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Reversible vitrification is a serious field of research that actually appears pretty close to realization for use in the fields of tissue engineering and organ
by reasonattlm 10y ago
Reversible vitrification is a serious field of research that actually appears pretty close to realization for use in the fields of tissue engineering and organ transplant. A number of independent research groups are working on a variety of approaches. Some sample reading:
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34190/title/Icing-Organs/ http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34190/...
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21690025-after-decades-piecemeal-progress-science-cryogenically-storing-human http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2169002...
http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/nov/discovery-could-open-door-frozen-preservation-tissues-whole-organs http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/nov/discovery-co...
It is also the case that a rabbit kidney has been vitrified, thawed, transplanted, and it worked for a while. See:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/
I think that progress towards reversible vitrification of organs is one of the most important drivers of growing support and acceptance of cryonics among those who write and opinionate. It is hard to throw out the evidence for preservation of fine structure in the brain when there is earnest progress towards preserving the similarly fine structure needed for organ function.