Details of the next meeting:
Saturday the 21st and Sunday the 22nd of January 2012
Times will be: 11:00 - 17:00 Saturday, 10:00 - 16:00 Sunday.
Attendance is free of charge!
The meeting will be hosted at our HQ, whose address is:
7 Greenfield Drive
Greenhill
Sheffield
South Yorkshire
S8 7SL
On this occasion, we'll also be visited by Alcor's CEO Max More and Transport Coordinator Aaron Drake, so if you'd like to meet them while they're with us, now's your chance to ply them with any questions or feedback you may have regards Alcor's support of cryonics in Europe!
The meeting will consist chiefly in hands-on training to provide the skills necessary to assist in a human cryopreservation (which task is CUK's reason for being).
If you are based in or near the UK, and either have made arrangements to by cryopreserved or are just interested, then this weekend is for you!
Any journalists wishing to attend will benefit most from the last part of the training, when we practice all the trained separately activities in a simulated cryonics emergency scenario, which takes place on Sunday afternoon.
If you would kindly let me know if you'd like to attend, that would help me greatly in terms of logistics! My email address is ds@cryonics-uk.com — Many thanks.
Warm regards,
Eternally,
David Styles (Organiser)
+44 7706 149 771
PS, here are some directions and hotel suggestions:
City centre, 15 mins away:
And many more, just google!
Time and mileage saving tip:
- If traveling from the South up the M1, exit at J29 and head for Chesterfield. When you reach Chesterfield take the A61 to Sheffield. When you hit the Sheffield ring road, you will be at a roundabout with a cricket club on your left and an Audi dealership on your right. Take a left at the roundabout, then first right (Greenhill Avenue), first left (Greenfield Road) and first left again (Greenfield Drive). It's the first house on the left with tall boxy hedges.
- If coming up the A1 or down the M1, exit at J33 and take the A630 towards the city centre. Leave the A630 for the A6102 ring road and head towards Chesterfield. Look out for the Audi dealership on your left, go straight over at that roundabout, then first right (Greenhill Avenue), first left (Greenfield Road) and first left again (Greenfield Drive). It's the first house on the left with tall boxy hedges.
Report from last meeting
Saturday the 11th and Sunday the 12th of December 2010
"Bob's dead; help!"
If you received such a call from Bob's wife, would you know what to do?
There's a lot to be done all at once when someone suffers a cardiac arrest; from first aid in almost any case, to "last aid" in the case of those who have made arrangements for their cryopreservation under such circumstances.
Even just knowing the right phonecalls to make is a starting point.
December's CUK training incorporated a session covering as many eventualities as possible, ensuring attendees knew not only what should happen in an ideal situation, but also what should happen when things are thrust upon them at a moment's notice, in a situation that's not ideal. 
- Has there been a pronouncement of death already?
- Who has custody?
- What is the patient's condition?
- Where is the patient?
- Who has been contacted already?
- Can cooling begin right away?
- What about cardiopulmonary support?
As usual there was also a more practical hands-on element to the training too, including much of Sunday afternoon being occupied with training in the use of CUK's air-transportable perfusion kit (the equipment with which a patient is perfused with a cryoprotectant solution, known by the creative and colourful name "CI VM-1", in order to allow the patient to be cooled to a very low temperature without allowing ice crystals to form in the patient's brain).
Not a lot of people know how to do that, but those who attend our trainings get a head start!
Report from the Cryonics UK European Exposition
with Saul Kent & Catherine Baldwin
Thursday, September 23, 2010 • 12:00pm - 6:00pm, Sheffield • function room at the Sheffield Park Hotel
Cryonics UK exposition / European workshop with some very noteworthy guests from America who wish to meet as many cryonicists (especially Europeans) as possible at this event.
Catherine Baldwin (General Manager, Suspended Animation, Inc.) and Saul Kent (CEO, Suspended Animation, Inc.; Director, Alcor; Co-Founder, Cryonics Society of New York; Co-Founder, Life Extension Foundation; Co-Founder and Director, 21st Century Medicine; Co-Founder and Director, BioMarker Pharmaceuticals; Co-Founder, Timeship Project) were in attendance.
The day was pleasant and successful.
A presentation was given on the topic of CUK, and also a presentation on the topic of EUCRIO. A video of CUK training was shown, tours were given of the CUK clinic, bulky equipment storage space, and ambulance. There was a CUK equipment show-and-tell.
Many small peripheral meetings were made; some purely social, and some quite productive.
We were joined by people from England, Scotland, Wales, France, Poland, Finland, and America.
Report from Cryonics UK meeting,
Saturday and Sunday the 24th and 25th of July 2010
by Ben Best: Cryonics UK (CUK) training session – a .pdf file from Long Life magazine (September 2010)
Report from Cryonics UK meeting,
Saturday and Sunday the 13th and 14th of March 2010
The weekend kicked off with our AGM, at which our committee was re-elected. The only change to the Committee has been that Mark Willis has been elected Secretary, in place of Mark Walker.
A new Constitution was proposed, but to implement it at this meeting would give the membership insufficient notice and be unconstitutional, so notice will be given by our Secretary more than two weeks before the next meeting, such that it can be implemented at that time.
At the last meeting, we created a large to-do list. At this meeting, we addressed whether these things had been done. Most of them had been done. The only thing not addressed as yet has been the ambulance's cosmetic make-over, which has been delayed due to inclement weather, and the reluctance of vehicle painting companies to take on such a one-off fiddly job. We expect to have this done before the next meeting, however.
Training was conducted over the course of both Saturday and Sunday, and included training regarding medications, medications administration methods (injections, IV drips, F.A.S.T. intra-osseus infuser, CombiTube, etc) the portable ice bath, the ambulance, the perfusion circuit, and the dry ice shipper.
Social meals out were enjoyed after training both days; Saturday this was at La Scala, and Sunday this was at Piccolino. Both are Italian restaurants in Sheffield.
If you missed out on this weekend, we look forward to seeing you at the next! See top of this page for details.
Eternally,
David Styles
Organiser
Report from Cryonics UK meeting,
Saturday and Sunday the 12th and 13th of December 2009
This weekend we were inundated with media representatives. One two-person TV crew, one print journalist and accompanying photographer, and one private film-maker, all with us to see what we do and also to visit our shiny new headquarters.
A handful of our members, myself included, consented to appear on film and in photographs. Personally, I view press activity as important, even if we place ourselves somewhat at their mercy as a result. Fortunately, press has thus far been mostly favourable, and the only article that misrepresented us at least brought us interest from different journalists who will hopefully represent us more fairly.
Because of group size, training was now split in two most of the time, with the Facility Manager taking one group and myself taking another at any given time. This seemed to work very well, as it gave everyone much more chance to practice, and also means that people have two different teachers; some people find they learn better from one person's teaching style than another's.
Another change to training was an increased use of Bob, our life-sized (and weighted) human body dummy. This really helps make more clear what is going on with activities such as perfusion, wherein the patient has previously been represented only by an imaginary space caused by connecting the apparatus to itself to complete the circuit minus patient. This time, we placed a blood filter between Bob's legs (to represent the fact that it the ATP would be connected via cannulation tubes inserted into the patient's femoral arteries) and plumbed the circuit into that instead, such that the blood filter could represent the patient's place in the system.
Saturday's training included ambulance, ice-bath, thumper, Air-Transport Perfusion apparatus, with most segments repeated for the benefit of a) cameras b) late arrivals c) better yet comprehension.
Sunday's training included administration of medicines appropriate to cryopreservation, followed by refreshers on the work from the previous day. We were also pleased to be joined on Sunday by Shannon Vyff, formerly a volunteer Readiness Coordinator for Alcor in the US, before moving to the UK.
Sunday afternoon also held a committee meeting, with other members sitting in as is customary. Everyone's input is important. We discussed legal and financial matters, more on the ongoing improvements to the ambulance, our happy situation of now having VM-1 (Vitrification Mixture One) supplied by CI, administrative issues, and PR issues.
Saturday night's social evening consisted of dinner in local Italian restaurant "La Scala".
If you didn't make it to this meeting, you missed out, but we look forward to seeing you at the next, in March! See the top of this page for details.
Eternally,
David Styles
Organiser
Report from Cryonics UK meeting,
Saturday and Sunday the 19th and 20th of September 2009
Saturday kicked off with a tour of our new HQ in Sheffield (after many years of it being located at the home of our President, Alan Sinclair).
We now have a large subterranean room that can be used as anything from a training room to an operating room, and when we're not using it it'll be an acupuncture clinic. Aside from that, our new HQ is a delightful environment in which to conduct the rest of our business, ranging from committee meetings, to discussions pertaining to the theory of cryonics, to social chats.
That said, Cryonics UK is now focussed far more intently on the practical side of cryonics. At this most recent meeting, everyone enjoyed three hands-on practical sessions, relating to three of our four main training modules.
The first, on Saturday afternoon (the morning having been dedicated to some necessary discussion elements), was our new area of training, the ambulance. Rather than have too few people know how to operate everything in the ambulance, as had previously been the case, Alan Sinclair, our President, personally headed a session to ensure that all team members in attendance understood all main elements of the use of the ambulance and its intrinsic technologies. This will now be included as a regular training module, as the ambulance is an important part of our resource toolbox.
Sunday morning was devoted to training in / practice of the use of the Air Transport Perfusion (ATP) kit. This is the equipment by which the patient's blood is replaced first with washout fluids and later, with some modifications to the kit, with a perfusate intended to minimise tissue damage.
Sunday afternoon was spent practicing the use of the portable ice-bath (PIB) and the oxygen-powered cardio-pulmonary support (CPS) equipment, also known as the Thumper.
The only practical training module not covered in this weekend was medications, and this was ommitted at this meeting simply because the relevant equipment (and indeed everything else) had only just been moved up to Sheffield from our former HQ down near Brighton, and would take some more hours than we had to prepare a sufficient number of dummy kits for training purposes.
At the next meeting, in December, we will include all four main practical training modules (Ambulance, Meds, PIB, ATP).
Covered in discussion elements at this meeting were steps to maximise our financial sustainability, administrative elements, a call for a new constitution, a discussion of the pros and cons of the potential use of various perfusates by Cryonics UK (glycerol, M-22, VM-1), and a collaboration towards producing improved, more user-friendly, instruction manuals for team members.
And most of us also enjoyed a very pleasant meal in Piccolo's Italian restaurant. Well worth a visit if you're passing through Sheffield.
If you didn't make this meeting, we look forward to seeing you at the next, in December!
Eternally,
David Styles
Organiser