[Histonet] fixation/no fixation

[George Cole]

Histotechs;
Thank you for your responses to my question.  They reflect a much
broader range of tissues and entities studied than my
muscle/nerve/kidney studies.  My questions arose from my  experience
over 27 years with  biopsy tissues of  muscles,  nerves and  kidneys.
The question simply was, given, that once fixation was considered
impossible for use with immunofluorescent work and, I thought, all
antibody techniques. Now the histonet carries constant references to
fixation in these studies. The questions were 1) what do you do to make
fixed tissues useable for these studies and, 2) what is the comparable
results between fixed and non fixed tissues in the results? I am
impressed with the broad responses reflecting much expertise in work
done.  But questions 1 and 2 have been whiffed aside by an acceptance of
the fixed tissue work, and  this retiree is still in the dark about what
has altered a once Absolute Rejection of fixation, and allowed
histotechs of today an acceptance of fixation in certain areas of
histochemistry.  Like the food ladeller and Oliver Twist: When Oliver
asks, "Please, sir. May I have some more?", the man serving the children
shouts; "More! The boy wants more! Surely the boy shall hang!!" That I
should  question fixatives seems  worse than Oliver asking for more
oatmeal!   The question about fixatives seems foreign to  the current
generalized mind set with strong habits of  use of them.  I ask these
questions after a working lifetime in which fixatives caused absolute
failure in all but a few processes in muscle work and it was taken as an
additional absolute, that fixatives ruined imnunofluorescnce in kidney
work. Have these absolutes  evaporated?
georgecole <@t> ev1.net