Mea Culpa, Again

O.K., I really screwed up. Jonathan Depres had complained about a post in which I described the cryonics solution used at Alcor to vitrify human bodies as a mixture of “polyethylene glycol, formic acid, dimethyl-sulfoxide and glycerol." This was the impression I had mistakenly received from a talk by Brian Wowk of 21st Century Medicine and a discussion afterwards at an Immortality Institute conference. Subsequently, I received an e-mail from the same Brian Wowk telling me I had got it wrong.

“There is no formic acid, polyethylene glycol or glycerol in M22. Since formic acid is highly poisonous, this claim is borderline defammatory,” said he. M22 contains formamide, not formic acid; ethylene glycol not polyethylene glycol; and whereas glycerol is sometimes used for cryopreservation, it is not a component of M22 at all.

I apologize to Dr. Wowk, to 21st Century medicine, to Alcor and to Jonathan Depres. For the record, here is the recipe for M22, as recorded in a paper on which Brian Wowk is a co-author.

Components of M22

Dimethyl Sulfoxide, 2.855 M
Formamide, 2.855 M
Ethylene glycol, 2.713 M
N-Methlyformamide, .0508 M
PVP K12, .0056 M
PVA, .005 M
PGL, .0267 M5 LM5, 20 ml/dl