Ben Best

Ben Best is President/CEO of the Cryonics Institute, the world's second largest cryonics organization. He is a well-known activist in cryonics and life extension advocacy. Best holds undergraduate degrees in pharmacy from the University of British Columbia, and physics and computing science (BSc), and finance (BBA) from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.

Cryonics activities
For most of the 1990s Best was President of the Cryonics Society of Canada (CSC) and was Editor of Canadian Cryonics News (total circulation of about 60 copies) until the last issue was published in Spring of 2000. He is still a Director of CSC.

Along with many other cryonics activists, in the mid 1990s he left Alcor Life Extension Foundation to form CryoCare Foundation. He was Secretary of CryoCare and finally took over as president in a final effort to prevent the organization from failing. When CryoCare contractors discontinued service to CryoCare members in the year 2000, he negotiated the transfer of CryoCare's two cryonics patients to Alcor.

In the year 2000 Best became President/CEO of The Institute For Neural Cryobiology, which funded the Hippocampal Slice Cryopreservation Project (HSCP) -- a project focused on vitrification of rat brain hippocampal slices which involved cooling to &minus;130 degrees Celsius, rewarming and testing for viability. Discoveries from this research have been incorporated into the vitrification formulations of Twenty-First Century Medicine. Dr. Yuri Pichugin (currently cryobiology researcher for the Cryonics Institute) conducted the research for this project under the direction of Dr. Gregory M. Fahy, Chief Scientific Officer of Twenty-First Century Medicine. The results of the HSPC were published in the April 2006 issue of the journal CRYOBIOLOGY.

In September 2003 Best became President/CEO of the Cryonics Institute (CI), replacing Robert Ettinger who had been President since co-founding CI in 1976.

The most popular Cryonics FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) currently on the web was authored by Best, and endorsed by Tim Freeman as a replacement for his own cryonics FAQ which was well-known during the 1990s. Best is also known for creating and maintaining personal web pages with extensive scientific and technical information about cryonics.

Life extension activities
Best is active in the field of biogerontology. He regularly attends biogerontological conferences and has debated with Aubrey de Grey in the Community Bulletin Board of SAGE KE. His monograph Mechanisms of Aging was reprinted in the Anti-Aging Clinical Protocols 2004-2005 of the A4M.

Writings
Ben Best has self-published articles on his website on more than 150 diverse topics ranging from science and medicine to history and philosophical musings. Articles reported to be accessed most frequently include:


 * Causes of Death


 * Brain Neurotransmitters


 * Mechanisms of Aging


 * Cancer Death - Causes and Prevention


 * The History of Christmas