Someone related to Ted Williams recently asked for my remarks on the alleged case report for Ted Williams, which was printed in Larry Johnson's book. There are too many spelling and grammatical errors to make sense of much of it but, in my opinion, it clearly paints yet another very clear image of the glaring incompetency rampant in cryonics. Even laymen should be able to see the unprofessionalism in most of it. From the alleged TW case notes, published in Johnson's book:
"Mike is trying to do something on the right." (Brilliant record taking!)
"Mike needs a curving knife!" (No comment necessary.)
"Mike is trying to seal up (the tubes?)" (This person does not have a clue what she is describing, other than Alcor's incompetent staff hacking someone's head off and trying to perfuse it.)
"They are trying to open up some part on the front neck..." (More of the same.)
"...Mike murmured "We need electric curving knife..." (Maybe Mike should have been a chef.)
"The head was completely detouched." (No comment necessary.)
"Mike said lots of drainage coming out from everywhere but not from the jugular..." (If this is accurate, it seems blood was coming out from everywhere EXCEPT where it was supposed to be.)
"Brian said we are not getting any cryoprotectant in the venous. Mike back to the head." (It seems they were putting cryoprotectant in the arterial side, but it wasn't coming out the venous side, as it should.)
"Mike called Jose. Jose came back in. (It seemed to me Jose didn't complete his job.)" (How would Erico Narita know if anyone had completed a surgical task? Her notes make it quite clear she has little knowledge of the procedures and equipment. Throughout the report, I believe she uses various terms, such as "canyon," for "cannula." If Alcor assigns their note-taking to someone who has yet to master the English language, (much less applicable medical terminology), how can we even begin to trust them to assign medical tasks to the appropriate personnel?)
The pressure changes, the pump "making funny noises," Mike noticing one of the tubes is "not getting any fluid," the "reflectometer" that "had air" all seem to indicate air was pumped during the case, (something I'm told happens during most cryopreservations, a grossly negligent perfusion error that has been virtually non-existent, in conventional medicine, for decades).
"No air is coming out from the left side as well, Brian noted." (Just guessing from the phrasing, I would say "No" was supposed to be "Now." Either way, it most likely indicates that air was being pumped into, and exiting the vessels, at some point in time...a definite perfusion "no no.")
"The part of the flowrate was incorrect, because bypass line was open." (There's a bypass line that should be closed, when flowing to the patient. When the bypass line is open, a portion of the flow that is supposed to be going to the patient is being diverted to the venous (return) line, without ever reaching the patient. It's not clear when they turned on the perfusion pump, as it's not always clear as to what flows and/or pressures they are referring to, but they document starting the ramping of the cryoprotectant agent, at 22:02. No one noticed the bypass line was open, (a perfusion error), until sometime between 23:21 and 23:27, more than an hour later (79-85 minutes later). Does this seem acceptable for a company that had been in existence for approximately THREE DECADES??? Does this seem like a company that should expect people to believe they can preserve the "legally dead" well enough to be awakened in the future??? Would YOU pay THEM $150K to take perform your cryopreservation?
(The "Mike" being referred to is Michael "Mike Darwin" Federowicz.)
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
ABC Nightline Received False Information on Behalf of Alcor
There is a well-known story, in cryonics, about an HIV+/AIDS, patient, whose death was allegedly hastened by staff member(s) of Alcor. I've heard the story, I believe it was told in Kunzman's book, (Mothermelters). Larry Johnson told the same story, in his book, and he has audiotapes of an Alcor staff member discussing it. They played those tapes on ABC Nightline, last night. They also said someone claiming to be that patient's nurse called in, yesterday, to claim the patient died in his bedroom, with only the nurse and his partner present. I can only find one 1992 Alcor case report, in which an HIV+/AIDS, patient died, and it is very well-document BY ALCOR, that that patient died in a garage, just as Johnson and others have said.
From the Alcor Case Report for Case A-1260, in May 1992:
(Note: As per Alcor's report, "Nick" is a fictitious name.)
"The only feasible location for set-up was a garage located about 60 feet from the front door up a steep street. Considering that it took us over two minutes to move the last patient about six feet, there was concern over the ischemic time such a move would cause if Nick were pronounced in his bed.
That day, with Jim's assistance, Hugh and Keith cleaned out the garage, moved in several oxygen bottles, built a plastic enclosure large enough to hold the MALSS cart by stapling plastic sheeting to the ceiling beams, and installed 2000 watts of lighting. Typically, this would not be necessary, since most houses have at least one doorway that will admit the MALSS cart. So, while it was kind of rough and ready, the nurse who pronounced Nick when the time came commented that he had certainly seen worse set-up's used for operating rooms in Vietnam."
...
The logistics of moving our patient downstairs resulted in more discussion, arguments, and testing than any other aspect of the whole transport. (Mike missed this because he was in the garage priming the MALSS cart.) Keith's suggestion of using a gurney was tried with an empty gurney, but the required 70-degree angle looked so scary that nobody was willing to be a test subject. Hugh`s suggestion of a fireman's carry was ruled out because a slip on the carpeted stairs might seriously hurt both the patient and the carrier. We finally tried and settled on Carlos's proposal, with Max on one arm, Paul on the other, Hugh taking Nick's feet under his arms, and Keith holding his head. We got him downstairs without any problems (good suggestion, Carlos), onto the gurney, and (in our white Alcor lab coats) wheeled him up the street into the garage."
http://alcor.org/Library/html/casereport9205.html
Judging from information on Alcor's website, this appears to be the ONLY Alcor case, in 1992, involving an HIV or AIDS patient:
"1992
A-1260 19 Mar 1992 Neuro Case Report: Alcor handles an HIV case.
A-1171 Michael Friedman 01 Jun 1992 Brain and rest of body stored separately Case Report: An Alcor member is murdered (and worse yet, shot in the head).
A-1184 19 Jun 1992 Whole Body Case Report: Lessons learned from ischemic time that could have been avoided.
A-1367 Jim Glennie 24 Jun 1992 Neuro Case Report: An unusually extensive non-technical report on a near-textbook case See also A Well-Loved Man, a personal account by Jim's wife, Mary Margaret Glennie.
A-1410 James Hourihan 27 Jul 1992 Neuro Case Report: An extended standby in Massachusetts."
http://alcor.org/cases.html
Here are the people who were on the "Transport Team" when A-1260 died:
"Transport Team:
Hugh Hixon: Transport Team Leader, Surgical assistant
Mike Darwin: Oversight, Consultant, Femoral Cutdown
Arel Lucas: Airway Management, Temperature Probe Placement
Tanya Jones, Medications, Scribe
Max More: Scribe, Airway Relief
Paul Wakfer: Logistics Support, Airway Relief, MALSS Monitoring
Carlos Mondragon, Film and Video Recording
Leonard Zubkoff: HLR Operator, Oxygen Supplies Management
Keith Henson, Carpenter Assistant, O.R. Nurse, MALSS Monitoring"
http://alcor.org/Library/html/casereport9205.html
I suggest Nightline tracks down the person who claims to have been the nurse present when the AIDS patient died, with his partner, in his bedroom, and verify the situation, because it seems, to me, that Alcor's only HIV or AIDS patient that died in 1992, died in a garage. Nightline might also use the photos in Alcor's case report, to attempt to verify the location. (There are copies of the case report, in case it disappears from the Internet.)
From the Alcor Case Report for Case A-1260, in May 1992:
(Note: As per Alcor's report, "Nick" is a fictitious name.)
"The only feasible location for set-up was a garage located about 60 feet from the front door up a steep street. Considering that it took us over two minutes to move the last patient about six feet, there was concern over the ischemic time such a move would cause if Nick were pronounced in his bed.
That day, with Jim's assistance, Hugh and Keith cleaned out the garage, moved in several oxygen bottles, built a plastic enclosure large enough to hold the MALSS cart by stapling plastic sheeting to the ceiling beams, and installed 2000 watts of lighting. Typically, this would not be necessary, since most houses have at least one doorway that will admit the MALSS cart. So, while it was kind of rough and ready, the nurse who pronounced Nick when the time came commented that he had certainly seen worse set-up's used for operating rooms in Vietnam."
...
The logistics of moving our patient downstairs resulted in more discussion, arguments, and testing than any other aspect of the whole transport. (Mike missed this because he was in the garage priming the MALSS cart.) Keith's suggestion of using a gurney was tried with an empty gurney, but the required 70-degree angle looked so scary that nobody was willing to be a test subject. Hugh`s suggestion of a fireman's carry was ruled out because a slip on the carpeted stairs might seriously hurt both the patient and the carrier. We finally tried and settled on Carlos's proposal, with Max on one arm, Paul on the other, Hugh taking Nick's feet under his arms, and Keith holding his head. We got him downstairs without any problems (good suggestion, Carlos), onto the gurney, and (in our white Alcor lab coats) wheeled him up the street into the garage."
http://alcor.org/Library/html/casereport9205.html
Judging from information on Alcor's website, this appears to be the ONLY Alcor case, in 1992, involving an HIV or AIDS patient:
"1992
A-1260 19 Mar 1992 Neuro Case Report: Alcor handles an HIV case.
A-1171 Michael Friedman 01 Jun 1992 Brain and rest of body stored separately Case Report: An Alcor member is murdered (and worse yet, shot in the head).
A-1184 19 Jun 1992 Whole Body Case Report: Lessons learned from ischemic time that could have been avoided.
A-1367 Jim Glennie 24 Jun 1992 Neuro Case Report: An unusually extensive non-technical report on a near-textbook case See also A Well-Loved Man, a personal account by Jim's wife, Mary Margaret Glennie.
A-1410 James Hourihan 27 Jul 1992 Neuro Case Report: An extended standby in Massachusetts."
http://alcor.org/cases.html
Here are the people who were on the "Transport Team" when A-1260 died:
"Transport Team:
Hugh Hixon: Transport Team Leader, Surgical assistant
Mike Darwin: Oversight, Consultant, Femoral Cutdown
Arel Lucas: Airway Management, Temperature Probe Placement
Tanya Jones, Medications, Scribe
Max More: Scribe, Airway Relief
Paul Wakfer: Logistics Support, Airway Relief, MALSS Monitoring
Carlos Mondragon, Film and Video Recording
Leonard Zubkoff: HLR Operator, Oxygen Supplies Management
Keith Henson, Carpenter Assistant, O.R. Nurse, MALSS Monitoring"
http://alcor.org/Library/html/casereport9205.html
I suggest Nightline tracks down the person who claims to have been the nurse present when the AIDS patient died, with his partner, in his bedroom, and verify the situation, because it seems, to me, that Alcor's only HIV or AIDS patient that died in 1992, died in a garage. Nightline might also use the photos in Alcor's case report, to attempt to verify the location. (There are copies of the case report, in case it disappears from the Internet.)
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Re-inventing More Wheels, in Cryonics
(The "bottom line" of this post is, "If you want to develop a complex perfusion procedure, you start out with the existing technology, and at least one good perfusionist.")
Aschwin de Wolf quotes below, (in navy blue italics) are from: http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/2009/09/22/the-future-of-alcor/
Aschwin de Wolf: "Where this criticism can go off track, however, is when it is insufficiently recognized that knowledge of conventional medicine is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to do good cryonics."
I know Aschwin means well, when he writes something like this, but it's a misconception on the part of self-taught "cryonics experts" to believe they can perform variations of existing conventional medical procedures, simply by having read about them, and/or having practiced on a couple of animals, or cryonics patients. People do NOT learn to do good cannulation procedures, or perfusion, without extensive, SUPERVISED experience. Cryonics procedures are simply variations of existing conventional medical procedures; they are not something totally new and unique.
In regard to Alcor's computerized system, they still need a qualified perfusionist to operate such a system. There's a reason why perfusion is not fully-automated, in conventional medicine, and to think it can be fully-automated in cryonics, to the point of being performed by amateurs, is extremely naive. This reminds me of a joke a friend of my mother's told me, when I was 13. A transatlantic flight had just taken off, and the following message came over the loudspeaker: Good morning ladies and gentleman. You have the privilege of being aboard the world's first fully-automated airplane. Decades of research have resulted in this state-of-the-art aircraft that will immediately adjust to any and all flight conditions. Please sit back and relax, with the knowledge that nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong..."
Aschwin de Wolf:""Alcor has decided to develop a system that not only uses software to record perfusion parameters (concentration, pressure, temperature, refractive index etc.) but to use the same software to control them as well. Provided that this new system lives up to its expectations, this development will be a major step towards a system that can use real-time feedback to adjust perfusion parameters in a manner that so far has only been available in small organ cryobiological research. The data that will be generated during cases can, in turn, be used to create cases reports that follow a consistent, formal standard. When these reports are used in an intelligent fashion, the prospect of developing technologies and protocols that can reduce the high variability in patient care will be feasible."
Alcor isn't doing anything new, here. Heart-lung machines have been responding to, and recording, all of these parameters, with the single exception of refractive index, for many years, now. To state that "real-time feedback to adjust perfusion parameters...has only been available in small organ cryobiological research" is extremely uninformed. This is yet another example of people in cryonics attempting to "reinvent the wheel," rather than building on existing technology, another situation in which the cryo-orgs are going to pay a bundle to a handful of individuals to attempt to do what the companies building perfusion equipment can do, and have done, better, and probably at a much lower cost than all those DIY'ers who brought cryonics the six-figure vinyl PIB liner. Three years ago, I wrote a report, for Saul Kent, and had a subsequent discussion with him, describing how we should investigate adapting a computerized heart-lung machine, to perform the ramping based on refractive index feedback, and informed him that some heart-lung machines would already record, and respond to, the other needed parameters. I don't know why my suggestion didn't go far, other than maybe it didn't involve a science fiction writer and materials from Home Depot.
Aschwin de Wolf: "One of the worst scenarios for the future of cryonics is one in which regulators impose standards upon cryonics organizations that actually increase the challenges of providing good patient care; something that has happened already in the case of the Cryonics Institute when the organization was forced to perform a complex technical procedure like cryoprotective perfusion at a funeral home."
I, totally, disagree with the situation at Cryonics Institute being a negative one. Throughout history, organizations such as Alcor and SA have allowed just about anybody off the street to perform these "complex technical procedures" that could be performed, with ease, by qualified medical professionals who are experienced with cannulations and perfusion.
More and more, each day, I am convince that regulation is the ONLY way the science of cryonics is going to progress.
Aschwin de Wolf quotes below, (in navy blue italics) are from: http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/2009/09/22/the-future-of-alcor/
Aschwin de Wolf: "Where this criticism can go off track, however, is when it is insufficiently recognized that knowledge of conventional medicine is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to do good cryonics."
I know Aschwin means well, when he writes something like this, but it's a misconception on the part of self-taught "cryonics experts" to believe they can perform variations of existing conventional medical procedures, simply by having read about them, and/or having practiced on a couple of animals, or cryonics patients. People do NOT learn to do good cannulation procedures, or perfusion, without extensive, SUPERVISED experience. Cryonics procedures are simply variations of existing conventional medical procedures; they are not something totally new and unique.
In regard to Alcor's computerized system, they still need a qualified perfusionist to operate such a system. There's a reason why perfusion is not fully-automated, in conventional medicine, and to think it can be fully-automated in cryonics, to the point of being performed by amateurs, is extremely naive. This reminds me of a joke a friend of my mother's told me, when I was 13. A transatlantic flight had just taken off, and the following message came over the loudspeaker: Good morning ladies and gentleman. You have the privilege of being aboard the world's first fully-automated airplane. Decades of research have resulted in this state-of-the-art aircraft that will immediately adjust to any and all flight conditions. Please sit back and relax, with the knowledge that nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong, nothing can go wrong..."
Aschwin de Wolf:""Alcor has decided to develop a system that not only uses software to record perfusion parameters (concentration, pressure, temperature, refractive index etc.) but to use the same software to control them as well. Provided that this new system lives up to its expectations, this development will be a major step towards a system that can use real-time feedback to adjust perfusion parameters in a manner that so far has only been available in small organ cryobiological research. The data that will be generated during cases can, in turn, be used to create cases reports that follow a consistent, formal standard. When these reports are used in an intelligent fashion, the prospect of developing technologies and protocols that can reduce the high variability in patient care will be feasible."
Alcor isn't doing anything new, here. Heart-lung machines have been responding to, and recording, all of these parameters, with the single exception of refractive index, for many years, now. To state that "real-time feedback to adjust perfusion parameters...has only been available in small organ cryobiological research" is extremely uninformed. This is yet another example of people in cryonics attempting to "reinvent the wheel," rather than building on existing technology, another situation in which the cryo-orgs are going to pay a bundle to a handful of individuals to attempt to do what the companies building perfusion equipment can do, and have done, better, and probably at a much lower cost than all those DIY'ers who brought cryonics the six-figure vinyl PIB liner. Three years ago, I wrote a report, for Saul Kent, and had a subsequent discussion with him, describing how we should investigate adapting a computerized heart-lung machine, to perform the ramping based on refractive index feedback, and informed him that some heart-lung machines would already record, and respond to, the other needed parameters. I don't know why my suggestion didn't go far, other than maybe it didn't involve a science fiction writer and materials from Home Depot.
Aschwin de Wolf: "One of the worst scenarios for the future of cryonics is one in which regulators impose standards upon cryonics organizations that actually increase the challenges of providing good patient care; something that has happened already in the case of the Cryonics Institute when the organization was forced to perform a complex technical procedure like cryoprotective perfusion at a funeral home."
I, totally, disagree with the situation at Cryonics Institute being a negative one. Throughout history, organizations such as Alcor and SA have allowed just about anybody off the street to perform these "complex technical procedures" that could be performed, with ease, by qualified medical professionals who are experienced with cannulations and perfusion.
More and more, each day, I am convince that regulation is the ONLY way the science of cryonics is going to progress.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
In Kent's Own Words
Saul Kent: "When cryobiologists contend we are damaging
our patients too much to permit future reanimation, we criticize
them for failing to take into account the potential of future repair
methods. In doing so, we fail to appreciate that we are, similarly,
failing to take into account the severity of the damage our
methods cause. Until we have solid evidence that we can
preserve the brain well enough to retain enough information to
maintain our identities, it is inappropriate, I believe, for us to
criticize cryobiologists over their opinion that future repair of
today's frozen patients will be impossible. Without the
evidence that we can effectively preserve ourselves, the
cryobiologists are not only entitled to their negative opinions
about cryonics, but we don't have the slightest chance
of changing their minds!"
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=1222&mode=linear
Kent might, at least, begin to change the minds of cryobiologists, (and others), if he would send qualified, experienced personnel, capable of performing femoral cannulations and perfusion, without causing more damage than is necessary. When he sends a bunch of bumbling amateurs, who take hours to do a simple cannulation, (and, then, probably don't get it right), and doesn't guarantee a qualified perfusionist will show up for the washout procedure, he is subjecting his organization to well-deserved ridicule. The Suspended Animation Inc. (SA) personnel make both Kent and Faloon look rather foolish, like they don't know what they are doing.
Isn't it time for Kent and Faloon to REALLY do "the best they can"?
our patients too much to permit future reanimation, we criticize
them for failing to take into account the potential of future repair
methods. In doing so, we fail to appreciate that we are, similarly,
failing to take into account the severity of the damage our
methods cause. Until we have solid evidence that we can
preserve the brain well enough to retain enough information to
maintain our identities, it is inappropriate, I believe, for us to
criticize cryobiologists over their opinion that future repair of
today's frozen patients will be impossible. Without the
evidence that we can effectively preserve ourselves, the
cryobiologists are not only entitled to their negative opinions
about cryonics, but we don't have the slightest chance
of changing their minds!"
http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=1222&mode=linear
Kent might, at least, begin to change the minds of cryobiologists, (and others), if he would send qualified, experienced personnel, capable of performing femoral cannulations and perfusion, without causing more damage than is necessary. When he sends a bunch of bumbling amateurs, who take hours to do a simple cannulation, (and, then, probably don't get it right), and doesn't guarantee a qualified perfusionist will show up for the washout procedure, he is subjecting his organization to well-deserved ridicule. The Suspended Animation Inc. (SA) personnel make both Kent and Faloon look rather foolish, like they don't know what they are doing.
Isn't it time for Kent and Faloon to REALLY do "the best they can"?
The Suspended Animation (SA) Research Myth
Recently found on the Internet:
"In addition to the publicity, long-time backers of cryonics like Saul Kent of the Life Extension Foundation are putting more money and time into pushing the cryonics industry forward into the 21st century. This makes sense for them, based on the arguments I put foward at the top of this page. They have thought long and hard about the likelihood of living long enough to benefit from the medical technologies of the future, and decided to put more effort into cryonics. One result of this renewed funding is Suspended Animation, a cryonics company that focuses more on research than providing services," another the work of Twenty-First Century Medicine towards a demonstration of reversible cryonic suspension."
http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/cryonics.cfm (Appears to have been written in April 2008.)
More propaganda from the LEF machine. As far as anyone knows, SA does not perform any legitimate scientific research likely to advance the science of cryonics. In my opinion, they mostly focus on sending laymen to perform medical procedures, for which they want to charge a lot of money.
"In addition to the publicity, long-time backers of cryonics like Saul Kent of the Life Extension Foundation are putting more money and time into pushing the cryonics industry forward into the 21st century. This makes sense for them, based on the arguments I put foward at the top of this page. They have thought long and hard about the likelihood of living long enough to benefit from the medical technologies of the future, and decided to put more effort into cryonics. One result of this renewed funding is Suspended Animation, a cryonics company that focuses more on research than providing services," another the work of Twenty-First Century Medicine towards a demonstration of reversible cryonic suspension."
http://www.longevitymeme.org/topics/cryonics.cfm (Appears to have been written in April 2008.)
More propaganda from the LEF machine. As far as anyone knows, SA does not perform any legitimate scientific research likely to advance the science of cryonics. In my opinion, they mostly focus on sending laymen to perform medical procedures, for which they want to charge a lot of money.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Is Suspended Animation, Inc. Doing Animal Procedures in Boynton Beach Facility?
"Liquid Nitrogen-based Cryoprotectant Chiller
A powerful but compact chiller with a small footprint is desirable for use in the operating room for cooling cryoprotectant perfusion circuits. Suspended Animation has developed such a chiller about the size of a compact, desktop laser printer. It is currently in use at SA for cooling a cryoprotection training circuit used with pig cadavers.
The next generation of this chiller may be used for patient cryoprotection in SA's operating room and for field-level cryoprotection in the future." (Emphasis added.)
http://suspendedinc.com/equipment.html
Is any type of approval needed for these activities? If so, does SA have such approval?
A powerful but compact chiller with a small footprint is desirable for use in the operating room for cooling cryoprotectant perfusion circuits. Suspended Animation has developed such a chiller about the size of a compact, desktop laser printer. It is currently in use at SA for cooling a cryoprotection training circuit used with pig cadavers.
The next generation of this chiller may be used for patient cryoprotection in SA's operating room and for field-level cryoprotection in the future." (Emphasis added.)
http://suspendedinc.com/equipment.html
Is any type of approval needed for these activities? If so, does SA have such approval?
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Alleged "Research" of Alcor and Suspended Animation
There are people who maintain that Alcor and Suspended Animation, Inc. are engaging in scientific research. Personally, I don't think many scientists would consider what they are doing to be legitimate research, (and, not because it involves cryonics, but because it is so damn sloppy). Their "research reports" are, for the most part, rambling narratives that describe a bunch of amateurs attemping to perform well-established medical procedures, they are not qualified to perform, nothing more.
Has anyone working at these two organizations ever heard of things like...
The Scientific Method?
Dependent variables?
Independent variables?
Control groups? (And, don't tell me the control group is in the cemetery.)
Conclusions?
Reproducibility? How would anyone reproduce what Alcor and/or SA do, in any of their cases? They don't even appear to know what they are doing, most of the time, and thus far, there seems to be little reliable documentation. For example, in CI-81, none of the SA team members, or advisors, even knew how much heparin had been given, and some of the medications were spilled on the floor of a vehicle they were in.
In my opinion, SA's washouts and Alcor's cryopreservations are not "research," any more than the heart surgeries I particpated in were "research." These are medical procedures, not research. Alcor and SA are bumbling along, attemping to perform femoral cannulations and perfusion, (medical procedures that were virtually perfected decades ago), without much success. If you ask me, it's just a bunch of laymen, "playing doctor."
Has anyone working at these two organizations ever heard of things like...
The Scientific Method?
Dependent variables?
Independent variables?
Control groups? (And, don't tell me the control group is in the cemetery.)
Conclusions?
Reproducibility? How would anyone reproduce what Alcor and/or SA do, in any of their cases? They don't even appear to know what they are doing, most of the time, and thus far, there seems to be little reliable documentation. For example, in CI-81, none of the SA team members, or advisors, even knew how much heparin had been given, and some of the medications were spilled on the floor of a vehicle they were in.
In my opinion, SA's washouts and Alcor's cryopreservations are not "research," any more than the heart surgeries I particpated in were "research." These are medical procedures, not research. Alcor and SA are bumbling along, attemping to perform femoral cannulations and perfusion, (medical procedures that were virtually perfected decades ago), without much success. If you ask me, it's just a bunch of laymen, "playing doctor."
Maybe Alcor has hopes someone will perform research on the people they are cryopreserving, in the future, but for now, what Alcor and SA are doing looks a lot more like sloppy embalming, to me.
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