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The patent in Russia being operated on for ovarian cysts had a formalin (37% formaldehyde solution) mistakenly introduced into her abdomen.
It was washed out when the mistake was recognized, but ultimately, too late.
Formaldehyde is used for many things, in biology it is often used to fix tissues. It covalently bonds to nitrogen in proteins, either drastically altering their structure of double bonding with adjacent proteins. This causes the proteins to become denatured, non-functional, and precipitate (fixing their location, thus fixing the protein, ). It results in dead cells.
This reminds me of a similar (difficult to forget) story I read about long ago when I was in graduate school. In this case, gluteraldehyde (a stronger, better cross linker than formaldehyde, good for doing histology) was put into someone's brain and fixed their brain while leaving the rest of the body OK (with mechanical assistance).
It was washed out when the mistake was recognized, but ultimately, too late.
Formaldehyde is used for many things, in biology it is often used to fix tissues. It covalently bonds to nitrogen in proteins, either drastically altering their structure of double bonding with adjacent proteins. This causes the proteins to become denatured, non-functional, and precipitate (fixing their location, thus fixing the protein, ). It results in dead cells.
This reminds me of a similar (difficult to forget) story I read about long ago when I was in graduate school. In this case, gluteraldehyde (a stronger, better cross linker than formaldehyde, good for doing histology) was put into someone's brain and fixed their brain while leaving the rest of the body OK (with mechanical assistance).