Doesn’t vitrification require small tissue pieces and high cooling rates?
No. Vitrification can happen on any scale at any cooling rate if enough water is replaced by cryoprotectant. The paper that first proposed the modern approach to vitrification included a photograph of a vitrified organ (rabbit kidney). The first paper showing successful vitrification of living cells used a cooling rate of only 20 degrees per minute. Other papers have been published studying the vitrification of volumes as large as 1.5 liters. It’s true that vitrification followed by return of normal metabolism can only be done for small tissue pieces, such as blood vessels, at this time. Slow heat transfer in large organs causes an accumulation of toxic effects with current technology. Nevertheless, tissue structure can be preserved. Thus Alcor’s vitrification is a morphological vitrification that preserves the structure and much biochemistry of the brain, but not sufficient biochemistry for spontaneous return of normal metabolism. Future repair or replacement of molecules altered by t
