With a budget that is well over a million dollars a year, Suspended Animation could adequately equip three or four QUALIFIED standby teams and station them in major cities such as Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, or (insert the city of your choice). Paramedics and EMTs are abundant, and their salaries are far too meager; many of them would be happy for some extra income. Perfusionists make a lot of money and endure a lot of stress, so they tend to retire early. There are also groups that supply temporary perfusionists. Some of these retirees or per diem workers would be happy to earn a little extra money for cryonics training sessions, call retainers and per diem case work.
YET...What do we get in response to the criticisms of the recent circus event at SA? I believe their report indicates Platt and CCR (through their perfusionist) will be earning a significant amount of money to "train" RUPs to perform perfusion, (via instructional videos, no less). That's silly. It makes me think of hokey advertisements, like:
"If u cn rd ths msg, u 2 cn hv a carer in crdiovsclr prfshun,"
or perhaps,
"Learn whole body perfusion in just three easy DVD lessons. And, if you order now, you can get our bonus DVDs on how to insert IV lines and do a femoral cut down."
No doubt Platt will get in a bazillon highly-paid "consulting" hours for writing new instructional manuals and churning out graphics of equipment he doesn't completely understand. I'm sure he'll also be able to come up with additional projects, for himself, along the way. This approach just does not make sense. Why doesn't SA just hire a couple of paramedics and/or perfusionists to run the office, and retain a number of others to do cases?
While perfusionists and paramedics are capable of the daily tasks the RUPs perform at SA, the reverse is not true.
Paramedics, EMTs and perfusionists have educations in anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and patient care. Many perfusionists participate in research projects, as part of their education, and a lot of perfusion groups are owned and operated by perfusionists. The jobs of these people require personnel that have good common sense, something that seems to be entirely lacking at SA.
If the goal of SA is "standby, stabilization and transport," then they need to focus on that goal, acquire the PROPER equipment and attain QUALIFIED personnel. If the goal of SA is "research," then they need to hire people capable of participating in research, not golfers and fabricators.
So, will someone please explain to me why the benefactors of SA are not using the brains they are so desperately trying to preserve?
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2 comments:
Excellent post. I find it very interesting that, once again, we see silence on THIS issue from EVERYONE important in cryonics who SHOULD be out there in the blog/forum/newsgroup media answering to this. That's why I consider blogging-- with automatic Google blogsearch spidering-- to be the key element in working issues now-- Check it out [+] To inform CF and Cryonet readers of your blog update, may I suggest you post a link to that Google blogsearch page-- because that way they can always find your blog when they want-- and your blog will always appear on that page when you update with the keyword 'cryonics'.
Jerry Leaf reported arterial pressure when doing perfusions in 1979 on the Berkowitz case. [+] I don't recall arterial perfusion pressure being measured as carefully in C81's case.
If you're interested in staying with cryonics-- at least as a hobby to investigate further-- there is a history of cryonics reporting-- including details on perfusions that is quite interesting-- in back issues of various cryonics magazines over the years. Mike Perry has the most complete back-issue collection of "everything" at the Alcor facility. I have bits and pieces. No person of high net worth in cryonics has EVER made a cryonics "museum/libary" where it's easy for cryonics students to do this research. To NOT construct such a center is, in my view, anti-intellectualism and de facto cover-up. I understand now, in a broader picture, why no community college, no university, no "real" academic institution, has ever taken on cryonics seriously.
Your position and history, your line of expereience, and your forthrightness-- along with your blog-- represents in my mind-- an historical breakthrough in cryonics in 2007. Depending on how much time you put into this-- and other factors-- the history of "cryonics meets medicine" can be looked at again with a new eye.
If you study the cases written by Leaf and compare them to case reports today, I think the differences are astonishing. It appears to me that cryonics reporting has gone backwards. Why would this be? Overall, I believe there is a massive suppression and suffocation of "real cryonics" going on in cryonics. Cryonics not only must meet medicine, it must also meet the death-care industry... witness the still-great use of morticians-- and note the huge historical defense of Alcor in AZ against Stump a few years ago.
Did you note the son of C81 refused to grant the Team Leader of SA a lousy extra 15 minutes to get ready before pulling the plug on his father? I thought that that was VERY telling-- something seriously not right about that. You yourself pointed out that the involvement of SA was an override of C81's wishes-- I agree-- and I was looking into what CI would have done without SA-- and went down a rabbit hole that got me thinking that CI isn't even trying to do cryonics!!!-- and had to back out of that-- but that's where my nose led me. Anywhere I look in cryonics, it's like looking into the Twilight Zone-- you look deeper, and like some twisted space time physics-- the universe changes and distorts.
There is truth however. There is reality. So ultimately, we go on epistemology-- how do we know what we know? Well-- start wtih Jerry Leaf's careful measurement of arterial pressure in 1979 with Berkowtz. That's an element of truth. And that's something professional perfusionists can understand. CCR's ATP used by SA must have dials that measure that. Did the SA sheet metal fabricator not read the dial? I'm nieve obviously on this... but everything can be translated to an average person's understanding.
The buffoon CPlatt-- who you point out is planning a silly video-- will be seen in cryonics history as just that-- a buffoon. Mark Plus pointed out the arrested development of cryonicists-- in his blog (another cryonicst blogger) and I'm tempted to think that CPlatt is an overgrown 14 year old... immature in a serious way.
Why Kent favors Cplatt-- RATHER THAN Alcor's own team and lab-- is astonishing to me. Kent wrote in 1979 that he believes in "private" enterprsie for cryonics. Is KEnt an arrested development 16 yr. old? -- a guy who hit on a formula for money-- and so leaves cryonics as an industry victim to 2 over grown teenagers?-- with eveyrone too afraid to say anything because of the money?
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