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. 


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