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Gunshot Victims to be Put in Suspended Animation

posted by NCommander on Tuesday April 01 2014, @09:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the on-ice dept.

Open4D writes:

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").

 
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  • (Score: 2) by etherscythe on Tuesday April 01 2014, @11:23PM

    by etherscythe (937) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @11:23PM (#24520) Journal

    From TFA:

    "We are suspending life, but we don't like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction," says Samuel Tisherman, a surgeon at the hospital, who is leading the trial. "So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation."

    Well, they're not hitting absolute 0, so it's really more of a "retarded animation" situation, but that term sounds even worse. I think I agree with the doctor on this one. But, if you don't know what suspended animation is, hand in your geek card.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @11:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @11:48PM (#24524)
    (pssst, that's the article you're quoting from, not the summary.)

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:46PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:46PM (#25250) Journal

      I guess that's why he wrote "TFA", not "TFS".

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