X-Message-Number: 7023
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 07:50:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joseph Strout <>
Subject: Re: amber vs. LN

On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Mac Tonnies wrote:

> I feel that immersing would-be cryonics patients in amber would prove more
> ultimately successful than conventional liquid nitrogen storage.

Do you have anything to support this feeling?  I have a hard time
believing that amber would penetrate very far into a human body; I suspect
that you'd end up with a well-preserved crust concealing a rotten
exterior.  (Hmm, that must be a good metaphor for something...)

>From my limited experience, amber seems very similar to substances like
epoxy resin.  We do embed tissue in epoxy for preservation and
thin-sectioning for the electron microscope, and it's true that it will
last for decades unchanged.  But it only works on very tiny pieces, on
the order of 1 mm^3.  Insects are of this order, which may be why they are
so well preserved.  Unfortunately, humans are a bit bigger.

I suppose it's conceivable that one could perfuse with something that
hardens into a resin.  But perfusate has to be pretty thin, and the resins
we use are very viscous (about like maple syrup) even before polymerizing.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|               http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/  |
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