Amos, I don't know the answer, but this is a really interesting question. I have worked both in the Research and Clinical Histology Laboratory and I have never seen the two mixed, which begs the question, "Why?". Maybe it's just because, if you go through the trouble and expense of starting a CAP accredited lab, processing patient specimens is so remunerative for the owner of the Pathology lab, why would they want to do anything else? Conversely, if you are a university or corporate owner of a Research Laboratory, your PI would get PO'ed if some Pathology Resident adding blocks to the tissue processor after hours, and not restarting it, messes us an experiment that had taken a year and ten thousand man-hours of meticulous lab time to get to the tissue block stage. Maybe there is a pertinent regulation. In my opinion, it sounds like a really good way to spread zoonotic infection.
Sincerely, Jay A. Lundgren M.S., HTL (ASCP) _______________________________________________ Histonet mailing list Histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu http://lists.utsouthwestern.edu/mailman/listinfo/histonet