Perspective
The cryonics movement, which started with the publication of Robert Ettinger’s book The Prospect of Immortality in 1964, is still treated as a curiosity by most people, though cryonics continues to gain in acceptance by both the general public, and the scientific community. Given the small number of people in suspension, and the incidents of patients lost to carelessness or accident in the past, the risk management approach to cryonics followed by the American Cryonics Society is warranted. That said, the extant cryonics organizations appear to have stability not always present in the past, and there have been no recent incidents of lost patients.
There are (perhaps) 1,800 people with pre-need cryonics arrangements in place; however many of these people are young and not apt to need suspension services for many years. As of the end of 2010, there are about 220 people now in suspension. These numbers include members and people in suspension from all organizations, in all countries. Almost half of them are at the Alcor facility, and half at the CI facility (which includes the patients of the American Cryonics Society). A couple of subjects are at Trans Time and KrioRus, and we will include in our count the dry ice storage of Mr. Bredo Morstoel, in Nederland, Colorado, though many cryonicists argue that because of the warmer storage temperature of Mr. Morstoel, he should not be counted as a "patient." Since the patients at the CI facility are almost all whole body patients (as opposed to head only), the volume of biological material at the CI facility is far greater than at the other facilities.
From 1974 to present, only one American Cryonics Society patient has had to be transferred out of long-term cold storage. In that case the transfer was following a request made by the patient’s family, apparently for financial reasons. The patient was then preserved by chemical means. However, there have been several patients "converted" from whole-body to "neuro" because of funding concerns. The American Cryonics Society members either pre-approve or opt out of such arrangements as part of their contract. There have been no incidents in ACS history of embezzlement or loss of any patient funds.
Read more about this topic: American Cryonics Society
Famous quotes containing the word perspective:
“The fact that illness is associated with the poor—who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one’s midst—reinforces the association of illness with the foreign: with an exotic, often primitive place.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“A lustreless protrusive eye
Stares from the protozoic slime
At a perspective of Canaletto.
The smoky candle end of time
Declines.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“All things being equal, I would choose a woman over a man in order to even the balance of power, to insinuate a different perspective into the process, to give young women something to shoot for and someone to look up to. But all things are rarely equal.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)