X-Message-Number: 21454
From: 
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 13:29:43 EST
Subject: vitrification

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Brian Stewart asks about vitrification. No doubt others will answer, and 
there is a discussion on our web site, but very briefly:

Vitrification means formation of a state that is seemingly solid but does not 
have the crystalline structure typical of solids. In the case of water, there 
are no ice crystals, if the vitrification is complete and perfect. 
("Vitreous" means "glassy" and refers to the fact that many glasses lack 
crystalline structure and will flow very slowly over long periods of time.) 
Preventing formation of ice crystals will prevent mechanical damage by ice 
crystals that would otherwise occur, although there can be offsetting 
disadvantages, including, among other things, toxicity of chemicals used to 
achieve vitrification.

You can visit Alcor's site or talk to them directly for information about 
their procedures. As we understand it, their current procedure (for neuros 
only) is intended to achieve vitrification, at least in part, but as far as 
we know there have been no applications of these procedures to test animals 
followed by full evaluation of results. They believe the indirect evidence 
justifies use of the procedures anyway, and of course they may be right.

Dr. Yuri Pichugin, director of research for the Cryonics Institute, is 
engaged in his own program of development of vitrification procedures, and 
has made what we believe to be significant progress, including the likelihood 
of bypassing some of the previous obstacles, such as the need for very fast 
initial cooling. We don't keep our work secret, and have disclosed much of it 
on our web site and in The Immortalist, but disclosure of the newest work 
must be delayed, in part because of patent questions. With luck, some time 
this year we may be able to have a new procedure tested on whole animals and 
perhaps human cadavers, and fully evaluated.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
www.cryonics.org 

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