Anyone who looks them up online can find this information easily. It is required to be public since they are a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Here are their current board of directors: https://www.alcor.org/library/alcor-board-of-directors/
> What if their interests become misaligned wrt customers?
Anything is possible but this seems extremely unlikely given their governing structure and requirements for being on the board of directors. Alcor has been criticized in the past because they fall very far in favor of protecting their existing patients in cryopreservation rather than making accommodations for prospective patients, leading to them turning away prospective patients for a variety of reasons.
> A fundamental rationale for selecting the self perpetuating Board structure was its ability to provide continuity of purpose over a long period of time. Existing Board members select those new Board members who they believe are best able to preserve Alcor’s core values and carry out its mission. All Board members are required by Alcor Bylaws to be Alcor members. While not required by the Bylaws, we also find that Alcor Board members are cryonicists of long standing and are well known within the cryonics community. By tradition, new Board members are usually sought from the ranks of Alcor Advisors, although the Board can and has selected Board Members who have not been Advisors. Board members have a strong incentive to choose carefully because the success of Alcor and the survival of our members — including our Board members — is heavily dependent on the abilities and character of future Boards of Directors.
BTW, I'm not a shill for Alcor. I think some aspects of their operations are worthy of criticism. But this is not one of them. If you disagree, feel free to state why, but I would recommend at least learning the basics about them before doing so.
Freezer burn occurs when moisture escapes from frozen biospecimens due to slow freezing and temperature fluctuations. It's not an issue during storage in liquid nitrogen, which causes much faster freezing and has a much colder storage temperature level.
> And a few very wealthy people
Cryonics is not only accessible to the very wealthy. There are options available that are equal or less expensive than an average funeral.
> How do you keep a cryostasis business honest when you - the customer - are dead and there is no profitable reason to keep you from becoming like that loose frozen hamburger at the bottom of my freezer
1: The companies are non-profits so profit is irrelevant.
2: You look at their long-term reputation which is important for them to get new clients. This is why Alcor has been around for 50 years without thawing a single one of their patients.
"A comprehensive meta-analysis published in 2019 in JAMA that compared 32 oral antipsychotics helped solidify the sentiments shared by Kahn and other investigators who have conducted clinical studies with amisulpride. That meta-analysis identified amisulpride as the second most effective antipsychotic at reducing overall symptoms in schizophrenia patients (behind clozapine) and the most effective in terms of reducing positive symptoms. The analysis also ranked amisulpride better than clozapine in terms of tolerability and side effects."
Do you know what else sounds like a recipe for killing people? Not allowing people to access therapeutics that might save their life because it hasn't yet gone through regulatory approval yet for whatever reason (delays, too expensive to submit), etc.
> There's very little that's approved by a non-US body and approved by the EU or non-OECD body that warrants clinical use, and if it is it gets reviewed quickly
LOL. What are you talking about. There are so many examples.
One of the most tragic is amisulpride. Amisulpride is an antipsychotic medication used to treat schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions. Some key notes about its regulatory status:
- Amisulpride was first approved in France in the 1980s and is widely used in Europe.
- It was never approved by the FDA for use in the United States, and at this point there's not organization that can afford to go through the approval process because there's no patent.
- The reason often cited is that the manufacturer did not apply for approval with the FDA. It was likely not considered commercially viable for the US market at the time.
- Amisulpride is believed to have comparable efficacy to other second-generation antipsychotics like olanzapine and risperidone, but with a lower side effect burden according to some studies.
- In Europe, amisulpride is considered a first-line treatment option for schizophrenia, but American psychiatrists do not have access to it. According to some sources, it is literally recommended as the best antipsychotic in other countries.
I apologize and wish I could have presented it better. I first compiled this in 2019 and had been planning to summarize it more. Alas, I recently realized that I wouldn't have the energy for that and that I should simply publish as is.
I'm surprised that people care at all, but perhaps I underestimate how many are as interested in the content as I am.
Regarding the formatting, I will try to update the background to something more readable using wordpress, although I obviously lack your skills in this area. In the meantime, you're free to copy it onto your website or elsewhere.
Very fair point. There are other examples that go beyond DHCA, though, and point clearly in the same direction. One example is that sometimes people suffer cardiac arrests and lose consciousness for minutes to hours 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2014.06.015. Coordinated electrical activity stops after a few minutes following cardiac arrest, but people can (rarely) be revived with their apparent memories and personality intact.
So if your point is a separate one, that Alcor et al might have to close, eg as a result of war or global financial collapse, then that is a very reasonable point and absolutely a potential cause of failure.
It is one of the things that Tim brings up as well: "The cryonics company goes bankrupt and doesn’t have the means, the will, or the organization to create a plan that will save the patients. I mentioned that this happened a few times with some of the earlier companies. The major companies today claim to have secure backup plans in place in case of the worst case scenario, and this security blanket is the main purpose of Alcor’s sizable trust."
"It doesn’t do any good to use the most advanced techniques to get our members into cryopreservation unless we can keep them there, as well as build capital to eventually fund revival and reintegration."
Also, if the technology to do revival develops in the future, it is likely to be relatively cheap.
Analogy: in the 1910-1920s, people were interested in life extension via hormone replacement therapy (mostly misguided, but that's a separate topic). They were understandably worried that this would only be available to the rich, as it was relatively expensive to do at the time. One hundred years later, hormone replacement therapy is relatively cheap and widely available, at least in countries like the US.
There are many many problems with cryonics, but IMO this is not a major one.
I'm working towards a phd in genomics right now, primarily doing bioinformatics. Here are some thoughts:
1. You're almost certainly likely to make more money doing something else, like web development or finance. Scientists get paid very little money relative to their education and abilities, with the trade-off of interestingness. If you go into it, it shouldn't be for the money. So basically yes in re (2). So for you, doing bioinformatics would probably have to be a goal in your life that you're willing to make sacrifices for.
2. If you want to work on life saving drugs or curing cancer, you could learn how to make some contributions with a MS, but realistically would need a PhD to have more autonomy. Depends on what matters to you.
3. The main benefit would probably be working with a good mentor and helping to decide if you want to go for the PhD. Not sure about your prospects in industry with an MS however.
Great point -- there's a huge disconnect between what is needed in terms of the data and algorithm development and the profit motive. This is why I think some portions of this, especially the data generation and curation portions, may need to be driven by non-profits and/or the government.
In my reading there were three parts of the article:
Part I: Optimism. Is this a new curative treatment for a cancer with an extremely poor prognosis? We get to see Muizelaar's perspective on why he (presumably) thought he was doing the right thing.
Part II: The Fall. Deaths, lawsuits, the expose, resignations.
Part III: Resolution. Maybe there is some value in an alternative approach that focuses on mechanism and iterates towards human trials via animal studies. But also, maybe there is something to be said about Muizelaar's approach that our current medicolegal system isn't equipped to handle.
To me, the structure of the article helped to underscore that Muizelaar might have been right, which is key for using this article as a way to learn about science and rationality as opposed to solely for its object-level information. Just listing the facts almost certainly would not have been as useful for getting that point across.
It is clear that you have done a good amount of research, which is great! If you look further, you will find that in fact there are plenty of people who are interested in precisely this aspect of brain preservation/cryonics. See, for example, [1], [2], [3], [4].