The 7th Alcor conference wrapped up yesterday: a conference at the intersection of the healthy life extension, cryonics, advanced nanotechnology and transhumanist communities. You'll find ample coverage from the Alcor blog; some snippets below:

7th Alcor Conference, Friday Morning sessions:

Alcor policy specialist Barry Aarons gave an introductory speech summarizing the recent progress of Alcor's status as a research entitity in Arizona. Indeed, within only four years, Alcor has progressed from being existentially threatened by the state government, to being perceived as an accepted research and technology institute furthering the public good. We are all grateful to Barry and the Alcor leadership for their excellent public relations work that made this possible. The next step should be to strengthen Alcor's relations to other leading Biotech institutions in Arizona, and begin collaborations with efforts like the Biodesign Institute in Tempe, or the Bio5 in Tucson. In the long term, this should establish Alcor as an indispensible part of Arizona's sprawling academic and Industrial Biotech network.

7th Alcor Conference, Friday Afternoon Sessions:

The afternoon session featured several illustrious speakers from the fields of molecular, cell and tissue repair, which would seem indispensable for successful resuscitation from cryonic suspension. We began with an introduction to molecular nanotechnology from Ralph Merkle, PhD, which may one day allow us to rebuild damaged structures molecule by molecule. The next higher level of repair, cell repair, was the topic of Mike West, PhD. West’s Advanced Stem Cell Technology may one day allow us to reassemble lost human tissues and organs cell by cell.

Sunday:

Sunday began with a bioethics panel discussion on the ethics of life and death, and in particular definitions of death, which have of course profound implications for the cryonicist’s legal situation. The panelists were care physician David Crippen, Alcor COO Tanya Jones and bioethicist Leslie Whetstine. Next, Steven Harris, MD introduced his fluorocarbon-based rapid body cooling system for resuscitation and cryonics applications. Calvin Mercer, PhD continued to address possible relations between people of religious faith and cryonicists or more broadly life-extensionists. Christine Petersen finally provided a survey of allegedly existing life-extension technologies.

On the spot conference converage can also be found at the Frontier Channel - just keep scrolling.

Stephen Van Sickle, Ralph Merkle, Michael R. Seidl, and Brian Wowk of the Alcor Board of Directors answered questions from the audience for the last session of the day. The Board addressed questions about the current state of Alcor finances. Alcor is financially stable, with the following sources of income:

1/3 membership dues
1/3 bequests and estates
1/3 grants and donations

At the current number of members (approximately 800) Alcor cannot support all the efforts it needs to support. Employees must wear many hats to cover all the administrative and technical tasks required. Better fund-raising was a popular suggestion for improvement by Board members.

“Alcor will aways muddle through,” said Van Sickle, stressing that this was both a strength and a weakness.

Maintenance costs are expected to remain stable over the next few decades, but operations costs are generally less stable. With more members, Alcor could see economies of scale, but exactly how does Alcor gain new membership?

The cryonics industry has been in the classic bootstrap phase for longer than I've known it existed; the stable provision of service continues on the strength of dedicated, hardworking volunteers and visionaries. Progress towards technological advancement and top to bottom professionalization of cryonics organizations has been solid but painfully slow; the same can be said of growth in capacity and provision of services. This is the state of affairs that young companies overcome with venture funding, something that the cryonics community has seen comparatively little of - though there are promising signs of late in that regard.

The cryonics industry should be supported in its efforts to reach mainstream size and success for the same reason that we support advocacy for healthy life extension research: far too few people even realize they have a choice beyond the grave and certain oblivion, and real progress is all about offering that choice. There's a long way to go, but that just makes the first steps easier, right?

Posted by Reason at October 8, 2007 4:38 PM | TrackBack (0)