The next new thing doctors are trying to do to save our lives? Bring us that much closer to death.
Suspended animation is an experimental technique that could buy critically injured patients the crucial extra time needed for surgeons to save their lives. Dr. Peter Rhee, chief of Tucson, Arizona’s trauma center is one of several pioneers behind a growing push to graduate suspended animation from experimental vetting to common treatment. He’s getting there. The Food and Drug Administration has already approved his technique for human trials, and he has secured funding from the Army to conduct the feasibility phase. Dr. Rhee is currently lobbying for funds to conduct a full trial. If he’s successful human trials could begin as early as next year.
The idea is simple: slow a person’s metabolism to such a crawl that the process of dying from say, a gunshot wound, is held in check. Like an animal in hibernation breathing, heartbeat, brain function and general metabolic functions are slowed drastically. Talking to the Arizona Star Daily, Dr. Rhee called suspended animation “when you are no longer alive but you are not dead.”
What Dr. Rhee hopes to test on humans is a method he worked out for the past couple decades on pigs. Patients would be injected with a cold fluid to induce severe hypothermia. Clinically hypothermia is characterized by the drop of a person’s body temperature from its normal 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celcius) to lower than 95 degrees (35 C). Below 95, the heart, nervous system and other organs begin to fail. The strict range is indicative of a metabolic system with strict temperature requirements for proper function (death waits only a few degrees the other way as well). Dr. Rhee’s method involves injecting patients with a cold fluid that would bring the body’s temperature down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 C). Sounds chilling, but when he induced the extreme hypothermia in pigs they came out just fine. Heart function, breathing, and brain function was completely normal.
More here. You can read it after you're revived.Suspended animation is an experimental technique that could buy critically injured patients the crucial extra time needed for surgeons to save their lives. Dr. Peter Rhee, chief of Tucson, Arizona’s trauma center is one of several pioneers behind a growing push to graduate suspended animation from experimental vetting to common treatment. He’s getting there. The Food and Drug Administration has already approved his technique for human trials, and he has secured funding from the Army to conduct the feasibility phase. Dr. Rhee is currently lobbying for funds to conduct a full trial. If he’s successful human trials could begin as early as next year.
The idea is simple: slow a person’s metabolism to such a crawl that the process of dying from say, a gunshot wound, is held in check. Like an animal in hibernation breathing, heartbeat, brain function and general metabolic functions are slowed drastically. Talking to the Arizona Star Daily, Dr. Rhee called suspended animation “when you are no longer alive but you are not dead.”
What Dr. Rhee hopes to test on humans is a method he worked out for the past couple decades on pigs. Patients would be injected with a cold fluid to induce severe hypothermia. Clinically hypothermia is characterized by the drop of a person’s body temperature from its normal 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celcius) to lower than 95 degrees (35 C). Below 95, the heart, nervous system and other organs begin to fail. The strict range is indicative of a metabolic system with strict temperature requirements for proper function (death waits only a few degrees the other way as well). Dr. Rhee’s method involves injecting patients with a cold fluid that would bring the body’s temperature down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 C). Sounds chilling, but when he induced the extreme hypothermia in pigs they came out just fine. Heart function, breathing, and brain function was completely normal.
http://singularityhub.com/2011/09/14/ai ... al-trials/
