Mike, let’s be fair about this. Veterinary surgeons for thoracic surgery (after loss of Jerry Leaf) and chemists for running perfusion machines were also used during your tenure managing biomedical affairs at Alcor two decades ago. You trained and utilized lay people to do all kinds procedures that would ordinarily be done by medical or paramedical professionals, including establishing airways, mechanical circulation, and I.V. administration of fluids and medications. Manuals provided to lay students even included directions for doing femoral cutdown surgery.
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/1990manual.html
The good cases that you were able to do with lay help (and being only a dialysis technician by credential yourself) are the stuff of cryonics legend. That was how cryonics was done back then. With the resources that were available then, and the need to provide cryonics response over vast geographic areas, using trained lay cryonicists was the most effective way to deliver cryonics care for many years. Some history of this is discussed here
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/professionals.html
In the 2000s Alcor began to supplement trained lay cryonicist teams by deploying a staff paramedic to cases whenever possible. In the 2010s, Alcor began using Suspended Animation, Inc., more extensively. As announced here,
http://www.alcor.org/blog/?p=2174
Alcor policy is now to use Suspended Animation, Inc.., (SA) for all cases in the continental U.S. outside of Arizona which SA can reach in time. Local trained lay teams are now only used as first responders, bridging time between notification of emergencies and arrival of SA.
The significance of this is that SA now uses board certified cardiovascular surgeons and certified clinical perfusionists on almost all cases. I’ve met two of SA’s contract cardiovascular surgeons, one of whom trained under Michael DeBakey. These are top-rank professionals who go out on cryonics standbys, and get cryonics patients on cardiopulmonary bypass faster than ever before in cryonics. They established fem-fem bypass on one patient last year in only 15 minutes.
http://www.alcor.org/blog/?p=2175
Another patient was placed on bypass only 7 minutes after arrival in SA’s vehicle using emergency median sternotomy, never before done in cryonics.
http://www.alcor.org/blog/?p=2267
These are professional surgeons and perfusionists who do median sternotomies and cannulations so fast that in their day jobs they actually save patients who suffer cardiac arrest from fixable causes (e.g. “fatal” DVTs). This is now the level of care available under ideal circumstances in cryonics.
In Alcor’s O.R., Alcor is presently evaluating and training two board certified general surgeons to supplement the veterinary surgeon and neurosurgeon who have been used by Alcor for the past 15 years. Alcor has transitioned toward utilization of professionals whenever possible or practical. There are now more medical professionals doing the work of cryonics than ever before in the history of cryonics; not just scientists and technicians, but actual clinicians.
You are also mistaken, at least partially, about utilization of animal models in training. Even though professional surgeons and perfusionists already have extensive and ongoing clinical experience, SA uses a porcine model to train its contract surgeons, perfusionists, and other personnel in the specific procedures of cryonics.
There are shortcomings to this model. Contract clinicians are extremely skilled at specific procedures that must be done, but they are not cryonicists. For example, they don’t understand cerebral ischemic injury, its mechanisms, and significance in the context of cryonics. This can hypothetically lead to difficulties understanding and managing cases with moderate periods of warm ischemia that would ordinarily be “written off” in conventional medicine. Cryonicist involvement is still essential. However on balance, as measured by the speed and competent handling of standbys and transports in which they have been involved, participation of cardiovascular surgeons and perfusionists has been very positive. I hope we can continue to afford it.
Your points are mostly well-taken, Mike. Not everything is better than it used to be. While the basic cryopreservation technology (vitrification) is better, and some important aspects of service delivery are better, Alcor does not have in-house expertise comparable to the era of you and Jerry Leaf. With the benefit of hindsight, I would say that people of such caliber willing to devote their life to cryonics are a historical anomaly not amenable to formulaic replication.
With respect to communications, the two new potential O.R. surgeons I spoke of were not a public announcement being withheld because Alcor is opaque and untrustworthy. Contact was made with them only within the past few weeks, as discussed at a recent public board meeting. I mentioned them only because your message seemed to imply that Alcor was content with the status quo.
I confess that you have a knack for twisting the knife of public criticism in ways that prompt me to “announce” things that aren’t ripe for announcement, and that lead to more questions and criticism. When will I learn? :)