X-Message-Number: 5516 Date: Mon, 1 Jan 1996 01:33:02 -0800 (PST) From: Doug Skrecky <> Subject: Eveready Energizer Bunny In message #5505 (Brian Wowk) wrote: > Suffice to say that no cell has ever (or could ever) >spontaneously recover from chemical fixation. Like the Eveready Energizer Bunny, red blood cells fixed with paraformalderhyde, frozen with 5% albumin, freeze-dried and then rehydrated and injected into dogs became incorporated into wounds inflicted on these animals. They just kept on ticking..... (2419-2420 Vol.92 March 1995 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA) I would not like to be dogmatic and say it was impossible for fully reversible chemical fixation ever to be developed. For example recently a zinc based fixative has been shown to be remarkably effective in limiting damage to protein antigens. (1127-1134 Vol.42 No.8 1994 The Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry) Unfortunately this zinc based fixative is not yet commercially available. (personnal communication from the author) >Clearly cryopreservation is the most >conservative, least injurious, and most-likely-to-succeed means to >get our minds to the future when we are dying today. ..that is currently available... When an effective freeze-drying protocol is validated for human tissue, I believe this will make simple cryopreservation obsolete due to freeze-drying's far greater safety margins during the long-term storage. Like the Eveready Energizer Bunny, companies that use freeze-drying instead of simple cryopreservation I suspect would keep on thumping for a long, long time. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5516