X-Message-Number: 4977 Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 00:45:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug Skrecky <> Subject: The New Egyptians THE NEW EGYPTIANS (November 1991 Funeral Service Journal(UK)) BY DOUG SKRECKY Summum corporation of Salt Lake City, Utah USA is in the mummification business. For a hefty fee of about $8000 they will mummify the corpse of the deceased. Unlike cryonics companies no claims about possible future reanimation are used to sell this service. Instead the selling point is to the vanity of well heeled yuppies who are unwilling to allow their bodies to decompose after they die. It is not impossible that some of these American mummies may one day find a final resting place beside the ancient Egyptian pharoahs in museums of the distant future. If current trends hold up there may soon be more people signed up to be mummified than all those signed up to be frozen by cryonics companies. Is the funeral industry missing out on a substantial amount of business by not offering an alternative to cremation or traditonal internment procedures? Mummification could involve expensive apparatus such as a refrigerated vaccuum dessicator or ... provided the corpse is first embalmed dessication need only require the use of a small room large enough to hold the body and a high capacity dehumidifier. With the output of the dehumidifier blowing directly onto the corpse complete mummification would take about a week. In order to insure high quality preservation higher doses of formaldehyde than is customarily used in embalming would need to be employed, in addition probably to small amounts of glutaraldehyde as well. The best results with formaldehyde alone seem to be obtained by altering the embalming procedures to a two step process. For instance by first perfusing with a 4% formaldehyde solution at pH 6.5 rapid penetration of tissue is obtained as formaldehyde does not react with proteins significantly at this low PH. Then after switching to a pH 11 formaldehyde perfusion rapid fixation occurs which is quite uniform since the tissue has been already saturated with formaldehyde from the previous step. *1 After embalming has been completed it may be worthwhile to perfuse the corpse one last time with a sugar saturated solution before commencing dessication. Strictly speaking even mummification may offer at least some chance however small for future revival. Cryonics companies base their claims of revival on the use of cryoprotectants to minimize freezing damage. Similar claims might conceivably be made for mummification if agents to protect against drying damage were used. It is now known that one of the most effective such agents is sucrose or common table sugar. *2 After mummification is completed longterm storage would require a corrosion resistent casket, which would then be packed with a dessicant such as calcium oxide. Although steel and even bronze caskets eventually corrode underground tests have found that type 316L stainless steel remains inert in all fresh water exposures. The only known vulnerability of this mid price stainless alloy in fresh water is by corrosion induced by some types of bacteria. No corrosion would be thus be expected in the arctic permafrost. For local burial sites which are located on high ground well away from the seashore a 316L SS casket would seem to stand a good chance of remaining intact for at least a few centuries. This is something of a bargain as tests have found that more expensive high molybdenum stainless steels and nickel alloys used for seawater service are LESS resistant than 316L SS to microbiologically induced corrosion. *3 The total costs associated with mummification would appear to be no larger than those incurred with some of the more elaborate traditional internments. While future reanimation can not be guarenteed by any method of preservation mummification can offer a highly credible option for ensuring longterm preservation of human remains. *1. "Importance of Fixation in Immunohistochemisry: Use of Formaldehyde Solutions at Variable pH for the Localization of Tyrosine Hydroxylase" 844-850 Vol.29. No.7 1981 The Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry *2. "Interactions of Sugars With Membranes" 367-384 Vol.947 1988 Biochimica et Biophysica Acta *3. "Ranking Alloys for Susceptibility to MIC - A Preliminary Report on High-Mo Alloys" 55-57 January 1991 Materials Performance .....In the above article I talked about perfusing with formaldehyde. Unfortunately in many cases any kind of perfusion would be impossible once blood has coagulated in capillaries. In these cases with only injection into the major arteries and veins being possible an alcohol based fixative would appear to be necessary if decent tissue preservation is the goal. Alcohol penetrates tissue much faster than aldehydes (and even faster than glycerol). If possible revival is the main concern a much better procedure would be to treat just the brain using state-of-the-art freeze-dry techniques and cremate the rest of the body to reduce costs. Lead has been suggested as a possible replacement for titanium or stainless steel. However underground tests have found lead to be much more vulnerable to corrosion than these, although lead was more resistent than low alloy steel, zinc or aluminum. (See Corrosion and Corrosion Control by Professor Herbert Uhlig MIT) Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4977