The Alcor Life Extension Foundation, most often referred to as Alcor, is a Scottsdale, Arizona, USA-based nonprofit company that researches, advocates for and performs cryonics, the preservation of humans in liquid nitrogen after legal death, with hopes of restoring them to full health when new technology is developed in the future.
As of September 30, 2012, Alcor had 975 members, and 112 patients in cryopreservation, many as neuropatients (76 of Alcor patients were neuropatients or brain preservation patients as of July 2012). Alcor will cryopreserve the pets of members. As of November 15, 2007, there were 33 pets in suspension.
Alcor accepts anatomical donations (cryonics cases) under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act and Arizona Anatomical Gift Act for research purposes, reinforced by a court case in its favor that affirmed a constitutional right to engage in cryopreservation and donate one's body for the purpose. A form of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act has been passed in all 50 states.
Read more about Alcor Life Extension Foundation: History, Research, Policies and Procedures, Membership
Famous quotes containing the words life, extension and/or foundation:
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars, his eyes see through the earth, his ears understand the language of beast and bird, and the sense of the wind; and, through his sympathy, heaven and earth should talk with him. But that is not our science.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)