The Seattle region of the Cryonics Northwest group will be meeting to have lunch and socialize in our first get together and organizing effort. The buffet style lunch will be held at Spice Route Indian Cuisine on Saturday, February 12th at 12:30 P.M. Location: Spice Route Indian Cuisine 2241 148th Avenue Northeast Bellevue, WA 98007 […]
A new position called the Member Communications Director (MCD) has opened at Alcor. The Member Communications Director’s job will be to communicate with Alcor’s members by email, by telephone, and in person for multiple purposes, among which are: 1. To find out more about the member, including such information as the member’s health condition, occupation, […]
During the last two years Alcor has made great efforts to return to its regular publishing schedule. We are pleased to announce that Cryonics magazine is back on schedule with the launch of a new Cryonics magazine website at http://www.alcor.org/magazine. The new Cryonics magazine website will publish the latest issue of the magazine, featured articles […]
Teens & Twenties 2011: Getting to know each other seminar. This cryonics focus group seminar hosted by Bill Faloon and Carin Idun will be held on Thursday, May 19 and Friday, May 20, 2011, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Invitations were mailed to CI and Alcor members ages 13-29. The purpose of the young cryonicists’ seminars […]
Can you imagine the future? When we’ll travel to other stars. Have super-intelligent computers. Robot servants. And nanomachines that keep us young and healthy for centuries! Will you live long enough to experience all this? “Unlikely,” you say? Not necessarily. Suspended Animation can be your bridge to the advances of the future. The technology is here today to […]
As we approach 2011, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our valued members for their steadfast support over the past year. Many members have helped the organization by making donations, volunteering, hosting gatherings to educate others about cryonics, or simply talking to friends and family members about Alcor’s mission. Thank you, to […]
Scottsdale, Arizona – December 23, 2010 – The Board of Directors of Alcor Life Extension Foundation today announced that Dr. Max More, 46, has been named Chief Executive Officer effective Jan 1, 2011. The new executive appointment follows the decision of Alcor Executive Director and President Jennifer Chapman to step down. After 10 years of dedicated service, she plans to pursue her law degree full-time and feels this will put her in a better position for Alcor’s long-term benefit. Since starting her career at Alcor in 2000, Jennifer’s demonstrated abilities resulted in her rise to the leadership role. She has made important contributions to nearly every aspect of Alcor operations over the past decade. The Alcor Board and staff thank her, and wish her well in her future endeavors.
An internationally recognized advocate of the effective and ethical use of technology for life extension and cryopreservation, Dr. More brings experience in running non-profit organizations, many years of analyzing and writing about business organizations, and a long commitment to Alcor’s mission. More joined Alcor in 1986 as its 67th member, founded Alcor-UK (originally Mizar Limited) in the same year, and has participated in several cryopreservations. He has spoken on cryonics and life extension at numerous conferences and in many national and international media, including a Crossfire debate shortly after the cryopreservation of baseball legend Ted Williams.
“Max brings a quarter century of experience in and commitment to cryopreservation, life extension, and improving the future,” said Alcor director Tim Shavers, “and has earned a reputation for both practical and principled leadership and bold thinking. Crucially, he shares our vision of Alcor’s mission and understands the organization’s past and its challenges and opportunities. His extensive knowledge of our operations, goals, and needs makes him the ideal choice to lead Alcor as CEO,” said Shavers.
More built Extropy Institute, an educational non-profit organization that created the modern “transhumanist” movement, whose goals centrally include extending healthy human life span. More organized and chaired five successful conferences and, along with Ray Kurzweil, was the keynote speaker at an online summit that lead to the development of the “Proactionary Principle”, and was editor-in-chief of the pioneering publication, Extropy: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought. More’s advocacy of cryonics dates to several years before he became an Alcor cryopreservation member in 1986 while a student at England’s Oxford University. His commitment was reflected academically in his doctoral dissertation, a chapter of which argued for a reconceptualization of death according to which cryopreserved patients are neither fully alive nor dead but in a third state.
“I am honored to assume the leadership of Alcor and to continue the legacy of commitment to maintaining Alcor’s patients in cryopreservation while growing the organization and improving our technological capabilities,” said More. “Since I joined, Alcor has grown from 67 members to around 930, and its patients from 6 to 100. I am thrilled to work with Alcor’s Board, with its broad and deep expertise, to continue and accelerate that growth while keeping a primary focus on protecting our existing patients. I am also committed to strengthening the stability of the organization to better endure over the coming decades and to continuing to raise the level of our medical professionalism and business practices.”
About the Alcor Life Extension Foundation
Alcor Life Extension Foundation is a not-for-profit research organization founded in 1972. Alcor is the world leader in cryonics, and cryonics technology. Cryonics is the science of using ultra-cold temperatures to cryopreserve humans. The intent is that advanced scientific procedures may one day be able to revive cryopreserved humans and restore them to good health. Alcor performed its first human cryopreservation in 1976, and has engaged in long-term care of cryopreserved members in its state-of-the-art facility since then.
Among the scientific achievements of Alcor is the use of advanced cryoprotectant formulas capable of vitrification. Vitrification enables cryopreservation to take place without the damage that occurs in freezing tissue. Alcor has published papers in scientific journals documenting the quality of tissue preservation possible with its procedures, and the effects of clinical death on the brain. Alcor also sponsors research in the field of nanomedicine, a technology that may someday be used to revive cryopreserved patients.
Alcor is overseen by a Board of Directors consisting of successful and well-regarded scientists, physicians, attorneys, and other professionals. Alcor also has a group of scientific advisors, who are leaders in the fields of medical research, nanotechnology, and
computer science.
Alcor has about 930 members and 100 cryopreserved patients. The public is welcome to attend regularly scheduled tours of the Alcor facility in Scottsdale, Arizona. For more information about Alcor and cryonics, visit www.alcor.org.
You are cordially invited to a Holiday Party hosted by the some of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation members in Southern California. It will be held on Sunday, January 2, 2011 from 4 PM to 8 PM in Newport Beach, CA. The theme of this celebration is to put the past behind us and begin […]
James “Jim” Stevenson, PhD, first became a member of Alcor in 1989 and was assigned member number A-1203. Jim was an experimental psychologist for NASA for 35 years in the Human Systems Integration division. Jim was blind and his work had applications for sighted as well as vision-impaired people. He was a long-time advocate of cryonics.
In late November of 2010, Jim was admitted to the hospital with abdominal pain. He notified Alcor immediately and we remotely monitored his condition over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and there was no treatment the doctors could offer due to the late stage of his diagnosis. When Jim’s condition took a turn for the worse, Alcor deployed members of the Northern California Response Team to the hospital to pre-position the medications and response kit. Aaron Drake, Alcor’s Medical Response Director, and Steve Graber, Alcor’s Readiness Coordinator, flew to Palo Alto, CA, where Jim was hospitalized.
As Aaron, Steve, and members of the Northern California team met with hospital administrators to lay the plans for the expected cryonics procedures, Jim’s vital signs continued to decline over the course of the day. Late the same evening, Jim was pronounced by the attending physician with the Alcor response team at his bedside.
The Alcor field team stabilized the patient and performed a field washout, with the assistance of a friendly mortuary. This was the first field washout performed by an Alcor team in several years and a significant milestone in Alcor’s emergency response capability. The team also performed a neuroseparation in the field and expedited transport of the patient to Alcor using a charter flight.
The Alcor OR team achieved terminal perfusion. Alcor’s redesigned cooldown and acoustic monitoring system, which controls the cooldown process and detects tissue fracturing during temperature descent, was used for the first time on a human patient with good results.
Cryonics Magazine has been a staple of the Alcor Foundation for decades. We hope you find it a compelling source of information about topics of interest, such as how to optimize your cryopreservation arrangements, recent happenings at Alcor, issues facing the field of cryonics, relevant sciences, and more. While Alcor has no plans to stop producing Cryonics Magazine, we have gone digital in our distribution.