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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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Didn’t they eventually have to scoop up a decomposed human as bio-goop sludge from the bottom of one of the earliest cryopreservation capsules?

A lot of people died attempting to fly before we figured out how to do it.

The earliest version of a lot of things didn't work /shrug.

Most of the early cryo-patients didn't survive, the most notable incident being the Chatsworth disaster.

Cryonics has learned from those mistakes. In particular, cryonic orgs now absolutely refuse to preserve a patient unless he has already provided enough money to cover both his preservation and his upkeep, in perpetuity. This is important, because most cryonics failures happened partly or wholly due to financial problems.

From "Suspension Failures: Lessons from the Early Years", first published in Cryonics, February 1992:

One important lesson to be drawn from this tale of woe is that cryonic suspensions should only be maintained by those who have a strong personal interest in being cryopreserved themselves and have made arrangements. This includes the financial backers as well as those in charge of daily care. Those who are personally committed generally have superior judgment and realize the advisability of the neuro option (head-only preservation) in cases where funds are limited. Such people will fight hard to maintain even someone they hardly knew, who is not a relative, as happened at Alcor during the Dora Kent crisis for instance. They are not afraid to take measures others squeamishly shun, when a patient’s survival is at stake. Neuroconversions carried out by such people have saved several patients whose funding ran out [28]. Not one of the many suspension failures was a neuro.

Of seventeen documented freezings through 1973, all but one ended in failure, while maybe five or six later cases, some of them privately maintained, were later terminated (or were continued under questionable circumstances, such as attempted permafrost interment). In most of these cases, finances were a factor.

And from "Don’t Ask, But Do Tell" by Mike Darwin:

Your statement “(CSNY) underestimated the costs associated with maintaining the leaky Cryo-care capsules (sound familiar?)” is incorrect. The estimates for the cost of cryopreservation presented to the public ranged from $8,500 posited by Bob Ettinger in THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY in 1964 to the $10,000 widely quoted by the media as being the cost of indefinite cryopreservation at both CSC and CSNY during the period from1969 to 1972. Of that $10,000 no less than $8,000 was to be invested for long-term care. $8,000.00 in 1969 had about the same buying power as $44,561.80 in 2006, or roughly twice what CI currently budgets for long-term storage for Option One Members ($23,000 per patient). The problem was that this money was never set aside, and indeed never existed in the first place. What’s more, with the exception of Paul Hurst, Sr. (and later Herman Greenberg), CSNY was not consistently paid, or in the case of Steven Mandell, paid at all. Steven’s life insurance was applied for after he was already (terminally) ill and did not pay out. Pauline Mandell never paid Cryo-Span for the CC dewar, the charges for “encapsulating” Steven, or for liquid nitrogen or facility floor space (rent). The $4,500 for the CC dewar, the $1,100 for the Sergeant-Welch vacuum pumps, and the costs of welding, transportation, and miscellaneous hardware were paid for by Curtis Henderson.

Didn’t they eventually have to scoop up a decomposed human as bio-goop sludge from the bottom of one of the earliest cryopreservation capsules?

You probably mean Chatsworth scandal, this was indeed one of more embarrassing failures of early cryonics.

Normie introduction

Cryonicist-transhumanist introduction

"The stench near the crypt is disarming, strips away all defenses, spins the stomach into a thousand dizzying somersaults."

If the improbable case anyone is interested in in-depth analysis what went wrong with cryonics, see "Cryonics: An Historical Failure Analysis" series.

When the long awaited ‗freezing‘ of the first man took place on 12 January, 1967, the man in charge was Robert F. Nelson, aka Frank Bucelli, a Santa Monica TV repairman. Bucelli was much more than a TV repairman; he was a convicted felon with a long criminal record beginning in his youth; including violent offenses such as assault and battery as well as numerous charges, and several convictions for fraud and theft.

Yes, freezing people is not easy.

I'm not sure, but this shouldn't be an issue with modern preservation techniques.

Modern preservations techniques are virtually the same as they were back then; build a human-sized thermos, fill it with liquid nitrogen, stick the patient inside, and occasionally top it off with liquid nitrogen to keep it full as it boils off. The biggest difference is that they now pump a patient full of cryoprotectants to prevent freezing damage from ice crystals, a process called vitrification.

The big changes that were instituted as a result of the early disasters were institutional, not technological. Cryonics companies will refuse to touch you until you have paid them cold, hard cash, or given them ownership of a life insurance policy with a reputable life insurance company. Patients are stored upside-down so that their heads are protected longest in the event of liquid nitrogen boil-off. Cryonics orgs are prepared to convert their whole-body patients into neuros if that is the only way to keep them suspended.

These are all bitter lessons that had to be learned the hard way. Family members would arrange to cryopreserve their relatives, then lose interest in paying for their upkeep as the grief faded. Patients used to be stored upright for optics reasons. Patients that could have been saved were never converted to neuro, usually because of family objections.

It’s not about preservation techniques, it’s about organizational continuity and goal rigidity. Unless the freezing capsules are buried in the Antarctic permafrost, they aren’t passively safe for the occupants and cryopreservation must be actively maintained.

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