My somewhat eccentric friend Keith Henson once performed the grisly task of "converting whole body to neuro", which the article mentions: downgrading some of Alcor's full-body customers to head-only by removing their heads from their bodies with a chainsaw, or as Alcore's illustrated report delicately explained, "a rapid conversion to neuropreservation was done using a high-speed electric chain saw."
>Just be glad you didn't have to explain an in joke about ftp sites, the local loopback address, and a troll, in a deposition, under oath, to Scientology lawyers, like Keith Henson did.
The Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition, page 93-94:
>Finally some evidence about the success of cryonics emerged from
among the ranks of the frozen themselves. Not that they were
revived, they were only defrosted. Or at least parts of them were.
>In November of 1983, for the first time ever, a cryonics firm
conducted autopsies on the defrosted mortal remains of two Trans
Time patients who had been converted to neuro. The parties in
question were a married couple who had wanted to be frozen after
death. They hadn’t had the required lump sum in advance, but
Trans Time didn’t want to turn them away, so it accepted them on
a contingency, pay-as-you-go basis. Monthly maintenance costs
would be covered by their loving son.
>When the son’s parents died, Trans Time suspended them as
whole-body patients, which was their desire, and for a number of
years everything went along exactly as planned. But then the son
himself died, in an automobile accident, after which the monthly
payments ceased. Trans Time kept the parents frozen for a while,
but it was clear that sooner or later something had to be done. It
was a private company, operating without government support —
indeed, often in the teeth of government opposition — and could
not afford an extended period of unpaid maintenance, especially
when for fifteen out of its sixteen years of existence the company
had run at loss.
>But then the Alcor Life Extension Foundation came to the
rescue. It would take care of the frozen parents, essentially on a
charity basis, but only on the condition that they could be
“converted” first, which is to say, converted from whole-body to neuro,
the latter being far less expensive than the former. “The same
capsule that you put a whole body in,” Saul Kent once explained,
“you can probably put twenty heads in.”
>This, of course, meant that the heads had to come off while the
patients were still frozen. Not that this was much of a problem.
As Alcor’s illustrated report on the case explains, “a rapid conversion
to neuropreservation was done using a high-speed electric
chain saw.”
>This was now a golden opportunity to see how frozen bodies
actually fared over their years in storage—nine years for the husband, five for the wife. So the Alcor men thawed out and autopsied
the newly decapitated bodies.
>There was both bad and good news. “The most unexpected
finding as a result of these autopsies,” says the report, “is the
discovery of serious fracturing in all of the suspension patients.”
There were fractures in the outer skin, in the subcutaneous fat,
in the blood vessels next to the heart, in the arteries and veins. The
right lung of one patient was cracked almost in half, as was the
liver, and there were open wounds on the hands and right wrist.
>This was not encouraging, but it was all too easy to lose one’s
perspective. The fact of the matter was that the injuries suffered
by these frozen corpses were no worse than what’s seen in hospital
shock-trauma units every day of the week—broken (if not absent)
arms and legs, and so on—but many of these people end up
recovering. The fact that the frozen corpses were not in pristine
shape was not by itself any cause for alarm.
>The good news was that much of the bodies survived perfectly
intact. The palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, and other
structures were all in fine shape. As for the brains, they remained
in suspension and were not examined.
>To Alcor, the whole thing was a learning experience. The initial
suspensions had not been perfect, but all things considered, the
patients came through the whole process about as well as anyone
could expect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson
Keith is quite a character, who also successfully performed one of the most hilarious trolls ever against Scientology lawyers:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20791891
>Just be glad you didn't have to explain an in joke about ftp sites, the local loopback address, and a troll, in a deposition, under oath, to Scientology lawyers, like Keith Henson did.
The Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition, page 93-94:
https://www.gwern.net/docs/transhumanism/1990-regis-greatmam...
>Finally some evidence about the success of cryonics emerged from among the ranks of the frozen themselves. Not that they were revived, they were only defrosted. Or at least parts of them were.
>In November of 1983, for the first time ever, a cryonics firm conducted autopsies on the defrosted mortal remains of two Trans Time patients who had been converted to neuro. The parties in question were a married couple who had wanted to be frozen after death. They hadn’t had the required lump sum in advance, but Trans Time didn’t want to turn them away, so it accepted them on a contingency, pay-as-you-go basis. Monthly maintenance costs would be covered by their loving son.
>When the son’s parents died, Trans Time suspended them as whole-body patients, which was their desire, and for a number of years everything went along exactly as planned. But then the son himself died, in an automobile accident, after which the monthly payments ceased. Trans Time kept the parents frozen for a while, but it was clear that sooner or later something had to be done. It was a private company, operating without government support — indeed, often in the teeth of government opposition — and could not afford an extended period of unpaid maintenance, especially when for fifteen out of its sixteen years of existence the company had run at loss.
>But then the Alcor Life Extension Foundation came to the rescue. It would take care of the frozen parents, essentially on a charity basis, but only on the condition that they could be “converted” first, which is to say, converted from whole-body to neuro, the latter being far less expensive than the former. “The same capsule that you put a whole body in,” Saul Kent once explained, “you can probably put twenty heads in.”
>This, of course, meant that the heads had to come off while the patients were still frozen. Not that this was much of a problem. As Alcor’s illustrated report on the case explains, “a rapid conversion to neuropreservation was done using a high-speed electric chain saw.”
>This was now a golden opportunity to see how frozen bodies actually fared over their years in storage—nine years for the husband, five for the wife. So the Alcor men thawed out and autopsied the newly decapitated bodies.
>There was both bad and good news. “The most unexpected finding as a result of these autopsies,” says the report, “is the discovery of serious fracturing in all of the suspension patients.” There were fractures in the outer skin, in the subcutaneous fat, in the blood vessels next to the heart, in the arteries and veins. The right lung of one patient was cracked almost in half, as was the liver, and there were open wounds on the hands and right wrist.
>This was not encouraging, but it was all too easy to lose one’s perspective. The fact of the matter was that the injuries suffered by these frozen corpses were no worse than what’s seen in hospital shock-trauma units every day of the week—broken (if not absent) arms and legs, and so on—but many of these people end up recovering. The fact that the frozen corpses were not in pristine shape was not by itself any cause for alarm.
>The good news was that much of the bodies survived perfectly intact. The palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, and other structures were all in fine shape. As for the brains, they remained in suspension and were not examined.
>To Alcor, the whole thing was a learning experience. The initial suspensions had not been perfect, but all things considered, the patients came through the whole process about as well as anyone could expect.