefits of rightbrainthinking. The author in fact argues thata lasting improvement resulted from thestroke, and that she can assist others to abetter state who do not undergo trauma.Actually her claim is stronger, and problematicfor immortalists: that she—her old self—“died” with the stroke and a new, albeit betterperson emerged, even though memories fromthe earlier time in some degree survived. It issignificant that the choice to pursue the pathof recovery was made out of a sense of obligationor altruism rather than perceived personalbenefit.At this point it occurs that the idea andclaimed benefits of right-brain thinking havealready been long advocated and indeed antedateour modern understanding of the brain.Blissful states of detachment—nirvana,moksha, or kensho—seem clearly to correspondto right-brain dominance. By appearancewe see a pervasive attitude: the “self ”(left brain-centered) is a burden one wishes toescape while still in some sense continuing toexist. I am left with the thought that it is possibleto see both brain hemispheres in a positivelight, as essential, complementary parts ofa valued self. It may be uncommon thatpeople strongly feel this way, though, and itmay in part account for the scarcity of thosewho choose cryonics.In any case the reader will be intrigued bythis first-hand account of one person’sencounter with a debilitating mental disorderand her brave and successful struggle to reinventherself and come back stronger thanever, even if perhaps the original person didnot survive. As a sideline the book alsoencourages postmortem donations to theHarvard Brain Bank which reportedly is confrontinga shortage of tissue for research.Unfortunately this would not fit the plans ofa cryonicist, and it does point up the conflictsif you take seriously the idea that true deathand clinical death are not the same. ■About theAuthorJill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., is a neuroanatomistaffiliated with the MidwestProton Radiotherapy Institute inBloomington, Indiana. She is thenational spokesperson for the HarvardBrain Tissue Resource Center (BrainBank) and one of Time magazine’s100 Most Influential People in theWorld, 2008. For more informationplease visit www.drjilltaylor.com andwww.mystrokeofinsight.com. (Source:My Stroke of Insight, front matter.)18 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

Alcor Membership Dues 2010 IncreaseOne of the primary ways our members support the organization is through thepayment of membership dues. Alcor charges membership dues to support theadvancement of its programs and to help defray the costs of equipment andsupplies, administrative expenses, professional services, and other similar expenses.Alcor’s last dues increase was eight years ago, in 2002. Since then, the CPI-U (a frequentlycited measure of inflation) has increased by nearly 20%. Alcor’s expense budget hasaccommodated this significant increase in general cost levels without any correspondingincrease in revenue from member dues.In light of this, and considering the need to address Alcor’s current operating budgetdeficit, the Alcor board of directors approved a 20% dues increase effective January2010. Comprehensive Member Standby charges and Life Member dues remainunchanged.The updated fee schedule which will apply as of January 2010 can be viewed on the Alcorwebsite here:http://alcor.org/BecomeMember/scheduleA.htmlMembershipStatistics2009 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12TOTAL 876 883 888 886 891 893 895 895FINALIZED 3 11 8 0 4 3 3 32REINSTATED 1 0 0 0 2 0 0 3CANCELLED 3 3 3 2 1 0 0 12CRYO- 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 3PRESERVEDNET GAIN +1 +7 +5 -2 +5 +2 +2 +20On July 28, 2009, Alcor had895 members on its EmergencyResponsibility List. During thefirst seven months of 200932 memberships wereapproved, 3 membershipswere reinstated, 12 membershipswere cancelled and 3members were cryopreserved.Overall, there was a net gain of20 members for the year of2009 to date.www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 200919

Tech News R. Michael Perry, Ph.D.Alzheimer’s SymptomsReversed in MiceA human growth factor that stimulates bloodstem cells to proliferate in the bone marrowreverses memory impairment in mice geneticallyaltered to develop Alzheimer’s disease,researchers at the University of South Floridaand James A. Haley Hospital found. Thegranulocyte-colony stimulating factor (GCSF)significantly reduced levels of the brain-cloggingprotein beta amyloid deposited in excessin the brains of the Alzheimer’s mice,increased the production of new neurons andpromoted nerve cell connections. The findingsare reported online in Neuroscience andwere scheduled to appear in the journal’s printedition in August. GCSF is a blood stem cellgrowth factor or hormone routinely administeredto cancer patients whose blood stemcells and white blood cells have been depletedfollowing chemotherapy or radiation.Advanced clinical trials are now investigatingthe effectiveness of GCSF to treat stroke, andthe compound was safe and well tolerated inearly clinical studies of ischemic strokepatients. “GCSF has been used and studiedclinically for a long time, but we’re the firstgroup to apply it to Alzheimer’s disease,” saidUSF neuroscientist Juan Sanchez-Ramos,MD, PhD, the study’s lead author.ScienceDaily7/2/09http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/009/07/090701160557.htm___________________________________Researchers Grow NewTeeth in MiceAccording to study recently publishedonline in the journal Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences, a group ofJapanese scientists have successfully grown afully functional tooth in an adult mouseusing specially engineered stem cells takenfrom a mouse embryo. To grow the newtooth, the research team, led by EtsukoIkeda and Ritsuko Morita of the TokyoUniversity of Science, sought to recreate theprocesses that occur while an animal isundergoing normal embryonic development.The new tooth, therefore, grew after abiologically engineered “tooth germ”—agroup of seed-like stem cells loaded with allthe necessary information to eventuallyform a mature tooth—was implanted into abony hole in the upper jawbone of an adultmouse following the removal of a regularmolar. After about five weeks, the new toothemerged from the gums of the adult mouseand eventually grew to the “plane of occlusion”with the opposing molars, creating aperfect interlocking bite with the teethbelow. The scientists found that the replacementteeth were equal in hardness to andhad the same structure of regular teeth—including enamel, dental pulp and bloodvessels. Additionally, neural fibers from the“host” animal eventually re-entered the pulpand periodontal ligaments of the new tooth.Miller-McCune8/10/09http://www.miller-mccune.com/mice/nice-crop-of-teeth-1417___________________________________DNA “Organizes Itself”on SiliconResearchers reporting in Nature Nanotechnologyhave now shown how to get engineered“DNA origami” to self-organize on silicon.The origami can be designed to serve as ascaffold for electronic components just sixnanometers (nm) apart, making these DNAboundcircuit components smaller and thusfaster than can currently be produced. Severalresearch groups have shown that DNA itselfcan be used to store or manipulate data, andthe juggling of DNA in a test tube or withinbacteria has been shown to solve simple computationaltasks. The current method, by contrast,leverages the ability to design DNAstrands into regular shapes such as triangles.The computer industry would like to makeuse of next-generation materials with favorableelectronic properties such as carbon nanotubesor nanowires. Such structures are tinyand difficult to manipulate, but the chemicalgroups hanging off of DNA molecules couldbe used as anchor points for them. “The combinationof this directed self-assembly withtoday’s fabrication technology eventuallycould lead to substantial savings in the mostexpensive and challenging part of the chipmakingprocess,” said Spike Narayan, ascience and technology manager at IBM’sAlmaden research centre.DNA offers many anchor pointsfor tiny circuit components.BBC News8/17/09http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8204906.stm___________________________________Special Stem Cells Build“Biological Bypass”U.S. researchers have identified stem cells thatare able to grow new coronary arteries, afinding that could lead to new ways to treatatherosclerosis. “We have defined this novelclass of primitive cells and named them coronaryvascular progenitor cells [CVPCs]. Thesecells possess all of the fundamental propertiesof stem cells and are distributed within nicheslocated in the vessel wall of the entire humancoronary circulation system,” Dr. PieroAnversa, of Brigham and Women’s Hospitalin Boston, said in a hospital news release. Totest the activity of these cells, the scientistscreated a blockage in a coronary artery indogs and injected human CVPCs in theblocked artery. After one month, the dogsshowed improvements in blood flow andheart functioning. The researchers found thatthe dogs had grown large, intermediate andsmall human coronary arteries. The findingssuggest that the human heart contains a reservoirof CVPCs that can be used to create a20 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

iological bypass in patients with chroniccoronary artery disease and ischemic cardiomyopathy,which results when arteries thatsupply blood and oxygen to the heart areblocked. The study is scheduled to appear inthis week’s online issue of the Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences.AJC.com8/17/09http://www.ajc.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/cora/630096.html___________________________________Single Molecule’sStunning ImageThe detailed chemical structure of a singlemolecule has been imaged for the first time,say researchers. The physical shape of singlecarbon nanotubes has been outlined before,using similar techniques—but the newmethod even shows up chemical bonds.Understanding structure on this scale couldhelp in the design of many things on themolecular scale, particularly electronics oreven drugs. The IBM researchers report theirfindings in the journal Science. It is the samegroup that in July reported the feat of measuringthe charge on a single atom. In bothcases, a team from IBM Research Zurichused an atomic force microscope or AFM.Their version of the device acts like a tinytuning fork, with one of the prongs passingincredibly close to the sample and the otherfarther away. When the fork is set vibrating,the prong nearest the sample will experiencea minuscule shift in the frequency of itsvibration. Comparing the frequencies gives ameasure of just how close the nearer prongis, effectively mapping out the molecule’sstructure. Lead author of the research LeoGross told BBC News that the group isaiming to combine their ability to measureindividual charges with the new technique,characterizing molecules at a truly unprecedentedlevel of detail.Atomic force microscope (SPL).BBC News8/28/09http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8225491.stm___________________________________How Broccoli Can ProtectYour ArteriesIt’s long been thought that broccoli is goodfor your heart, and now British scientiststhink they know why. Farm workers of theD’Arrigo Brothers Company harvest broccoliin Salinas Valley, often called the “SaladBowl of the World,” in the central coastregion of California. Researchers at ImperialCollege London have found evidence achemical in broccoli and other green leafyvegetables could boost a natural defensemechanism that protects arteries from theclogging that can cause heart attacks. In astudy funded by the British HeartFoundation charity and conducted on mice,the researchers found that sulforaphane—acompound occurring naturally in broccoliand other brassicas—could “switch on” aprotective protein which is inactive in partsof the arteries vulnerable to clogging. “Weknow that vegetables are clearly good foryou, but surprisingly the molecular mechanismsof why they are good for you haveremained unknown for many years,” saidPaul Evans of the National Heart and LungInstitute at Imperial College. “This studyprovides a possible explanation for howgreen vegetable consumption can promote ahealthy heart.”Reuters9/4/09http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE5833ZZ20090904___________________________________Insulin Boost Restores MuscleGrowth in ElderlyRecently, scientists have recognized that lossof responsiveness to insulin plays a major rolein the loss of physical strength that occurs aspeople grow older. Now, University of TexasMedical Branch at Galveston researchers havedemonstrated that by increasing insulin levelsabove the normal range in elderly test subjects,they can restore the impaired musclebuildingprocess responsible for age-relatedphysical weakness. “Insulin is normallysecreted during food intake,” said Dr. ElenaVolpi, senior author of a paper on the studypublished in the September issue ofDiabetologia. “When you give insulin intravenouslyand increase the blood insulin levelsto the same amount produced after a meal,you see that in young people it stimulatesprotein synthesis and muscle growth, while inolder people it really doesn’t. But when wegave seniors double the insulin they wouldnormally produce after eating, their muscleswere stimulated like those of young people.”ScienceDaily9/27/09http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090925115457.htm___________________________________A Genetic Fountain of YouthBy disabling a gene involved in an importantbiochemical signaling pathway, scientistshave discovered a way to mimic the wellknownanti-aging benefits of caloric restriction,allowing mice to live longer andhealthier lives. This finding, published onlineOct. 1 in Science, offers a promising drugtarget for combating the many health problemsassociated with aging. “This researchpoints the way to potential pharmacologicalapproaches to treating aging-related diseasesin humans,” says senior author DominicWithers, professor of diabetes andendocrinology at University College London.“It really defines this as a pathway that’saffecting aging all the way from yeast tomammals, which I think is pretty striking,”says Matt Kaeberlein, professor ofpathology at the University of Washingtonand coauthor of a commentary accompanyingthe new study. Caloric restriction haslong been known to extend lifespan andreduce the incidence of age-related diseasesin a wide variety of organisms. Exactly howa nutritionally complete but radicallyrestricted diet achieves these benefits hasremained unclear. But recently severalstudies have offered evidence that a particularsignaling pathway, involving a proteincalled target of rapamycin (TOR), may play apivotal role.Technology Review (MIT)10/1/09http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23560/___________________________________www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 200921

“Ethical” Stem CellCrop BoostedUS researchers have found a way to dramaticallyincrease the harvest of stem cells fromadult tissue. It is a practical step forward intechniques to produce large numbers of stemcells without using embryos. Using threedrug-like chemicals, the team made the procedure200 times more efficient and twice asfast, the Nature Methods journal reported. It ishoped stem cells could one day be widely usedto repair damaged tissue in diseases and afterinjuries. Much of the work on stem cells hasfocused on those taken from embryos as theyhave an unlimited capacity to become any ofthe 220 types of cell in the human body—aso-called pluripotent state. This is the firstexample in human cells of how reprogrammingspeed can be accelerated. But this hasproven controversial and some campaignershave objected to their use on the grounds thatit is unethical to destroy embryos in the nameof science. The creation of stem cells fromhuman adult skin cells was first reported in2007 by Japanese and US researchers, openingthe way for new sources of stem cells. Thelatest research builds on that process byadding specific chemicals to improve theprocess. Study leader Professor Sheng Dingsaid they had manipulated a “fundamental”process in the cell.BBC News10/18/09http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8311055.stm___________________________________Tests Raise Life Extension HopesA drug discovered in the soil of a SouthPacific island may help to fight the agingprocess, research suggests. When US scientiststreated old mice with rapamycin itextended their expected lifespan by up to38%. The findings, published in the journalNature, raise the prospect of being able toslow down the ageing process in older people.However, a UK expert warned against usingthe drug to try to extend lifespan, as it cansuppress immunity. Rapamycin was first discoveredon Easter Island in the 1970s. It isalready used to prevent organ rejection intransplant patients, and in stents implantedinto patients to keep their coronary arteriesopen. Researchers at three centers in Texas,Michigan and Maine gave the drug to mice atan age equivalent to 60 in humans. The micewere bred to mimic the genetic diversity andsusceptibility to disease of humans as closelyas possible. Rapamycin extended the animals’expected lifespan by between 28% and 38%.Researcher Dr Arlan Richardson, of theBarshop Institute, San Antonio, Texas, said: “Inever thought we would find an anti-ageingpill for people in my lifetime; however,rapamycin shows a great deal of promise todo just that.”BBC News7/8/09http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8139816.stm___________________________________The 15-Minute Genome: Faster,Cheaper Sequencing on the WayIn the race for faster, cheaper ways to readhuman genomes, Pacific Biosciences ishoping to set a new benchmark with technologythat watches DNA being copied inreal time. The device is being developed tosequence DNA at speeds 20,000 times fasterthan second-generation sequencers currentlyon the market and will ultimately have a pricetag of $100 per genome. Chief TechnologyOfficer Stephen Turner of PacificBiosciences will discuss Single Molecule Real-Time (SMRT) sequencing, due to be releasedcommercially in 2010, at the 2009 IndustrialPhysics Forum, a component of the 51stAnnual Meeting of American Association ofPhysicists in Medicine, which takes place fromJuly 26—30 in Anaheim, California. A decadeago, it took Celera Genomics and the HumanGenome Project years to sequence completehuman genomes. In 2008, James Watson’sentire genetic code was read by a new generationof technology in months. SMRTsequencing aims to eventually accomplish thesame feat in minutes.ScienceDaily7/29/09http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090727191912.htm___________________________________Call for Debate on Killer RobotsAn international debate is needed on the useof autonomous military robots, a leading academichas said. Noel Sharkey of theUniversity of Sheffield said that a pushtoward more robotic technology used inwarfare would put civilian life at grave risk.Technology capable of distinguishing friendfrom foe reliably was at least 50 years away, headded. However, he said that for the firsttime, US forces mentioned resolving suchethical concerns in their plans. “Robots thatcan decide where to kill, who to kill and whento kill is high on all the military agendas,”Professor Sharkey said at a meeting inLondon. “The problem is that this is all basedon artificial intelligence, and the military havea strange view of artificial intelligence basedon science fiction.” Professor Sharkey, a professorof artificial intelligence and robotics,has long drawn attention to the psychologicaldistance from the horrors of war that is maintainedby operators who pilot unmannedaerial vehicles (UAVs), often from thousandsof miles away.BBC News8/3/09http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8182003.stm___________________________________Groundbreaking Treatment forOxygen-Deprived NewbornsUntil now immediate cooling of the newborninfant was the only treatment that could possiblyprevent brain damage following oxygendeprivation during delivery. New researchfindings from the Sahlgrenska Academy at theUniversity of Gothenburg and SahlgrenskaUniversity Hospital, Sweden, in collaborationwith Zhengzhou University in China, open upthe possibility of a new and effective treatmentthat can be started as late as two daysafter birth. The new treatment involvesnewborn infants being given a two-weekcourse of injections of erythropoietin, ahormone that stimulates the formation of redblood cells. “For the first time we can demonstratethat it is possible to influence the braindamage occurring as a result of oxygen deprivationduring delivery considerably later thanthe six-hour window of opportunity fortreating with cooling,” says Klas Blomgren,professor of pediatrics at the SahlgrenskaAcademy and specialist at Queen SilviaChildren’s Hospital.ScienceDaily8/16/09http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090811144000.htm22 Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009 www.alcor.org

MeetingsAbout the Alcor FoundationThe Alcor Life Extension Foundation is a nonprofit tax-exempt scientific and educationalorganization dedicated to advancing the science of cryopreservation and promotingit as a rational option. Being an Alcor member means knowing that—shouldthe worst happen—Alcor’s Emergency Response Team is ready to respond for you, 24hours a day, 365 days a year.Alcor’s Emergency Response capability includes specially trained technicians and customizedequipment in Arizona, northern California, southern California, and southFlorida, as well as many additional certified technicians on-call around the UnitedStates. Alcor’s Arizona facility includes a full-time staff, and the Patient Care Bay is personallymonitored 24 hours a day.ARIZONACALIFORNIADISTRICT OF COLUMBIALife Extension Society, Inc. is acryonics and life extension group withmembers from Washington, D.C.,Virginia, and Maryland. Meetings areheld monthly. Contact Secretary KeithLynch at kfl@keithlynch.net. Forinformation on LES, see our web site atwww.keithlynch.net/les.TEXASScottsdale:This group meets the third Friday of eachmonth and gatherings are hosted at a homenear Alcor. To RSVP, visithttp://cryonics.meetup.com/45/.At Alcor:Alcor Board of Directors Meetings andFacility Tours – Alcor business meetings aregenerally held on the first Saturday of everymonth starting at 11:00 AM MST. Guestsare welcome. Facility tours are held everyTuesday and Friday at 2:00 PM. For moreinformation or to schedule a tour, callD’Bora Tarrant at (877) 462-5267 x 101 oremail dbora@alcor.org.NEVADALas Vegas:There are many Alcor members inthe Las Vegas area. If you wish tomeet and socialize, contact Katie Karsat (702) 251-1975. This group wants toget to know you!Host a Meeting in your area.If you are interested in hosting regularmeetings in your area, contact Alcor at877-462-5267 ext. 113. Meetings area great way to learn about cryonics,meet others with similar interests,andintroduce your friends and family toAlcor members!Los Angeles:Alcor Southern California Meetings—For information, call Peter Voss at(310) 822-4533 or e-mail him atpeter@optimal.org. Although monthlymeetings are not held regularly, you canmeet Los Angeles Alcor members bycontacting Peter.San Francisco Bay:Alcor Northern California Meetings areheld quarterly in January, April, July, andOctober. A CryoFeast is held once a year.For information on Northern Californiameetings, call Mark Galeck at (408) 245-4928or email Mark_galeck@pacbell.net.OREGONPortland:Cryonics Oregon holds regular meetingsevery 2-3 months for members of cryonicsorganizations living in Portland and thesurrounding areas. For information, pleasecontact Chana de Wolf at chana.de.wolf@gmail.com or (503) 756-0864.A Yahoo group is also maintained forcryonics activities in the Pacific Northwestat http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CryonicsNW/.Dallas:North Texas Cryonauts, please sign up forour announcements list for meetings(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cryonauts-announce) or contact DavidWallace Croft at (214) 636-3790 for detailsof upcoming meetings.NEW ENGLANDCambridge:The New England regional group strives tomeet monthly in Cambridge, MA – forinformation or to be added to the AlcorNEmailing list, please contact Bret Kulakovichat 617-824-8982, alcor@bonfireproductions.com,or on FACEBOOK via theCryonics Special Interest Group.UNITED KINGDOMThere is an Alcor chapter in England.Its members are working diligently to buildsolid emergency response, transport, andcryopreservation capability. For informationabout meetings, contact Alan Sinclair atcryoservices@yahoo.co.uk. See the web siteat www.alcor-uk.org.www.alcor.org Cryonics/Third Quarter 200923

ISSN 1054-4305AdvertisementsFREE ONLINEBOOk &DOCUMENTARYIMMORTALITYINSTITUTEBe Part Of The Future.Join Today!FREE CrYoNiCsTRIAL SUBSCRIPTIONAlcor SupportsMolecularNanotechnologyResearch andDevelopmentpage 3ISSN 1054-4305$9.954 th Quarter 2008 • Volume 29:4Cryonics AroundThe Worldpage 3ACryopreservationRevival Scenariousing mNTpage 7interview withRobert Freitas anDRalph Merklepage 9Member Profile:page 12Kumar Krishnamsetty1 st Quarter 2009 • Volume 30:1Alcor Case Reportfor Patient A-2404page 4Member Profile:Alcor BoardMember JamesClementpage 11tech newspage 19ISSN 1054-43052 nd quarter 2009 • Volume 30:2Advances inreadinesspage 3Alcor CaseReport forPatient A2061page 6Member Profile:Tim Shaverspage 16Tech newspage 20$9.95$9.95Call today to request a free one-year trial subscriptionto Cryonics Magazine for yourself or someone you know.877-462-5267 x10124Cryonics/Third Quarter 2009www.alcor.org

What is Cryonics?Cryonics is an attempt to preserve and protect the gift of human life, not reverse death. It is the speculativepractice of using extreme cold to preserve the life of a person who can no longer be supportedby today’s medicine. Will future medicine, including mature nanotechnology, have the ability to heal atthe cellular and molecular levels? Can cryonics successfully carry the cryopreserved person forwardthrough time, for however many decades or centuries might be necessary, until the cryopreservationprocess can be reversed and the person restored to full health? While cryonics may sound like sciencefiction, there is a basis for it in real science. The complete scientific story of cryonics is seldom told inmedia reports, leaving cryonics widely misunderstood. We invite you to reach your own conclusions.How do I find out more?The Alcor Life Extension Foundation is the world leader in cryonics research and technology. Alcoris a non-profit organization located in Scottsdale, Arizona, founded in 1972. Our website is one ofthe best sources of detailed introductory information about Alcor and cryopreservation (www.alcor.org).We also invite you to request our FrEE information package on the “Free Information” section of ourwebsite. It includes:• A fully illustrated color brochure• A sample of our magazine• An application for membership and brochure explaining how to join• And more!Your free package should arrive in 1-2 weeks.(The complete package will be sent free in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom.)How do I enroll?Signing up for a cryopreservation is easy!Step 1: Fill out an application and submit it with your $150 application fee.Step 2:Step 3:You will then be sent a set of contracts to review and sign.Fund your cryopreservation. While most people use life insurance tofund their cryopreservation, other forms of prepayment are alsoaccepted. Alcor’s Membership Coordinator can provide you with alist of insurance agents familiar with satisfying Alcor’s current fundingrequirements.Finally: After enrolling, you will wear emergency alert tags or carry a specialcard in your wallet. This is your confirmation that Alcor will respondimmediately to an emergency call on your behalf.Call toll-free today to start your application:877-462-5267 ext. 132info@alcor.orgwww.alcor.org