Comments From Cornwall
by John de Rivaz
Introduction:
This file contains the text of a monthly column that appeared in The Immortalist, a magazine published by The Immortalist Society <ettinger@aol.com>
Wherever possible source information has been given, and no additional information is usually available if you write in.
November 1989
Embalmer Calls for Tougher Controls of Autopsies.
Writing in Funeral Service Journal David Pym, MBIE, DipFD, IFT, Affil RSH, MBIFD, called for more restraints on pathologists, particularly at hospitals. He said that the severity of the examination varied from a simple part evisceration to a complete evisceration and internal mutilation. He expressed surprise that relatives allow post mortems when the deceased has simply perished through old age. In his professional experience as an embalmer, he found that hospitals inflicted far more mutilation that a coroner's pathologist.
He suggested that the rules should be altered regarding the request for a post mortem made to relatives by hospitals. So soon after bereavement relatives often have no idea of what is being asked them. Mr Pym called for a period of time before next of kin are requested to sign consent forms, and for the procedure to be explained to them properly. He goes on to query the real need for some of the examinations performed.
The conclusion is that he can't see an easy way to get these ideas across to the general public, but feels that some effort should be made in finding one.
More on Time It has been said that if anything can be imagined one day it will be done. Something that has been imagined by fantasists and science fiction writers is the time destructor, but most rationalists would regard the concept as nonsense.
A time destructor would be a device that enables the user and everything within his area of influence to move through time slower than the universe as a whole, thus he would be able to get more done than those around him. In a way, tools are time destructors, for example a man with a mechanical digger can move far more dirt than one with a pick and shovel, who can move more than one using only his bare hands. However a true time destructor would be far more than a simple tool. To someone using it, the rest of the universe would appear frozen whilst he caught up with whatever he was doing. H.G. Wells wrote of The New Accelerator, being a drug that speeded people up, and a recent Twilight Zone story featured a mechanical device.
But is this idea basically impossible? It depends on whether time has one or more dimensions. Some say that there are an infinite number of dimensions (why stop at 4?) If this is the case, then maybe what we regard as time are all those dimensions from four up. If time has more than one dimension, then a time destructor would be possible, as when activated the user would simply be creating more time for himself and the selected task in another dimension.
A more serious difficulty is the energy consideration. It may require very large inputs of energy to operate a time destructor. All ideas for time travel devices, such as the one reported recently in The Immortalist, require the movement of astronomical objects through space - hardly projects for the average individual to use in his own home. However these concepts do show that maybe it could be done one way, and if it can be done one way them there is always a chance it can be done another.
A difficulty that has been touched upon by science fiction writers is that anyone using a time destructor would age according to their body time, not the universe's time. Therefore to a bystander although they would appear super efficient and unflustered, they would age quickly. Of course the complete absence of stress (practically all stress is time- related, or at any rate could be relieved by a time destructor) would lengthen body-time lifespan measurably, but nevertheless if they used the device a lot they would age quickly to an observer. However this difficulty is more apparent to our level of technology, as one capable of making a time destructor would most likely have conquered ageing long before.
In a society where time destructors were commonplace, individuals would live in their own universes, connecting to the common time-stream only when they needed further input from others, or to present the results of whatever task they were performing.
This would be in complete contrast to the present world, where devices like the telephone and cell-phone allow others to intrude upon our lives, regardless of whatever we are struggling with at that moment. An interesting corollary to people living in "the time age" would be that if you wanted to contact someone and he was in his own "time-bubble" you wouldn't have to wait for him to come out of it, as he would leave it at the same instant he entered it, according to the main time path. As long as you were on the main time path yourself, then you can contact your friend.
More on Aging In electronics, engineers use devices with transfer characteristics. For example, the word transistor is based on "transferred resistor". By varying the current between the base and emitter, one varies the resistance between collector and emitter. In an ideal world, the relationship would be linear, ie the current would be directly proportional to the resistance regardless of its value. In reality, this is never so. However there is a range of values of current over which the resistance is directly proportional, and it is this range that can be used for engineering applications such as analogue amplification.
Life could be regarded as an engineering construct of a large number of processes. The input analogous to the current in the above example is time, and the output a particular individual. Between birth and death, the processes have a desirable characteristic, and death represents that point in time when these characteristics become useless. If this hypothesis is true, then it will be impossible to maintain a human body with pills and potions much beyond the three score years and ten held by the establishment to be an acceptable lifespan.
The only ways to an extended lifespan will be a totally re-engineered vehicle for the mind, (which could be in something that looks and feels like an ordinary body) or alternatively a periodic regrowth of a new body every 75 years or so, by the sort of processes Dr Segall suggests in his book Living Longer, Growing Younger.
I hope I am wrong, and that someone will find an elixir that conveniently switches off a death hormone or whatever. But I don't think so. Certainly vitamins and minerals and life extension drugs will save many people from hospitalisation and surgery during their lifetime. They will help people to attain the maximum biological age possible, and that limit may well move upwards as science advances. But it will never reach infinity.
Body Lost on Flight According to a report in the New Zealand Herald, a body in a coffin went astray on a flight from Fiji to Sydney while relatives waited in Fiji to hold a funeral. The story was repeated in Funeral Service Journal. Cargo handlers in Nadi failed to find the coffin, which was stacked beneath cartons of vegetables. The body went to Tahiti and subsequently to Los Angeles.
Mizar Gets Facility Building Mizar, the UK offshoot of Alcor, announced several giant steps towards cryonics capability in its latest newsletter. Mr Alan Sinclair has purchased a brand new industrial unit near his home in Polegate, Sussex. The interior layout is based on plans drawn up under the directions of Alcor, and encompasses 2400 sq ft, including a 21ft by 23ft operating room. He has also ordered the equipment necessary to perform a perfusion and cool down to the solid state as per the Alcor specification.
A special container has been ordered for the shipment of cooled down patients to Alcor's facility in Riverside. The design features 4" of polyurethane foam insulation sandwiched between two glass fibre walls, vented to allow the escape of carbon dioxide gas.
Mizar and Alcor have also established a Fax link. This has proved invaluable in the rapid turnaround on questions concerning the building, the shipment container and equipment list.
Mizar has established a minimum funding requirement of 35,000 pounds ($52,000) neuropreservation and 125,000 pounds ($187,500) for full suspensions. And this doesn't include sign up fees, annual dues, or lost investment opportunities and legal expenses incurred in meeting contract requirements.
An article in The Biostasis Letter, Mizar's aperiodic newsletter, concerned these costs. It covered the point I am always pointing out about life insurance and inflation, without offering a real solution. It also discussed the question that in order to be state of the art suspension could be very much more expensive, mentioning hyperbaric chambers and eutectic solutions. [Also see The Immortalist October 1989 p29, item 1.]
It was pointed out that every successful technological innovation, from the motor-car to the VCR, started off as the preserve of those who were rich enough - or enthusiastic enough - to put up with high prices and questionable benefits. The article concludes: "Right now cryonics is where the automobile was around the turn of the century (and remember, the automobile had been around then for about as long as cryonics has been around now.) All it takes is a Henry Ford ..."
My comment is that the Cryonics Institute is appropriately situated near Detroit to take on that role, and its pricing seems to fit the bill as well! Scanning Tunnelling Microscope images DNA in New Mexico
According to a report in New Scientist for 18 November, the first images of DNA were obtained using a scanning tunnelling microscope at the University of New Mexico, and detailed in Nature vol 342 page 204. The achievement was cited as the closest step yet towards the goal of sequencing DNA with a scanning probe microscope.
December 1989
Writing in Cryonics magazine, Max O'Connor typified the average cryonicist as "venturesome". In World Out of Time Larry Niven's cryonics science fiction novel, the cryonicist was described as the "born tourist".
Max O'Connor is certainly venturesome. He founded the UK's only cryonics organisation, Mizar, which offers Alcor services there. Finding the pace too slow, he resigned his chairmanship of Mizar and emigrated to the USA to be nearer the action.
Science fiction readers usually fall into two groups:
1. Those who are outgoing and who have a wide social life, attending conferences around the world, and 2. Those who more closely resemble Dr Isaac Assimov's character Dr Urth, who never travelled further than he could walk yet allowed his mind to roam infinity, solving problems throughout the universe by remote control.
I would suspect that Larry Niven falls into the first of these, and hence makes his characters the same. Also the same may be said of newsletter proprietors. Certainly I would fall into the latter grouping, and it is interesting to note that I seem to identify with the majority of Longevity Report readers. Yet on the other hand, the readers of Cryonics and The Immortalist seems to be more "venturesome", judging by the success of the conferences and other activities held by the respective organisations.
It may well be that the average introvert rejects Cryonics and The Immortalist and accepts Longevity Report, and visa-versa. Certainly when it was free Longevity Report went out to about 300 people, which figure dropped to about 80 when they were asked to pay five pounds for it or make a written contribution. However maybe only 80 of the 300 ever read it. I don't myself feel that the article content of Longevity Report is particularly introverted. Nevertheless it is certainly true to say that the articles tend to be libertarian and anti-authority, and if you are going to get out and about, particularly involving international travel, you have to accept quite a bit of authority and surrender a lot of control. (Unless you're a lone yachtsman like Ev Cooper.)
Anyway, in case you are wondering what the point of all this is, the fact remains that it may be very dangerous to try and typify the average cryonicist from a group of people to which cryonics has successfully been marketed so far.
It could well be that the best grouping has yet to be found. On a global scale, all cryonics publications are insignificant. Even broader publications like Omni or Omni Longevity reach a tiny proportion of the world as compared to a popular national newspaper.
In an earlier edition of Longevity Report one of my readers said he though cryonics was a cop-out. I think he meant that people could make cryonics arrangements and then not bother to look after themselves because they'd know they had another better life coming. I think that I rid him of this idea when I explained how difficult it was to make cryonics arrangements. (I don't mean the actual actions are difficult, but it is difficult to integrate them with other aspects of prudent living.)
However this comment does raise some points for discussion. One is that should cryonics be a cop out? If it were possible to make arrangements as easily as opening a bank account, say, would it matter if people lead short reckless lives until such time as they were stored and reanimated in better fitter bodies?
In a way, this question has plagued Christianity. It promises an idyllic post mortem existence, yet it has somehow to prevent all its followers from immediately committing suicide in order to experience that existence. For a long while suicide was made a sin, and indeed countries like the UK had suicide listed as a crime, with attempted suicides being punished as common criminals. The fact that modern more relaxed rules about attempted suicide haven't lead to a rush to the pearly gates suggest that either most people don't believe in them, or that the self preservation instinct is stronger than religious belief.
One would suspect that the same would hold true if "cop-out" cryonics were available. Indeed, the "creed" of cryonics is NOT that it is certain to work, but that there is a finite probability that it will work, and it is better than doing nothing. This is very different to the weekly repeated statements about "true and certain knowledge of a life hereafter" made by churchgoers, in order to make a faith appear like fact by reiteration.
So it would appear that there is no harm in making cryonics "a cop-out". Would it do any good either, ie would it save more lives?
I would say it certainly would. If you have had a hard struggle to persuade someone to accept cryonics, and then have to get them to accept the arrangements needed to sign up, then your chances are pretty slim. In the UK at least a large portion of the population can't even be persuaded to make a simple will.
Of course at the present stage of cryonics it could be argued that one can't accept passengers - each person who signs up is more in the position of someone going on an adventure holiday in the Antarctic as opposed to a fortnight in Florida.
But I would expect that as time progresses and more people sign up with the various cryonics organisations, signing up will become progressively simple and less likely to be at variance with prudent investment. Even if it does produce a hoard of cop out passengers, they will at least be people who have the foresight not to kneel to the axeman, and hopefully their presence will add to the credibility of cryonics and its financial stability.
It is usual in industry to get initial customers to pay development costs, ie the produce is marketed to the very rich, and the profits made thereby pay for further development so that the product is available world wide to the much larger middle classes, and finally it gets to the poor. Television sets, for example, can be found in the poorest of homes, and even in shanty towns. At the start of television, sets were very expensive allowing for inflation -they cost about the same as now in money terms. The choice of programs was very poor value for money. In the UK it was a couple of hours a day, I think.
This procedure I find strange in a capitalist society inasmuch as surely it should be the shareholders who pay for development, and the customers for the product. But nevertheless it is also a free market society and presumably that free market has allowed this system to evolve as the most profitable from the overall point of view.
In the case of cryonics, it is not so much a case of paying for development as paying for marketing. If many more people were involved costs could fall, unless the dead hand of bureaucracy loaded costs onto the system in order to find jobs-for-the-professional-boys. One way this could be arranged would be to have a second class suspension membership where one trades cost for risk. I would be dubious of choosing this scheme for myself, but if the choice was between this or nothing, then the proposal has merit.
The proposal is that a cryonics organisation would allow group memberships. The group of say 20 people would put up the money for two suspensions. When one of the members of the group is suspended, they have to have a collection to replace the funds, so that there is always two pre-paid suspensions per 20 members. Of course the group would be encouraged to add to its size in order to reduce the individual cost, and each group may have different ideas as to who to allow in.
I know that in a way I am re-inventing life insurance, but if it could be arranged informally between groups of people who know each other the very high professional costs associated with life insurance (ie the difference between the return on a life policy and comparable investments made elsewhere) would be avoided. This idea needs a lot of work before it becomes practical, but it could be a way in for some people.
The introduction of democracy in Communist countries could be a major advance for immortalism. There is, of course, a serious risk that the professional interests of those in the armaments industry could actually cause some lunatic to try and precipitate a war to discourage disarmament. However the risks of such an action in the nuclear age are so high it is less likely to be initiated.
It is unlikely that governments would be willing to relinquish control of all the tax money they collect for military spending. Instead they will probably instigate massive environmental and civil engineering programmes, and therefore I would look to those industries as being worthwhile subjects for investment over the next decade. Health spending is likely to rise, which should bring more profits to the drug companies, who may well also be in the forefront of anti-aging research.
I have favoured investment in drug companies for the past year or so, and take-over speculation has seen some good short term gains. However it is the long term prospects that attract me.
A collapse of the military market will probably mean electronic companies will find it more difficult to show the phenomenal growth of the 1980s. I like Intel because it provides the chips for IBM computers and clones and somehow manages to keep its prices up. Once developed, a chip costs little to produce, so it must be doing well as long as it can sell 80386's at around $400. (So are the distributors, who get about half!). Intel has some good chips in the developmental pipeline, with the 80486 just appearing in development quantities. Its neural network chip may be released for the civilian market in a range of computer products quite unlike anything we have seen so far.
A reader from my newsletter Fractal Report is studying neural networks, and proposes some articles in the future. If this works out, I hope to be producing a companion newsletter on this subject sometime during the next decade.
Cryonics organisations aren't the only one to have problems over getting paid for irreversible services. An item in Funeral Service Journal detailed the plight of an Aberdeen monumental mason. He supplied and fitted some stone angels to a grave, only to find that his customer had paid with a stolen cheque. He was unable to remove the angels as they were concreted in. The customer finally did pay, and was fined £50 by Aberdeen magistrates.
Cryonics organisations may find the arrangements made a by an Englishwoman nearly 200 years ago for her family vault to be preserved of interest. The family vault and tomb of Miss Mary Gibson is inspected every year on 12 August as part of a ceremony prescribed in her will. She left money to St Nicholas Church in Sutton, Surrey to carry out the procedure, and to hedge her bets she also left money to the governors of Christ's Hospital to ensure that they did. A back-up hospital was also given. The article in Funeral Service Journal that describes this says that she wasn't famous and didn't live in Sutton, but in London. However she was rich. Also her will ordered that no more people were to be buried in the vault after her. It doesn't relate whether her remains were treated in a manner that would win the approval of Mr Olson, (The Immortalist October 1989) but if they were maybe one day she will be in for a surprise.
An article in the Financial Times gave coverage for an idea designed to provide economies for religions suffering a drop in numbers. Entitled The Deventer Project the proposal is a design for a universal religious facility or church which could be used by any religious body or indeed individual seeking a refuge for reflection on their ultimate destination or similar matters.
The chairman of the project, Mr Robin Waterfield, wrote the article and seems very articulate and logical. He likens religions to cars and other modes of transport in which people drive to the seaside, the seaside being the ultimate meaning of existence. Religious bigots are likened to people who never get past discussing their cars or journeys. More enlightened people of whatever faith can have meaningful discussion on ultimate topics without getting hot under the collar about differences of religious procedure.
A design is given for a universal church based on "numerical laws representing the descent of utter simplicity into relative complexity in which simplicity is nevertheless comprehensible."
The project is attempting to gain charitable status, which is quite difficult under British law. It requires from a religious charity specific doctrines or specific forms of worship, which is the opposite of the aims of the project. Their address is 2, Gondar Mansions, Mill Lane, London NW6 1NU (UK).
Another article in the Financial Times over the holiday period discussed the problems of the rising costs of tax collection. Combining the costs borne by the authorities and the corporate taxpayer, they at present amount to 1.5% of the gross national product. The article points out that this does not take into consideration the very real psychological costs on private individuals nor their costs in complying with the law. (As their costs are not tax deductible, there is no record thereof.)
Considering all the fuss that there is when similar portions of a gross national product are spent on some scientific project, the waste of resources that this represent should be the subject of considerable public complaint.
I don't know what the comparable figure is the United States, but I wouldn't be surprised to read that it is higher.
There is a problem with the free market system in that the overpayment of lawyers and accountants has caused highly talented people to flock to the profession. The profession has become an entity with a will of its own (cf Drexler's "governments as intelligent entities) and created self- serving money making systems that create no real wealth for society as a whole. We need to redirect this remuneration to inventors, and discoverers - scientists and engineers, for it is only these professions that can design what is needed to conquer ageing and death. Even if all the lawyers in the world would work for the cause for no payment they could never find a solution if there were no scientists.
The treatment of witnesses by the legal profession may be logical. Lawyers are paid more than anyone else, therefore it makes economic sense to minimise time wasted by lawyers as opposed to the rest of the world. Therefore witnesses are called sometimes days before they have to give evidence. Although they are compensated, this amounts involved are seldom enough. Also in British courts there have been tales of witnesses held in waiting rooms together with the defendants of the criminal cases.
The effects of this is that members of the public are often unwilling to report crimes on the grounds of the legal ramifications. Unable to change the law, police forces are now setting up anonymous tip-off telephone lines for people to report crimes. Although these reports don't provide hard evidence, they often gives sufficient information to enable hard evidence to be collected by police officers. In areas where this system has already come into operation, there have been dramatic improvements in the solution of crimes.
The relevance of this story to immortalism is that although it may appear that the money making systems of lawyers have a stranglehold on society, where there is enough initiative they can be circumvented to produce good results.
There will always be a need for lawyers and the law, but their costs, both financial and otherwise, should be kept in proportion to their value. The removal of spurious systems, such as wills and probate, will enable the creative individual in the legal profession the chance to deal with life's real problems, not problems invented by his profession to make money.
An example is that at Christmas time there are always news items about people living in cardboard boxes with no home or jobs. An addendum was added this year that many are males who have been stripped of their homes and income by divorce. They are unable to afford decent accommodation or to attire themselves at a level required by their employment, and lose their jobs. They then get thrown out of their rented accommodation to roam the streets, and become unable to meet their commitments under the terms of their divorces. It is clear that the legal system is not solving this problem, but creating it.
Undoubtedly there is a problem to be solved in split ups, whether of marriage relationships or indeed between employee or employer. I certainly don't know of a solution, but I do think that society ought to try something different to impossible "redundancy payments."
Here we had a ludicrous situa tion in a local hospital where some people were given too much radiation therapy for cancer. The professional who sets the dose is described as a "physicist". The physicist concerned was dismissed, and received a dismissal payment vastly in excess of the damages received by each patient!
January 1990
A reader of my newsletter Longevity Report, Mr Mike Zehse, sent in these comments about the immortalist story publication Lifequest:
I enjoyed the Lifequests. A Place by the Sea (issue 2) was particularly impressive; it was so powerful and mesmerising one almost got the impression of reading the same pages twice over. Are the Rockwells of defense technology fame? [No. They are pen names. -ed] Leigh could consider submitting Save the Whales (issue 3) (possibly re-titled A Christmas Story?) to a cat fancying magazine if she could find one where the editor had a good sense of humour. (Apparently cat magazines have a surprisingly large circulation!) or some more general pet magazine, circulation ditto.
As a firm chipmunk supporter I was delighted to read Grandpa Chippers (issue 2). Wasn't there a 1950s pop group called The Chipmunks? If this sentimental story was ever serialised on the radio they could use their music as background. [end of reader's comment]
Unfortunately the take up on Lifequest in the UK has been very poor. It is possible that serious immortalists feel that it is a poor use of their time reading stories. However the publication has value beyond the mere entertainment of immortalists. It is designed to inform others outside the movement of immortalists ideas. Considering that many of the stories are of good quality, it is a pity that they don't get wider coverage.
Issue 6 included a further good crop of stories, including, as far as I am aware, Dr Thomas Donaldson's first fictional piece. Mass on Christmas Day, 8936 AD makes interesting reading as it contains a message about the ultimate truth of the Christmas Story. Leigh Rockwell returns with another cat story, and further contributions by Lee Corbin, David Pizer, Douglas Quinn and others makes this another good issue.
Douglas Quinn's story Saviors has plenty of suspense and action, and whilst it by no means paints a relaxed and contended human race in the future, it does give a gleam of hope. Of course it was written before the collapse of Communism, so it represents a timeline that doesn't follow from the present. Nevertheless the depiction of a future America made mad by religious fundamentalism and intolerance could unfortunately still follow from the present position. At the time of writing the position taken by the Vatican on behalf of a deposed dictator wanted for alleged drugs offences may weaken the credibility of religion, but we shall see.
Secular Funerals in Demand in UK
The London based British Humanist Association has set up its first district outpose to deal with enquiries for secular funerals. They have 87 officiants, but say that they need a hundred times this, and are receiving 400 enquiries a week. People are beginning to realise, usually by word of mouth, that they can have the kind of funeral ceremony they want. Qualifications for officiant are minimal. The association wants sensitive people, prepared to work in harrowing conditions for $37 a service. They must be prepared to put in long hours counselling the bereaved and write individual scripts for each ceremony.
They have to respond to "the most outlandish whims of clients" without turning a hair. Last year when someone who was interested in ballroom dancing had their remains burned, the mourners had to end with a tango to taped music. The crematorium officials were taken aback, and none too pleased.
Surprisingly, perhaps for people who believe in no afterlife, almost all secular funerals involve burning the remains. Although I suppose there is not a lot to chose between the options unless one has some morphostatic plans.
When the remains of Mr Eddie Oakley were incinerated, the arrangement was to play his favourite tune Every Time We Say Goodbye. Owing to a misunderstanding, the organist played instead When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
Stockbrokers Predict Expensive Funerals
Stockbrokers Phillips and Drew have predicted an increase in funeral costs because of the Green Movement. They cite controls over emissions from crematoria and a desire to save land from becoming burial plots.
I should have though that cemeteries would have been something the Green Movement would be keen to preserve. After all, they are a habitat for wild life and provide areas of vegetation where otherwise there would probably be concrete.
No doubt holiday makers stranded at airports may wonder whether they'll live long enough to get to their destinations sometimes, but strikebound Eastern Airlines has something different in mind when it offered a 50% discount to dead passengers. The promotion is aimed at funeral directors who are being offered the discount for the shipment of remains. Funeral directors also earn "Air-Miles" in relation to the amount of business they can place with the airline. The Miami based airline filed for bankruptcy protection in March 1989 after its machinists union members withdrew their labour.
A BBC television programme Food and Drink offered this recipe for good health:
Vegetables can have a beneficial effect in helping prevent cancer and other diseases. It is also accepted that olive oil (high in mono-unsaturates) helps prevent heart disease.
Ingredients:
450g/1lb white cabbage, 225g/0.5lb
carrots, roughly grated, 100g/0.25lb
spring onions chopped, 1 red apple cut into small pieces.
For the dressing:
125ml/4 fl oz olive oil,
50ml/2fl oz grapeseed (or other oil),
juice of 1 lemon,
1 garlic clove
crushed, 1 heaped tspn runny honey,
1 tspn Dijon mustard, salt and pepper.
Method:
Cut the cabbage into quarters, cut away the thick core and finely shred the leaves with a sharp knife.
Mix the cabbage, carrots, onion and apple together thoroughly in a large bowl.
To make the dressing combine all the ingredients in a blender or whisk in a bowl. Pour over the vegetables and mix well. This salad is best refrigerated for a few hours (and even overnight) before serving.
February 1990
Mr J.J. Finkelstein in a bulletin from Alpha One Biomedicals Inc., the Thymosin company originally promoted in Anti Aging News, (now Life Extension Report) announced that in October the company gained FDA approval to export Thymosin to Sclavo S.p.A., an Italian pharmaceutical company. This will enable Sclavo to conduct clinical trials with a view to obtaining Italian marketing approval for the treatment of the following diseases with Thymosin:
Chronic active Hepatitis B
Lung Cancer
and for its use as a vaccine adjuvant for influenza and hepatitis. These trials are also being repeated in the US with a view to getting approval there for it's use for similar purposes.
The company has also had a patent accepted for a Solid Phase Process for Synthesizing Peptides. This process enables the production of large quantities of Thymosin.
An AIDS vaccine being developed by Viral Technologies Inc., a 50% owned company is currently underdoing trials in London. 15 out of 24 planned participants have been recruited for the study, and no toxicity has been observed as of the date of the report. The vaccine is based upon a highly conserved region of one of the internal p17 core proteins of the AIDS virus and has been named HGP-10. The State Versus Your Health
This is the title of an important series of articles currently being run in the Journal of the Mega Health Society. Regular readers will know of the jaded view I have of the way professions as entities independent of the individuals working with them develop a self serving system of money making without giving value for their service. It would appear that Mr Scott Moyer has this view of the medical profession at least and backs it up with a very well researched catalogue of appalling historical facts.
He catalogues how the profession has sought to reduce the number of physicians per head of the population in order to keep fees up. They make qualifications unnecessarily difficult in order to prevent more people entering the profession.
I would strongly urge every member of The Immortalist Society to obtain a copy of this article and read it. It is contained in issues 24 and 25 of The Journal of the Mega Health Society. To buy these as back numbers, send $6 to
The Mega Health Society,
P.O. Box 60637,
Palo Alto,
California 94306.
Professional Fees Halve Bristol Myers Squibb Profits
Shareholders of the Bristol Myers Squibb drug company, formed recently after a merger between Bristol Myers and Squibb, saw the quarter's profits halve due to the professional fees associated with the merger and subsequent re- structuring. Mr Sam Islay, of Mehta and Islay, a New York based consultant to the drug industry was reported in the Financial Times as being shocked by the $690 million charges. They were particularly unjustified, he said, as the merger supposedly came about as a result of informal and friendly conversations between two old friends, Mr Richard Gelb, chairman of Bristol Myers, and Mr Richard Furland, chairman of Squibb. He also said that the merger was supposed to have been between two strong companies, that have now landed themselves with a serious financial problem.
However the figures did not deter the market, and on the day they were announced the share price rose by $0.50 to $56.50.
This should be seen in the context of the fact that the company's estimated annual profits, without taking this loss into consideration, would have been $1.5 billion on a revenue of $9.25 billion. Clearly they can shrug off what has been a disaster in just one particular quarter.
However should a cryonics or life extension company be faced with such a problem, it may not be so easy to shrug it off!
New US Newsletter for Life Extension Drug Enthusiasts
As regular readers will know, most countries allow their citizens to import prescription only medicines for their own personal use or for that of a member of their household. Unfortunately this freedom is not extended to those of the US, who are compensated by having the freedom to own guns. (You can see where the US authorities' priorities lie!)
However this does not stop companies trying to export such products to US citizens, and provided the operations are kept low key most packages usually get through.
A US newsletter has been set up called Offshore Medical Therapies which details products available from a number of such companies. Although it is only sold in America, a reader has kindly forwarded some copies to me for review. (Presumably it is not sold elsewhere, as people living in the source countries may try applying for products originating in their own countries, which is definitely illegal. Products may not be despatched from the same country to which orders are sent.)
The newsletter uses the same paper size as The Immortalist although it only occupies four sides, and comes out four times a year.
There are two to four articles in each issue on specific therapies, and a list of scientific references are printed at the end of each. The Charter issue listed three different suppliers, two in Canada and one in Germany. They didn't link any particular supplier with any particular product, so presumably you have to write and ask for a price list.
I approve of this, as these companies do come and go, and such address lists can become quickly out of date. If you write and don't get a price list, then all you've lost is a stamp.
I would advise people not to send large sums of money to these companies until they have proved themselves capable of delivering small orders and a relationship has been built up. I would also be grateful if anyone does have any problems dealing with them to get in touch with me c/o The Immortalist so that their difficulties can be published to warn people off any dubious concern. (The name of the customer can, of course, be kept confidential.)
The charter issue was a little bigger than the two other issues I was given. It has eight sides, and covers Gerovital H-3, RN- 13 Cell Therapy, Hydergine, Centrophenoxine, Retin A, Isoprinosine, Conjunctasin-A, and Ethoxyquin. None of these articles had references, though.
The second issue and third issues seemed to have better written articles, probably by someone different and more knowledgeable. Issue numbered 2 - Spring 1989 covered Piracetam, described as a powerful drug to enhance memory, and had nearly a page of references, although one was in German. It appears that it is also useful in helping alcoholics recover, which is something I didn't know before. A shorter article on Feverfew was on the back page, with three references. Surely you can get this in the States?
Number 3, Summer 1989 had a major article on Deprenyl, and a shorter one on Arcalion 200, a B vitamin derivative said to help with sleep problems and give energy.
Deprenyl is the drug that life extensionists have been waiting for. In animal tests, it has extended MAXIMUM lifespan, not just the average lifespan. Although it is expensive, the life extension dose is so small that the monthly cost is quite reasonable. In the UK, the National Health buy it in 5mg tablets. For life extension purposes, you only need to take two or three per week, so a 100 tablet bottle would last you nearly a year. Deprenyl is also known as Eldepryl, Jumex and Eldepryn. Eldepryl is the name it comes under in the UK. They don't tell you it's chemical name in the article. It's selegiline hydrochloride.
It has a mean plasma half life of 39 hours, which makes two a week possible, although clearly not optimum. It would be worthwhile for smaller dose tablets to be produced for life extensionists. However for this to be done enough people have to be supporting the product in this dosage for it to be worthwhile for the manufacturers. It may be possible to grind the tablets up and mix the resulting powder THOROUGHLY with vitamin powder or a bulking agent to reduce the dose that way, but personally I don't know whether thorough mixing is practicable for the average life extensionist or whether there would be other objections to this idea.
Deprenyl is probably the most important product ever to have appeared for the life extensionist to date, and it is obviously important that it is used safely and wisely. I hope that those knowledgeable in this subject can give us all their opinion. The more different opinions and articles there are, the easier it will be for people to make up their minds as to whether to use it.
Cryonicists, especially older ones, often feel that life extension is a waste of money and the only answer is cryonics. But if life extension can make some improvement in lifespan, then when suspension occurs it will be with more advanced methods, both physically and organisationally. By extending maximum lifespan, Deprenyl looks as though it could be a sensible choice for cryonicists as well.
Issue 4, dated Fall 1989, consisted of four pages packed with eye opening material. The main article was on Aminoguanidine - introduced to UK television viewers a few years ago on Tomorrow's World as helping to stop cross linking caused by the sugar cycle. A number of remarkable claims are made, such as possible prevention of senile cataracts, thickening of the arteries, kidney failure, thinning bones, osteoarthritis, skin wrinkles (not pre-existing) and all other signs of aging due to cross-links. The article recommends the use of the hydrochloride, not the more commonly available bicarbonate, and a dose not exceeding 300 mg/day divided into two doses. 7 references are given.
Another substance covered is Xanthinol Nicotinate. Advantages are claimed for brain and other energy, conversion of "bad" to "good" cholesterol, and improvements in short term memory. 3 references are given for this one.
The newsletter ends with a short item on Hyperforat, a natural plant derived medicine that has attracted interest for use against AIDS and other viruses. A full report is promised in a future issue. Other uses are given as follows: depression, anxiety, lack of drive, automatic nervous system disturbances, migraine, overstimulation and insomnia. A warning is given against those with light sensitive skin using the product.
No references were given, but no doubt they will be to follow with the next article.
Offshore Medical Therapies costs $19 per year, (U.S. only) and was available from PO Box 833, Farmingdale, NY11737. They'll probably send you a sample copy if you ask nicely! It is no longer available as far as I know. Many of the articles were reprinted in Longevity Report
In The Immortalist December 1989 I reported upon an article that appeared in Funeral Service Journal on the subject of autopsies. Readers may recall that an embalmer, Mr David Pym, MBIE, DipFD, IFT, Affil RSH, MBIFD, criticised the unrestrained manner in which autopsies were performed.
This brought a rejoinder from a consultant histopathologist in the January 1990 edition of Funeral Service Journal. Mr J.V. Clark, BSc, MB, BS, FRCPath gave his reasons for autopsies, and indeed called for more frequent and more thorough autopsies to be performed in future. His reasons were as follows:
1. When death is unnatural it provides evidence for proceedings in court. "These are legal requirements that cannot be questioned." he says. (Good axe- kneeling stuff, that!)
2. Pathological findings may be compared with clinical findings. This benefits future patients.
3. If familial or inherited diseases are found at autopsy, it can benefit other family members who can be informed that they are at risk. (How can it benefit them? Surely most such diseases will be untreatable until nanotechnology or genetic engineering treatments become available.)
Mr Clark goes on to say that pathologists "reconstruct the body" so it does not present a grizzly slight to mourners. He says that with refrigeration provided by funeral parlours, there is no real need for embalming of bodies at all. Perfusive embalming is impossible after a properly thorough autopsy, he says.
The editor gave Mr Pym the chance to reply immediately following Mr Clark's letter. Unfortunately he tends to grovel. He starts by praising Mr Clark's team's efforts at reconstructing bodies destroyed by autopsy, but criticises others with doing "hatchet jobs". He now accepts the legal and medical "advantages" of autopsy. However he defends his frequent use of the word mutilation, as being accurate. Mr Clark describes it as emotive.
He says that refrigeration is not the answer when bodies are required for viewing at funeral ceremonies. Often the body is viewed at different times, and if it is cooled and warmed over and over again this is an ideal breeding state for bacteria which rapidly destroy facial features.
Curiously, this exchange in Funeral Service Journal appeared in the same issue as an article of mine introducing the ideas of Mr Olson to the UK funeral industry.(The rest of this section will also appear in Funeral Service Journal in a slightly altered form.) The juxtaposition of these two articles has brought to light a serious dilemma between the living and the dying. If we accept the realities of dying, ie that death is a process that occurs after a person is declared by the medical profession to be beyond their help, and that a person is only dead when the program and data in his brain is irrecoverable regardless of present or future technology used, (eg after cremation) then we have a serious problem.
At what point does a dying person become a resource to be used by the living? The transplant lobby clearly has a great interest in this issue. But if one were to carry the arguments of Mr Clark to their logical conclusion we get this argument: A man aged say 75 and with only a few years of life left presents for treatment with an expensively treatable condition, but a sound heart. Do we spend a lot of money saving his life for just a few years by treating his condition, or do we "harvest" the heart and fit it into a younger man with many more years of life, sacrificing the older one? I am sure that Mr Clark would favour treating the old man. Yet if one accepts the promises of cryonic suspension or chemostasis, then that is exactly the choice he is faced with when considering the question of autopsies.
It may well be the motivation of many scientists who reject cryonics, yet fail to give serious scientific arguments against it or enter into scientific debate with those that propose it, that they regard it as a threat to scientific progress in that it will cut them off from the source of knowledge that autopsies provide.
Mizar Ltd, which provides Alcor services in the UK, has changed its name to Alcor UK Ltd. Readers may recall that they charge £35,000 ($56,000) for neuropreservation and £100,000 ($160,000) for whole body suspension.
On 21 January 1990 an article appeared in Sunday Sport, a sensationalist British newspaper which focuses on women's mammary glands, concerning the cryonic arrangements of Ms Vicki Little, Ms Tina Burnett, and Ms Gert Buckett. All these women are dangerously obese, but Ms Little appears normal except for a 73 inch bust. (This may be a photo-graphic illusion created by the newspaper.)
It was claimed in the article that Alcor UK is arranging the construction of specially reinforced dewars to house these women. (I consider this to be extremely unlikely.) Mr Garret Smyth is quoted as stating that Ms Little and Ms Burnett "will need to have their casks specially designed at the front to accommodate their incredibly large breasts."
The article includes a box in which Sunday Sport readers are invited to write to the newspaper if they are interested in cryonics, and all enquiries will be passed to Alcor UK.
In case readers are wondering how I came by the article, it was found in a London dustbin by Longevity Report reader Mike Zehse and subsequently sent to me.
Alcor UK's facility has been completed in an industrial park in Sussex, a county about 50 miles south of London on England's south coast. The facility appears to be of a good quality construction and similar to Alcor's in the US. They have also purchased an ambulance for recovery of their clients in England's south east (the most densely populated part of the country) and plan to start training sessions in April.
Sterile perfusion will be carried out at the unit, situated in the seaside retirement town of Eastbourne, and the patients prepared to dry ice temperature. Then the patients will be shipped to Alcor's US facility in the specially designed container, packed in dry ice.
The barrier between Alcor and the rest of the cryonic world seems to have been breached by arrangements made by Alcor UK Ltd to ship the body of Bredo Morstoel from Norway to the US, for suspension by Trans Time Inc. Alcor UK announce the operation as a test for their especially designed overseas shipping casket, but clearly this could indicate a thaw in the relationship between the organisations.
How UK Accountants Get Rich From Bankrupts
Returning to the subject of the abuse of the public by professions, a recent UK television program revealed how firms of accountants were taking (typically) $27,000 from people who went bankrupt owning $3,000.
The trick is to find a bankrupt who was never discharged many years ago for some relatively trivial debt. Even if the creditors have forgotten about it, the firms of accountants can take up the case, work out compound interest at extortionate rates back to the date of the bankruptcy, add this on and then add on a hefty percentage for fees and disbursements. They can even do this in cases where the bankrupt has unofficially paid back his debts in full, but has not been cleared by the courts. They do not need the permission of the creditors to proceed.
Armed with all this legal power, they then descend upon the hapless bankrupt and destroy what remains of his life, just to earn themselves some fee income.
The programme showed one case where the axe kneeling bankrupt meekly found and offered ten times what he originally owed only to be told it couldn't be accepted as he now owed a further $2,700 for postage and letter writing. By not accepting his offer, they could go on charging interest rates that they could certainly never get from any bona fide savings institution.
For the benefit of any new readers, I am not against individual members of professions who persue their professions honourably and give proper value for money. However I am concerned as to the power available to the professions as whole entities to extract wealth from the world as a whole which could more usefully be spent elsewhere.
I feel that cryonics is particularly vulnerable, as events at Alcor have shown. If it wasn't for the generous legacy from Dick Clair and the support from the Life Extension Foundation, Alcor would never have survived.
I hope that if the bogey of Communism is finally laid to rest by the end of the century, then the power of the professions will be the next target of public unease. Already in the UK, the Freemasons have come the subject of increasing public concern, as they are an organisation that is said (rightly or wrongly) to amass wealth for its members as the expense of the rest of us.
March 1990
Secular Funerals in Demand in UK
The London based British Humanist Association has set up its first district outpost to deal with enquiries for secular funerals. They have 87 officiants, but say that they need a hundred times this, and are receiving 400 enquiries a week. People are beginning to realise, usually by word of mouth, that they can have the kind of funeral ceremony they want. Qualifications for officiant are minimal. The association wants sensitive people, prepared to work in harrowing conditions for $37 a service. They must be prepared to put in long hours counselling the bereaved and write individual scripts for each ceremony. They have to respond to "the most outlandish whims of clients" without turning a hair. Last year when someone who was interested in ballroom dancing had his remains burned, the mourners had to end with a tango to taped music. The crematorium officials were taken aback, and none too pleased.
Surprisingly, perhaps for people who believe in no afterlife, almost all secular funerals involve burning the remains. Although I suppose there is not a lot to distinguish the options unless one has some morphostatic plans.
When the remains of Mr Eddie Oakley were incinerated, the arrangement was to play his favourite tune Every Time We Say Goodbye. Owing to a misunderstanding, the organist played instead When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
Stockbrokers Predict Expensive Funerals
Stockbrokers Phillips and Drew have predicted an increase in funeral costs because of the Green Movement. They cite controls over emissions from crematoria and a desire to save land from becoming burial plots.
I should have thought that cemeteries would have been something the Green Movement would be keen to preserve. After all, they are a habitat for wild life and provide areas of vegetation where otherwise there would probably be concrete.
No doubt holiday makers stranded at airports may wonder whether they'll live long enough to get to their destinations sometimes, but strikebound Eastern Airlines has something different in mind when it offered a 50% discount to dead passengers. The promotion is aimed at funeral directors who are being offered the discount for the shipment of remains. Funeral directors also earn "Air-Miles" in relation to the amount of business they can place with the airline. The Miami based airline filed for bankruptcy protection in March 1989 after its machinists union members withdrew their labour.
In an article in the Financial Times dated 17 February 1990, Ms Sara Webb decried the escalating costs of a funeral in the United Kingdom. Funeral costs in England and Wales have shown a savage increase in the past year. This emerged from a recent survey by market research company Mason- Shakespeare. Burials now cost $1,500 up 24.8%, and cremations $1,200, up 12.9%. The average inflation rate was only about 7%. Burial plots vary from $100 to $1,000 according to region - understandably they are more expensive in high concentrations of people.
The cost of burnings are higher too in densely populated areas. Whether this is due to increased need for environmental precautions, or whether this is merely due to the higher costs of services in these areas is unknown.
The current costs for transportation abroad were also quoted in the article. Spain to UK is given as $5000, and California to UK is given as $4,500. Why the longer journey is cheaper is anyone's guess. Mine guess is additional Spanish jobs-for-the- boys bureaucracy, having read Cryonics' account of the Laura Tomás suspension.
Ms Webb complains that the cost of transporting a dead body is far more than a one way economy class air ticket, and concludes by advising readers travelling abroad to make sure that their insurance includes the cost of repatriating their remains if they perish whilst abroad.
Bizarre Funerals in Birmingham
According to a report in the Birmingham Evening Mail, regulars in ten Midlands pubs have been offered the ultimate resting place. Provided they have their remains burned to ashes, they can be buried under the bar in their favourite pub. To qualify, tipplers have to put money in a special trust via their wills. The organiser, Mr Colm O'Rourke, said "Instead of being stuck in a cold graveyard, the deceased would be surrounded by friends who would have a permanent reminder of them." Mr Jack Haywood, his solicitor, said that he could find nothing illegal in the idea.
The British Humanist Association recently arranged a cremation in which the deceased's last wishes were met. His instructions were that his remains were to be placed in a spherical coffin made like a large football, and then consigned to the blaze.
And no doubt these people think cryonicists are mad!
Turning now to more serious matters, an important article in the February issue of Funeral Service Journal discusses the ownership of remains and body parts. It starts off by saying that if the international trade in hallucinatory drugs is the new slave trade, then the growing trade in body parts is equally repugnant.
It claims that there is an organisation in Germany writing to those recently bankrupted offering $50,000 cash if they give up a kidney for transplant. Impoverished migrants from the Middle East are only offered $8,000. In Latin America unwanted children are being sold for spare parts, and in some countries such trade is said to have government sanction.
The article concluded that some hospitals may demand spare parts from the deceased in order to pay unmet bills.
However as I have said before in these columns, the upside of this is that theoretically there are more than enough spare parts in the average body left after a neuropreservation to pay for that and leave a lot of cash spare as well. Whereas most people will regard this trade in spare parts with disgust, I think it is no more disgusting than many accepted surgical practises, as long as no one is the loser from it. Obviously it is irrational to complain if spare parts are used rather than left to rot or burned, especially if that use could save a life or ease suffering.
I think it would be a difficult concept to offer the public in the present climate, but maybe one day all neurosuspensions could effectively be free if there are any useable parts left. Certainly it is a topic that could be discussed by surgeons in the secrecy of their profession once they come to accept cryonics.
Right now it could be a bargaining point between neurosuspensionists and obstructionist authorities, especially if it could be angled to the popular press that the authorities had prevented a life saving transplant by obstructing cryonics.
The popularity of cremation took off at the beginning of the 1950s. Great Britain increased the number of its dead treated this way from 15% then to 69% now. The Roman Catholic countries only considered it after 1963, when it was accepted by the Pope. The European average for burnings remains at "only" 28%
Having made the above points in an article in the February issue, Funeral Service Journal then goes on question whether cremation is really such a sociable and green idea after all. Large amounts of poisonous fumes and smokes are vented to the atmosphere in large doses, whereas in burials the disposal is a slow, gradual and natural process and is confined to the ground. It goes on to list the output of gasses and smokes per blaze: Personally I would question the accuracy of this, as a burning process should combine the oxygen, and I would have thought that there would be quite a lot of halogens as well as phosphorus and cyanide molecules in the discharges.
A test run by Leeds University revealed dioxins in the flue of Leeds crematorium. Dioxins are the most poisonous substances known, and the findings included 2,4,5-T and Agent Orange nerve gas. It was commented that cremation is an inexact science, yet a complete combustion should yield no obnoxious products. A number of countries, including the US, now insist on catalytic converters being fitted to crematoria.
As I have said before, burial in the ground provides areas for wildlife and vegetation that otherwise would be concreted over, and may therefore be considered a greener option.
April 1990
The Schering-Plough corporation has filed for US approval to use Intron A, its brand of interferon for the treatment of hepatitis in the B C and forms. On November 20, The New England Journal of Medicine published three articles pertaining to this use.
The company has also licensed a unique one a day oral nitrate drug for angina pectoris, Imdur, or isosorbide-5 mononitrate. It is currently used in Europe, and awaits the FDA in the US.
Their antihypertensive Levadil is being introduced into Japan, and it will be marked in the US under the name Dilevalon after FDA approval. Again a one per day treatment, the drug works through vasodilation. It has also been approved in Portugal, and further approvals are anticipated soon.
Warner Lambert Attacks Alzheimer's Disease with new CNS drugs
Warner Lambert have regarded Alzheimer's disease as a major market some years ago, and their portfolio of drugs under development are claimed to be likely to have a substantial impact on the company's fortunes in the next few years. Top level management are taking steps to speed up development.The list of names manufactured by the company's Park Davis subsidiary will not be unfamiliar to life extensionists.
T he co m pa ny is al so working on products to deal with anxiety and that will control gastric secretions. It is well known that the human body is designed in a peculiar way so that anxiety increases gastric secretions that increase anxiety etc. That is why there is such a large industry concerning stomach ulcers. A compound that gets at the root cause of the problem, before ulcers even develop, will be a major breakthrough.
In the meantime, Warner Lambert markets Rolaids antacid, an OTC product that reduces stomach acid and is calcium rich rather than containing sodium.
Warner Lambert is one of only a few pharmaceutical companies that sells both regulated and OTC products. It is actively pursuing a programme of obtaining approval for the marketing of some of its regulated products over the counter.
Regulatory Problems Hit Ribavirin Research
Readers of Mike Darwin's account of his trip round Europe last year in Cryonics will recall that, in common with most travellers, he was stricken with a number of illnesses to which he had no immunity. Readers will also recall his account of the dramatic effect of the virus killer drug Ribavirin on one such disease. This drug is manufactured by a subsidiary of the company ICN Pharmaceuticals, to which I was introduced by an article in Cryonics describing its plans with Eastman Kodak for an anti-aging research program valued at $40 million.
In ICN's annual report for 1989, it has announced that the Kodak deal has been curtailed. Although the money will be spent on research as originally proposed, the joint venture company set up with Kodak has been closed and Kodak has paid off its commitment under the original plan. The research "to the extent conducted" will now be performed by Viratek Inc, the Ribavirin subsidiary.
The company has written off $56,551,000 of its $63,485,000 goodwill valuation of Viratek Inc this year, because of regulatory difficulties over Ribavirin. The Canadian government has now chosen another drug for its anti-AIDS studies, and Ribavirin is the subject of litigation. According to the annual report: "The company is currently cooperating in certain government investigations, and has been named as a defendant in certain consolidated class action lawsuits relating to Ribavirin and the company's and its subsidiaries businesses."
All I can say is that if Mike Darwin's anecdotal account of the drug is anything to go by, it will be a great loss to humanity if lawyers, in order to earn fees, stop research and development of this product.
On the other hand, obviously if there is something wrong, then it needs to be sorted out. However I would wonder whether a biochemist rather than a lawyer might be more suited to this task!
More Offshore Medical Therapies
I have recently been sent the winter issue of this newsletter, of which I reviewed the earlier issues a couple of months back.
It starts with a review of an eugregoric that acts on the chemical processes of the brain to prevent the loss of alertness and depression that occurs with increasing age. (eu=good, gregor=arousal) Adrafinil is claimed in the article to be the first of this new class of drugs, and to be safe and non-addictive. It works on directly on special receptors in the brain called the postsynaptic receptors.
The article claims the following advantages of a course of Adrafinil:
After 8-10 days:
Increased "get up and go".
After 15 days:
Increased productivity.
After 1 to 3 months:
Improved intellectual function, in particular idea formation and recall.
The drug has been used successfully in France to arrest Alzheimer's disease. It is said that it can be of use to increase performance of computer enthusiasts, creative artists and students, and increase social skills. (How on Earth this can work I don't know, as social skills surely rely on knowledge of a society rather than innate mental ability. An agile mind could help, though!)
The article concludes with dosage information, and a heavily emphasised list of cautions. In particular people are advised not to continue with unsupervised treatment for more than five months. There are ten references, many from French publications.
Candida Albicans and fungal infections frequently come under attack from alternative and self help therapists. Presumably the medical establishment has problems with diagnosing and treating these conditions. The next topic in this Offshore Medical Therapies is Amphotericin, an antifungal antibiotic. This product is produced by microorganisms that live in the soil. When taken orally it is effective against Candida Albicans, Thrush etc., and these fungal infection do not appear to build up a resistance to it. The following organisms are exterminated by it: fungi, algae, protozoa and flatworms. Bacteria and viruses are unaffected.
There are no undesirable effects with the oral form of the drug, although there have been problems reported with the injectable version. Eight references are given.
The final item in this issue is Centrophenoxine or Lucidril. This is widely used by life extensionists for its mental and life extending properties, and contains DMAE. Enough has already been written about this product to make it unnecessary for me to go through it all again now, suffice to say that Offshore Medical Therapies does its usual good job and includes the usual cautions and a list of ten references.
The issue concludes with a whole page inviting people to renew their subscriptions and detailing what they are planning for the following volume. They list the following countries as being the subjects of searches for new medical ideas not previously presented to English speaking audiences: France, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain. Switzerland, Germany. They are also planning further reports on mental abilities, libido increase, and hair re-growth in addition to their general coverage of anti-aging substances.
A subscription to Offshore Medical Therapies is $19 per year, and US residents may apply to PO Box 833, Farmingdale, NY11737 for a subscription. Perhaps if you take their recommendations you'll no longer be taken in by advertisers trying to make a $20 item look $10 cheaper by "nine pricing"! (Well, at least it wasn't $19.99.) No longer available - most of the articles appeared in Longevity Report
Sussex University Research Reduces Professional Justification for Brain Slicing
One of the main reasons used by pathologists for removing the brain of deceased people and cutting it into slices is research into Alzheimer's disease. However researchers at Sussex University are now working on a test that can be performed on nasal tissue, which can be taken from live patients under local anaesthetic.
This will also be of benefit inasmuch as people just starting the disease can be identified and possibly treated to lessen its impact.
According to an article on page 30 of the 31 March issue of New Scientist Barbara Talamo At the Tufts Medical School in Boston made a discovery last year that changes in nasal cells are produced by the disease. Lynne Maine and researchers at Sussex university in England plan a larger scale program of research. They will obtain samples from elderly Alzheimer's patients undergoing other operations, and will also seek relatives' permission to take samples within three hours of death. If these sample correlate with autopsy findings, then they will have demonstrated a viable test for the disease.
Cells high up in the nose are unique amongst nerve cells in that they regenerate throughout adult life, and are the only cells of the central nervous system that are accessible for sampling from a live patient.
As well as assisting in the detection of Alzheimer's patients for general research purposes, the test will enable the efficacy of drugs to combat the disease to be investigated.
Ms Mayne also plans to culture Alzheimer's cells as well as ordinary cells to subject them to different environments, so as to test various theories about the disease, such as aluminium in water.
However Gordon Wilcock, a founder of the Alzheimer's Disease Society, suggests that the test is too impractical for most people, and looks forward to other tests in the pipeline that cause less patient suffering. However he welcomes the test as a stepping stone in the right direction.
If We Could Restore a Severed Nerve ...
New Scientist of 17 March 1990, page 36, carried an item of interest to neuropreservationists. George Bittner and Todd Crause at the University of Texas in Austin used polyethylene glycol to fuse nerve cells of flatworms together. Mr Bittner compared the method to melting two candles, sticking them together, and allowing them to cool. He is now testing the method in rats and other vertebrates. If he succeeds, he expects the method to be used in humans within five years. For the benefit of professional readers, the primary reference is Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences vol 87, p1471.
Alpha 1 Biomedicals, the company originally promoted in Anti Aging News (now Life Extension Report) has issued a further press release on the activities of its jointly owned subsidiary Viral Technologies Inc. Dated 6 March 1990, it detailed the clearance received for trials of a new AIDS vaccine, HGP-30. The vaccine works by targeting the protein P-17 that is common to all the different AIDS viruses. It is claimed that this protein doesn't mutate like other parts of the virus. The vaccine contains no live or dead virus components, so there is no chance its administration will contaminate people with the disease.
24 healthy HIV negative volunteers at medical centres in Los Angeles and San Francisco will receive escalating doses of HGP-30 and will be monitored for at least one year following the first injection.
Idea for Promotion of Immortalism
I have written previously of the benefits of direct investment in pharmaceutical companies.
I have recently received the annual report and accounts of The Bristol Myers Squib Corporation, Inc. It came in two lavishly produced books. The smaller of the two is termed Notice of 1990 Annual Meeting and Proxy Statement. Of interest to Immortalists is that fact that shareholders of this (and presumably every other American company) are able to send in proposals to be printed in the proxy statement and discussed at annual general meetings. Many of the proposals are routine, such as the re-appointment of the company's auditors and directors.
However some of the proposals appear frivolous, and often come from people with very little stock. For example, Mrs Evelyn Y. Davis of Washington holds 120 shares and requests that all the directors be re-elected annually instead of the stagger system that was recently adopted. This received two pages of print in the booklet, her reasons for the proposal, and the directors' reasons why it should not be adopted. Members of the Gilbert family, some of whom were dead(!), who hold 972 shares between them, requested something called cumulative voting which apparently a number of American companies have adopted. The directors complained that this system would give power to vociferous small groupings of shareholders controlling less than a majority interest, and so advised shareholders to reject the motion.
A holder of only 40 shares tabled a motion against animal research, which together with the directors' reply, filled eight pages of the book!
As far as I understand at present the shareholder has to attend the meeting personally to read out the statement. I do not know whether it is possible to appoint a proxy top do this. If it is, then people like Saul Kent may well think it worthwhile to get themselves appointed proxies of as many shares as they can find to propose motions such as:
RESOLVED : That the shareholders of Bristol Myers Squibb Company, assembled in annual meeting in person and by proxy, hereby request the Board of Directors to take the steps necessary to research a means of slowing, halting and reversing the basic processes of aging as a means to more swiftly rid the world of cancer and other degenerative diseases that affect the elderly.
or even
RESOLVED: That the shareholders ... etc ... steps necessary to support research into cryonic suspension so that people alive today can take advantage of the future discoveries of this company in the fields of medicine.
Depending on how many shares are owned by individual Immortalists, it may be possible for the elected spokesperson to present formidable support compared to the aforementioned before he even starts!
As far as I can understand, you can add as much waffle as you like to support the motion.
It is clear that as long as one of the people proposing the motion is present, it can be presented. A motion against involvement in South Africa was tabled by a page full of shareholders. After their names it said "... have informed the company that they, or any one of them, intend to present to the meeting the following motion..."
Stockholder proposals relating to Bristol Myers Squibb's 1991 Annual Meeting of Stockholders must be received by the company at its principal executive offices, 345, Park Avenue, New York, NY10154, FAO Corporate Secretary, no later than 15 November, 1990.
I would suspect that using company meetings as platforms by small shareholders for publicity will be a loophole that will be closed sooner or later, so if this idea attracts immortalists, it should be followed up sooner rather than later. It will state our case to people who have money and influence.
There was an interesting letter in Cryonics of April 1990. An unsigned letter from an opponent of capital punishment on page 21 suggested that people who were likely to commit pre-meditated murder had differences in brain chemistry to normal people.
It went on to say that such differences could be generated artificially during the upbringing of children. In particular it cited "failure of intimate physical affectionate bonding" between mother and infant, and "failure of intimate sexual affectionate relationships during adolescent and adult development" as being responsible for a violent and possibly murderous individual.
It is interesting to note in this context that both the United Kingdom and Germany have favoured rigorous and spartan education of children from an early age in single sex schools, and these countries engaged as major opponents in two world wars before the first half of the century was completed.
Another article was quoted that showed that in primitive cultures where there was low degrees of physical affection, and pre- marital coitus was punished, there was also an excess of violence over those where the converse applied.
Anyone interested in criminology will find this letter and its references of interest, and I would urge them to read it.
Of course there are instances where the law would regard killing as murder where on any rational basis it isn't. The concept of self defence, for example is not clear cut in law. Similarly in warfare there is always someone who starts it.
But nevertheless these ideas do bear looking at, and may once again show how the "selfish gene" will stop at nothing to reproduce itself. Ultimately it is going to be the action of this "selfish gene" that could turn out to be the biggest enemy of the immortalist.
Following that letter was an interesting article by Dr Steve Harris, that suggested that the authorities, such as those who persecuted Alcor, are merely automata acting without emotion on behalf of the state. He cited as example how ants will treat other ants that had been covered with a chemical given off by a rotting dead ant as though they were dead, even though they were alive and kicking.
He suggested some solutions based on solving the problem as an anthropological one rather than by direct conflict.
I must say that this ties in with what I and others have been saying about the professions, their charging structure, and their symbiosis with the legislature to keep costs artificially high.
Again, this article is well worth getting hold of if you are interested in this subject.
Alcor to Accept Non-Member Suspensions
Following the increased public interest in cryonic suspension, Alcor have bowed to the inevitable and worked out a procedure to accept non-member suspensions. The basic idea is that nothing should be done to prejudice the safety of the signed up membership, and indeed the proposer of the non-member suspension should be made to pass through a barrage of "Negative Selling" before being accepted. Everything that was suggested seemed very sensible to me.
Some readers may think that I have set attitudes that will never change. However those that have followed my writings since the earliest days will have seen a lot of mention of wills and my attempts to find a way to fund cryonic suspension through this means. After all, it is much more painless to write a will than fund cryonics by the accepted processes.
However readers cannot have failed to notice that I tend to seize upon any news item that shows up the professions in bad light. My failing regard for the integrity of the professions has gone hand in hand with a loss of faith in the professions to honour a will that is any way out of the ordinary. After all, making a will is an act of faith in the legal profession as a whole that it will be honoured. A professional system that earns its members fee income by "breaking" wills that someone has paid the profession very substantial sums in good faith to set up does not to me seem honest.
It is now my view that the only sensible way to leave one's affairs is with a nil estate. But as yet I am a long way off finding a way to do this without losing control of it or losing a great deal of money in the process.
May 1990
Rather than print the same old map of Cornwall every month, I though I'd have a change of logo to varied Cornish scenes. Cornwall could lay claim to being one of the first parts of the UK to be settled, as it is the first bit of land traders travelling by sea would have reached, coming around the French coast from their native lands. Mining would have been their reason to visit Cornwall, and this scene shows the partly restored ruins of a steam engine house at Levant, which was worked for copper from 1820-1920. Cornwall was once in the forefront of technology, with the development of steam power through the work of Richard Trevithick, and it also boasts the first house ever to be lit by gas, in the town of Redruth. It is possible that the unhurried lifestyle and relatively unpolluted environment may make the Duchy a haven for creative people in its future as well.
BSE Spreads to UK Cat Population
BSE, or "Mad Cow Disease" has been observed in a cat, dissected on post mortem in England. Most pet food manufacturers claim that they have removed offal from their products some years ago. This could indicate that the disease is now endemic in wild life that cats naturally hunt, or that the incubation period is longer than the self imposed ban. The authorities point out that this is one cat in a population of seven million, but it is yet to be seen whether this is the tip of an iceberg or just an isolated incident.
As the disease is caused by a "virion" or agent smaller than a virus, it may be extremely difficult to deal with. Nevertheless it would seem a matter of urgency to devise means of dealing with it. It is, as Mike Darwin mentioned in Cryonics some months back, a much more serious threat than AIDS. Yet there are almost daily a flood of news stories about developing treatments for AIDS.
I would also comment that diseases like this add fuel to the contention that this universe could not possibly have a benevolent creator. If someone deliberately set out to create a disease that would thwart cryonics, then I cannot think of a better design to use than BSE.
An Ideal Immortalist Investment
Sorry, I am not going to describe an investment product that exists, merely what I as an individual would like. Maybe there is someone out there who is willing and capable of taking on some of the ideas into a real product sometime in the future.
First, a bit of background. From an engineering point of view the most efficient process is one that has few stages. It is also known for example that copying deteriorates the information depending on the number of times a copy is made. It is a test of the fidelity of photocopiers to copy a sheet and then copy the copy and so on until the result is illegible. On this basis, therefore the number of stages an investment has to be handled, reduces its performance. The most efficient investment is direct ownership of stocks. The inefficiencies come in from the costs of buying and selling and taxation.
Of course you may feel that you can do better by paying someone to pick the stocks for you. Here then is one level of inefficiency - the chooser's wages come out of your profits, and you probably have to pay his taxes (sales tax, VAT etc.) and your own taxes on the money you have handed over to him.
You can go one further, and select a mutual fund. Here you are paying for someone to pick the investments, and also for someone to manage the fund.
You can go further still, and choose life insurance. This has all of the above plus an actuary to work out the risk and the risk itself to pay for, and someone to manage the whole thing as well as the fund manager. In additional life insurance pays very high finders fees to those who arrange it. All this money does not come out of thin air - it comes from your investment profits, or indeed your capital if the investment chosen for you don't do well.
As you can see, we now have an army of highly paid people each taking their cut from your profits. There is only one way you can win from this - that is if the choice of investment made for you is orders of magnitude better than you could do for yourself.
But even if this is so, you can cut out most of the steps by going for a mutual fund. (They are called unit trusts in the UK.)
There is, of course, one serious objection to this from the immortalist point of view. That is that ordinary holdings in any mutual fund go straight into the management of the legal professional who sorts out your estate. He and his colleagues representing other individuals, whom his colleagues in the legislature say have claim on your estate, will decide whether the will for which you have paid in good faith is sound. This is, as so often previously stated, not sound enough for the funding of cryonic suspension.
Mutual funds and indeed individual stocks can be held in joint names, so that when one partner perishes the holding becomes the property of the other. This has I believe been used for cryonics purposes, but events at Alcor have suggested that even this is open to abuse by the legal profession and bureaucrats, at least in the US. If a person becomes incompetent through illness, then his affairs can be taken over by someone else, and this person can then spend the money in these accounts in order to maintain the person over his last few days. Even some life insurance policies have been broken by such people, who are often officials more motivated by the fees they can extract themselves than any consideration of the patient's welfare. (Reference for this statement - Omni Longevity June 1989 Savage Guardians by William Sherman pages 40-45.)
It would be somewhat inconvenient to have a special agreement for each stock owned in a balanced portfolio. However a brokerage account is one where a stockbroker holds all the stocks to the owner's account. An ideal arrangement would be such a brokerage account in joint names with the following terms agreed by all parties concerned.
1. The account shall be in the joint names of (the proposer) hereinafter described as the Owner, and the Cryonics Institute, hereinafter described as Residual Beneficiary, and managed by stock brokers hereinafter called The Managers.
2. During his lifetime, the Owner only will have the power to add to or remove funds or securities from the account, or alter these terms.
3. The Residual Beneficiary may at any time ask for and receive from the managers a statement as to the funds available in the account.
4. Upon presentation of a Death Certificate for the Owner, or a certified copy thereof, the Residential Beneficiary will become the owner of the funds in the account, and be able to withdraw any or all of them at any time.
5. The Owner (and therefore his estate) guarantees that there will be sufficient funds in the rest of his estate to meet any death tax (currently termed "Inheritance Tax" in the UK) requirements, and guarantees to reimburse the managers for any expenses that they may incur upon his death in respect of government enquiries.
6. The Owner will undertake to report all transactions within the account subject to taxation to the tax authorities, and pay all taxes thereon.
7. The Managers will provide a letter signed by a Director or authorised representative that they will implement the terms of this agreement.
8. In the event that The Owner be declared bankrupt, medically incompetent to handle his affairs, or become the subject of litigation, he or his representatives or trustees shall have no control over the account until such time as the bankruptcy, incompetency or litigation is resolved. Should the Owner die before the situation is resolved, the account will pass to the Residual Beneficiary as hereinbefore provided.
(Overseas CI members would need a slightly different set of clauses to allow for taxation by their own government and to assure that they don't also get taxed by the US government.)
At the time of writing I am awaiting a response from my own US brokers as to whether they would agree to such terms attaching to a joint account. If any other reader of The Immortalist with a brokerage account is interested in doing the same, it would certainly be worthwhile for him to approach his broker and see what results can be achieved. Not all brokers are the same, and if one says no they won't necessarily all say no.
No doubt there are possibilities I may have left out with these proposals, and hopefully debate in the columns of The Immortalist could further improve these terms in the future.
Although some people may be able to do deals with other individuals or even members of their own families to their own advantage, I have found that the impersonalisation of stocks is the only way to get real profits.
If you put money into the business of someone you know and hope that if he does well you'll get some profits, the likely outcome is that any profit he has made he will see as the result of his own hard work and not your investment. Any suggestion that his hard work would have come to nothing without your investment will be met with the comment that he could just as easily have borrowed the money elsewhere, conveniently forgetting such things as interest or collateral. Indeed people who make a rule of never lending money to their friends may have a point if they need return on their funds.
Lending money to someone personally usually means GIVING them the interest, which is fine if you are willing to do this. If you have other ideas, then the transaction is likely to lead to a broken friendship.
The anthropic principle states that the coincidences in the universe that make life possible happened because we are here to observe them. Examples of these coincidences includes the fact that there is a planet in the narrow sphere around the sun at which the heat balance makes water liquid. Another is the fact that there exists within the periodic table of elements an element like carbon whose chemistry is sufficiently complex to make life possible. I also understand that the initial conditions at the Big Bang are critical for there to be any matter in the universe at all.
When cryonicists are revived, the universe will be observed by them because they are there and because the steps necessary for revival have taken place.
These steps involve an industrial base which includes nanotechnology and a greatly advanced chemical and pharmaceutical industry. It would be fair to say that these industries will have advanced beyond the expectations of professional investment analysts employed by mutual funds and insurance companies. Therefore the current prices of relevant stocks will not take into consideration these advances, and therefore are cheap relative to their levels at these future times in real terms.
Suppose you have invested with a view to growth over 100 years and with a foreknowledge of any great technological advance, think of the vast profits you could have made compared to those investing without this knowledge.
The point I am trying to make is that cryonicists have an advantage over other people. As time travellers they can only arrive in a future where certain things have happened, therefore if these things don't happen they will never arrive.
Therefore from the point of view of the revived cryonicist, he knows things for certain which give a substantial investment advantage.
It has been suggested (Longevity Report 21 Comments on International Cooperation by Alan Sinclair) that as growth over the past 80 years has averaged only 2.5% that cryonics funds should be invested very conservatively to yield this growth. There may be a case for such conservative investment, but even if only a small portion of the funds were invested in companies capable of giving what I am going to term Anthropic Growth this would be worthwhile. In the case of the Cryonics Institute, most suspension members should be able to provide a sum over the modest minimum funding required, and the surplus could be invested anthropically.
Leasehold profits for Immortalists
If you own your own house, selling the freehold to your suspension fund, with a 99 year lease to yourself at a nominal ground rent, say $10 per year, could be a wise move. When you die there'll still probably be some years to run on the lease, and these years can in themselves be a saleable asset. The legal costs of working all this out will be very high, but if cryonics societies and reanimation organisations collectively do the work on behalf of their members, then a standard document can be prepared.
An additional advantage accrues to people who seldom stay more than five years at the same address. Rather then renting, why not buy the house, sell the 99 year lease to your suspension fund, and then when you move sell the 94 year lease to the next person. You'll get nearly as much as the freehold price, yet each time you move you'll be building up a substantial portfolio of properties in your fund. As you'll probably be in suspension when the leases terminate, the fund will accumulate a number of valuable reversions.
(Note 1997 - since the above was written, the freedom for UK citizens to enter into binding contracts to lease properties for long periods for a single premium has been removed by the legal and political professions.)
In the April edition of Which? Way to Health page 44 it was suggested that the Japanese will soon start to market what is termed functional food. This food is marketed as medicine, ie with claims to help with curing disease, aid in immunity, and even reduce ageing.
One company has already introduced Fibe- mini, which contains water soluble dietary fibres. It sold 240 million bottles during its first year in Japan. Another product is a chewing gum that contains something to improve the calcium content of teeth, and cinnamon to aid digestion.
However the article suggests that the price of these foods may put some people f.
Marion Merrel Dow to Convert POMS to OTC.
Marion Merrel Dow Inc, the pharmaceutical conglomerate formed by the recent merger of Merrel Dow and Marion Laboratories, plans to convert two of its most widely sold medicines from prescription only to over the counter.
These are Carafate (through an agreement with Schering Plough) and Seldane.
Seldane is a non sedating antihistamine. Histamine release is an important mechanism of allergy, and as the world gets more stressful and more pollutants are added to the environment, more people are suffering from allergies. Undoubtedly the best way to deal with the situation is to reduce stress and keep away from polluted environments such as cities, but for those who can't or would prefer not to for other reasons an OTC anti-histamine may be safer than submitting to a barrage of invasive tests and possibly a (discredited by some) de-sensitisation procedure.
Carafate is also another product that should sell well amongst stressed customers. It is to treat ulcers. I have written before that it is curious to those that believe in a benevolent universe that the human body is designed to present distressing symptoms of gastric disturbance when the individual is stressed, which symptoms add to the stress and so on.
June 1990
Following on from last time when I showed (as a masthead picture in The Immortalist, not on Internet) a Cornish engine house, this month I show a drawing of the works. The Cornish were at the forefront of steam technology. The macro technology of steam power has a strange link with nanotechnology. Both technologies were greeted by writers as heralding the end of work!
More on Professional Qualifications
Following my coverage of Journal of the Megahealth Society's article on medical qualifications, I thought that readers may be interested in a similar article that appeared in New Scientist on 21 April 1990. Writer Jon Turney, who works for the Times Educational Supplement, says that perhaps Britain suffers from a severe shortage of professional physicists because it is too difficult to get a degree in the subject. This is also the view of Sir Sam Edwards, Cavendish Professor of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
His report to the University Grants Committee at the end of 1988 said that courses were too difficult for all but the brightest students to complete, and even then some of these only had a hazy understanding of the subject, and feeling of (unjustified) inferiority. The problem isn't the level of material, but the quantity crammed into the course.
Also, some students drop out after taking two years of the three year course. Therefore it is being suggested that physics is taught in two year sections. The first two lead to a general degree, the second a masters' and the third a doctorate. However, some ideas point the other way, to a four year first degree.
The article concludes by suggesting that no consensus or solution is in sight.
There has been a lot written about the so-called "greenhouse effect", and recently politicians have felt that there are votes to be had by introducing all sorts of regulations to counteract this, not to mention a greater control over the individual. These regulations will, of course, make everything more expensive, and a reduction in individuals' buying power also gives politicians more control.
However Roy Spencer and John Christy, of the Marshall Space Flight Center and University of Alabama respectively, write in Science (vol 247 p1588) that satellite measurements provide a more reliable guide to global temperature measurement than ground based instruments. Their data shows that during the 1980s two strong "El Niño" events produced a sharp warming, which was counteracted by a colder run of temperatures from 1984 to 1986.
However measurements made from space during the 1980s show that there has been no overall warming during the decade. The TIROS-N satellite measurements have produced monthly averages with variations of less than 0.011oC.
The headline in New Scientist read "Satellites search in vain for global warming." (7.4.90)
In a letter to the Financial Times, published on 7 June, Mr A. Doll- Steinberg comments that one can get as many scientists to reject evidence for a greenhouse threat as one can find to support it. He also mentioned that since the middle of the last century the increase in the human population would have accounted for an increase in carbon dioxide of the order of a billion tons. This never seems to be mentioned in alarmist calculations designed to get jobs, budget and salary increases for committees and quangos dealing with the subject. He suggests the reasons for this omission is that population growth is not part of the Western industrialised capitalist system. He also says that we know very little about the effect of the oceans on carbon dioxide equilibrium.
Omni of May 1990 carried a chilling article elucidating the threat hovering over the human species from viruses and virions. It outlined horror stories of how ruthless killer viruses eliminated African villages and were stopped - just. Yet the writer complains that governments were cutting back on funding for disease control. Once can only hope that the article was written before the current military cutbacks, and that now more funds will be available for this important civil defence.
The article also stressed the danger of travel in spreading such diseases, especially now that exotic holiday destinations are more widely marketed.
It even queries the building of townships in the American North East infringing on natural deer habitats. A deer-borne tick is claimed to be responsible for Lyme disease - a debilitating arthritic condition. As more and more areas of rain forest are disturbed, there is a constant risk of unleashing a doomsday bacteria upon the world.
The Mega Cities of the tropics are breeding grounds for new diseases, or mutations of current non lethal illnesses. Most mutations are harmless, but there only has to be one a billion that is not, and it could run like wild fire through such cities, and thence on to the rest of the world.
The Limited Liability Company was introduced in the late middle ages when investors were reluctant to put their entire life savings at risk in order to invest in companies.
With increasing litigation in our society with ever increasing complexity, there seems to be a case for a financial product that places an individual's assets safely out of harm's way. A trust such as I suggested in an earlier issue could well have value well beyond cryonic suspension.
Admittedly if the individual was sued he would be cut off from his assets, but this would happen anyway, so he has lost nothing. The great advantage would be that he would not be worth suing as it would be impossible to get at his assets by a lawsuit.
Of course there is the risk that the litigant might try and break the trust. This could be prevented by what I would term a "cluster trust". The analogy is with the cluster bomb or missile, that when detonated bursts into a number of small bombs. The cluster trust would be designed so that if attacked the assets would be automatically distributed in very small amounts to a large number of beneficiaries. It would then be very costly to re-assemble the assets again.
I can envision a scheme where say 100 suspension members set up a fund for the suspension of members who have made arrangements but have later suffered bankruptcy through litigation. Selection of members for benefit would be entirely at the discretion of the group, and they would just so happen to select only those members whose cluster trusts had "exploded" to make them the beneficiaries. What in fact would be happening is that the concentrated and therefore vulnerable fund is diffused so thinly that the law is powerless to mop it up, yet when the member dies it can be re-constituted to pay for the suspension.
As with many of my ideas, it would take someone more knowledgeable than I to actually make something practicable that would work, but they do indicate a principle - in this case of diffusing funds so much that confiscation would be virtually impossible.
A report in the Canadian Funeral Director details a growing practise in Tennessee mountain regions for people to hold their own funerals and be present thereat in late old age. However prediction of death can be hard - Mr Paul Blevins held his funeral in 1976, but lived on until 1987 when he was buried in a casket he made himself.
Recent coverage in Venturist Monthly News of a serialised interview with Robert Nelson reminds us of the Chatsworth Disaster, but similar events occur with monotonous regularity in society as a whole. Regular readers may recall the ordeal of a Mrs Gwyther whose husband's grave in Wales was disturbed in order to take further remains, which became the subject of a television programme. (Not in Internet version) Now, the Funeral Service Journal reports a similar event concerning the Louisville Crematory and Cemeteries Company. A 60 item indictment alleges that remains were unearthed so graves could be reused in their Eastern Cemetery, which records indicated was probably full in the early 1900s. It had room for 18,000 bodies under current industry standards, but 51,000 are now estimated to be buried there.
In Japan, such activity is being considered for government approval, where it can cost around $30,000 for a grave in Tokyo's cemeteries. It is being proposed that only 30 year leases are allowed on graves, after which time they are opened up and re-used.
Letter to Comments from Cornwall
Following my comment on wills and lack of faith in the legal profession, Mr Tim Freeman of Pennsylvania very kindly wrote in. This what he said:
In the May 1990 edition of The Immortalist you mention that wills are an unreliable way to fund cryonics, and that you would prefer to legally die with an empty estate. I believe this is possible (in the US at least) by using a living trust. A living trust is a separate legal entity you control to which you give all your assets. When you die, the assets owned by the trust become the property of the beneficiary specified in the trust without going through probate (the legal process in which many wills are broken). When you give your assets to the trust, you don't lose control of them because you control the trust while you are alive.
This is discussed in great detail in It's Easy to Avoid Probate by Barbara R. Stock, which may be available at your bookstore, and may be ordered by looking up the publisher in Books in Print. It can also be ordered from Loompanics Unlimited, PO Box 1197, Port Townsend, Washington 98368, USA, order number 73061, for $21.98 outside the US or $19.95 inside the US. Incidentally, the Loompanics catalogue is the most interesting book catalogue I have ever encountered.
Comment
Thank you very much for taking the trouble to mention It's Easy to Avoid Probate. Some years back I bought a copy of How to Avoid Probate (without a lawyer), and investigated its applicability to the UK situation. This book contains a number of legal forms and explanatory text. It is published by Crown Publishers Inc, 1, Park Avenue, New York, NY10016 at about $20 when I bought it. This company will supply by mail, but (in my case at least) require a lot of handling charges as well as postage and are not very quick at answering letters. That said, it is a big book for $20, and may cost much more now.
In response to my investigations, the legal correspondent of the Financial Times replied that in the UK judges would be likely to "set aside" any arrangement designed to avoid the laws of probate. Also, another article in The Financial Times said that trusts in the UK require two active trustees (ie no "successor trustees"), and that a trust of £50,000 or less would cost as much to set up and run as a small new foreign car to buy and run. As trusts have been used for tax planning in the past, (particularly avoidance of death taxes) there are now severe tax laws that penalise trusts, inhibiting growth of any assets maintained therein.
The UK Consumers' Association is very much against the laws about wills and probate in the UK, and I support their campaign to get them changed. However it will be a long struggle, as these laws form the mainstay of lawyers' income, and lawyers are over represented in the legislature. Most people only come up against the laws concerning dying when they are bereaved, and they are not in a fit state to start complaining about the system at that time.
July 1990
Cornish scenes - the church at St Keverne.
The closeness of religion and superstition amongst the Cornish possibly indicate that they fulfil a similar purpose in human psychology. The legends surrounding St Keverne don't put his character in line with that which religious people would expect of a Christian saint.
The reason why no metallic minerals are available on the Lizard - that peninsula forming the "heel" of Cornwall and the southernmost part of Britain - is said to be that the Saint put a curse on the land because of the impiety of his parishioners. He declared that "no metal would ring within the sound of his church's bells."
On another occasion, he was visited by St Just, who stole a chalice (vessel used for the service of Holy Communion). Discovering his loss just as St Just left, St Keverne threw boulders at him until he dropped his loot. This is said to explain the presence of rocks at Germoe, some miles distant, that geologists say have no business being there.
In reality, as the continents moved in geological time Cornwall was a very active region, and the land masses that form it came from different places, hence the rich and varied mineral structure of the duchy.
I sometimes get the feeling that if one could pick up the human species and shake it, the secret of immortality may well fall out of the results of previous research.
While Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw were mere children, events in the then Communist state of Hungary were taking place that will affect immortalism in the later 1990s and beyond. If these events had been uncovered by the movement earlier, possibly history may have been a little different.
At the time of the Suez crisis in 1956, the Hungarian pharmaceutical company organised an investigation of local plants in search of undiscovered chemicals. On analyzing vinca minor they discovered the chemical they called vincamine, which could be used to treat mental decline with some success.
By the early 1960s, just as man was beginning to probe into space, they were marketing a drug called DevincanTM which was successful but for several unwanted side effects. Despite this, the treatment is still available in France, Spain and Korea.
In 1968, Dr Cs. Lorincz found out how to make an artifi