U.S. Scientists Create Zombie Dogs 1010
Alex_Ionescu writes "U.S. scientists have managed to revive dead dogs to life, by using a technique similar to cryogenation, in which the dogs' blood was drained and replaced by a cold, saline liquid. A couple of hours, their blood was replaced, and an electric shock brought them back to life with no brain damage. The technology will be tested on humans within the next year."
Re:well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally I think the fluids would just drain out of whatever wounds you do have.
I think a better application of this technology will be for these multi-hour operations where they want to repair heart defects or do transplants, in which they currently induce hypothermic states.
Re:well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, this is ubercreepy. Even the electrical shock at the end bit... sounds like 50s sci-fi. What's next? "The shock required is quite intense, so facilities doing this work will need to affix a lightning rod to their roof and wait for a storm..."?
Not new news (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no idea if they've recently done yet another incrementally longer period of exsanguination, as the article doesn't mention the time or a journal article name or anything.
not really that much of an advancment (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not On Me. (Score:2, Interesting)
Not just ER Patients... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No brain damage (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would you want to freeze someone indefinately? Let's go for a Sci-Fi answer since we're dealing with a near-Sci-Fi topic. Let's say that you've got the aging examples of some really prize breedings from a particular bloodline (I'm talking dogs here). And then, something ugly not unlike hoof-and-mouth, or bird flu starts turning in a species-specific pandemic. If I were a breeder that had been perfecting a bloodline for 50 years, I'd seriously consider taking a couple of those dogs and letting them have A Big Nap.
For a lot of breeders, they love the individual dogs, but their truly beloved "pet" is the bloodline out of which they spring. Generations (of human lives) go into creating something as unique as a specialized dog (or bull, or chicken), so ways to put them on ice for later revival once a viral or other threat has been understood (or a vaccine developed) could be very compelling.
I'd say all the same things about humans, but I'd be very Politically Incorrect at that point, so of course I won't.
What about the soul of humans (Score:2, Interesting)
Ontological argument (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyways...
I'm really fascinated by the metaphysical meanings of all this. Imagine that we froze a dog and brought it back to life (Hey, we just DID that, didn't we? Or pretty close, at least). Dog comes back, everything is hunky-dorey, he wags his tails, just like he used to, eats the same food as before, and still doesn't know not to pee on the carpet.
Understand that at LN2 temp, -197C, the only appreciable reaction is due to cosmic rays. We're talking EONS here. If it's that cold, it's dead. Dead, dead, dead. Not living anymore. This sets the stage for my philosophical question.
Imagine that we freeze a human. Human's just as dead as the dog. We reanimate him/her/it, and then... two possibilities. 1) Same thing as with the dog, human comes back, harty and hale. 2) Body comes back, but the brain refuses.
Isn't this a proof for the (non) existence of the soul? If the human comes back to life, that means the soul never left. Now, unless you're going to start some twisted, "Yeah, but god KNEW this one was coming back to life so he didn't take his soul... Hey, look 4800 year-old dinosaurs!" argument, you pretty much have to admit that the soul doesn't exist, or at least doesn't go away when you die. Because, let's admit it, frozen at -197C is just as dead as being blown to smythereens or having your heart stopped by the last (ultimate?) Big Mac you ate.
If the human DOESN'T come back, that pretty much proves that there is something special inside only humans that we lose the moment when we die, i.e. the soul.
So I'm really excited to see the first half of the data is in. Dogs live after death. They have no souls, at least not in the way we imagine them. Now, if only I'd work a little harder instead of reading
Re:Here's the scene... (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, not quite the same but similar and I find it somehow entertaining
This hits home... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things the doctor told us was that they were going to actually induce hypothermia in him while he is in the ICU. Recent studies have provided evidence that doing so may limit the brain damage caused by the loss of oxygen to the brain. Of course, in his case, it was extremely important (and fortunate) that CPR was started soon after his heart stopped, thus limiting the loss of oxygen to his brain.
Hopefully studies like this will lead to more treatments which help people recover from heart failure.
OT: Technically (Score:4, Interesting)
Reanimating the dead was placed into this category much later, though beliefs about this practice....
As a completely off-topic side-note, William Butler Yeates (the Nobel Prize-winning poet) was kicked out of the Theosophical society for experiments in necromancy. He was trying to summon the spirits of dead flowers.
I was ready to call this a joke... (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd
unethical (Score:3, Interesting)
The FDA has to approve any medical studies conducted in the US. There's absolutely no way they'd approve a study of perfectly healthy people that are subjected to a test where there's a large unknown factor of whether they'd die, suffer permanent brain damage, etc. Replacing someones blood with saline, then taking them to "clinical death" for three hours is something that would only be tried if the patient was going to die anyway given current treatment and this procedure might save their life.
Might need more than that. (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally think that this idea might have merit, but it might require more than just blood replacement to work for deep sea rescues. For example, the lungs are still full of air, right? What effect does the pressure have on this? Do you still ge tthe bends unless you remove all the air from the lungs? How difficult is this do to well enough?
Or maybe another way might be to cover the face with a rubber mask, place the body in normal-pressure water, and then encapsulate this in another iron pod. Such a pod might be fairly easily be built small (just needs to be big enough to fit your largest crew member).
Cellular Perforation (Score:2, Interesting)
Canine Cognitive Tests? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Canine Cognitive Tests? (Score:2, Interesting)
Brain damage = damage to the brain
Cognitively Impaired = IQ 70 (or 75 if you are going by the education definition)
Legal Questions (Score:2, Interesting)
More information can be found... (Score:2, Interesting)
They provide a little more information on their suspended animation page [pitt.edu].
Re:well... (Score:3, Interesting)
B)All medicine, indeed all of life, is a question of probabilities and trying to stack them in your favor. We do not have, and thus cannot rely on, foreknowledge.
Get used to this idea.
The most common and "safest" traditional procedures may, in the right circumstances, kill you. That's the way it is.
No one can be sure, ever, that they'll actually benefit more from a trial procedure (or any other) than from a traditional approach, that's why it's a trial procedure, and why trial procedures are necessary. Probability is an empirical science and someone has to go first.
KFG
no sedimentation == no damage (Score:1, Interesting)
Draining blood and replacing it with saline also could prevent sedimentation, but I don't think it would be easy to get right.
they do this everyday (Score:2, Interesting)
The paddles you see shocking heart attack victims back to life.
They even have Automatic External Defibrillators (AED) in most major airports, many public schools, even malls have them. The AED shocks the heart back into sync and are easy to use -- the instructions are on the box
Re:well... (Score:5, Interesting)
So is there a temperature limit for metabolizing?
Cell death is of two kinds - apoptosis or necrosis. Apoptosis is programmed cell death (when the lysosomes break), whereas necrosis is due to cell damage - and in this case, lack of oxygen. Cells that die due to necrosis show a lower level of ATP - so it makes sense that the cell was trying to metabolize the remaining oxygen and ran out.
From here [bham.ac.uk], you can see that the increase in Ca2+ ions leads to chain of events that eventually leads to necrosis. Ca2+ ions over a certain threshold inhibits the energy and respiratory processes. I guess the question is, what is stopping the neuron from trying to metabolize?
What I'm assuming is that it takes longer for the blood in the body to cool down, during which time the neurons can continue metabolizing. But when the temperature is suddenly lowered to 7C, metabolysis stops? But we couldn't just quickly lower the temperature of the body to 7C because it would take > 5 min for the blood to cool.
Re:Here's the scene... (Score:2, Interesting)
And in fact, there is no educational value in it at all as far as I can see. The goldfish is given an electric shock and its body reacts to it vigorously, but the video is cut off right after that initial reaction to the shock.
For all I know, the fish is dead and remains that way.
Re:brains.... brains.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Dogs will "eat their own shit," if you feed them food they can't digest... so their crap is still "food."
Re:Here's the scene... (Score:2, Interesting)
But this.. this is just seriously fucked up. And these are the same people who did all that ipod battery stuff. Go figure.
Re:Try feeding your damn dog asshole (Score:3, Interesting)
This site, I don't know how authoratative it is, seems to affirm this assumption. http://www.manuelsweb.com/poop_rolling.htm [manuelsweb.com]
Re:About the green blood... (Score:1, Interesting)
Clinically dead vs. DEAD dead (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd agree with the poster about someone going through this procedure and not having any memory of it since there's no brain activity to store anything.
But let's say there is some sort of energy that isn't measureable by the tools we have now that you could call a "soul" (tm). Maybe it's bound to the body until cellular decay occurs.
Besides, what ever happened with those studies where researchers put notes up on ceilings of operating rooms to see if there were any NDE's that actually found themselves floating up to the ceiling to see what was written on these notes?
Re:well... (Score:3, Interesting)
At the end of the article they describe the same work with dogs that the current story is describing (at Pittsburgh).
a script (Score:5, Interesting)
We hear beeping sounds of monitoring devices; voices from the nearby nurse's station. The lighting is yellowish flourescent in the hallway for a sad, depressing atmosphere. It's a public hospital, so no one thought to have an interior designer make happy colors. The interior of the room is bright with white flouresent light.
POV: facing LAUREN, just inside doorway. She's just been crying and is still wearing her street clothes.
POV: LAUREN, looking into room.
ANDY has just been wheeled into the room with a major gun shot wound to the chest. The wound is covered by a washcloth and shows some blood, but not a lot. He's behind a curtain setup so only his lower body is clearly visible.
A NURSE (Asian female, early 30's) is facing away from us and is adjusting a piece of equipment.
A DOCTOR (White female, 40's) is facing away from us and illuminated behind the curtain. She's dictating into a tape recorder between probing ANDY's injuries: "Bleeding from perforation of the left thoracic cavity 8cm from center of sternum." Pause. "Fracture of the fourth thoracic rib." Pause. "Wound track and cavity visible. Left lung perforated approx. 4 cm from inner side." Long pause. "Laceration of the circumflex coronary artery. Fragment not found." Pauses tape. (To NURSE) "Get me the chest x-ray please." Starts tape and continues indistinctly.
Fade to black.
Fade back in. More people are in the room. An X-RAY TECHNICIAN (Black male, 30's) is wheeling out the x-ray machine. It's digital, so the results appear on a CRT monitor in the room. The DOCTOR and SURGEON (white male, 50 and graying) discuss the x-ray and gesture to parts of it. They are ignoring LAUREN, who is still standing in the doorway. Finally, DOCTOR comes over to LAUREN and removes her bloody gloves.
DOCTOR: Are you Mrs. Watters?
LAUREN: Yes.
DOCTOR: I'm going to explain what happened and what your options are.
LAUREN: (Bravely) ok.
Blood begins to drip onto the floor, which LAUREN doesn't notice but we do (center of frame between DOCTOR and LAUREN). NURSE puts absorbent towels onto the small pool that's forming.
DOCTOR: Your husband was shot in his chest area fairly close to his heart. The bleeding is serious and we're trying to stop it. The biggest problem is that the heart was injured and we can't repair it completely without stopping it.
NURSE comes up to both of them and stands there.
LAUREN: What does that mean?
DOCTOR: (ignoring her question) You have three options. The first option is for us to try open heart surgery. That is risky and means we have to stop the heart and use a heart-lung machine. The second option is for us to do what's called a "saline evacuation," which means we essentially put the body on ice for a couple of hours while we try to repair the heart. That's the most risky by far. The last option is for us to end treatment now.
LAUREN:
DOCTOR: I'm afraid I can't tell you that.
LAUREN: (Confused) Why not? I have no idea which one I should do.
DOCTOR: Liability reasons. (To NURSE) Come get me when she chooses.
DOCTOR leaves the room, giving the impression of indifference to ANDY's condition and LAUREN's confusion.
NURSE: Ok Mrs. Watters, you need to decide what to do now.
LAUREN: (Confused) Well what did she mean by "put him on ice?"
NURSE: It's where we take out all his blood and replace it with icewater.
LAUREN: (Dumbfounded). Doesn't that mean he would die?
NURSE: Not exactly. It's a technique they did a few years ago to save wounded army people. The heart stops but everything stays preserved and then you can restart the heart after surgery.
LAUREN: Surgery?
NURSE: To repair whatever damage there is. Your husband has a cut in his heart and they can't do anything about it as long as the heart's beating