X-Message-Number: 14307
From: 
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 18:58:39 EDT
Subject: credit to Pichugin

In all the euphoria about recent research results involving the INC, 21CM 
etc., there has (as far as I have noticed) been very little public 
acknowledgement of the role of Yuri Pichugin, who did much of the 
experimental work (and some of the theoretical work) that led to the 
optimistic pronouncements on brain cryopreservation at Alcor's Asilomar 
conference.

For various reasons, certain people involved don't want direct attribution or 
direct quotations, but from highly placed or/and well informed sources I have 
been given to understand the following, summarized and paraphrased:

Dr. Pichugin was the only cryobiologist that could be 
found--world-wide!--qualified and willing to work on the hippocampal slice 
project. (This is old news, of course.)

The brain slice program is virtually indispensable for the larger whole-brain 
cryopreservation research. 

Dr. Pichugin created or mastered the experimental techniques after others had 
repeatedly tried and failed over a period of years. His skills may be unique 
and irreplaceable in the time frame of the next year or two at least.

He developed data showing that a temperature different from that previously 
used at Alcor for cryoprotectants, including glycerol, is preferable, and 
that led to improved results reported in the recent suspension of F.M. 
Esfandiary by Alcor. 

He was formerly a professional cryobiologist at the world's largest 
cryobiology research laboratory in Kharkov, Ukraine, with extensive training 
in biochemistry. In one of his papers he anticipated the usefulness of 
methoxylated compounds developed at 21CM.

He was plunked down in California in a moldy wreck of an abandoned 
laboratory, but managed to overcome the difficulties with very little help.

Previously, with collaborators in Europe, working on contract for CI, he had 
demonstrated coordinated electrical activity in rabbit brain pieces perfused 
with glycerol and rewarmed from liquid nitrogen temperature. 

His work has implications not only for cryonics, but for neural tissue banks 
and for research in clinical medicine pertaining to Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, 
and other diseases. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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