Cryonics Institute -- What's New In The World Of Cryonics

The old HSSV-2 cryostat was removed from service on December 4, 2004 -- with the two patients it contained moved to one of our new HSSV-6 cryostats. Click on this link: photographic essay to see a "photographic essay" of the move.

The Cryonics Institute has received the mother of French cryonicist Yvan Bozzonetti as our 68th patient. Yvan was informed by his funeral director that cryonics is illegal in France and that ice is "strictly forbidden". So the ice that Yvan had packed around his mother's head was removed and she was stored at refrigerator temperature by the funeral director. After a 3-day struggle with French authorities his mother was released to the British funeral director Barry Albin, who tranported her to the UK where she was perfused before shipment to Michigan.

Yvan feels that the 3-day ischemia at refrigerator temperature suffered by his mother only gives her a "very slim chance", but evidently feels that it is still a chance that should be taken.

The American Cryonics Society has cryopreserved a Florida man who died of cancer using the services of the Florida cryopreservation research firm S-A. The man has become the 67th patient at the Cryonics Institute through a storage agreement with ACS. Although the man was under nursing care in his home, no one was expecting the deanimation to come so quickly -- not S-A, the doctors and certainly not the man himself, who was quite lucid before his sudden deterioration. Nurses gave CPR, applied ice and called S-A, which was soon on the scene.

S-A was expecting this man to deanimate about a year ago, but he recovered. Again, just before hurricane Ivan they prepared for his deanimation, but he recovered again. They had begun to prepare two weeks ago, but it had appeared that history was repeating itself yet again. It didn't.

CI's 66th patient was a woman in her 60s suffering from Multiple Sclerosis and after being hospitalized apparently choked and was declared brain-dead. An autopsy was never performed so although the cause of brain-death was somehow related to the MS, precise details are lacking. The family decided to have her cryopreserved and we were contacted. The patient was heparinized, cooled-down, removed from life-support and transported to our facility from the hospital.

CI's 65th patient was a "last-minute" case which demonstrated many of the things that can go wrong for people who sign-up at the last minute. We were initially contacted about 8pm Eastern Standard Time and the patient deanimated at about 4am EST the next morning.

The patient was a cancer victim living in the Los Angeles area. Both her son and brother were intent on having her cryopreserved, but did not have much familiarity with cryonics. They chose a funeral home and hospital well before the time they contacted us. They were unaware that we use cryoprotectants, but agreed to a credit card charge for us to express-courier our perfusate to their funeral home.

We will not accept a full cryopreservation fee on a credit card and it takes the better part of a day to wire funds or express-courier a cashier's check. Too late we learned that the funeral home refused to do the perfusion, refused to allow anyone else to do a perfusion on their premises and objected to having two boxes of perfusate couriered to their address.

Our funeral directors' network cannot be utilized unless there is a commitment that a paid-up Member is at immediate risk. Without cash-in-hand we cannot be certain that a last-minute case will not result in a last-minute change-of-mind, so we had to find another funeral director ourside of our usual network.

We contacted Russell Cheney, who was in Florida. Russell has been a local response coordinator for Alcor in the Los Angeles area. In addition to his recommendation of a funeral director Russell gave us a list of phone numbers for Alcor volunteers in the LA area. We were reluctant to contact these people, thinking that there might be "political" ramifications to circumventing official Alcor approval.

As the general public learns more about cryonics we hope they also get the message that cryonics arrangements are not to be made while on a deathbed. Unfortunately, there are also many people who know a great deal about cryonics who think that last-minute arrangements are preferable for economic or other reasons. Such people are making a big mistake.

More details on the 65th patient can be found in the upcoming issue of THE IMMORTALIST.

For a status report on the cryostats (storage units for holding our human patients in liquid nitrogen), see:

CI's 64th Patient deanimated shortly after midnight on Sunday morning. The event caught too many people by surprise. Knowing he had cancer, the Member's paperwork and funding were in order. But he was living at home and apparently getting better thanks to his new Erbitux treatments.

His deterioration was very sudden -- he was in the hospital only about a day before his deanimation. The hospital staff were not informed of his cryonics arrangements, nor were many in his family, although his wife had signed a next-of-kin form. The funeral director had been forewarned and responded fairly rapidly. CI only learned of the deanimation from the funeral director.

The Patient's family should have understood the importance of contacting CI immediately when the Member went to the hospital, the hospital staff should have been informed and persons willing to stand by to render immediate CPS should have been found. My commitment as CI President is that CI Members/Patients will benefit as a result of my being President. I am not proud of my role in this case. Complacency about apparently recovered cancer patients can be hazardous. I have resolved to have more personal discussions with CI Members who are cancer patients, their family and their funeral directors.

A CI Member suffered a heart attack at home on Monday. He was not discovered and pronounced dead until several hours later. He was refrigerated at the morgue and soon released to one of our funeral directors who held him at water-ice temperature for over a day while it was determined whether financing was available to cryopreserve. Then he was cooled in dry ice for at least another day.

In the hope of reducing the number of losses of cryonicists living alone we have been testing two alarm systems with Robert Ettinger and plan soon to test a third. We will be reporting on my investigations in a forthcoming issue of THE IMMORTALIST.

An elderly CI Member who died of coronary artery disease at the end of March was cremated by a cousin who had signed a Consent/Release form for cryonic suspension. Because the Member was cremated rather than cryopreserved, the cousin will inherit the money that would have gone for cryopreservation. More details can be found in the upcoming issue of THE IMMORTALIST.

Late afternoon on Tuesday, April 6th the Cryonics Institute received ten American Cryonics Society patients from CryoSpan, along with some pets. CryoSpan has been attempting to close-down operations for several years and with this move will finally be able to do so. When I was Secretary of CryoCare I negotiated the move of the two CryoCare patients from CryoSpan to Alcor, so I have been very involved in helping CryoSpan to safely ensure the long-term care of all of its patients. CryoSpan can now safely cease operations.

Twenty-four hours after receiving the CryoSpan patients the Cryonics Institute received another patient. In this case the patient was the wife of a man for whom cryonics was an afterthought. His wife was cooled in a hospital after dying of cancer and stored at refrigeration temperature while her husband sought information about cryonics services. After he learned of us, we sent perfusate and the wife was perfused by a funeral director, but the perfusion was understandably poor. The wife was then stored on dry ice for nearly a month while the husband worked to raise the funds.

The Cryonics Institute does not solicit and emphatically discourages this kind of cryonics. We seek to cryopreserve Members who have given forethought to the lifesaving potentials of cryonics and who arrange for cardiopulmonary support and rapid cooldown soon after legal death has been pronounced. Unfortunately, the association of cryonics with death rather than with medicine encourages the idea that cryonics arrangements are made after legal death. Nonetheless, I believe that this man's wife has a chance at future life as a result of her cryopreservation which she would not have were she buried or cremated.

With the CryoSpan patients plus the patient just described, the Cryonics Institute patient count now stands at 62. John Bull, Editor of THE IMMORTALIST magazine, was present for the loading of the CryoSpan patients in California and for the unloading & transfer to cryostats in Michigan. There will be a detailed description and photographs of this historic move in the next issue of THE IMMORTALIST.

THE IMMORTALIST is published by The Immortalist Society, not the Cryonics Institute. CI Members must join The Immortalist Society/subscribe in order to receive the magazine.

THE IMMORTALIST is sent to both Associate and Full Members of the Immortalist Society. Full Membership is US$75 with postage paid anywhere in the world. Associate Membership is US$25 in the United States and higher rates (for postage) outside the United States (surface or air mail). For more details on Membership -- or to buy a Membership online through PayPal -- see the website of The Immortalist Society

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Cryonics Institute will be held Sunday, September 19, 2004 at 2pm at the main facility, 24355 Sorrentino Court, Clinton Township, Michigan 48035. The Annual General Meeting of The Immortalist Society will immediately follow the AGM of CI on the same Sunday. Meetings generally last most of the afternoon.

For driving directions, use MapQuest or send e-mail to the CI Facility. or phone 1-586-791-5961. The meetings are open to the general public, but we do request that we be informed ahead of time if you wish to attend (by the above e-mail address, phone number or mailing address).

Meetings offer a great opportunity to see the facility, to meet other members, to get a sense of the status of the Cryonics Institute and to see Officers, Directors & staff.

> The Immortalist Society Can Now Accept Credit Cards for Research Donations

The Immortalist Society can now accept credit card payment. Those wishing to donate to the cryonics research being conducted by Dr. Yuri Pichugin can now do so directly from their Visa, MasterCard or American Express card. The Immortalist Society is a 501(c)3 organization, meaning that it is charitable and that donations made to the charitable organization are tax-deductable in the United States. If your credit card gives frequent flier miles or similar benefits, you can enjoy those benefits while advancing cryonics research with a donation that you can deduct from your American income tax. (Foreign contributions are also very welcome, but cannot be given tax exemption, unfortunately.)

Dr. Pichugin believes that CI will be able to begin offering vitrification to members within a few months, but there is still research to be done in application & testing. And of course research will continue for further improvement thereafter. More explicit reporting on these developments will be made in the near future.

Those wishing to make a tax-deductable (USA) credit card donation to the Research Fund fund can do so by phoning the Cryonics Institute at (586) 791-5961 and giving your credit card or send e-mail to the: Immortalist Society. (E-mail is NOT secure and it is NOT recommended that credit card numbers be included in an e-mail message.) You can even request that a regular monthly donation of some specified amount be charged to your credit card. Please take advantage of this opportunity to improve the quality of cryopreservation for yourself, your loved ones and for your fellow aspirants to much more life in the future.

The Cryonics Institute has its 51st human whole body patient, a California cancer victim. Washout and perfusion were done at a California mortuary

The Cryonics Institute has reached an agreement with the Michigan Department Labor & Economic Growth (DLEG) Bureau of Commercial Services to be licensed as a cemetery. The Cease and Desist orders issued by CIS against CI have been withdrawn.

Concerning the agreement with DLEG, CI agreed to be licensed as a cemetery without waiving its claims and objections regarding the lack of jurisdiction of DLEG or the Cemetery Commission over CI. CI's purpose is to attempt to save lives, not to store dead bodies. CIS has acknowledged the distinctive nature of cryonics.

CI can no longer perfuse patients at the CI facility. All perfusions done in the state of Michigan must be performed at the premises of a licensed funeral director -- although the protocol and perfusates are still those intended for cryopreservation, and can be modified when we are ready to implement vitrification. Because funeral directors already perform our perfusions under our direction (and will continue to do so under our agreement), we believe that we can operate and continue to improve our protocols at the premises of a funeral director.

The terms of the licensure also require the creation of an Endowment Care Trust Fund for patient care -- amounting to $4,000 per patient. The interest from this fund can be used for patient maintenance and maintenance of CI's facility. The existence of a separate fund is required for all cemeteries, and is intended to provide an extra assurance that funds will be available to maintain our patients. CI will continue to hold more than this amount for patients outside of the Trust Fund in addition to the minimum requirements of DLEG.

While CI has not sought out regulation, there are advantages to this result. By reaching an agreement that recognizes the many differences between CI and cemeteries, we believe that we have achieved a "benign regulation" that is intended only to provide additional protection to our members, and therefore have avoided the problems of hostile regulation. Also, there are people who feel that their consumer's rights are being safeguarded when they deal with a regulated industry, so such people may be more comfortable about making cryonics arrangements with CI.

I regret that our members have been in the dark about this situation for so long, but our silence was necessary due to the legal sensitivity of the negotiations. I look forward to not only resuming operations with advancing technology & service -- but to resuming efforts to establish open dialog with the membership.

Beginning Monday, October 27th, 2003, the Cryonics Institute will be able to accept credit card payments by any of the three major credit cards -- Visa, Mastercard, or American Express.

This means that members can now pay dues by credit card.

And make easy-to-pay donations to CI as well.

CI will also accept the use of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to pay for DNA and tissue storage services.

CI continues to offer members the option of paying by cash or check, or through Paypal at www.paypal.com.

We hope the new option of paying by credit card will make the process of joining and/or donating to CI simpler and more popular.

The Cryonics Institute held its most recent Annual Meeting on Sunday, September 2003. The meeting marked a significant transition in CI affairs, as the founder of the company, CI President and 'father of cryonics' Robert Ettinger, stepped down from his post after leading the organization from its inception.

Ettinger will not be retiring from his duties at CI entirely, however, but was elected by the membership to the post of Vice President. In that position, and continuing as a CI Director, Ettinger is expected to advise and assist the newly elected President in his duties during the period of transition.

Newly elected to the post of President of CI was CI Director and well-known cryonics activist Benjamin Best. Best, a former President of CryoCare, has also served as President of the Cryonics Society of Canada, as President of the Institute for Neural Cryobiology, and as Treasurer for the Toronto chapter of Mensa.

A computer programmer by profession, Best has specialized in database applications for the financial and banking industries. As an author, lecturer, and traveller, Best has been a CI member for several years, has spoken and written on behalf of cryonics in North America and internationally, and has attended most major American and international cryonics conferences since the late 1980's. He is widely regarded as one of the most technically knowledgeable and highly respected figures in the cryonics community.

Though currently a Toronto resident and Canadian citizen, Best will remain near the CI facility in Michigan for the next several weeks in order to better familiarize himself with its operations. He expects to relocate to the area in the very near future, so as to work more effectively with CI in its day-to-day functions.

In other developments, CI Director Connie Ettinger, and CI Director and Treasurer Pat Heller, were re-elected to their posts. CI Director Jack Nixon stepped down from his post, and his seat as Director was filled by a British member, Sussex resident and Cryonics Europe officer Alan Sinclair.

The Immortalist Society also met and made administrative changes. IS President Robert Ettinger again exchanged his post from President of the IS to Vice-President of that organization, and Vice-President York Porter assumed a new role as IS President. Ettinger and Porter, as well as Treasurer John Besancon and Secretary Royse Brown were re-elected as Directors. Besancon and Brown will continue to hold their current officer positions. Also elected to the post of Director of the Immortalist Society was Immortalist magazine editor John Bull.

In addition, former CI Director Jack Nixon was elected the first member of CI's recently created Advisory Board.

The Cryonics Institute received its 49th and 50th human patients early this June. Both were emergency sign-ups -- patients who were not members prior to CI being contacting to arrange suspensions.

Although again CI was able to pull things together on short notice, we must emphasize that this is usually not possible, and never ideal. To ensure a safer and better suspension, every effort should be made to sign up and get all arrangements in place long before the emergency strikes.

In these particular cases, it helped that key people in the families were already familiar with cryonics and CI. Also, CI had especially good hospital cooperation in one case.

Dr. Yuri Pichugin was in attendance at one perfusion; another was performed locally by a funeral director and assisting professionals following CI instructions.

During recent discussions, the directors of the Cryonics Institute voted to give Option Two members full voting rights, in cases where those members have paid dues for at least three years and have fully executed and funded suspension contracts.

In its second case this February, the Cryonics Institute received its 47th patient, and the first one involving a collaboration with Suspended Animation Inc. The case was another death-bed membership and barely under the wire. SAI had people at the hospital, in Florida, for a day or two before death.

Best-selling novelist James Halperin has generously donated 100 copies of his novel, THE FIRST IMMORTAL, which CI will use as bonuses for new Option One members, and for those who make donations to the CI Research Fund either through the Immortalist Society or through the Cryonics Institute.

The Cryonics Institute received its 46th human whole body patient, one of our most senior members, who died of a combination of health problems. The member was washed out and perfused by a local mortician who had been previously trained, equipped, and supplied. The member died under hospice care, with good cooperation from all involved.

As reported in the current issue of The Immortalist, Dr. Yuri Pichugin has demonstrated the vitrifiability of new cryoprotectants with the potential to allow vitrification of CI's whole-body patients, without extra-fast cooling or warming, and without the need for new types of storage units at higher temperatures.

We are hoping for full evaluation of results later this year with whole animal brains and also with human cadavers obtained from a mortuary college.

Meanwhile, we have a very recent update from researchers at 21st Century Medicine (which advises and supplies Alcor) on their work with rabbit kidneys.

21CM can now load and unload rabbit kidneys with a "vitrifiable concentration" of cryoprotectant without impairing viability of the kidneys. However, they have not yet recovered any kidneys from lower than - 50 C, so they cannot yet report success with vitrified rabbit kidneys. They make no claims about brains.

Alcor publications sometimes convey the impression that their neuro patients are "vitrified" -- but this is only an assumption, with no actual evaluation of results to date with any animal brain, so far as we know.

CI has had four new patients in about the last four months, bringing the total to 45 human whole body patients. The current issue of The Immortalist carries an account (also available online) by CI Director Ben Best of the 43rd patient, who died in Toronto. Ben, Gary Tripp, Christine Gaspar, and others in Toronto were of great help.

New Scientist, the leading science magazine among Britons and English-speaking Europeans, is offering its subscribers a prize, as Reuters puts it, "to die for": a fully paid cryonic suspension.

The decision by New Scientist to offer the prize is being hailed in various quarters as yet another indication of the increasing scientific and social acceptability of cryonics.

And very interested readers can not only subscribe, but take a free tour through the CI web site, and learn just why the prize "to die for" is not only the gift of a lifetime, but the gift of life.

The Presidents, CEOs and top officials of the Cryonics Institute, the American Cryonics Society, Suspended Animation Inc., and Alcor met from the 23rd through the 25th of September to discuss the future of the cryonics industry and the cryonics movement, and to work together to provide a higher and more open level of care to the members of all the organizations in attendance.

A feature article in The Immortalist describing the discussions and agreements resulting from the historic conference can be read online by clicking on CryoSummit article.

Recently it was reported that legendary Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams had been placed in cryonic suspension.

To help journalists researching for information about cryonics as it relates to this case, and to help people who may be visiting our site for the first time because of the interest generated by the Ted Williams story, we'd like to provide brief replies to a few of the most-asked questions or misunderstandings about this case that we have received. Please click here to view a brief FAQ relating to the Ted Williams case.

After further investigation and experimental study, CI has shortened its dry ice cool-down phase for patients to two days. It is expected that this will result in improved patient conditions and care.

Dr. Yuri Pichugin, CI's Director of Research, is now on a combined business/vacation trip to the Ukraine and Russian Republic. Among other items on his agenda, Dr. Pichugin expects to be conferring and working with brain scientists and cryobiologists on experiments in their areas of expertise and utilizing available equipment. Dr. Pichugin will be returning about the mddle of August.

After careful investigations, experiments, and comparisons by Dr. Yuri Pichugin, CI's Director of Research, the Cryonics Institute is changing the composition of the solution used for washout and for the substrate of our perfusate.

CI's cooperating funeral directors and others, in the US and abroad, will be informed of the change, and in appropriate cases the solutions they have will be replaced as soon as possible.

The exact composition of the new solutions, and experimental data relating to their adoption, is available to the public on our web site's Research section, and can be seen by clicking here.

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For the past few years now, more people have been joining the Cryonics Institute than any other cryonics organization, and they've been joining in record numbers. CI membership has more than doubled since 1999, and we now have more than 400 members, which means that roughly four out of every ten people in the world signed up for cryonic suspension are CI members.

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