Jerry Donnell Leaf (April 4, 1941 – July 10, 1991) was Vice President and Director of the

cryonics Cryonics (from ''kryos'', meaning "cold") is the low-temperature freezing (usually at ) and storage of human remains in the hope that resurrection may be possible in the future. Cryonics is regarded with skepticism by the mainstream scien ...

organization Alcor Life Extension Foundation, and President of the

service firm Cryovita, Inc. until his death in 1991. Leaf joined the United States Army and fought in special operations during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

. Upon return, he received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Cerritos College. He also worked as a cardiothoracic surgery researcher at the

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

School of Medicine, co-authoring more than 20 papers from the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Buckberg. During the late 1970s and 1980s, Leaf transformed the field of

by bringing unprecedented medical expertise to the field and introducing technologies and procedures of thoracic surgery, especially heart-lung bypass, for improved blood vessel access and life support of cryonics patients. Leaf was involved in the first experiments done by a cryonics organization. He is most famous for developing with

Mike Darwin Michael G. Darwin (born April 26, 1955), formerly known as Michael Federowicz, is a former president of cryonics organization Alcor Life Extension Foundation. He was president from 1983 to 1988, and research director until 1992. He was also the ...

a blood substitute shown capable of sustaining life in dogs for four hours at near-freezing temperatures. Leaf was the head of Alcor's suspension team and participated in many suspensions of Alcor patients.

Cryovita Laboratories

In 1978, after teaching surgery as a research associate at UCLA, Leaf founded Cryovita Laboratories. Cryovita was a for-profit organization which provided

cryopreservation Cryopreservation or cryoconservation is a process where biological material - cells, tissues, or organs - are frozen to preserve the material for an extended period of time. At low temperatures (typically or using liquid nitrogen) any cell ...

services and the building for Alcor in the 1980s, including storage of the first cryonics patient,

James Bedford James Hiram Bedford (April 20, 1893 – January 12, 1967) was an American psychology professor at the University of California who wrote several books on occupational counseling. He is the first person whose body was cryopreserved after legal ...

, from 1982. During this time, Leaf also collaborated with Michael Darwin in a series of hypothermia experiments in which dogs were resuscitated with no measurable neurological deficit after hours in deep hypothermia, just a few degrees above zero Celsius. The blood substitute which was developed for these experiments became the basis for the washout solution used at Alcor. Together, Leaf and Darwin developed a standby-transport model for human cryonics cases with the goal of intervening immediately after

cardiac arrest Cardiac arrest (also known as sudden cardiac arrest CA is when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. When the heart stops beating, blood cannot properly Circulatory system, circulate around the body and the blood flow to the ...

and minimizing

ischemic Ischemia or ischaemia is a restriction in blood supply to any tissue, muscle group, or organ of the body, causing a shortage of oxygen that is needed for cellular metabolism (to keep tissue alive). Ischemia is generally caused by problems ...

injury, the "gold standard" of technology at that time, in which a patient's

kidney In humans, the kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped blood-filtering organ (anatomy), organs that are a multilobar, multipapillary form of mammalian kidneys, usually without signs of external lobulation. They are located on the left and rig ...

was considered to be in transplantable condition two days after his or her death. Leaf and Darwin transferred Bedford, the first person cryopreserved, to a more technologically advanced

Cryogenic storage dewar A cryogenic storage dewar (or simply dewar) is a specialised type of vacuum flask used for storing cryogens (such as liquid nitrogen or liquid helium), whose boiling points are much lower than room temperature. It is named after inventor James De ...

at Alcor in 1991, and were able to examine him at that time. A member of the Society for Cryobiology, Leaf objected to a 1980s change by the Society to amend its bylaws to prevent cryonicists from holding membership in the Society.

Death

With no history of heart disease, Leaf suffered a fatal heart attack in 1991. He was subsequently cryopreserved by Alcor.

References

External links

Interview with Jerry Leaf''Cryonics'' tributes to Leaf
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leaf, Jerry 1941 births 1991 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople United States Army personnel of the Vietnam War American cardiac surgeons Cerritos College alumni Cryonically preserved people Cryonicists David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA faculty United States Army soldiers 20th-century American surgeons