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/ | `------------------------------------------------------------------' Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7023