X-Message-Number: 15268 Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 00:21:15 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: Chemical Fixation At some point during the past few days, someone (Bob?) mentioned chemical fixation as an alternative to vitrification. As I understand it, this option was considered and rejected many years ago, after an experiment at the Red Cross which showed a) chemical fixation without refrigeration is not adequate to prevent significant deterioration over a period of time, as the fixative agent degrades tissue, and b) chemical fixation with refrigeration causes worse structural damage than a conventional cryoprotectant followed by refrigeration. I recall that the chemical fixation creates such rigid bonds, when refrigeration adds its mechanical stresses, the eventual breakdown of the system is more chaotic. Like bending a substance that is brittle and shatters, as opposed to bending a substance that retains some malleability. The bottom line: ALL the easy obvious answers have been tried. Cryobiology is not a new science, and the people pursuing it are not idiots. There is no quick-fix. If there was, they would have found it by now. Research, as Edison said, is 90 percent perspiration, 10 percent inspiration. Or was it 99 percent? This especially seems to apply to research involving temperamental, delicate, fussy entities such as human cells. --CP Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15268