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Cryopreservation Page 3 2nd quarter 2010 • Volume 31:2 funding Your Cryopreservation page 3 Death of Robert Prehoda Page 7 Member Profile: Mark Plus page 8 Non-existence ISSN 1054-4305 is Hard to Do page 14 $9.95 Improve Your Odds of a Good Cryopreservation You have your cryonics funding and contracts in place but have you considered other steps you can take to prevent problems down the road? Keep Alcor up-to-date about personal and medical changes. Update your Alcor paperwork to reflect your current wishes. Execute a cryonics-friendly Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care. Wear your bracelet and talk to your friends and family about your desire to be cryopreserved. Ask your relatives to sign Affidavits stating that they will not interfere with your cryopreservation. Attend local cryonics meetings or start a local group yourself. Contribute to Alcor’s operations and research. Contact Alcor (1-877-462-5267) and let us know how we can assist you. Alcor Life Extension Foundation is on Connect with Alcor members and supporters on our official Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/alcor.life.extension.foundation Become a fan and encourage interested friends, family members, and colleagues to support us too. 2ND QUARTER 2010 • VOLUME 31:2 2nd quarter 2010 • Volume 31:2 Contents COVER STORY: PAGE 3 funding Your Cryopreservation Without bequests and page 3 donations Alcor’s revenue falls 11 Book Review: The short of covering its operating Rational Optimist: How expenses. This means that Prosperity Evolves Alcor should further cut costs Former Alcor President or increase revenue. Alcor Steve Bridge reviews Matt Director Ralph Merkle presents Ridley’s optimist tract The Death of Rational Optimist: How Robert Prehoda fourteen strategies to raise Page 7 more revenue with a special Prosperity Evolves. Member Profile: ISSN 1054-4305 Mark Plus focus on how to re-structure page 8 Alcor’s cryopreservation 20 Mike Perry on David $9.95 Non-existence Benatar’s Antinatalism is Hard to Do funding mechanisms. page 14 Mike Perry reviews David Benatar’s Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence and 7 Death of Robert Prehoda offers his own perspective Mike Perry on why life is worth A visionary advocate of depressed metabolism research has starting. passed away. 23 Membership Report The state of Alcor 8 Member Profile: Mark Plus membership at the Chana de Wolf end of March 2010. Mark Plus is one of Alcor’s most committed and outspoken members. Mark Plus coined the term”Singularitarian” but has 24 Tech News evolved in a more skeptical direction in later years. Tech News editor Mike Perry reports on break- 14 Non-existence is Hard to Do throughs on memory Aschwin de Wolf chips, low-cost prediction Cryonics editor Aschwin de Wolf takes on the pessimists in an of Alzheimer’s, full face extensive review of contemporary philosophical pessimism transplants, and a and antinatalism and learns something about the limited landmark achievement in appeal of cryonics while doing it. synthetic biology. www.alcor.org Cryonics/Second Quarter 2010 1 FROM THE EDITOR Editorial Board ne of the most popular talking points about cryonics is its cost. Advocates of Jennifer Chapman cryonics argue that if cryonics is funded through life insurance, making cryonics Aschwin de Wolf Oarrangements should be within reach for most people in the United States. Alcor Ralph Merkle wisely does not permit third party pay-as-you-go funding but this means that the organiza- tion needs to give careful thought to the (projected) costs of running a cryonics organiza- Editor tion, providing cryonics services, maintenance and resuscitation. In the 4th quarter 2009 issue of the magazine, Charles Platt opened a discussion about the challenge of setting Aschwin de Wolf realistic cryopreservation minimums for members that will not need these services for many years to come. Art Director In this issue of Cr yonics, Alcor Director and nanotechnology researcher Ralph Merkle Jill Grasse looks this problem straight in the face and identifies no fewer than 14 specific strategies to close the gap between Alcor’s income and operating expenses. One of the interesting themes Contributing Writers in Merkle’s contribution is that Alcor is not faced with a simplistic choice between aban- Ralph C. Merkle, Ph.D. doning grandfathering (the practice of honoring the cryopreservation minimum that was in Steven Bridge place when the person signed up) and carrying on business as usual. There are multiple R. Michael Perry, Ph.D. solutions to ensure that Alcor can charge realistic and future-oriented fees for its services Aschwin de Wolf without leaving long-time members, and those with limited means, behind. Chana de Wolf It is clear that Alcor will need to make important decisions about its revenues and costs ________________________________ to remain a robust and credible organization. One of the most important requirements to make such decisions is to present members with up-to-date information about Alcor’s Copyright 2010 operating expenses and the cost of cryopreservation. Updating this information will provide by Alcor Life Extension Foundation a useful picture of how Alcor’s technical and administrative costs have evolved since its All rights reserved. inception. Reproduction, in whole or part, without Alcor has a long history of presenting an optimistic perspective about the future of permission is prohibited. technology and mankind. In this issue Mike Perry and I take a critical look at the recent stream of books that advocate philosophical pessimism and antinatalism (the view that pro- Cr yonics Magazine is published quarterly. creation should be discouraged because coming into existence is always a harm). We are not persuaded, but it is important to follow these debates because the topics that antinatalists To subscribe: call 480.905.1906 x101 discuss feature prominently in bioethical discussions about cryonics and transhumanism as ________________________________ well. Antinatalist writings may also hold important clues to the reasons why so few people make cryonics arrangements. Not among the pessimists is Matt Ridley, whose new book The Rational Optimist is Address correspondence to: reviewed by former Alcor President Steve Bridge. Cryonicists do not necessarily believe that Cr yonics Magazine “in the long run, we are all dead,” but human history as we know it has seen recurring periods 7895 East Acoma Drive, Suite 110 of unrest and decline. The challenge for existing cryonics organizations is to persist through Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 such great upheavals and transformations. Phone: 480.905.1906 Mark Plus is a long-time Alcor member and vocal cryonics advocate. It was about time Toll free: 877.462.5267 that our magazine approached Mark for a member profile to talk about cryonics and related Fax: 480.922.9027 topics. Alcor keeps spreading the word! In June 2010 Alcor created its official Facebook page Letters to the Editor welcome: at: http://www.facebook.com/alcor.life.extension.foundation [email protected] If you have not already done so, please join our page and encourage others to do so as well. The Alcor Facebook page is an important tool to connect members and to generate Advertising inquiries: support outside of our own membership. 480.905.1906 x113 [email protected] Aschwin de Wolf ISSN: 1054-4305 Visit us on the web at www.alcor.org To request a printed copy of this Cryonics issue, Alcor News Blog go to www.magcloud.com. http://www.alcor.org/blog/ 2 Cryonics/Second Quarter 2010 www.alcor.org Funding Your Cryopreservation By Ralph C. Merkle Introduction The Problem marginal costs, not the fully loaded costs of Alcor is really two organizations. One Simply put, when members join Alcor running Alcor and (b) we usually charge a Alcor takes care of cryopreserved patients they agree to pay today’s minimum funding. lower “grandfathered” price which is well and is funded by the Patient Care Trust Decades later, when they are cryopreserved, below even that. (PCT). This Alcor has regular and pre- Alcor has to pay the inflated future costs – Figures 1 and 2 (prepared by Robert A. dictable expenses (the monthly costs of which often exceed what the member (or the Freitas Jr. from Alcor’s published financial liquid nitrogen, rent, caretaker salaries and member’s life insurance) pays to Alcor and is data and records of cryopreservations) the like) and a regular funding source (the usually well below the cryopreservation provides a more quantitative perspective PCT). When new patients are cryopreserved, minimums in force at the time. And the about what it has historically cost Alcor to the PCT gets a fairly predictable infusion of minimums are – well, minimums. They let us cryopreserve patients. funds to deal with the resulting expenses pay the marginal costs of the procedure, but Fig. 1 shows that over the last 2 (although grandfathered members pay less don’t pay for the overhead of running an decades, total Alcor expenses per new cryo- to the PCT). The primary concern is organization. This problem has been noted insuring that the PCT has acceptable long for as long as I can remember, most recently term growth – sufficient to keep the patients in an article in Cr yonics [2009-4] by Charles cryopreserved and to have an annual growth Platt. that modestly exceeds inflation. This Alcor A member who signed up for neurop- seems to be doing well. reservation in 1995 needed a $50,000 life The other Alcor cryopreserves patients insurance policy. The minimum for neurop- as needed, publishes a magazine, deals with reservation today, 15 years later, is $80,000 – periodic legal problems and legislative issues an increase of 60%. That’s an annual rate of (both of which can cost quite a bit), increase of a little over 3%, somewhat above Fig.
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