At 13:51 9-07-00 +0200, you wrote:
>I am thinking more and more about cryonics. The problem is that I live in
>Europe. Everything that I read so far seems very American. Suppose I sign up
>with a cryosuspension provider in the US. Suppose I have a fatal accident on
>the road after that. I do not think there would be time for an emergency
>team to come from the US. Most likely the cryosuspension would have to be
>performed by a local team and the frozen corpse shipped to the storage
>facility in the US, of course in proper containers and handling procedures..
Yes, that's pretty much how it's currently done. Local members/teams,
sometimes supplemented with non-cryo friends, family members & hospital
staff handle the initial emergency while the professional team flies over
from the US asap. The patient is cooled, treated with various medications
(as far as this is still possible), perfused with organ-protecting fluids,
packed in ice
(but not *frozen*) and shipped to the US, where the actual washout with
cryoprotectants and -finally- LN2 storage is done. That's the Alcor
procedure, anyway; CI has no professional/ volunteer teams afaik, but uses
a specially trained funeral directors (Barry Albin & Co, based in London)
which use a more or less similar, though less advanced, procedure.
>But these technical problems might be nothing when compared to the
>administrative and legal problems. Is there any cryonics provider in a EU
>country?
No, there is no specifically European provider yet, but we're working on
it. If you're interested you can join the cryonics-euro mailing list at
http://www.egroups.com/group/cryonics-euro
see also the European Cryonics Page at:
http://homepages.go.com/~cryonic4life/europe.html
>Does any major US provider have branch offices in the EU?
Cryonics Institute uses the services of the beforementioned funeral
directors. Alcor has a facility in the UK (http://www.alcor.co.uk) where
patients are prepared for shipment to Alcor HQ in the US. Perhaps they will
be stored here as well in due time, though the building wouldn't exactly be
ideal for this sort of thing; better have something like an old bunker.
Better protection against accidents and vandalism. Probably better
insulation possibilities too, and it looks wicked cool.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:34:18 MDT