• MonkderDritte@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      39
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Humans are particularly difficult to preserve because of the delicate structure in (most of) our heads.

      Nonsense. We are just too big to be frozen quickly enough that no ice crystals emerge. Every living thing turns to slush if frozen normally.

      • khaliso@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        21
        ·
        6 months ago

        Yea. Turns out the biggest creature you can freeze and thaw again (in strict lab conditions) is a hamster, anything bigger just dies.

    • PrimeMinisterKeyes@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      6 months ago

      Ever seen DMSO solidify upon cooling? I wouldn’t even call it vitrification, it obviously has macroscopically large crystalline domains. It would be like putting rocks in your veins. I mean it kind of works fine for single cells because the failures* can be treated as a statistic, but anything on the scale of organs will become damaged just too badly.

      * See e.g. what happens to frozen sperm cells: “chromatin disruption through protamine translocations, DNA fragmentation, and lesions to genes involved in fertilization capability and embryonic development […] are known consequences of the cryopreservation process.”