Alcor Member Profile: John Schloendorn, PhD

Alcor Member Profile
From Cryonics 3rd Quarter 2009

By Chana Phaedra

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John Schloendorn


Cryonics is only necessary because we currently suffer from the plague of death. Alleviating humans from suffering the ailments of aging and death altogether is our ultimate goal, and John Scholendorn is on the job.

Expressing a precocious interest in avoiding death, John first learned about cryonics by researching how to live forever on the Internet when he was very young. He says, “Cryonics was, of course, one of the first things that came up. Even then, without any science background, I very much had the immortalist mentality — no matter what the chances of this working are, as long as they’re greater than zero, I obviously need to take it.” And take it he has. However, he’s not ready to bet the farm on cryonics when he can try to prevent the need for cryonics in the first place. In fact, John would like to “put cryonics out of business by helping to solve death in another way.” His life has been dedicated to this goal for several years now, first really beginning when John attended Aubrey de Grey’s second annual Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) conference in Cambridge, England, in 2005.

At this meeting, discussion among Dr. de Grey and several other scientists involved in life extension research centered on putting together the research teams to tackle Dr. de Grey’s seven proposed mechanisms of aging — particularly, the LysoSENS research team, which would be tasked with disovering microbes capable of dissolving intracellular junk. John, who had just finished his master’s work in biochemistry, participated in these discussions and was happy to accept an opportunity to obtain his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University in preparation for leading the LysoSENS team.

“I spent the past 3.5 years in Tempe, AZ, getting a Ph.D…. I like the way the education at Biodesign emphasizes ‘design’ applications, i.e. goal-oriented intervention in biology, as opposed to the mere knowledge production engine that most science is.”

John Schloendorn
John in the lab.

John’s thesis research was funded by SENS Foundation and focused on dissolving intracellular junk molecules. “I discovered a panel of enyzmes that may one day be used to dissolve cholesterol plaques in arteries, and a second panel that dissolve lipofuscin, a different junk molecule that accumulates in macular degeneration. SENS Foundation, Arizona State University, and a new collaborator at Columbia are now working to develop these enzymes into new first-in-class junk dissolving biotechnology therapeutics.” Since mainstream researchers now seem to be “getting it,” John is excited about the potential for pushing aging therapies such as his forward more easily by passing off their further development to these researchers.

John Schloendorn
John literally scours the Earth in his search for intracellular junk-digesting microbes.

Most recently, John has taken this strategy to the next level with a new non-profit called Livly. Livly focuses on enabling other immortalists to start their own projects by making used lab equipment available to interested individuals with ideas for potentially ultra-high impact life extension projects.” Did you have a new idea for how to cure cancer in the bath tub, but don’t have the $100,000 to get a biolab started?,” John asks. “Just come over and use Livly’s gear. Human cell culture, immunology, synthetic biology — we have it all. You will remain in full control of the project and your intellectual property; all we want is to help you save everybody’s lives.”

John joined Alcor in May 2007. He knew he wanted to become a member for a long time but says he needed to understand the financing before he decided to sign up. “The cost quoted on the website seemed so high that cryonics always seemed like a remote dream that I might be able to afford at the end of my life or maybe never.”

But then he found out about financing his cryonics arrangements through life insurance. John felt like he was winning the lottery when he found this out. As soon as he realized he could afford his arrangements now, he signed up immediately. John tells this funny anecdote to illustrate how amazing this revelation seemed to him at the time:

“When I was very little, maybe 5 years of age, I learned about insurance. I thought insurance actually protects you — fire insurance makes sure your house can never burn, theft insurance makes sure nobody can ever steal from you, etc. So then I heard about life insurance. Great! Problem solved! When I grow up I’ll get that to protect me from death. Mission accomplished! I proudly told my parents about this plan. They explained to me that insurance didn’t quite work that way. I was devastated. Now what? Decades later, when I met cryonics life-insurance agent Rudi Hoffman at a conference, I finally discovered that my parents had been wrong this one time. When used for cryonics, life insurance actually might just save your life directly.”

John Schloendorn
Providing updates on the 7th Alcor conference in 2007, John blogs while listening to one of the speakers.

But, like every cryonicist, John does have his concerns about the challenges facing cryonics and how they might be solved. First, he questions how stable cryonics organizations can be over the long run in times of technology-driven change or other, unforeseen changes the future may hold. He also wonders how much time between post-legal death and suspension is acceptable without causing unacceptable loss of personal information in the brain, and whether cryonics as practiced today actually preserves enough information to reconstruct a patient’s personality. Lastly, he wonders what we would do if cryonics suddenly became wildly popular and 100 million people showed up and demanded preservation arrangements. These are all questions that cryonics and cryonicists have struggled with over the years, and there are no easy answers. But John quickly points out that cryonics questions can actually be addressed by research, and, of course, strongly supports research efforts in the field.

John says that his cryonics plans have not impacted his lifestyle so far, simply because his lifestyle explicitly incorporates plans for longevity. John feels that he’s too young to die and hopes to survive in another way via technologies such as stem cell therapy or uploading. However, he acknowledges that accidents happen and he doesn’t necessarily know the best way to handle that possibility. “…It does pose problems for making sure that I die in a way that allows the most efficient suspension,” he says. “Right now I’m more or less ignoring this problem, and that’s not good.” He does wear his Alcor bracelet, though, and his social network consists of other cryonicists. To further improve their chances in case of an emergency, John and his friends also interact regularly with Alcor readiness and response teams and attend training sessions when possible.

Obviously, these days most of John’s friends are also cryonicists or life extensionsts with no qualms about his cryonics arrangements. “Most of my friends love it,” he claims. “The immortalist community is large and growing fast.” In fact, it has grown so fast that John socializes almost exclusively with those who share his vision. “Even though it is very pleasant, I can’t afford interacting too much with people who don’t share the goal — my life is at stake, after all!” John explains. “I need the synergy of being around fellow immortalists.”

John Schloendorn
John and other young cryonicists show their appreciation for resveratrol-containing red wine at the Teens and Twenties cryonics conference hosted by the Life Extension Foundation. (From left: Michael Maier, John Schloendorn, Chana Phaedra, and Michael Smith.)

And synergy he has found. Being an aging researcher intimately involved in the community, John meets other Alcor members, immortalists, and life extensiontists all the time. In fact, he says that almost everyone he knows wants to live forever very badly, and is signed up or has plans to sign up.

Where John grew up, in Germany, he could relate to people in terms of personal style and had many friends there. But, John laments, “it was always hard to find a way to experience true personally meaningful interaction with people who wish for me and themselves to die.” Since John has been around other immortalists in Arizona and California, he has finally discovered what it means to connect with people on this level, and he highly recommends it. “If there are really people reading this who have never met other Alcor members,” John proclaims, “I have only one piece of advice — try it!”

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