All,
	I think this is an excellent point. For those of you who were lucky
enough to hear Russ Allison in SLC this is a variation on the same theme.
Perhaps we are caught up in the small stuff and not looking at the big
picture. I do NOT mean to imply that safety is not a major issue, however
that each aspect needs to be weighed and prioritized appropriately.

Cynthia Favara
Rocky Mountain Laboratories
903 S 4th Street
Hamilton, MT 59840
ph: 406-363-9317
FAX: 406-363-9286
e-mail: cfavara@nih.gov


> ----------
> From: 	Mary Ann Miller[SMTP:millerma@email.uc.edu]
> Sent: 	Thursday, March 11, 1999 6:24 PM
> To: 	HistoNet@Pathology.swmed.EDU
> Subject: 	formalin substitutes
> 
> Dear Histonet friends,
> 
> I was just reading the message encouraging everyone to stop using formalin
> fixation. We are the tissue bank for just one of the large SWOG studies
> and
> because of that must do lots of work on approximately 500 different cases
> on each of several different protocols which come to us  from all over the
> country. We find it extremely difficult to do any kind of standardized
> immunochemistry on tissues fixed in so many different ways, especially
> when
> we have no idea as to which fixative was used. It's hard enough not having
> any idea how long the tissues have been fixed etc. These technical details
> are never included and we are not able to call individual hospitals to
> find
> out. Often we simply have to eliminate a case  because we cannot get it to
> stain with any pretreatment whatsoever and I know that is often because
> one
> of the newer fixatives have been used.
> 
> I agree that we must all become more aware of safety concerns, but this is
> a big problem which worries me for any of us attempting to do
> multiinstitutional basic clinical research on diseases which require large
> numbers of individual cases in order to get enough numbers on any one
> process to have statistical significance.
> 
> Any thoughts would be welcome.
> 
> Sincerely  Mary Ann
> 
> 
> Mary Ann Miller
> University of Cincinnati
> College of Medicine  ML 529
> 231 Bethesda Avenue
> Cincinnati, Ohio  45267
> FAX: (513) 558-2289 
>