X-Message-Number: 20864 From: Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 10:21:24 EST Subject: rabbit kidneys --part1_f9.282e560f.2b5584f4_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yvan Bozzonetti mentioned my earlier post on 21 CM rabbit kidneys. Actually, that post was somewhat in error--I gave them not quite enough credit in one sense, a little too much credit in another. As reported at a fairly recent Alcor meeting, the 21 CM people can now load and unload a "vitrifiable concentration" of cryoprotectant in rabbit kidneys with 100% viability. But they have NOT retrieved any viable kidneys after actual vitrification. They have only revived kidneys after cooling to around - 50 C, not cold enough for vitrification. And as far as I am aware, they make no claims at all about brains. But Yvan's continued insistence that washout of perfusate is a big problem does not seem reasonable. Many systems, including some small mammalian organs (rat ovary, rat parathyroid), have been revived after freezing, with washout obviously successful. Certainly Yvan is right that larger and more complex organs, especially the brain, pose more of a problem--but on the magnitude of the problem he is only guessing. Dr. Pichugin obtained coordinated electrical activity in networks of neurons after warming rabbit brain pieces from liquid nitrogen temperature. (See our web site.) Robert Ettinger Cryonics Institute Immortalist Society www.cryonics.org --part1_f9.282e560f.2b5584f4_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20864