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Pipedot has picked up on this remarkable New Scientist article: "Gunshot victims to be suspended between life and death."
From the article:
Doctors will try to save the lives of 10 patients with knife or gunshot wounds by placing them in suspended animation, buying time to fix their injuries. ... The technique involves replacing all of a patient's blood with a cold saline solution, which rapidly cools the body and stops almost all cellular activity. ... At lower temperatures, cells need less oxygen because all chemical reactions slow down. This explains why people who fall into icy lakes can sometimes be revived more than half an hour after they have stopped breathing. ... The technique was first demonstrated in pigs in 2002.
The surgeon leading the trial (who apparently prefers to avoid the term "suspended animation") says he "eventually hopes to extend the technique to other conditions." I'm not surprised. Isn't the potential here enormous?
And the ethical issues are interesting in their own right. These are discussed towards the end of the article, and in this separate (self-contradictory) opinion piece (which appeared in print under the headline "Opt out is a cop-out").
(Score: 3, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:54PM
Keep in mind that this "iffy territory" was perfectly acceptable to every medical establishment that ever handed out a donor card and only now needs ethical reevaluation following technological and procedural breakthroughs with extremely limited availability at this time. Those decisions were based on our knowledge of what a doctor could reasonably expect to revive someone from given the levels of skill and tech to hand; that's not iffy, that's cold reason applied exactly as it should be.
Your point of view is perfectly understandable, of course. As a motorcyclist, I am very well aware of how horrific accidental injury can be because of something someone else did/didn't and hope this gets rolled out ASAP before more of my friends, friends-of-friends or I myself lose limbs or die. Unfortunately, impatience won't help anyone, no matter whether it's the potential patient or the researcher.