14 replies to this topic

[A941]

Does somone know what happend to the Prometheus Project?

[123456]

Prometheus Project? [huh]

[jaydfox]

I remember the Prometheus Protocol... no, that was in a sci-fi book...

[A941]

The Site http://www.prometheus-project.org/ is dead, but ive found something from 1999 at Archives.org:

http://web.archive.o...us-project.org/

looks like it disappeard between April 1999 and August 2000.

[bgwowk]

The Prometheus Project, a mid-1990s fund raising effort initiated by cryonicist Paul Wakfer to start a brain vitrification research project at a rate of $1 million per year for 10 years with the goal of achieving reversible suspended animation of the human brain. The Project critically depended on luring a certain vitrification expert who would prefer to remain nameless from his then-employer to work on this project instead. In 1998 Paul and others were sucessful in luring said cryobiologist to leave his employer and work for a startup company called Cryova with the intention perfecting commercial preservation of human ova, and doing brain cryopreservation research on the side. Cryova failed almost immediately when investors backed out after CNN broke a story claiming successful cryopreservation of human egg cells by another institution. (Ironically this was only one of several "breakthroughs" in ova preservation reported by the media in the last decade, none of which really work with a decent success rate.)

This cryobiologist then became Chief Scientific Officer of 21st Century Medicine, Inc. (21CM). 21CM initially collaborated with the Institute for Neural Cryobiology to begin some of the research of the Prometheus Project. (The cryobiologist now employed by CI was also part of this work.) However the brain research project, which had 21CM intellectual property entanglements, was soon taken over completely by 21CM, and the original Prometheus Project disbanded.

---BrianW

[caliban]

In short: The prometheus project was scientifically ambitious (reversible brain suspension) and looked to be financially rather sucessful for a while.
While the project failed, it had useful spinoffs.

I remember the Prometheus Protocol... no, that was in a sci-fi book...

Every Immortalist who gets involved with the Mprize on a larger scale should know about the prometheus project.

[bgwowk]

In short: The prometheus project was scientifically ambitious (reversible brain suspension) and looked to be financially rather sucessful for a while.
While the project failed, it had useful spinoffs.

Yes. While the Prometheus Project no longer exists by name, much of what would have been the PP is proceeding nevertheless. These kinds of grassroots efforts, like the MPrize, can make a difference in unexpected ways.

---BrianW

[ag24]

> a certain vitrification expert who would prefer to remain nameless

In view of the recent release of the penultimate Harry Potter book I think it is really time to start making a habit of referring to this person by the specific phrase "he who must not be named", or at least "you know who". I am looking for anagrams of his real name already.

:-)

[justinb]

Heh, I didn't know you had time to read Harry Potter books! [tung]

[ag24]

I'm most irritated to find that even if I presume that the middle name of you-know-who is Marvolo (which is entirely possible, as his middle initial is indeed M), no sensational anagrams are obvious, to me or to online anagram generators. I'll shut up now.

[Da55id]

> a certain vitrification expert who would prefer to remain nameless

In view of the recent release of the penultimate Harry Potter book I think it is really time to start making a habit of referring to this person by the specific phrase "he who must not be named", or at least "you know who".  I am looking for anagrams of his real name already.

:-)

bored? [tung]

[jaydfox]

Ha! O grave, for my glory! You shall not have me, for the icy sleep awaits, a horcrux of unimaginable cold, whither I escape from you, and whence your grip cannot pull me!

Er, assuming, of course, that Marvolo is indeed his middle name.

[benbest]

I had to bite my tongue when I saw this topic raised.
BrianW gave some background, but it was very sketchy.
A more detailed sketch could be created by a list of
CryoNet messages:

http://www.cryonet.o...sp.cgi?msg=6437

http://www.cryonet.o...sp.cgi?msg=6693

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=11356

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=14049

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=14334

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=15948

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=16737

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=18934

Paul Wakfer started raising money for brain cryopreservation
research under the name Prometheus Project. He got an
enormous amount of pledges, most of which never materialized.
Nonetheless, a substantial amount of money was raised, enough
to get the project going. Paul was clever and able enough to
merge forces with Thomas Donaldson's 501©3 organization
the Institute for Neural Cryobiology (INC), which took-over from
Prometheus. Paul was President and Director of INC, the other
two Directors being Donaldson and Peter Gouras.

Money from INC became focused on the Hippocampal Slice
Cryopreservation Project (HSCP) which was to be conducted
at a lab of UCLA Pathologist Robert Morin by Dr. Yuri Pichugin
under direction of Dr. Gregory Fahy of 21CM. Funding for the
project was also to come from UCLA, but in the end much of that
money vaporized. 21CM contributed expertise, but no money.
Almost all of the money came from INC from donations by
cryonicists.

Late in 1999 INC and HSCP were about out of money. The
project was about to fold without having accomplished much.
Dr. Pichugin would have been sent back to Ukraine, because
he did not have a green card at that time. I was flush at the
time so I was able to donate US$15,000 in addition to the
$1,000 I had already donated, so the project was saved for
a while.

In February or March of 2001 when HSCP was beginning
to show some real results, Paul Wakfer angrily resigned as
INC President and supposedly washed his hands of HSCP
and INC. I did not want to see all of this work wasted, so I
took over as INC President and made an effort to keep
HSCP going until there were some tangible results.

I kept things going until the summer of 2001 when
Dr. Pichugin got his green card and went to work for the
Cryonics Institute. He wanted to be a big fish in a small
pond rather than a small fish in a bigger pond. After that
my main contribution has been to keep INC alive and to
pester everyone until a publishable paper was produced.

I know this is a very self-serving account of the matter,
and in truth far more credit should go to Wakfer, Pichugin
and Fahy for the accomplishments of INC and HSCP than
to me.

The reason I do not need to bite my tongue any longer
is that there has finally been a paper published of the
HSCP research in the April 2006 issue of CRYOBIOLOGY,
and the paper is available on-line:

http://www.21cm.com/...o_published.pdf

There is a page on my website that explains much of
the background research that does not appear in the
paper:

http://www.benbest.c...onics/hscp.html

-- Ben Best, President, Institute for Neural Cryobiology

[Paul Wakfer]

Thanks to Brian Wowk for this summary of the Prometheus Project and its effects. However, the collapse of the Project needs more eludication.

This cryobiologist then became Chief Scientific Officer of 21st Century Medicine, Inc. (21CM). 21CM initially collaborated with the Institute for Neural Cryobiology to begin some of the research of the Prometheus Project. (The [imported east European] cryobiologist now employed by CI was also part of this work [actually the chief investigator].) However the brain research project, which had 21CM intellectual property entanglements, was soon taken over completely by 21CM, and the original Prometheus Project disbanded.

There is more that needs to be said about the "luring" of "you know who" from the east coast back to California, but it is not particularly germane to the Prometheus Project, so I will omit it here.

The inital Prometheus Project work on cryopreservation,"Hippcampal Slice Cryopreservation Project", was mainly funded by a grant from, and was conducted in the Lab of, Dr. Robert Morin, Head of the Department of Pathology at Harbor UCLA, who had been attracted to provide this funding by the Prometheus Project publicity (the other major funding was from Ben Best). This was a long arduous trip from the 21CM facility which paid "you know who" for full time work and "you know who" never put sufficient time into interacting with the cryobiologist actually doing the project at UCLA. Therefore, the work of that project was not well coordinated and was essentially not wanted by the chief funder and effective owner of 21CM, who now that he had "you know who" working directly for him (thanks to the Prometheus Project), was no longer interested in supporting any other venture.

The Prometheus Project pledges had, right from the start, been conditional on the raising of a minimum of $1M per year pledged for 10 years. This conditional pledge raising had stalled at over $400K per year for 10 years, by late 1997 (see Internet archive of Prometheus Project website at that time: http://web.archive.o...us-project.org/ ) and continued to stall for the followling reasons:
1) "You know who" would not write up any kind of scientific plan for the project, which it desperately needed to carry on to its conclusion. (People will only pledge so much money on the basis of undetailed dreams.)
2) The leaders of the various cryonics organizations, particularly CI, had been highly antagonistic to the upstart Prometheus Project right from the start. Every new idea that was proposed was roundly criticized and denigrated as much as possible by many such antagonistic, but influential people (Bob Ettinger being the chief antagonist), on Cryonet.
3) The Harbor UCLA project was supposed to be the initial start/kick-off for the larger Prometheus Project, but "you know who" being fully paid by the majority shareholder and effective owner of 21CM would not help it go any further.
4) The plan was that Robert Morin, "you know who" and Paul Wakfer would go to see a wealthy cryonicist (who had made his wealth by beating the odds in Las Vegas, AFAIK) to get additional funding for enlarging and carrying on that startup project. (We even had a major connection in as much as Robert Morin and this investor had been schoolmates.) However, this plan was totally sabotaged by Paul Wakfer being accused of threatening harm to the patients under his care at CryoSpan, in a publication of CryoCare Update, without any chance to explain and defend himself, before publication. This publication caused the above named wealthy cryonicist to characterize Paul Wakfer as "a loose cannon" and want nothing to do with him.

Thus collapsed the Prometheus Project, leaving its creator with nothing but sad thoughts about what might have been, after putting an ernomous amount of thought, time and money into the effort.

--Paul Wakfer

[Paul Wakfer]

I had to bite my tongue when I saw this topic raised.

You would have done better to bite your tongue right off than to perpetrate the misunderstandings that you did in this post!

BrianW gave some background, but it was very sketchy.
A more detailed sketch could be created by a list of
CryoNet messages:

http://www.cryonet.o...sp.cgi?msg=6437

http://www.cryonet.o...sp.cgi?msg=6693

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=11356

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=14049

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=14334

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=15948

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=16737

http://www.cryonet.o...p.cgi?msg=18934

Paul Wakfer started raising money for brain cryopreservation
research under the name Prometheus Project.

Wrong! The Prometheus Project never raised money, It sought plegdes totally conditional on the total becoming over $1M per year for 10 years. There is a huge difference between asking for money and asking for totally conditional pledges. In effect the Prometheus Project was set up as a "trial balloon", which is why it was able to get as far as it did.

He got an
enormous amount of pledges, most of which never materialized.

Incorrect, misleading and unfair to all the pledgers! No one reniged on pledges because the condition to make them binding was never attained.

Nonetheless, a substantial amount of money was raised, enough
to get the project going.

Incorrect and misleading again. No money was ever obtained from the conditional pledges to PP because the condition was never met.
Furthermore PP as such never even started. Rather the publicity generated by PP not only caused "you know who" to move to the west coast after years of refusing the best posssible offers from Saul Kent, Mike Darwin and 21CM, but it also lured a grant of research funds from Dr Robert Morin head of Harbor UCLA Dept of Pathology and then also some funding from you and I can't remember who else.

Paul was clever and able enough to
merge forces with Thomas Donaldson's 501©3 organization
the Institute for Neural Cryobiology (INC), which took-over from
Prometheus.

Incorrect again. In no manner did INC "[take] over from Prometheus"! INC was only the non-profit coorporate vehicle used to receive and allocate the funds for the startup/kick-off project. My own approach to a company structure for PP (if and when I ever got sufficient funding and a business plan) was a method which would enable the investors to eventually get some return rather than effectively donating to a non-profit corp.

There is more in the rest of Ben's post which is misleading and warrants comment, but I really do not care to go further on this partly because I am unsure of some of the detail (such as the sources of all the funding of the HSCP. I will say one thing. I do not get angry easily or without good reason, usually after having been highly betrayed by other individual(s), the type of which cryonics seems to be overbrimming.