Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Something Doesn't Add Up, for CI-95

Time....the time Suspended Animation (SA) took to get Mr. Henderson to Cryonics Institute (CI) doesn't add up.

"But Curtis' heart stopped at 4:15am on the morning of Thursday, June 25th, 2009.

Curtis was given prompt pronouncement of death and placed in the ice bath with the autopulse cardiopulmonary support. But the standby team had to wait an hour for the funeral director before they could leave the hospital. It took another hour for the team to reach the funeral home, driving slowly in the van while the team gave Curtis cardiopulmonary support."

http://www.cryonics.org/reports/CI95.html
His heart stopped at 4:15am, on June 25th. The SA team had to wait for an hour, for the funeral director, and then it took them an hour to reach the funeral home, placing them there at approximately 6:15am. I believe qualified medical professionals could have performed the washout, packed up and been on their way to the airport, before lunchtime. So, what took the SA team so long?
"Plans were made to ship Curtis by air to Michigan on Thursday afternoon, but the earliest available flight would not have arrived in Detroit until 10:40pm Thursday evening. Cargo processing stops at 10pm, so Curtis would have had to remain in the Detroit airport until cargo processing began again on Friday morning."
http://www.cryonics.org/reports/CI95.html
SA was ready to start their washout procedure at 6:15am, but they couldn't get Mr. Henderson to the airport, in time for the flight that would have arrived in Detroit, at 10:40pm? Why not? Was this really the only available flight? There are many flights, between Albany and Detroit, each day.
"A decision was made for Catherine Baldwin and a New York funeral director to drive Curtis from New York.

Catherine and the New York funeral director arrived at the funeral home of CI's funeral director Jim Walsh at about 3:30am on Friday morning."

http://www.cryonics.org/reports/CI95.html
According to MapQuest, (which I, typically, find to be very generous in time estimates), the drive from Albany to Detroit is a ten-hour drive, meaning Ms. Baldwin and the funeral director did not leave Albany until approximately 5:30pm, (more than thirteen hours after Mr. Henderson was pronounced, and more than eleven hours after SA started their procedures, at the funeral home). The procedures should have taken a few hours, at most. Again, what caused the delay?
"The Suspended Animation team consisted of Suspended Animation staff plus a professional perfusionist."
http://www.cryonics.org/reports/CI95.html
Since we don't have the SA report, we can still only speculate, but my guess is: The delay was probably caused by unqualified persons attempting to perform the surgical procedure (femoral cannulation) needed for the washout.

"Team-leader Catherine Baldwin had years of experience doing surgery on laboratory animals, but not humans. Catherine solicited the assistance of a funeral director to isolate the blood vessels."
http://www.cryonics.org/reports/CI95.html

WHEN did Ms. Baldwin recruit the funeral director? Did she, or any of the other (surgically unqualified) team members attempt to isolate the vessels, and perform the cannulation, before she recruited the funeral director? If so, how long did they "play surgeon," before recruiting the funeral director?

Recently, we have the person who was responsible for selecting all the known SA staff members, (with the exception of Ms. Baldwin, and rumor has it he had an active role in her selection), stating:

"...I admire the scientists struggling to develop better methods of cryopreservation, to minimize the damage that we create today and thus reduce our dependence on unknown technology tomorrow. And for those (like me) who lack scientific qualifications, there is always the unappetizing prospect of participating actively in the imperfect processes of standby, stabilization and transport, in the hope of making them more reliable and more effective in the future."

(Charles Platt, in the "3rd Quarter 2008 - Volume 39:3" issue of Alcor's "Cryonics" magazine, which was actually published in July 2009.)
People who lack medical qualifications should not be "participating actively" in medical procedures, other than to tote equipment and supplies. They should not be leading medical procedures, or performing medical procedures, for which they are unqualified, any more than people who lack scientific qualifications should be taking lead roles in performing scientic research.

The procedures being used during the stabilzation of cryonics patients are not "imperfect processes," they are well-established medical procedures that have been bungled, time-and-time-again, in cryonics, by people who are not qualified to perform them. Why is it Platt, (and others in cryonics), are accepting of unsupervised persons attempting to perform well-established surgical procedures they are not qualified to perform? How can anyone think persons not qualified to perform lab experiments, could be capable of leading and performing medical/surgical procedures, for which they are equally unqualified?


When you allow unqualified persons to attempt to lead, and carry out medical procedures, things often don't add up.

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