After years of sci - fi - inspired fantasy about the proficiency , a team of doctors in Pittsburghare in the end quick to start testing out a procedurethat regard putting patients in a res publica of “ suspend animation ” while they repair their injuries . Put bluffly , they ’re going to kill people and bring them back to life sentence .
If you have n’t hear of this method before , organize to have your mind boast . Often patients with massive trauma like a gunfire or twinge wound run to death before doctors have the chance to fasten the morphologic injuries . However , this so - shout out “ emergency brake saving ” proficiency buy them special time , because it rapidly cool the physical structure down to temperatures as low as 50 - degrees Fahrenheit , stopping almost all cellular activity . “ We are suspend life-time , but we do n’t like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like scientific discipline fabrication , ” says Samuel Tisherman who ’s leading the discipline in Pittsburgh .
To do so , Doctor of the Church replace all of the patients ’ blood with a cold saline solution . In this state , the patient role has no signs of living — no pulse , no genius natural action , nothing . He ’s clinically dead , until the doctor revive his by pumping blood back into his body and bringing the trunk temperature back up . The patient can remain in the state of suspend animation for hours and still be brought back to life . Dr. say there would be no legal injury to the brain .
Suspended animation has never been tested on man . Dr. Hasam Alam , now at Harvard Medical School , first demonstrate the technique on pig in 2002 . By 2010 , Alamsaid that he was quick to start human trialsin Boston , and even though the FDA turn over the go out front a year later on , that has yet to happen .
But just imagine how many lives this could spare . Peter Rhee pioneer the technique at the University of Arizona in Tuscon and speaks about it in lofty terms . “ After we did [ the first ] experiment , the definition of ‘ idle ’ change , ” Rheetold The New Scientist . “ Every day at work I declare the great unwashed idle . They have no sign of spirit , no New York minute , no brain natural process . I sign a piece of composition knowing in my nitty-gritty that they are not actually dead . I could , right then and there , set aside them . But I have to put them in a body bag . It ’s thwarting to know there ’s a solution . ”
Soon , that solution could be coming to a hospital near you . The squad at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh is now on call and wait for their first candidate . They ’ll perform the procedure ten time and compare the results to ten standardized patients who were eligible but did not incur the treatment because the team was n’t available . If all goes well , they ’ll cover trials until they have enough data to analyze .
somewhat futuristic , correct ? It ’s a little minute ironical that this ground - smash raw method acting for keeping patients alive is just a dissimilar iteration of one of the oldest preservation method acting we know : pickling . “ We ’ve always assumed that you ca n’t bring back the dead , ” say Rhee . “ But it ’s a matter of when you pickle the cells . ” And now we ’ve made the leap from sci - fi to horror . God sign progress . [ New Scientist ]
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