It seems that several months ago a similar situation occurred.  I do not believe
that ANY question is too simple to be asked or replied to.   The members of this
list range from the VERY knowledgeable to students and to individuals that have
been assigned a research project that requires some histologic technique.

The latter is quite the case in our lab. where we have pre doctoral students,
postdoctoral, DVM's and MD's all assigned to study the effects of various
chemical compounds.  A part of the study may be the use of a particular
histologic technique which I will teach (and give as much background info. as
possible).  The rest of the study may involve HPLC, GC/MS, immunoblots etc.,etc.
which they also need to learn.  ALL of these techniques are NEW (for the most
part) to them and must be taught by myself and others.

I do not expect them to become histotechnologists, I DO expect them to learn the
methods and the theory behind the method.  In some cases where a lot of
histology is needed I'll take them to the Histology lab. that does our
processing and sectioning (in the Dept. of Lab. Animal Medicine) to see just
what is done to produce the slides they are using.  *A note of thanks to Teresa
Bone and her crew for some of the best histology I've ever seen.*

I may be in the minority of those histologists that have been around a while
(25+ years), but I do believe that if I can help someone out on the net with my
past experience, or with something that I just learned, then, time permitting, I
will.  

I will repeat this from my previous post.  If you are afraid that the question
that you need an answer to is too basic or may result
in negative comments you may send it directly to me and I'll do my best to get
an answer back to you,  it may take me some time to get back to you but I will
do the best that I can.

As for the negative comments, keyboards come with a "Delete" key.

best regards,
Bob
Robert Schoonhoven
Laboratory of Molecular Carcinogenesis and Mutagenesis
Dept. of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
University of North Carolina
CB#7400
Chapel Hill, NC 27599
Phone 
office 919-966-6343
   Lab 919-966-6140
   Fax 919-966-6123 

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you
nothing; it was here first. 
Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910) 

-- Begin original message --

> From: "Barry, Lilith" <Lilith.Barry@nrc.ca>
> Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 15:47:13 -0400
> Subject: Comments please
> To: 'Histonet' <histonet@Pathology.swmed.edu>
> 
> Dear colleagues,
> 
> I appreciate very much the numerous replies you have sent to my basic tissue
> processing question. As usual you have supplied the valuable practical
> information which will spare me from learning from my own mistakes. That is
> one of many reasons why the Histonet is so wondeful!  Thank you very much.
> 
> There are couple of things that bother me though and would like to share
> with you and be corrected  by you if I am wrong. 
> 
> One of them is that all the replies came to me personally, that is the
> copies were not sent to the listserver.  So frequently I have seen
> questions posted and have seen very few if any replies to them. I guess mine
> was one of them. True, my question was very basic but still, there might be
> some new histologist that might benefit from the replies. 
> 
> The second concern is  that among those many helpful replies there was one
> very unprofessional  reply coming from a prominent anatomist. And this one
> was posted, even twice! Most of the subscribers that have read the question
> and have seen only one offensive reply to it. Don't you think that this will
> discourage them from posting questions? If they had seen all the helpful
> replies, the negative one would be easily ignored.
> 
> I am eager to read your posted  comments on this.
> 
> Lilith
> 
> 
> Lilith Ohannessian-Barry                               
> National Research Council                          
> Institute of Biological Sciences                  
> CANADA
> Tel;613-993-6460
> Fax;613-941-4475
> e-mail; lilith.barry@nrc.ca <mailto:lilith.barry@nrc.ca> 
> 
> 

-- End original message --