Alcor advocates for, researches, and performs cryonics, the freezing of human corpses and brains in liquid nitrogen after legal death, with hopes of resurrecting and restoring them to full health if the technology to do so becomes available in the future.
[3][4] As of October 2023[update], Alcor had 1,927 members, including 222 who have died and whose corpses have been subject to cryonic processes;[5][6][7] 116 bodies had only their head preserved.
Alcor advertised in direct mailings and offered seminars in order to attract members and bring attention to the cryonics movement.
[citation needed] In 1977, articles of incorporation were filed in Indianapolis by the Institute for Advanced Biological Studies (IABS) and Soma, Inc. IABS was a nonprofit research startup led by a young cryonics enthusiast named Steve Bridge, while Soma was intended as a for-profit organization to provide cryopreservation and human storage services.
However, during this time researchers associated with Alcor contributed some of the most important techniques related to cryopreservation, eventually leading to today's method of vitrification.
[14] Increasing growth in membership during this period is partially attributed to the 1986 publication of Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation, which debuted the idea of nanotechnology and contained a chapter on cryonics.
Alcor moved from Fullerton, California, to the new building in Riverside in 1987; Timothy Leary appeared at the grand opening.
Alcor's vice-president, director, head of suspension team and chief surgeon, Jerry Leaf, died suddenly of a heart attack in 1991.
[7] According to a 2007 Forbes profile, Canadian businessman Robert Miller, founder of Future Electronics, is a financial supporter of Alcor.
[21] Riverside County, California deputy coroner Dan Cupido said that Alcor had better equipment than some medical facilities.
[23] Alcor receives $50,000 each year from television royalties donated by sitcom writer and producer Richard C. Jones who is in suspension.
[21] In 1997, after a substantial effort led by then-president Steve Bridge, Alcor formed the Patient Care Trust as an entirely separate entity to manage and protect the funding for storage, including owning the building.
[21] Alcor remains the only cryonics organization to segregate and protect funding in this way; the 2% annual growth of the Trust is enough for upkeep of the patients.
[28] Before the company moved to Arizona from Riverside, California, in 1994, it became a center of controversy when a county coroner ruled that Alcor client Dora Kent (Alcor board member Saul Kent's mother) was murdered with barbiturates before her head was removed for preservation by the company's staff.
No charges were ever filed; former Riverside County deputy coroner Alan Kunzman later said that this was due to mistakes and poor decision-making by others in his office.
"[20] In 2003, Sports Illustrated published allegations by former Alcor COO Larry Johnson that the company had mishandled Williams' head by drilling holes and accidentally cracking it.
[35] After John Henry's death, Ferrell again filed a lawsuit, but representatives of Williams' estate repeated that he wished to be at Alcor.
[32] In addition to his Williams allegations, Johnson handed over to the police a taped conversation in which he claimed that Alcor facilities engineer Hugh Hixon stated that an Alcor employee deliberately hastened the imminent death of a terminally ill AIDS patient in 1992 with an injection of Metubine, a paralytic drug.