Jerry Leaf

President, Cryovita, Inc.

Jerry D. Leaf was Vice President Alcor and President of the cryonics service firm Cryovita, Inc. He also worked as a cardiothoracic surgery researcher at the UCLA School of Medicine, co-authoring more than 20 papers from the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Buckberg. During the late 1970s and 1980s, he transformed the field of cryonics by introducing technologies and procedures of thoracic surgery, especially heart-lung bypass, for improved blood vessel access and life support of cryonics patients. He developed with Mike Darwin a blood substitute shown capable of sustaining life in dogs for 4 hours at near-freezing temperatures.

He was nvolved in special operations during the Vietnam War that had over a 50% mortality rate and stated in an interview in 1986, "I left my fear of death somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam. To this day, I have absolutely no fear of death, only the fear of not being able to save someone else that I care about. It's not that I don't want life for myself, because I do very much. I only have positive feelings towards life. I want more of it." He was cryopreserved by Alcor following a fatal heart attack in 1991.