Plastination: a badly neglected cryonics alternative.
(no login) Posted Jul 6, 2001 6:52 PM
Could be ideal for low budget brain preservation, as pointed out before on various other forums. Unfortunately (amazingly), most cryonicists seem to be rather closed-minded, or at least indifferent in the extreme, about this and other low budget emergency procedures. Hopefully plastination can become part of the Norwegian setup, so that at least Europeans will be able to choose from a broad(er) range of "services" (right now it's more or less "CI or nothing", unless you'd happen to be relatively rich).
Main advantages:
1) Specimens are strong and easy to handle compared to frozen ones. 2) Can be stored for long periods of time at room temperature with little or no decay (great backup in case there's a power failure/problem with the LN2 supply, or even if the cryo org goes out of business). 3) Costs almost certainly (a lot) less than a regular suspension up front, and does not necessarily require cryogenic storage, LN2 or electric --> much less or even no storage costs (if kept at RT). 4) Lower cost would give a (much) larger segment of the population a shot at immortality, thereby spreading the immortality meme and attracting more people to regular cryonics as well (and probably improving society in the process). 5) It would be the morally/ethically sound thing to do; always preserve as much as possible, by whatever means that are at your disposal (comparable to the medical guideline of "do no harm").
PLASTINATION: A technique of tissue preservation invented by Dr. Gunther von Hagens in Heidelberg, Germany in 1978. In this process, water and lipids in biological tissues are replaced by curable polymers which are then hardened. The results are a dry, odorless and preserved specimen. The type polymer used will determine both optical and mechanical properties of the impregnated specimen.
The process requires four main steps:
•Fixation - Involves the specimen to be fixed in a 10% formaldehyde solution, this stabilizes the tissue and prevents autolysis. Specimens can also be dissected and blood vessels injected with a colored medium to highlight desired structures.
•Dehydration - Biological specimens have a high water content which must be removed for plastination. This is achieved by a process known as Freeze Substitution where the specimens are placed into a cold -25°C solvent such as acetone. Then, over a period of 4-5 weeks the tissue water is slowly replaced by the acetone.
•Forced Impregnation - The dehydrated specimens are submerged into the liquid polymer and placed under vacuum, hence the term Forced Impregnation. The vacuum draws out the acetone from the specimen, leaving the polymer in its place.
•Hardening - Next, the polymer filled specimen is placed into a sealed chamber where it comes into contact with a curing gas. This gas fully hardens the polymer making the specimen dry to touch in about 48 hours. Curing is complete after several months and the specimen may be stored at room temperature indefinitely.