Alcor’s 110th Patient

Dec20
2011 Written by admin

Alcor member A-1277 was pronounced on Friday, December 9, 2011. A whole body case, A-1277 became Alcor’s 110th patient.

A member in the Yonkers, New York area had been in and out of the ICU at a local hospital for more than two months. Her son, also a member, was the liaison between Alcor and her medical providers. Despite numerous procedures and an encouraging recovery, she suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly succumbed to her illness, arresting at 3:55 AM (MST) and then pronounced. Previous communications with the hospital and a local mortuary prompted immediate heparinization, circulation, ice application and an expedited release from the hospital.

The time needed for a team response was greater than simply initiating an immediate airline shipment. Therefore the patient’s cooling was continued by the mortuary along with packaging and processing of the appropriate paperwork. The patient arrived in Alcor’s surgery suite at 10:13 PM on Friday night at a temperature of 2.6C. Cryoprotection was ended at 3:02 AM on Saturday December 10, and cooling with liquid nitrogen begun at 3:50 AM. At the time of writing, A-1277 is at -140C and cooling.

Posted in Announcements

Follow Up Test – New O.R. Table

Dec20
2011 Written by admin

In November, Steve Graber reported on a table cooldown test to -80C using saline water which demonstrated that the water bags in the cooldown chamber experienced difficulty passing through the ice temperature barrier, resulting in a very long cooldown process. Ultimately the test was stopped before the bags reached any appreciable cooling. Additionally, the research and development team noticed the table was cooling the leg portion much quicker than the remainder of the table.

The test was designed to more closely approximate the cooling characteristics of an actual patient scenario by using a mixture of anti-freeze and water in a 70/30 mix, rated to -65C. Steve’s test was run in essentially the same fashion as the previous run with identical LN2 consumption (two 200-liter dewars), and the data collection continued for an additional day to record the warmup segment. The table cooling tuning has been slightly over-corrected with the head and torso areas now cooling more quickly than the leg area. This should now allow him to dial in corrected vent opening settings for even cooling across the table. In the test the team noticed a significant improvement in the temperature drop vs saline water. At the end of our 10 hour test both the head and torso bags are nearing terminal temperature and the leg bag lagging behind. We achieved close to -80C cooling on our test bladders using LN2 at about the same rate as our current cooldown equipment.

Posted in Announcements

Administrative Report

Dec20
2011 Written by admin

Membership Statistics
Alcor had 958 members on its Emergency Responsibility List. Seven memberships were approved during the month of November, one membership was reinstated, no memberships were cancelled and one member was cryopreserved. Overall, there was a net gain of seven members in November.

Applicant Statistics
Alcor had 44 applicants for membership. Seven new applicants were added, seven applicants were converted to members and eight applicants were cancelled resulting in net a loss of eight applicants in November.

Information Packet Statistics
Alcor received 92 info pack requests in November. Twelve were handed out during facility tours or from special request. The average total of 105 info packs sent per month in 2011 compares to 199 in 2010. The full Information Packet is now available online.

Posted in Announcements

Alcor Board of Directors Meeting-FRIDAY, January 6, 2012

Dec13
2011 Written by admin

The next Alcor Board of Directors meeting is scheduled for FRIDAY , January 6, 2012, at 11:00 AM (MST) at the Alcor facility (7895 East Acoma Drive in Scottsdale, AZ). Members and the public are encouraged to attend.

Posted in Announcements

Northern California CryoFeast

Nov29
2011 Written by admin

This year’s Northern California CryoFeast will be held on Sunday, December 11, 2011, at 1:00 pm at the Halcyon Molecular facility in Redwood City, California.

About Halcyon:
Halcyon’s mission is to solve death. Currently they are pursuing inexpensive, accurate DNA sequencing as a powerful means of understanding biology, curing disease and extending health.  Their approach to sequencing involves high speed electron microscopy, synthetic chemistry, and nanomanipulation (not related to R. Merkle’s concepts). 

Halcyon Molecular is at:
505 Penobscot Dr
Redwood City, CA 94063

Event Schedule:
1 PM event starts and feasting begins
1:30 PM tour of Halcyon’s labs
2:00 PM talks start & feasting continues
Followed by informal discussion
6:00 PM event ends

Presentations:
If you have an idea for making cryonics work, you are welcome to present a brief but interesting 5-7 minute talk on cryonics or a related topic! There will be a projector and computer for PowerPoint presentations. Also, access will be provided for Google presentations.

Here are a few ideas:
* The search for a magical vitrification solution.
* Summary of an excellent paper in cryonics.
* Cryonics by the numbers: how many cryonicists are there?
* Cryonics as the easiest AND most under-funded of the Possible Ways of Not Dying    (uploading, bio-cures, AI being the other biggest 3)
* Summary of ‘the rabbit kidney’ results.  One kidney?   Not reproducible?
* How bad is warm ischemia really?
* Idea of how to make reversible cryonics work.
* Or just bring your questions. 

The host will give a short 5 minute talk on “Idea of how to make reversible cryonics work” but anyone is welcome to discuss this topic.

There will be pizza, fruit, and plenty of drinks but feel free to bring other dishes to share. 

If you would like to give a brief presentation send an email to:  m@halcyonmolecular.com
Also to RSVP for this event, please send an email to: m@halcyonmolecular.com

Posted in News & Events

The Next Alcor Board of Directors Meeting SUNDAY, December 11TH

Nov28
2011 Written by admin

The next Alcor Board of Directors meeting will be held on SUNDAY, December 11, 2011, at 11:00 AM (MST) at the Alcor facility (7895 East Acoma Drive in Scottsdale, AZ). Members and the public are encouraged to attend.

Posted in Announcements

Alcor’s 109th patient

Nov23
2011 Written by admin

Alcor member A-1546 was pronounced on Wednesday November 9, 2011. A neurocryopreservation case, he became Alcor’s 109th patient.

A-1546 had been on our watch list for a couple of years. He originally went into the hospital with a pulmonary embolism and it was discovered that he had gastric cancer. He said that a follow-up PET-CT exam showed that he was free of any problems. However, he went back into the hospital on November 3, 2011 with difficulty breathing, and was treated for pneumonia, hypotension, and tachycardia. Doctors discovered that his lungs were riddled with metastatic gastric cancer and that he had a hepatic lesion.

Alcor was alerted to the worsened situation by means of a medical alert message on November 5. The doctor estimated that A-1546 had perhaps two or three weeks remaining to live and wanted to transfer him to a hospice. The $5,000 available for moving to a Scottsdale-based hospice was mentioned; the member’s wife did not favor the idea but was otherwise cooperative. Alcor faxed written directions to the doctor for review and later spoke to the hospice director. A-1546 was being cared for by a hospice-at-home program from November 7.

At 12:55 PM on November 9, A-1546′s wife reported that he was having severe breathing difficulties. Although just a couple of days earlier, doctors had estimated that he had several more weeks, the Deployment Committee decided on November 8 that a standby was indicated. Since Aaron Drake could get there before Suspended Animation, he left Phoenix at 10:33 AM to fly to Washington (state) with a mini-med kit. A-1546 declined even faster than expected, so that Aaron arrived just an hour and a half before clinical death (which was around 5:30 PM PST). The SA deployment, which wouldn’t be possible until the next day, was canceled. Aaron dealt with the situation on his own, although SA handled arrangements with the mortuary.

A-1546 was delivered to Alcor at 10:44 AM on November 10, with a pharyngeal temperature of about 6C and no sign of clotting. The time from arrest to on the pump was 17 hours, 52 minutes. Good perfusate flow was observed, with even perfusion of both hemispheres and even skin coloration. Cryoprotection was completed at 4:31 PM MST.

Posted in Announcements

CEO Report

Nov19
2011 Written by admin
The never-ending quest for cost reductions continues. A review of Alcor’s utility bills and an examination of the roof space made it clear that thousands of dollars per year have been avoidably incurred in the form of unnecessarily high air conditioning bills. We have asked for bids from three companies and will choose one in the coming week to improve insulation and install radiant barriers. Judging by the remarkable escalation in billing during the hotter months (in some units of the building more than others), the annual savings should make this investment pay off in a pleasingly short time.We are still working on reducing liquid nitrogen bill, to the benefit of the Patient Care Trust. Despite overcharging us for years, our vendor is trying to hold us to the contract, which would mean being locked in until 2013. We are looking into either legal advice or minimizing purchases while pricing alternatives. 

We have also reduced the size of the staff by one. This is again in pursuit of maintaining a balanced budget. We wish former equipment fabricator Randal Fry well, and thank him for his years of work and attention to detail.

One of my concerns has been to improve Alcor’s security. It was clear that the existing (and quite antiquated) security camera system was ineffective. Not only is its coverage severely limited, its output was rarely observed. I put Steve Graber in charge of looking into a new system. Happily, prices have dropped dramatically since the existing system was purchased. The new system will provide vastly better coverage, including tilt and zoom viewing, constant recording, and output viewable (and cameras controllable) from the desktop.

The project to greatly improve Alcor’s ability to respond to members in England and other parts of Europe (and, later, in Australia and other parts of the world) and to ensure high quality standby, stabilization, and transport capabilities, including vitrification, is proceeding. I have been talking by Skype and email with a number of active cryonicists in Europe who are helping to gather information about existing capabilities and possible cooperative arrangements. At the same time, we are figuring out what equipment and supplies we would need to provide, who would house them, and who would use them (if Alcor were unable to send a team across the Atlantic in time).

On the communications front, Barry Aarons is helping us deploy the Alcor Speakers’ Bureau to give talks to organizations in the area. A few weeks ago, we started this effort modestly with me giving a talk to the Midtown Lion’s Club. The goal is to build a reputation and have a voice in the influential local business groups.

Finally, I’d like to note that we need to find a way to encourage our members to actually read both Cryonics magazine and the Alcor News emails and blog posts. We have already discussed the evidence that a substantial number of members are not reading the magazine. I have seen further evidence in the number of emails I am still receiving from members addressed to Jennifer Chapman.

– Max More
Posted in Announcements

Next Alcor Board of Directors Meeting

Nov19
2011 Written by admin

The next Alcor Board of Directors meeting is currently scheduled for Saturday, December 3, 2011, at 11:00 AM (PDT) at the Alcor facility (7895 East Acoma Drive in Scottsdale, AZ). Members and the public are encouraged to attend this meeting.

Posted in Announcements

Research and Development

Nov19
2011 Written by admin

New O.R. Table – 80L H20 Cooldown Test with Blanket

Based on our findings last month that the mylar cooldown blanket significantly reduced the LN2 usage of our automated perfusion and cooldown table with an empty patient pod, Steve Graber decided to conduct a more rigorous cooldown test utilizing four 20L water bladders in the pod cavity and a target cooling temperature of -80C. Note that this test was initiated with H2O at room temperature and is in no way intended to accurately convey an actual patient cooldown scenario. Steve filled all four bladders with room temperature H2O and placed them into the table. Each bladder weighed approximately 20Kg. He inserted thermocouples into the head and leg bladders via their fill tubes and located the probes approximately within the center of each bladder. The torso area comprised two stacked bladders with a single thermocouple probe sandwiched between them.

The table was connected to the Cooldown computer system and the initialization file was modified to perform only cooldown functions. The test was started with both atmospheric and cold stages set to exactly -80C and the mylar blanket in place and was cooled sequentially with two LR-40 dewars. The data collection continued for an additional day to record the warmup segment. A quick review of the test data showed that the table was not cooling evenly from end to end and needed some tuning to correct this. For this reason the table was designed to allow tuning corrections.

The photo above displays the table at hour number 5 running at -80C. The interior is LED lighting.

Posted in Announcements
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