CryoNet #32409 - #32413

CryoNet - Tue 23 Feb 2010

    #32409: Message #32403 [doctor Robert]
    #32410: Removing incentive [Keith Henson]
    #32411: Re: CryoNet #32404 - #32408 [RAMole]
    #32412: Talking point suggestion re: the Robbins case [MARK PLUS]
    #32413: Re: PR debacles and how to avoid future ones [David Stodolsky]

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Message #32409
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:24:35 -0800
Subject: Message #32403
From: doctor Robert <[email protected]>

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Hi All: Thanks Mark for this VERY important and timely question. I have
suggested that we all talk to our relatives about our plans and wishes. If
 any of them indicate the slightest reserve, hesitancy or withholds, then
endeavor to get them to sign an agreement TO  NOT INTERFERE. Get this
signed, witnessed by a family member who is completely supportive, and
dated. Send it to Alcor and keep a copy. You may have to negotiate with the
relative, like leaving something in the will to that person, with provisions
to subtract Alcor's legal costs if they try to interfere. It is the
communication that is the absolutely most important part of this. Each one
of us is individually responsible for doing this, as you can see, Alcor is
not your fail safe here because legal issues take time and that is the one
thing that cannot be compromised in your suspension. Dr. Robert Newport,
Medial Advisory Board. Alcor Life Extension Foundation

--

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Message #32410
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:52:42 -0700
Subject: Removing incentive
From: Keith Henson <[email protected]>

Some of the recent problem with suspensions may be coming from
relatives having a financial incentive to block suspensions.

If we think about it, most of us have a relative hostile to cryonics
who could be in a place to block a suspension depending on who died
first.

I think the section of the contract that specifies where the
suspension funding goes needs to be modified.  In fact I am going to
do this myself soon as I can get it worded correctly

Delete the section about who gets the funding if an Alcor member is
not suspended with this.
***********
In the event a suspension cannot be performed, (lost at sea, WTC
collapse, etc.) Alcor is still the beneficiary of the suspension
funding.  In such cases, Alcor may at its sole discretion pay part or
all of the suspension funding to a person or persons named here or to
the estate of the member.

(name of person, persons)

Alcor is forbidden to pay any part of the suspension funding to a
person or persons who have interfered with the member's prompt
suspension.

**********

Please comment.  I want to get this right the first time.

Keith Henson

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Message #32411
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:19:13 EST
Subject: Re: CryoNet #32404 - #32408

There must be many ways to prevent greedy relatives from trying to get  
suspension money by canceling suspensions. One's will might specify the exact  
amounts (not percentages) to each relative and suspension, with the rest 
going  to reanimation trusts or charities. Preferably, "the rest" would be a 
lot, so  there is a comfortable safety factor. Thus the relatives would not 
benefit form  canceling a suspension. Better yet is a clause deleting the 
inheritance of  anyone interfering.Or, as Rudy says, the insurance beneficiary 
may be  Alcor/SA/CI directly.
 
What I think is needed here is just some legal advice showing how to  
structure a will with standard clauses to remove the possibility of relatives  
profiting if a suspension is prevented.
 
Alan Mole
 
 
In a message dated 2/22/2010 3:00:33 A.M. Mountain Standard Time,  
[email protected] writes:

Mary  Robbins's relatives might have decided to interfere with her  
suspension
because they had heard the previous episodes of bad publicity  regarding
Alcor, including rumors of the abuse of a frozen head. If they  succeed in
preventing Robbins's suspension, while also intercepting the  money she had
set aside for it, that will give other members' relatives the  precedent and
incentive to try to stop their suspensions. And even if Alcor  wins custody
of Robbins's body, the media might frame the story in a way  sympathetic to
the relatives and derogatory to Alcor, contributing to  problems down the
line with other suspensions opposed by the suspendees'  family members.
What should we do to keep this from happening to  potentially all of us with
living  relatives?




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Message #32412
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:24:12 -0700
Subject: Talking point suggestion re: the Robbins case
From: MARK PLUS <[email protected]>

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If you get into any online discussions about the Robbins case, and people
ask about the source of new bodies for neuropatients, you might refer them
to the emerging, non-science fictional technology of organ printing:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22organ+printing%22&aq=f&aqi=g3g-m2&oq=

One of the scientists in this field, Dr. Vladimir Mironov, extended the
concept to printing a whole human body a few years ago in an article in "The
Futurist" magazine:

Beyond cloning: toward human printing

http://www.box.net/shared/static/p3idvxvlcb.html

If printing a whole human body becomes practical, that obviously suggests
itself as a solution to the needs of revived neuropatients for new bodies.

-- 
Mark Plus
Life is short: Freeze hard!

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Message #32413
From: David Stodolsky <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: PR debacles and how to avoid future ones
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:24:19 +0100
References: <[email protected]>

On 22 Feb 2010, at 11:00 AM, CryoNet wrote:

> Life insurance AND annuity contracts with named beneficiaries go  
> DIRECTLY to
> the beneficiary, bypassing probate, grumpy relatives, and delays.
>
> Especially in the case of life insurance, the money is created  
> exactly when
> needed, *and does NOT reduce the estate* *otherwise going to the  
> family.  *
>
> This is why life insurance funding makes sense from a structural as  
> well as
> economic standpoint.
>
> Additionally, properly named beneficiaries on an annuity contract can
> work...although there may be a perception, as evidently is the case  
> in the
> current Mary Robbins case, on the part of potential beneficiaries  
> that there
> is a genuine and available asset that either comes to them or to
> Alcor/CI/ACS.

snip

> Insurance companies are VERY reputation sensitive.  The Cryonics   
> community
> has already LOST many fine insurance companies who formerly were  
> willing to
> have cryonics organizations as OWNERS as well as beneficiaries due  
> to what
> was described to me as "REPUTATION RISK."  We are down to a single  
> carrier
> in some states allowing transparent ownership of policies by cryonics
> organizations.   Folks, this is a potential crisis which can be  
> averted.


Maybe for the moment, but it isn't a long-term solution. The payoff  
structure of personal insurance makes these conflicts inevitable and  
has other undesirable properties. Even if contracts go directly to the  
cryonics organization, the family can argue that the potential  
suspendee changed their mind at the last moment. As I recall, this was  
the argument in the Ted William's Case.

While the money may be "created exactly when needed", it is a future  
asset that can be borrowed against. We have seen a case recently,  
where policy value was drawn down to fund medical expenses.

As long as cryonics is regarded as a scam/cult by the mainstream,  
companies that operate in the mainstream can be expected to distance  
themselves from any involvement when there is negative press.  
Cryonicists are simply too small a market for these companies to take  
any risk.

While it may be that there is only a perception "that there is a  
genuine and available asset" at issue, it is precisely perception that  
is the problem. Even if there was no asset, we can expect objections  
to suspension on 'moral' grounds. This type of objection is clearly  
dominant from the research on any of the life-extension technologies.  
Law is based upon morality and if a certain practice is felt to be  
immoral by an overwhelming majority of the public, the elected law  
makers tend to conform and make that practice impossible.

Unfortunately, the Movement is not large enough to win this type of  
political battle and given current growth rates, it will never be  
large enough. Therefore, immediate action should be taken to assess  
the risk level by monitoring public perceptions and taking whatever  
educational/political steps that are necessary. This will be a  
profitable investment, if it avoids the types of law suits and bad  
press we are now seeing.

Another way to avoid bad press is by eliminating any financial payoffs  
to families and lawyers that could result from these cases and the  
associated bad press. This means restructuring the financing of  
suspensions away from personal assets and toward corporate assets. I  
have previously suggested prepayment of suspension expenses, with  
insurance against corporate bankruptcy. This would mean establishment  
of a fund that would have a single function: Payment of suspension   
expenses upon need. If the money wasn't used by an eligible  
individual, then the fund would retain the money to benefit other  
members of the association. That reverses the payoff structure that is  
now causing trouble.

If we apply this to the family, then we can envision of family fund or  
other financial vehicle that would be set up and be immediately  
effective. That is, family members would make monthly payments to the  
fund. The fund would be insured against any early expenses causing  
bankruptcy. While this doesn't eliminate all risks of bad press, it  
reduces the likelihood that objections and bad press would occur in  
suspension situations. Therefore, it would reduce the risk of the type  
of delays in suspension initiation caused by legal action that we have  
been seeing. It also eliminates much of the sensationalism that the  
press thrives on - I include here the 'cult' websites.

However, this type of family fund is likely to be a source of  
factionalism in the family. As funds become bigger and bigger, family  
members will have an incentive to dismember the fund and use the  
assets for immediate consumption. However, these types of intra-family  
legal battles are hard to understand and don't have any sensational  
elements like the current pre-suspension battles we have been seeing.  
So, they wouldn't generate much, if any bad press.

A more permanent solution is an independent organization that enrolls  
a large number of families in a cryonics expense prepayment system.  
This would pretty much eliminate any risk of legal battles, since if  
someone was opposed to the way the funds were being used, they could  
just leave the organization. There would be no personal assets  
involved. Such an organization could supply a large number of other  
services, thus reducing the visibility of the cryonics option and the  
risk of bad press. I earlier outlined the many benefits of this  
approach, both from a financial and political standpoint.

We can now see that this is a pressing issue. There are several steps  
that can be taken immediately to evaluate the situation and explore  
the options. First, we need to start routine data collection and  
analysis in order to understand the development of political  
capabilities and risk. As we have seen from recent discussions here,  
we currently don't have adequate data to even understand what the  
growth of the Movement is and therefore to predict our political  
capabilities in the future. There has also been virtually no work on  
the development of public attitudes toward life-extension  
technologies, in specific cryonics. Without these two types of  
information, the Movement is flying in the fog without radar, with  
respect to political risk. Once we have information about political  
capabilities and political risk, we will know whether resources are  
being allocated correctly between physical and social risks. Looking  
back on the history of cryonics, we can see that lawsuits are not a  
cost effective way to deal with social and political risk. This is the  
currently the dominant strategy.

New legal structures have to be investigated. Can the family funds  
suggested above be set up easily? If so, a standard set of paperwork  
should be made available to families interested in that route. Can  
these funds be insured, so that they can be effective immediately?  
Finally, can this strategy be extended to larger groups in a  
straightforward manner? Such an arrangement would not only solve the  
funding problems for large numbers of persons, but also could provide  
a more secure vehicle for wealth preservation. That is, wealthy  
individuals could have their funds controlled and administered by such  
a fund, avoiding the laws against perpetuities in a less risky manner.  
And that type of arrangement would also strengthen a suspension fund  
financially.


dss

David Stodolsky
[email protected]  Skype: davidstodolsky

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