THE EARLY DAYS
My Side Of The Story
By Bob Nelson
On planet earth and the beginning of
human history often a single thought will appear and bring with it an
idea that sows the seed of deep changes in the rise of human life on
earth.
In 1966 I
read The Prospect of Immortality and in that book Robert Ettinger
explained in vivid detail how I might today go about stopping or at
least greatly delaying my own death by utilizing the science of cryonics
suspension.
The books
explanation was crystal clear it offered a thesis of a fact and an
assumption. If I had my body frozen in LN2 -320 % While I was still in
the early stages of dying (clinical death) and stayed frozen until (the
assumption ) a future generation of science might one day in the distant
future be up to the task of returning me to a new and healthy life.
The problem
with implementing these life saving suggestions in 1966 was that there
were no facilities to perform such a cryo perfusion and no doctors or
morticians that would or could handle processing anyone that wanted to
be cryonicly suspended.
There were
also no reliable LN2 capsules or storage and maintenance services
available at that time and finally there was no place to store such a
frozen patient.
These
facilities would need to be created to care for such patients providing
decades or even centuries of intensive care and safe keeping before
anyone could rely on this method of dealing with the dying process.
Driving
home from work one day in 1966 I had just listened to an old Tony
Bennett song “If I ruled the world” when the stations DJ announced with
a tongue in cheek attitude “ If any of you listeners out there don’t
like the idea of dying just call this number______ and get yourself
invited to a Life Extension Society meeting in Los Angeles next week.
The L.E.S.
proposes freezing your body when you die instead of burying it. They
claim one day they may be able to bring you back.
Who knows
maybe some day they actually will be able to bring you back to life, a
life in which you can see the changes that have occurred over the past
few hundred years!
That DJ
never knew how much he had changed my life and world history with that
simple announcement that he was so playfully making.
I called
that number and attended that first ever human suspended animation
meeting. Within a month I was elected president of the newly formed CSC.
We had a
tight group of advocates incorporated as the non profit Cryonics Society
of California. We were determined to bring the needed professionals and
facilities together that could offer cryonics suspension to those
choosing this new and promising means of dealing with the dying process.
The "non profit" society was
represented by Nelson to be a protective mechanism for members,
responsible for their care. We found this to be illusory
and misleading,
when we finally obtained the details .
Among our
two hundred members the CSC meetings resulted in enlisting doctors, low
temperature researchers, mortuary owners and professionals from all
walks of life. It was not easy to convince most people that the grand
prize of greatly extended life was worth the effort, but to those of us
who loved life there was nothing that was going to stand in the way.
The above paragraph does not
reflect what Linda and I observed in 1970.
Poet Keliel
Gebraun said it beautifully when he writes, “ to be like a running brook
singing its melody unto the night, to wake at dawn with a winged heart
and give thanks for another day of loving”
Yes the
love of life is strong and is an inalienable right, an instinct that
some thriving human beings embrace with all their heart and soul. Yet
strangely, there are those who have no interest in extended life. My own
brother whom I love with all my heart has an attitude of, are you
kidding, no way do I want to come back to this world once I am out of
here. No way!
On January
12, 1967 CSC made world history by freezing Dr. James Bedford. Dr.
Bedford was the worlds first human being to be frozen under controlled
conditions with the goal of eventual reanimation.
The
suspension team consisted of Dr. Renault Able the attending physician,
Dr Dante Brunnol who directed the perfusion, Robert Prehoda an author of
three books supporting reduced metabolism research and myself.
Prehoda was
in a way two faced about his personal support for the cryonics program.
To the scientific world, he claimed he was opposed to human cryonics
suspension. However privately he was very much in support of the CSC
goals to freeze those of us facing death today.
This is
very clearly documented by his actual participation in the perfusion and
freezing of Dr. Bedford. Dr Bedford actually spent overnight in dry ice
in Prehoda's garage.
We spent hours in the early
1970's interviewing Robert Prehoda as to what took place. Prehoda presented a
significantly different picture of the Bedford freezing.
The
freezing of the first man created a lot of interest in cryonics
suspension, but the problem cryonics faced obtaining hard cash became a
difficult puzzle. People did strange thinks to hold on to their money.
Dr.
Bedford who left three hundred thousand dollars for his suspension and
care never even paid CSC for his own freezing expenses he was whisked
away by his son and Dr. Renault Able, then secretly transferred many
times to different locations over the next several years.
Many years
later when the three hundred thousand dollars was gone, Dr Bedford body
was given to the Alcor foundation who to this day provides a free
capsule and continued suspension in LN2 for the first men ever frozen.
We salute you Alcor the world is indeed indebted to you.
Dick Jones
who was the first secretary to the CSC and saw first hand how desperate
the society was for funds to purchase property on cemetery grounds and
build a storage vault to store our frozen heroes. Three patients were
then on dry ice for two years waiting for a capsule and reanimation.
Dick never offered to help not even a penny.
Dick Jones
as it turns out was a multi millionaire and when he himself died of aids
at thirty years of age he left over five million dollars to the Alcor
foundation in Arizona for his own suspension and safe keeping.
After the
freezing of Dr Bedford in 1967 a series of deaths of prominent CSC
officials occurred. First was the very wall known Marie Sweet who had
given enormously of herself and time to promoting CSC efforts to
prosper and develop a state of the art cryonics facility.
Marie died
on August 27,1967 alone in a Santa Monica hotel while in town promoting
the CSC first national cryonics conference. She was not discovered for
48 hours after her death.
We placed
her in dry ice temporary storage. As it turned out Marie had made all
the necessary legal arrangements for her own suspension, but she had
provided absolutely no funds for to pay for that suspension.
Her husband
gave CSC a total of three hundred and declared that was all the money
they had between them. They lived only on social security.
Several
months later, on May 14, 1968 my personal hero Ms. Helen Kline passed
away. Helen was dying when she set up the very first cryonics meeting at
her home in spite of the cancer that was ravaging her body.
Helen found
the strength to hang in there and fight for her life. It was Helen who
brought us all together and take the first step to bring together the
teachings of the Prospect of Immortality.
Helen died
with out having a penny to her name. She did however get an excellent
suspension there were no delays as we had a suspension team right there
at the moment of her clinical death. At my decision and direction we
placed her temporarily in the dry ice container with Marie Sweet.
On Sept 6,
1968 the historian of cryonics Russ Stanley died from a heart attack
while at work. Russ was the most gung ho cryonicist I had ever met. He
was a wealthy man, but left only ten thousand for his freezing storage
and perpetual LN2 replacement. It took 24 hours to get cryonic treatment
to Russ.
We now had
three patients in temporary storage and not enough money to save any one
of them on a permanent basis. At least the funds left by Russ Stanley
provided money to replace the dry ice on a weekly basis. The cost of
keeping these patients in dry ice for over two years at $90,00. Per week
translates into $9,500.00 for a two year period.
I decided
not to give up on saving these frozen heroes, I hoped something or
someone would come forward and help. I believed all our live depended on
that truth.
After about
two years of weekly replacing dry ice on our three patients, we received
a desperate call from a Michigan resident Marie Bowers who had had her
beloved father frozen and stored at the Cryo care equipment co in
Phoenix Arizona. She was broke and unable to pay for her fathers
continued maintenance.
Cryo care
owner Ed Hope told me when I called him to inquire about the capsule
that she had two weeks to pay up the $1,500.00 she owed him or he would
kick the fucking thing into the street. Mr. Hope asked me if that
was clear enough?
Ms. Bowers
donated the capsule and her father to CSC with a written notice of her
inability to continue her fathers suspension. The CSC paid Ed Hope the
$1,500.00 Ms. Bowers owed The Cryo Care co for the capsules previous
care. We then took the capsule to California.
In the
intervening two years CSC had acquired three more patients A beautiful
seven year old little girl from Canada. Her father had no money he
pleaded with me to help save her. I could not say no.
Another
young man from New York Stephan Mandell frozen by CSNY. The boys mother
pleaded with me to bring him to California as New York was not able to
provide her a secure storage location for her capsule.
We did
bring Stephens capsule to California. We never did hear from Ms. Mandell
once the capsule arrived in California.
The only
other people to provide any donation money ( ten thousand dollars ) were
the two sons of Mildred Harris.
Ms. Harris
was placed in temporary dry ice storage with the understanding the
brothers would donate between one and three hundred dollars a month to
maintain their mothers suspension
After two
years in dry ice storage the family requested and received a private
memorial service and viewing of their mother. About ten family members
traveled from Iowa for this service. The ceremony was very beautiful and
Ms. Harris did indeed appear to be sleeping beauty waiting for that
special kiss.
The
brothers like all of the frozen heroes survivors failed to keep
their promise to make monthly donation. After a year or two all the
patients were essentially abandoned and left for CSC to pay the bills.
Over the
ten years the society survived it did accomplish several outstanding
goals. We sponsored the first California national cryonics conference.
We froze the worlds first human being. We built the first cryo vault on
cemetery grounds. We froze and stored almost free, nine patients for
three years.
As in all
great ventures such as placing a man on the moon mistakes were made and
lives were lost. However in that effort great advances were made. At one
cryonics meeting I had the distinct pleasure of introducing Fred and
Linda Chamberlain to each other.
We met each other at weekly "working"
meetings where
preparations for a Conference were underway; usually 5-10 people
showed up. There was no formal "introduction".
It would be more accurate to say that we "bumped into each other" from
time to time, at these working meetings.
They
quickly fell in love and became a powerful team. Fred became a vice
president of CSC and Linda took charge of all office activities as
office manager.
After the conference, which took place
several months after we met, Linda moved to Idaho and began to
build a home there, with her S/O. In the course of letter
writing to "keep her up to date on CSC", we got to know each other
better, over an extended period of time. Nelson had no
visibility into this, and no "friendship" ever developed between he
and the two of us, so perhaps this explains how he perceived us.
(We did go out to dinner after the
conference, and that was, with one brief exception, the last time we
saw each other for over 100 days & nights, yet it had a powerful
influence on us, as evidenced on the page with our wedding vows.
If you are a friend of ours and haven't visited that page, use the
email icon below to ask, and we'll send you the link.)
The "appointment as a Vice President"
was for surface appearances only. When I asked, I
was told this was an "Honorary Vice President" role only, and
that this neither involved any of the responsibilities of an "actual"
Vice President, nor did it entitle me to knowledge of CSC's corporate
arrangements. In this role, I was
given no details of the many deficiencies of CSC. These were only
uncovered by Linda and I later during our work for CSC as volunteers,
when Nelson's attempts to keep them
secret failed.
Linda never was hired or appointed
to any official position with CSC, and worked strictly from home as a
volunteer. There were almost no "office activities" to begin
with. The mention of her as an "Office Manager", perhaps, is
intended to give the illusion that CSC had "others working in an
office", with substantial office activities. It did not! Whatever "office activities" CSC
did have required
only a few hours/week. Very little was going on, there.
It soon
became very obvious that they had a goal of establishing their own
cryonics facility. They had access to every bit of information and
activity the CSC was involved in.
We slowly gained sufficient access to information
about CSC, as volunteers,
to see that Robert Nelson had grossly misrepresented CSC to its
members, in a way that could easily be interpreted as fraud. As we discovered
more and more of this, we had to decide either to give up on CSC, or try
to help remedy its defects.
If it had not been for the fragile
condition of my father, a stroke victim in a local nursing home, Linda and I would
almost surely have walked away from CSC as soon
as we became aware of the extent to which it had been misrepresented by Nelson.
However,
by then, based on Nelson's detailed
and apparently sincere and honest claims that he had a viable organization, I'd
promised my father that I would get him suspended if he died, and had started the signup process
for him. Linda and I could not just walk away from this commitment.
It was unthinkable.
For the moment, we were "stuck". We set about trying to
deal with what we
perceived to be a still highly unknown, difficult and risky situation. As
other comments here will reveal, in the end this did no good. After a
year and a half of effort on CSC's behalf, we were forced to sever our relationship with it. We formed Alcor only
after Robert Nelson cut off our access to CSC's suspension program, as
discussed in more detail at the link below:
And that
was fine with me as I recently told Bob Ettinger and CI president Ben
Best my goal was not to become rich famous and live forever. Just living
forever was ample reward for me.
The
Chamberlains went on to make the dream of a state of the art cryonics
facility a reality. I solute them for their contribution to the world,
which is without a doubt comparable to the birth of the wheel or the
discovery of fire.
If it had not been for the desperate
situation Robert Nelson put us in, as described in more detail at the
above link, we might have never established Alcor. Instead, we
would far more likely have left CSC and
have worked closely with the Bay Area Cryonics Society, and to have helped form Trans
Time, Inc.
The one CSC
activity I did not share with the Chamberlains or any one else was that
the capsule containing the first four frozen heroes had failed and there
were no funds to purchase another capsule or to even provide LN2 the
society had completely run out of money
Robert Nelson did share the
fallout of the abandonment of his patients at
Chatsworth with us, by testifying under oath, in the course of a
deposition, that we had attended a meeting called over two and a half years after we
had totally severed relationships with he and with CSC, and had
(during this period) avoided contact with CSC entirely.
This was a meeting, in fact, as we
understand it now, it was the meeting, at which the
thawing of patients was divulged by Nelson, and the possible
dissolution of CSC was discussed. Nelson
indicated that not only did Linda and I attend this meeting, but
that we took the minutes and took them away with us, which, Nelson
explained, was "probably why
there are no minutes of the meeting available".
This might have seemed like a
"little white lie" to Nelson at the time, to help get around
questions about the degree to which CSC had actually discussed its dissolution
formally, and addressed the question of the patients' fates.
Perhaps Nelson thought that this could provide him with
some "corporate shield" protection. We can only
speculate about the motives.
The facts were that
when we did received copies
of the deposition as part of the pretrial proceedings, in which we
had been named as codefendants, we could see how Nelson
had implicated us as "still being active in CSC", when we had been
totally out of touch with it (for over two and a half years prior to the
meeting), and we were utterly dismayed and
confounded by what appeared to be Nelson's attempt to not only
hide behind CSC, but to hide behind us as well.
Almost entirely because of this one
factor, we (Fred and Linda Chamberlain) were named, along with Nelson,
his contract mortician, and several active CSC Directors, as
defendants in the pretrial proceedings of the relatives' lawsuit over
the Chatsworth "desecration of the patients". Our attorney
explained it this way:
"Since they (the Plaintiffs' attorneys)
knew you were at that meeting (or had excellent reason
to believe so), by way of Nelson's testimony, there was no way in good
conscience that they could avoid naming you as
defendants. It would have been incompetent of them to have left
you out!"
Extricating ourselves from this mess
cost us over $15,000 in
legal expenses, at a time when we were barely able to break even in a
new business we had begun after moving to Northern California, and it
nearly resulted in our bankruptcy, but there were even more serious
impacts and risks. By his actions, Nelson had set the stage for
dragging both Alcor and Trans Time into the trial as well.
The way it went was this: If
we were still active in CSC at a time when we were
also on the Board of Directors of Alcor and (Linda was) on the
Board of Trans Time, this gave legal cause for the plaintiffs to treat
both Alcor and Trans Time as "Alter Egos"
of CSC and name them as codefendants also, in the
Chatsworth suit. It "linked the corporations". Perhaps CSC
was broke, but both Alcor and Trans Time were caring for patients, and
had funds to do so. They would have been excellent "deep pocket"
targets for the Plaintiffs.
The damages sought by the relatives in
combination were eighty million dollars. If the two legitimately
organized firms (Alcor and Trans Time) had been named in the lawsuit,
as co-defendants, they would likely have been assessed the major share
of damages, and the damages awarded would likely have been far
higher also.
(Our understanding is that Nelson's contract mortician, who
had very limited involvement dealing with the relatives, was
assessed damages in the range of $400,000.00,
covered by his professional insurance. He was,
as things turned out, the "deep pockets" for the plaintiffs.
Let's be thankful that Alcor and Trans Time were not destroyed by
Nelson. They could have been.)
(Now, continuing with Nelson's
"story")
CSC was
broke.
I could
find no one who would part with any of their money to save these frozen
heroes who apparently did not care enough financially about saving their
own carcass.
I have been
severely rebuked for this action and I believe justly so. Not for my
conduct of trying with all my heart to save these poor fools who had
left virtually no funds with which to continue their suspension.
But for
walking away for twenty five years and refusing to discuss or answer
even the tiniest detail of what happened at the failed cryonics vault.
I can only
explain the anger I felt after being found at fault to the tune of
thirty seven thousand dollars ( the total judgment was almost half a
million dollars) for the intentional infliction of pain and suffering to
Clair Halpert a CSNY member whom I had never even met and had absolutely
nothing to do with. We had no knowledge of her mothers suspension by
the CSNY.
I felt like
a volcano had erupted inside my soul and like the volcano on the big
island of Hawaii kept on erupting for all of those years.
My reason
for not informing the Chamberlains or any one else regarding the issue
of the failed capsules was for their own well being this is true of all
the CSC members and directors who knew nothing about the capsules
failure.
As noted above, Robert Nelson
exposed Linda Chamberlain and myself, and Alcor and
Trans Time as well, to being named as defendants in the Chatsworth suit, by
his
falsehoods under oath. This is not what could be called
"looking out for the well being" of those concerned.
The
decision to try and save those who had made no provisions for their own
suspension cost, was my own foolish decision I acted on their behalf out
of my own compassion. If I had not done so they would been disposed of
with in a few days of their death.
The plaintiffs attorney Mr. Wormington
would then have included any one he could into his law suite and viscous
search for pockets to money grab, as he tried so desperately to do.
In closing I would remind everyone that
CSC played an important roll in the rise of the Chamberlains and of
Alcor itself. Every wonderful achievement they made had its beginning
from the existence of the Cryonics society of California.
Take this statement in the context of
the other statements of counterpoint, above. Linda and I had
both read Bob Ettinger's book and were highly enthusiastic about it,
prior to contact with CSC. If CSC had never existed, we might
well have "found each other" through the Bay Area Cryonics Society,
or one of the chapters in would doubtlessly have established in the
Los Angeles area. This claim has no merit.
Yes the CSC
vault did indeed in the long run fail, but the CSC members them self’s
were a resounding success. They produced the Chamberlains , Dick Jones,
Greg Fahey, and countless other leaders in today’s suspended animation
programs. While there are some who would choose to ignore this truth
there are many others who do acknowledge this truth.
The CSC
took an enormous Civil hit from unscrupulous money grabbing attorneys,
showing how vulnerable the cryonics concept can be to jury’s and people
who view this science as a new religion threatening the old ways of
thinking and believing . I acknowledge that CSC made mistakes, but I
ask you please don’t diminish CSC contribution to the cryonics program
because of those mistakes.
On April 4th
2004 some 25 years later I retired from my electronics business and
turned that switch in my head back on and allowed my self to once again
embrace cryonics as the life saving hope it truly is. I asked Bob
Ettinger if he would object to my writing another book about the early
CSC years (first book “We Froze The First Man”) Mr. Ettinger said he
thought it would be a good idea to record that part of history.
I have just
finished writing that book and hope it will be published soon. The
working title is “Frozen heroes and the cryonics time machine.”
Sense
finishing my book I have Joined CI as an option one member and I have
made all legal and financial arrangements to be frozen when my time
comes to face the grim reaper. In the meantime I am filled with
confidence, that one day I will be revived to become part of a brave new
world.
After
seeing the wonderful facility The people of Michigan have so carefully
built on a slow, but steady course. It is truly an honor to join your
group and be counted as one of those embracing the metamorphosis of cave
into super man.
In April
2005 I was rushed to my local hospital emergency room with what was
believed to be an oncoming heart attack. I was ultimately discovered to
have a life threatening lack of potassium which was easily managed.
During my
three day stay in the hospital I was faced with the horrible fact that
even though I had made arrangements to be frozen there was no one there
to prepare my body for cryonics suspension.
If I died,
sooner or later the Renaker Mortuary would come around to pick up my by
now very dead body, pack me in ice and ship me to Michigan for permanent
LN2 storage.
The
problem with this scenario is that after ten minutes of no oxygen to my
brain, what is now considered irreparable brain damage begins and gets
worse with every minute that goes by.
While we
have a right to expect future medicine to be able to perform miracles
we must deliver ourselves to that future generation in the very best
condition possible.
More about delivering ourselves to
that future generation in the "very best condition
possible"!
As I am now
retired this is a perfect time to bridge and fill that gap between death
and arriving at CI in Michigan. I happen to have a close personal
relationship with a young couple who work at the Palomar hospital here
in California. They are both trauma team experts and regularly work in
the organ donor ward of their hospitals.
It is a
matter of routine for them to place organ donors in a
special organ harvest ward and keep those deceased ones connected to a
heart lung machines until the exact right moment that they are released
to the donor recipient organization.
In our case
that would be the cryonics Institute or its representative, Renaker
mortuary.
We have
formed a company here in California to provide stand by service and
information for those patients now living in the west coast. The name of
this new venture is “The continued life Group” further information can
by found by calling us at (760) 358-6700 or emailing us at
________________.
And
remember as Ettinger explains it’s more interesting to be alive then to
be dead.
