The theoretical desirability and practicality of cryonics is what matters at this point. It's what the real controversy is about. If the given organizations are incompetent, they can be replaced with better ones. Or the people in them can be replaced. But, supposing that is necessary, we would need new people to replace them with. People who actually care about cryonics. Melody is not contributing to that cause, in my estimation. Rather she seems to be contributing to, and playing upon, the existing cocktail of mockery, misunderstanding, and marginalization that has plagued cryonics for years.
The theoretical desirability and practicality of cryonics is what matters at this point. It's what the real controversy is about.
Upvoted. But I'll still talk about organizational matters below :)
The thing I like about Mike Darwin is that he offers technical criticisms of cryonics organizations without resorting to threats of strict regulation. Of course, I understand there are people who do not think highly of Darwin, and condescendingly claim we are being duped by this "dialysis technician" (who then conveniently leave out that he received ad...
I recently found something that may be of concern to some of the readers here.
On her blog, Melody Maxim, former employee of Suspended Animation, provider of "standby services" for Cryonics Institute customers, describes several examples of gross incompetence in providing those services. Specifically, spending large amounts of money on designing and manufacturing novel perfusion equipment when cheaper, more effective devices that could be adapted to serve their purposes already existed, hiring laymen to perform difficult medical procedures who then botched them, and even finding themselves unable to get their equipment loaded onto a plane because it exceeded the weight limit.
An excerpt from one of her posts, "Why I Believe Cryonics Should Be Regulated":