CryoNet #22672 - #22676

CryoNet - Tue 14 Oct 2003

    #22672: Natural gas shortage threatens food security [Mark Plus]
    #22673: Movement to Regulate Florida Cryonics [Flavonoid]
    #22674: NYTimes: Odd Outpost of Icy Immortality in Sunshine State [Mark 
Plus]
    #22675: Article about Suspended Animation, Inc. [Bryan Hall]
    #22676: Cryonics in BC [Olaf Henny]

Administrivia

To subscribe to CryoNet, send email to:
    cryonet-request@xxxxxxxxxxx
with the subject line (not message _body_):
    subscribe
To unsubscribe, use the subject line:
    unsubscribe


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #22672
From: "Mark Plus" <markplus@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Natural gas shortage threatens food security
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 14:09:18 -0700

Considering that by now most of the protein in our bodies incorporates 
artificially fixed nitrogen, North America's natural gas shortage threatens 
long-term sustenance [Mark Plus]:

http://www.agriculture.com/default.sph/AgNews.class?FNC=goDetail__ANewsindex_html___50725___1

Study shows how much sky-high natural gas prices hurt farmers

By Cheryl Rainford
News Editor
Agriculture Online

High natural gas prices have taken a financial toll on nitrogen fertilizer 
manufacturers. They've passed on the costs to farmers, but farmers haven't 
reduced usage, due to substantially increased imports. Those are the 
findings of a new study released Friday by the Government Accounting Office, 
the non-partisan research arm of Congress.

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) used the news to call for better oversight of the 
natural gas industry, while Republican House representatives Richard Pombo 
and Billy Tauzin used the news to push for passage of an energy bill that 
would step up natural gas exploration on federal lands.

The report quotes industry officials as saying gas prices in 2003 are again 
resulting in unacceptably high production costs and, as a result, a decline 
in production levels is occurring.

"At one point in 2003, half of the nation's fertilizer production capacity 
was shut down because it was not profitable to operate," said Harkin in a 
release Thursday. "The high cost of natural gas has forced at least one 
major cooperative in the Midwest into bankruptcy and threatens the industry 
  farmers, cooperatives, fertilizer producers   as a whole."

The cost of natural gas can account for up to 90% of nitrogen fertilizer 
production costs. When natural gas prices increased in 2000 2001, nitrogen 
fertilizer manufacturers in the US reported money woes resulting from the 
resulting increase in production costs. Concerns also arose that US farmers 
would face much higher nitrogen fertilizer prices and that there might not 
be an adequate supply of nitrogen fertilizer to satisfy farmers' demands at 
any price.

_________________________________________________________________
See when your friends are online with MSN Messenger 6.0. Download it now 
FREE! http://msnmessenger-download.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #22673
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 23:37:26 -0400
From: Flavonoid@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Movement to Regulate Florida Cryonics

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/14/national/14CRYO.html?ex=1066708800&en=42b9eb692abbd02b&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #22674
From: "Mark Plus" <markplus@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: NYTimes: Odd Outpost of Icy Immortality in Sunshine State
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 22:08:50 -0700

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/14/national/14CRYO.html?ex=1066708800&en=42b9eb692abbd02b&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

Odd Outpost of Icy Immortality in Sunshine State
By RICHARD SANDOMIR

Published: October 14, 2003


BOCA RATON, Fla.   On a winding street in a nondescript industrial park, the 
odd science of preserving the dead is creating a new outpost here.

The name of the cryonics company is not on the building, and there are no 
cooled-down bodies awaiting transportation to long-term storage. But the 
company, Suspended Animation, hopes to receive a construction permit and 
approval in November from Boca Raton to perform animal research into the 
preservation and future revival of the dead.

If it is successful, it would join two other companies, the Alcor Life 
Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the Cryonics Institute in 
suburban Detroit, that have until recently quietly engaged in cryonics.

But the city's ultimate go-ahead, to let the company perform a two-day 
process at its site that it contends is crucial to preserving frozen bodies 
for possible resuscitation, will depend on being licensed by the state 
agency that regulates mortuaries, embalmers and cemeteries.

In Florida, Arizona and Michigan, state agencies are seeking more regulatory 
oversight of these businesses, which preserve the dead in hopes that future 
breakthroughs in medical science will make it possible to bring people back 
to life. (People who die, in cryonics parlance, are said to have been 
"de-animated.")

Debate over the issue intensified after a legal dispute over the decision by 
two of the three children of the baseball Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams to have 
his body preserved after his death in July 2002, and the discovery a year 
later that his head had been severed from his body.

"These companies need to be regulated or deregulated out of business," said 
Rudy Thomas, head of Arizona's Board of Funeral Directors.

Alcor and the Cryonics Institute store bodies in canisters filled with 
liquid nitrogen at minus 320 degrees and charge fees of $28,000 to $120,000 
for their services.

Suspended Animation prepares bodies for preservation for Alcor and the 
Cryonics Institute, charging $19,000 to $35,000 for its services, depending 
on time and labor. The company will not store bodies on a long-term basis.

While some have nicknamed cryonics the immortality business, David L. 
Shumaker, the president of Suspended Animation, said: "Death is a process, 
not an event. We want to slow, or stop, the process of death." Mr. Shumaker, 
a physicist, added, "You talk about immortality, you start offending 
people's religious perceptions."

For decades, the world of cryonics was insular   and confined largely to 
speculation about whether Walt Disney had been frozen and to films like 
"Sleeper" about thawed out characters   until the head and body of Mr. 
Williams were surgically separated and preserved in separate containers at 
Alcor.

The existence of the Cryonics Institute, where 50 bodies are preserved, was 
not even known to Michigan's Department of Consumer and Industry Services 
until the publicity over Mr. Williams.

"We were unaware that it was operating," said Andrew Metcalf, director of 
the agency's bureau of commercial services. Michigan has temporarily blocked 
the company from freezing more bodies.

Mr. Thomas, head of the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors, said that 
without state oversight there were no guarantees that the 58 bodies and 
heads at Alcor were being properly preserved and that environmental laws 
were being followed.

In Boca Raton, city officials do not oppose the existence of Suspended 
Animation or its proposed testing on laboratory animals. But the mayor, 
Steven L. Abrams, said the company must comply with the state's requirement 
that it receive a license as an embalming facility, cemetery or funeral 
home.

Boca Raton's decision to make final approvals for Suspended Animation 
contingent upon its obtaining a state license has delayed the company's 
plans and eaten at its finances.

`They've got us boxed in," Mr. Shumaker said, "and we may end up seeking 
some administrative or judicial relief." But he added that he was eager to 
help the state put together new regulations for cryonics.

Cryonics companies say they should not be overseen by state regulators but 
are covered instead by the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which sets organ 
donation rules covering all states. They say they are not embalming, burying 
or cremating the dead.

In Michigan, the belated knowledge that the Cryonics Institute had been in 
business for nearly 30 years prompted a yearlong investigation that 
culminated in August with a cease and desist order to prevent the freezing 
of new bodies.

There is a squeamishness about cryonics that has kept it from attracting an 
audience broader than the estimated 1,100 people who have signed up to be 
frozen after their deaths and the approximately 115 bodies and heads now in 
subzero storage in Michigan and Arizona.

"We walk in lock step with our ancestors," Mr. Shumaker said. "What your 
parents and grandparents did is normal to you. If three generations of your 
people were frozen, people would say, `Cremation? Are you crazy?' "

In choosing Boca Raton, Suspended Animation might appear to be motivated by 
a desire to pursue profits in a city where nearly one-fifth of the 
population is over the age of 65. But the company says that it settled here 
because it was the only city in South Florida that would allow the company 
to perform research on animals.

Suspended Animation's research will seek to reduce the post-mortem damage 
and destruction of cells caused when blood no longer circulates and the body 
is deprived of oxygen.

Mr. Shumaker said the research "will be on laboratory rats, and maybe dogs, 
but never primates." But the company says it hopes to perfect the process so 
that it can someday be used on people.

Until it begins its research, the company provides emergency standby teams 
that await the death of a terminally ill member of Alcor or the Cryonics 
Institute. Ted Williams was one of the first to receive its service.

"In days gone by, hospitals wouldn't even let us in," Mr. Shumaker said. 
"Now we sit in I.C.U.'s."

_________________________________________________________________
Concerned that messages may bounce because your Hotmail account has exceeded 
its 2MB storage limit? Get Hotmail Extra Storage!         
http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #22675
From: "Bryan Hall" <bryan8266@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Article about Suspended Animation, Inc.
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 22:40:58 -0700

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/14/national/14CRYO.html?ex=1066708800&en=42b9eb692abbd02b&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE


 Content-Type: text/html;

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #22676
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 23:32:48 -0700
From: Olaf Henny <olafh@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Cryonics in BC
References: <20031012090000.40636.qmail@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

In Message #22669 Jeff Davis <jrd1415@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote in part:
"Subject: Status of cryonics legality in BC"

(snip)
Olaf, if you read this, could you post a copy of that
letter?  I'm very interested to see how you achieved
your result." (snip)

Sorry, I no longer have the letter with which I 
approached the subject to Claude Richmond, Speaker 
of the House.

Claude and I go back to the late sixties and early 
seventies, when he was a member of the city council 
in Kamloops and I represented major development 
projects in that city, first as employee of an 
engineering firm and later as Project Manager of a 
major developer.  While we were not exactly close 
personal friends, we shared many a business lunch and 
found ourselves often on the same page, because 
Claude was very pro development.

I do however still have a scan of the letter I 
received from the Solicitor General on file and 
would be pleased to send a copy as attachment to 
an email to anybody  who requests one through 
private email.

Best, 
Olaf

----------------------------------------------------------------------

End of CryoNet Digest
*********************