3 replies to this topic

[thefirstimmortal]

X-Message-Number: 2830
Date: Tue, 21 Jun 94 17:52:33
From: Steve Bridge <STEVE@alcor.org>
Subject: CRYONET Suspension Termination

PAPERWORK COUNTS: Alcor is Forced to Surrender a Body for
Burial

by Carlos Mondragon

In April the California Supreme Court refused to hear an
appeal of lower court rulings which had mooted the
anatomical donation of the body of "Sylvia Graham" to Alcor
for cryonic suspension (see the report of the whole body
suspension of A-1242, Oct. 1990 issue of *Cryonics*). The
effect was to let stand a court order directing that Mrs.
Graham's next of kin arrange a "Christian burial."

This disposition of this case underscores the immense
importance of executing for oneself the "onerous" paperwork
which is required for Suspension Membership. Although we
have from time to time reported on the progress of this case
in *Cryonics* Magazine, here is a brief review.

Mrs. Graham had not executed *any* Alcor paperwork by
the time she became critically ill and unable to do so. The
suspension was arranged by her husband, Dr. "Marvin Graham."
This was not the first or last of Alcor's "last minute
cases" (those suspensions arranged by persons other than the
patient). Under California law and the Uniform Anatomical
Gift Act, a decedent's next of kin has the legal authority
to arrange for disposition of remains, including anatomical
donations, *in the absence of other written instructions by
the decedent*.

The litigation which ensued did not dispute the
legality of cryonics or the right of the patient to have
chosen cryonics. Rather, the issue was the patient's
intent. About two months after the suspension, the
patient's sister produced a photocopy of an old will signed
by Sylvia Graham which explicitly stated that she wanted a
Christian burial, and did *not* want to be "frozen or
cremated"! The sister brought suit to force execution of
that will. No original of the will was ever found, and it
was Dr. Graham's contention that Sylvia had resolved her
religious reservations regarding cryonic suspension and had,
in fact, decided to sign up with Alcor several months prior
to her death. The sign-up process had been delayed due to
difficulties in arranging funding. Evidence supporting the
suspension included the fact that the other, primarily
monetary provisions of the will had been rendered invalid by
changes to her estate which Sylvia had made in the last two
years of her life. Mike Darwin and I gave testimony (by
deposition and at trial) that Sylvia had apparently already
changed her mind on cryonics when she and Dr. Graham visited
Alcor a few months prior to her suspension.

The trial court ruled that notwithstanding any evidence
of Sylvia Graham's acceptance of cryonic suspension, she
could not have given *informed consent* to the procedure.
And since the judge accepted the legal status of cryonics as
scientific research (that status having been established by
an appellate court in Alcor's litigation with the California
Department of Health) he went further: the standard of
informed consent applied was equal to what would be required
for medical experimentation on legally living patients.

Alcor never did intervene or participate in this
litigation. We had fought in the courts long, hard, and
*successfully* to defend and firmly establish the legal
right to choose disposition of one's remains. Since this
case presumed the right to choose, our role was to provide
moral support and hope for the best.

Ultimately, when Dr. Graham was forced to carry out the
court order, our only choice was to demur. (An attorney
assured us, meanwhile, that our move to another state did
not change our legal status in this matter.) The court had
ruled that Sylvia's will and lack of informed consent had
sufficiently revoked her husband's authority to have made an
anatomical donation of her body. But as next of kin he was
still obligated and empowered to arrange a final disposition
within the guidelines set by the will: no freezing and no
cremation. Dr. Graham and Alcor complied with the law. At
the end of May, Sylvia's body was transported back to
California for burial, the first time such an incident has
happened in the history of Alcor.

If there is any good news here, it is that you can
expect the judiciary of the State of California to uphold
your direction regarding disposition of your human remains
after legal death. The caveat is that we had better be
damned swift about making those directives. Even if full
suspension membership has not been completed (for whatever
reason), I believe that a signature on any two of the three
core documents which comprise Alcor's core paperwork package
would be sufficient to produce a different outcome in
circumstances similar to those described above.

Membership Administrator Derek Ryan is at 1-602-922-
9013, waiting for your call.

[thefirstimmortal]

X-Message-Number: 4378
From: kqb@whscad1.att.com (Kevin Q Brown +1 201 386 7344)
Date: 10 May 95 11:40:00 -0400
Subject: Obcryo: Re: Ebola Virus

In message #4377 Charles Platt <cp@panix.com> said:
>Mike Darwin suggested that I should post this. By the time you read it,
>there may already be additional news in the usual media. Ebola Virus is
>considered too dangerous for study at CDC in Atlanta.

Charles,
That's interesting news. You forgot the "Obcryo" (obligatory cryonics
significance) line, though, and there certainly is a relationship to
cryonics (unlike some of the recent messages on CryoNet). From my
reading of message #2459 (Mike Darwin, Nov. 14, 1993) a member of
any cryonics organization who dies of Ebola virus almost certainly will
_not_ get cryopreserved. The virus is just too dangerous for the
suspension team or anyone else to get near it. Unless something has
changed in the last year and a half, Ebola cannot be contained effectively
yet, unlike other deadly diseases such as AIDS.
Kevin Q. Brown
kqb@cryonet.org
kevin.q.brown@att.com
PS: Also see messages 2451 and 2456.

[thefirstimmortal]

X-Message-Number: 4697
From: david@arch.ping.dk (David Stodolsky)
Subject: Patient long term survival
Date: Tue, 1 Aug 95 20:13:35 +0200 (CET DST)

Has any patient ever been lost except through bad faith?
There have been patients lost when an operator of a company lied.
There have been patients lost when their survivors decided to
take them out of suspension.
But has any patient ever been lost when everyone acted in good faith?

[thefirstimmortal]

In reply to Message #4697 and #4714
From: david@arch.ping.dk (David Stodolsky)
Subject: Patient long term survival
Tue, 1 Aug 95 20:13:35 +0200 (CET DST)
and Thu, 3 Aug 95 20:34:54 +0200 (CET DST)

As far as I am aware, the only patient who has been lost during the
last 20 years (since Nelson's failure at Chatsworth, which I agree
involved bad faith as well as bad planning) was the Alcor patient removed
from suspension in 1994.

This was a woman suspended in 1990. She and her husband were in the
sign-up process with Alcor when she was suddenly hospitalized with cancer
(the couple had not informed us of her condition). She went into a coma
very quickly and died two days later without signing the paperwork. The
husband signed on her behalf at the hospital before we began the transport
process.

Several months later her sister discovered a photocopy of the
Patient's will which stated that she did NOT want cryonics but instead
wanted a Christian burial. Her husband argued that his wife had voided
this will, but evidence to that effect was not strong enough to convince
the California courts. After three years of appeals, the California
Supreme Court upheld the original decision that the photocopied will was
valid. This forced us to remove the patient from suspension and turn her
body over to her husband for burial. After years of arguing in court that
the laws of California explicitly gave people the right to choose their
own method of disposition, including cryonics, we couldn't argue that
people should therefore be frozen against their explicit instructions.

This tragedy could have been avoided if the patient had signed Alcor's
suspension documents, which would have explicitly voided that section of
the will.

Was this an example of bad faith on the part of the family, since
they did not fully inform us of the prospective patient's medical
condition and previous will? No, not really. She wasn't signed up yet,
so no contract was in force. It was *poor foresight* on their part,
certainly. And Alcor certainly acted properly every step of the way.

Do some of the early losses constitute bad faith on the parts of any
cryonics companies? It's tricky to say; but my own understanding is that
just about all of the losses (Chatsworth aside) were a product of 1) poor
planning on the parts of brand new cryonics companies and relatives, 2)
allowing relatives to keep the legal authority to remove patients from
suspension, 3) patients being frozen by their relatives instead of
providing the funding and motivation themselves, and 4) the steep and
rocky learning curve in a strange new field.

I would say that most of the patients who were lost were so in spite
of good faith actions on the part of the early suspension companies. The
companies may have been *wrong* sometimes; but it may have been more often
that the companies were wrong to accept the under/unfunded patients in the
first place, or that they were naive in the legal arrangements they made,
rather than behaving improperly by allowing the families to remove their
relatives from suspension.

I would even argue that in most of those cases the *relatives* acted
"in good faith." They tried to freeze someone they cared about; but they
couldn't afford it. Another example is the man who took on the
responsibility of maintaining his own wife and another patient in
suspension himself simply lacked the single-minded fanaticism and
attention to detail necessary to make such an arrangement work long-term.

Steve Bridge