X-Message-Number: 15668
From: 
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 10:47:09 EST
Subject: intra- -extra ice

Wakfer wrote in part:

[Pascal]>>Technically, it is not the water inside cells, but the water 
outside and
>>between cells that causes the most damage in freezing.

[Wakfer]>This will only be so if and when there is more water outside than
>inside. However, microgram for microgram, ice formation inside cells is far 
more
>damaging than outside.
  
To use one of his own favorite expressions, this is misleading. A mcg of ice 
inside is worse than a mcg of ice outside--but there is very little ice 
inside. There is always much more water outside the cells than inside, in all 
real-life situations. Intracellular ice becomes significant only for quick 
freezing, as with small volumes of cell suspensions. This is ancient history.

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

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15668