Remote preservation price increases and grandfathering policy

[AndyMcKenzie]

As part of our effort to improve our services and strengthen our membership program, we are planning on increasing the prices for remote preservation procedures by our staff in the near future. This change is due to both the improvements we have made and the realities of what high-quality preservation requires.

There are several reasons for this change:

1. We have now found that at least partial brain perfusion can be reliably achieved even after several hours of ischemia.
2. Our team has gained significant hands-on experience with perfusion in human research cases.
3. We believe that the available data now more clearly support perfusion fixation as superior to immersion fixation for structural preservation (although whether immersion fixation may be sufficient for preservation of the information content of long-term memories is, we believe, still an open question).
4. Some prospective members have told us directly that they do not view immersion fixation as leading to an acceptable degree of preservation quality.
5. Based on these insights, we have decided to stop sending just one staff member to perform immersion fixation for remote preservation cases. We now plan to send two staff members and carry out a perfusion-based preservation. This necessarily increases our costs.
6. One thoughtful prospective member pointed out that charging below the actual cost of the procedure now may create problems for them later, if rising costs make it hard for us to continue subsidizing the service, but they have not planned on paying that higher price as they get closer to their legal death.

For all of these reasons, we now plan to price remote brain preservation procedures at a more sustainable rate that better reflects the true cost of performing them with perfusion-based techniques and a two-person team. The increased prices will be available on our new website once it rolls out shortly.

However, we understand that some early members may have made plans based on our previous pricing. To support them, we are introducing the following grandfathering policy:

Until September 2028, any person who signed up with us prior to this change may still choose to receive remote preservation at the previous lower cost, with one staff member and an immersion fixation procedure. We will honor this option for the next 3 years. Please contact us if you are interested in this.

We believe this strikes a fair balance, by providing continuity and trust for early supporters, while allowing us to raise the standard of care going forward. As always, we sincerely thank all of our members for helping make this work possible.