It definitely is not cheap. But it's more manageable if you start young, especially if you're using life insurance for funding. Or create a separate investment account and add to it every month.
I'd love to see the cost of cryonics fall. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening soon. For real economies of scale, we would need at least one or two orders of magnitude growth in members. It's tough to reduce storage costs, although Alcor did it by using Steve Graber's "Superdewar" design. (I helped by renegotiating the liquid nitrogen charges.) Achieving economies in standby services is difficult. Currently, Suspended Animation's costs are heavily subsidized by Bill Faloon.
With 100x or 1000x more business, enabling the hiring of full time staff (especially surgeons and perfusionists) and dropping the large annual fee for getting medical personnel, costs for SST should be able to come down. With serious growth, membership charges could go way down. I wrote about this ten years ago, but it should mostly still be relevant: https://www.cryonicsarchive.org/docs/cryonics-magazine-2013-03.pdf
I appreciate your emotional honesty. I don't know anything much about cardiovascular dementia, in particular whether or how much it destroys memories. In the case of Alzheimers, there is growing evidence that most memories are intact and the problem is one of access. I don't know yet if this applies to other forms of dementia. If anyone has information or pointers, I'll check them out.
MvB: It won't help your father but perhaps you can take a little comfort in the possibility that your post will induce others to make cryo arrangements for their parents (if the latter are willing).
Your comment creates a misleading impression of my article. Nowhere do I say experts can give a point probability of success. On the contrary, I frequently reject that idea. I also find it silly when people say the probably of AI destroying humans is 20%, or 45%, or whatever.
You don't provide any support for the claim that "the rest of the article doesn't hold all that well together", so I'm unable to respond usefully.
Note that our blog is called "The Biostasis Standard." Yes, the cryonics term is not ideal. Biostasis subsumes cryonics and I prefer it, but far more people are familiar with "cryonics", so it will take a long time to transition terms, if it ever happens.
One research project Biostasis Technologies is behind is vitrifixation -- cryopreservation combined with chemical fixation. It has some advantages in certain circumstances. Ideally, we want a range of cryo and non-cryo preservation approaches, each of which may be the best for particular situations -- such as ischemic time.
Don't hesitate to let me know if I or Alcor's membership administrator Diane Cremeens diane@alcor.org can help by answering any questions. You can reach me at max@alcor.org
The last statement is not accurate. Currently, with some warning, Alcor WILL deploy people outside of North America. In the near future, we expect to be able to deploy more local responders either instead of or in addition to our own personnel.
Depends what you mean by risk-averse. Alcor has an unquestionable history of fighting for its members' wishes, rather than giving up on them at the mere hint of a legal battle. The only way in which CI could be said to be more financially prudent (but in a way with its own costs) is in its remarkable ability to hold down operating costs. I'm working hard on reducing our costs without undesirable penalties in terms of capabilities. I think we are also now at a point where further membership growth will yield significant economies of scale.
But take a look at both organizations' financial statements. You will see that CI expects to maintain patients indefinitely -- and revive them -- on a small amount of per-patient funding. That takes some heroic and highly risky assumptions to accept. Alcor has carefully structured institutions and policies to manage sustainably for the long-term, including strict limits on what can be charged to the patient care trust fund, a 2% draw on the Endowment Fund, and an investment policy that has been giving us gains (while CI has been losing on its investments). If you continue to delve into the gory details, I think you may continue to update your views further.
Ben: I wasn't actually criticizing CI for not perfusing the body other than the brain, I was simply pointing it out. CI members in general seem very insistent on the importance of cryopreserving their entire body. Given THAT, it seems important to note that their body will not be cryoprotected. However, thanks for pointing out that CI will do so if requested. How often is that request made?
Why do you say that vitrification of the body is not possible "either at Alcor or CI"? It is done at Alcor for whole body members.
I mean that when we received some income that was not definitely specified for a particular purpose, when I suggested that some of it go to operations, the board unanimously insisted it all go into the Endowment Fund.
$100 per month of savings is incredibly low for average earnings. About 2%. It's a matter of priorities.