Suspended Animation Tests Successful 392
chrisb33 writes "Wired News reports that suspended animation tests have been successfully carried out with pigs. From the article: 'Long the domain of transhumanist nut-jobs, cryogenic suspension may be just two years away from clinical trials on humans (presuming someone can solve the sticky ethical problems).'" The pig that was the subject of the article was kept in suspended animation for two hours, and Duggan and his team have successfully suspended hundreds of pigs for an hour at a time. It's still a far cry from a spaceship filled with sleep pods, but would be just the ticket for doctors who need to buy extra time to save lives.
Welcome (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Welcome (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Welcome (Score:2)
Re:Welcome (Score:4, Funny)
Hey man, whatever you want to do with a communist midget is none of my business, but the only fetish we allow on Slashdot involves grits.
Oh, GRITS... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't know who Red Dwarf is. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Welcome (Score:2)
Want to know what nerds of the future will find interesting? Go into a state of suspended animation, and then on Slashdot, you can read the latest... er... nevermind.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Big Deal (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Welcome (Score:5, Insightful)
Blown in half (Score:5, Interesting)
So blown-in-half guy gets aorta and cava put back together; bone grafting and wiring or rodding his spinal column and an anastamosis of the spinal cord or cord amputation; clean up the damage to the kidneys and pancreas; do splenectomy if needed; multiple gut anastamoses and/or resections; and layered closures of the whole body wall. Nothing we don't do now - we just don't have time to do it.
Re:Blown in half (Score:3, Insightful)
Would it be worth all the money and hassle (from the point of view of the military) just to save one guy? Unless, as the GP had said, his 'return trip' was just returning him to the front. IANAD, but all those procedures seem like they would take a long time, and time is invaluable on the battlefield. Also as someone else mentioned, is the issue of tissue rejection, and other such worries. Yes, this is saving a life, and to you and me this is worth it.
Re:Blown in half (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Blown in half (Score:5, Insightful)
If you start withholding care that could save their buddies, they'll quickly realize that the care will be withheld from them too - and they're less likely to fight so well.
Soldiers can be pretty pragmatic too...
Re:Blown in half (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, money and expertise doesn't grow on trees, yet.
Re:Blown in half (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah. They're fighting for my government. Not always the same thing.
Last time any other nation was a real military threat to my country was 1814 or 1865, depending on whether you want to argue that the pro-slavery terrorists who styled themselves the "Confederacy" were or were not "another nation". The Mexican-American war was a war of agression; neither Japan nor Germany posed a threat of inva
Re:Blown in half (Score:2)
Re:Blown in half (Score:2)
Re:Welcome (Score:2)
old news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:old news (Score:3, Funny)
Suspension not the problem... (Score:4, Funny)
Similar Story (Score:5, Informative)
Auction time! (Score:2, Funny)
Pigs! I hear pigs, any advance on pigs? Come on, ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you've frozen more impressive animals than pigs. Dogs! Thank you sirs. Dogs to the group of US scientists in the corner. Dogs are bid. Dogs is the bid. Do I hear any advance on dogs? Dogs going once... Going twice... WALT DISNEY! Sold! Sold to the gentleman with the large ears and his trouserless sailor friend.
How? (Score:4, Funny)
It will make a good business, freezing people so their savings would grow and they could see the future.
But it also means the meat in your freezer might be technically alive.
alive!
Re:How? (Score:2)
Re:How? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How? (Score:2, Interesting)
But, imagine giving criminals (and wrongfully accused/evidence-stacked-against-them) "suspended sentences". You can "suspend them in animation" as well as suspend the verdicts leading to their sentences. Their sentence (punishment rightly or wrongly) AND the sentences (words) could be suspended from a string, or placed on a cryo-ice shelf in their flask.
Probably the GOOD thing is that the belatedly wrongfully-sentenc
Re: (Score:2)
If you want ethical problems... (Score:5, Informative)
One of Niven's ideas was of using executed criminals as a source for organ replacement; this led to the eventual application of the death penalty for most crimes. The general idea was that this would be made possible by using suspended animation to keep the organs alive and healthy for long periods after the "donor" had been killed, so that a suitable match might be found. Your new liver might come from someone who died years ago, and whose parts were kept in storage until a matching donor like yourself had need of them.
Niven also introduced the idea that illegal organ harvesting could also happen; "organleggers" kidnap and disassemble people to provide a black market service. He was writing this in the 60's, and since then there have been signs of both situations (legal and illegal execution as a source of organs) happening in thw world.
Assuming we could keep body parts alive in suspended animation after the host is dead, we could do exactly what Niven described. The question is, will we?
Re:If you want ethical problems... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If you want ethical problems... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only are ehtical issues having to be addressed, but legal ones as well.
IANAL, but from the article, "brain activity has ceased", which as I understand it is the legal and medical definition of human death.
With the recent news like the Kevorkian [cnn.com] issue, what is being alive or dead legally or ethically today?
Re:If you want ethical problems... (Score:3, Insightful)
A little bit more complicated (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not only "EEG is flat ergo the patient is dead, let's pull happily the plug".
Mostly, a doctor is supposed to run a whole batch of several tests, mostly testing funciton of the brain stem (with the idea that nowaday one needs a functionning brain stem to live. Just as in the past centuries the pulse was tested because a functionning hearth seemed to be a sensible requirement)
Those test have t
Re:If you want ethical problems... (Score:4, Interesting)
Niven explores the ramifications even more: In "A Gift From Earth", a small human colony is ruled by a relatively fascist government, with dissidents ending up in the organ banks. The government's control is threatened when a "care package" from Earth arrives, with the technology for growing organs directly from scratch, which makes the organ banks obsolete.
In Niven's timeline, this technology came a long time (a few centuries?) after the organ bank concept was perfected. In reality, we will have this technology much more quickly.
Not worried (Score:2)
1) It would never happen. As others point out, we're so worried about the potential problem that we don't allow death row inmates to become organ donors. Why would making organ donation easier and more successful change our already legally established position on the subject?
2) Research into construction and growth of replacement organs is already well advanced for many organs. The technologies include 3-D tis
Re:Not worried (Score:2)
Re:If you want ethical problems... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, you can never rule out the possibility that under those conditions a prisoner might kill himself. The solution used in the known space books is actually pretty ingenious, and an ethical nightmare.
And now, the movie (Score:4, Funny)
From-the-slashdot-chior-dept (Score:2, Funny)
It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere,
I'm all alone, more or less,
Let me fly, far away from here,
Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun.
The pig was only mostly dead (Score:2, Funny)
Can you imagine the lack of respect these researchers must recieve in certain circles?
Also I wish Wired would have elaborated a bit regarding the ethical issues of suspended animation. Saving people from gunshot wounds, the only example listed in the article, seems like a no-brainer to me.
Re:The pig was only mostly dead (Score:2)
Re:The pig was only mostly dead (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm... I think they were talking about the ethical issues of doing the clinical trials on humans, not the actual precedure once it's been proven. If somebody comes into the trauma room with gunshot wounds, do you do everything to save him, or do you try this risky new procedure that's never been tried on a human before, hoping to buy more time for the surgery? Ethical delimma. Cross your fingers and hope t
Big deal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Big deal. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think a mammal freezes at 0 due to the salt and other impurities.
Re:Big deal. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Big deal. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, cell rupture from the result of sharp-edged crystal formation occurs during the post-warming cycle, not during cool down. This is why rescuers prefer to bring avalanche victims back to normal body temp in as much of a controlled process as possible, in order to avoid as much crystal formation as possible. The most common result is frostbite, of course. In addition, after it happens once, you are best advised to not subject the same body part to another incident, as tissue durability in regards to a repeat is lost.
Re:Big deal. (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Big deal. (Score:2)
Long-term suspension is probably science fiction.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people may think that this may end up being a way to deal with any sort of terminal illness. I don't think it is. And it has nothing to do with the technology.
The real problems are financial and political. Suppose you get yourself "frozen". At that point, are you legally alive or dead? In order to be able to pay for the perhaps hundreds of years you might be in storage, you'll have to have a sizable chunk of change set aside. Your heirs (or, more likely, their descendants) will almost certainly attempt to gain control over it, and so the question of whether or not you're legally alive will have to be answered. I wouldn't put good odds on the ruling coming out in your favor.
But suppose it does. Now the question becomes how you ensure that the organization that freezes you will survive for the amount of time it takes for a cure to your terminal illness to be found. The odds of that happening are not good. How many several-hundred-year-old organizations can one find right now? Damn few.
And on top of that, there's the problem of the political stability of the country the organization in question is based in, not to mention the world at large.
The bottom line is that getting yourself frozen in the face of a terminal illness is a very low-probability shot in the dark. But any chance of survival is better than no chance, so I'd take the risk if it were me.
Re:Long-term suspension is probably science fictio (Score:2)
>> How many several-hundred-year-old organizations can one
Re:Long-term suspension is probably science fictio (Score:2)
Re:Long-term suspension is probably science fictio (Score:2)
How do you really think somebody will have to be suspended before we have the technology to revive them? A hundred years? Two hundred? Those are not likely guesses, from my standpoint. If nanotechnology-based reconstruction will work for this purpose as we "transhumanist nut-jobs" hope, we'll probably
Re:Long-term suspension is probably science fictio (Score:2)
Re:Long-term suspension is probably science fictio (Score:2, Informative)
In the USA, almost none. Here in the UK there are loads - schools, hospitals, guilds, universities, civic corporations, etc.
Just in my own experience, my first-year room at college was built about 600 years ago and my school was founded about a century later.
Re:Long-term suspension is probably science fictio (Score:2)
Re:Long-term suspension is probably science fictio (Score:2)
Let the tasteless joking commence (Score:5, Funny)
Freezing healthy people would be one thing... (Score:2)
Re:Freezing healthy people would be one thing... (Score:2)
Why would... (Score:2)
Critical patients? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Extra time" is usually needed when the patient is in critical condition. Critical patients, by definition, don't survive 'rough handling'.
Re:Critical patients? (Score:2)
Once you're no longer dealing with a ticking clock, the possibilities for systematic restoration open up; ie, you could make some of the repairs while they're still suspended, and tie them into life support systems before waki
limits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:limits? (Score:2)
What they are doing here in the article is not freezing the patient just lowering their body temperature to the point where most biological process appear to stop. That is great if you are quickly bleeding to death from an arterial wound it would be nice if we could stop your heart for a while without you going brain dead,
Re:limits? (Score:2)
Nut-jobs. Real tolerant. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see how it would make Wired sound if we changed the original sentence to apply to some more popular and better armed belief systems:
Long the domain of Christian nut-jobs, cosmologists report that the age of the universe is an overestimate and now believe it to be closer to the Biblical six thousand years.
Long the domain of Muslim nut-jobs, researchers at the Royal Madrassa Institute announced hard evidence that martyrs instantly ascend to heaven.
Long the domain of Mormon nut-jobs, archaeologists have rediscovered the golden plates that Joseph Smith claimed were given to him by the angel Moroni.
Long the domain of Scientology nut-jobs, paleontologists have reported a heretofore undiscovered volcano in Hawaii showing traces of ancient alien visitors.
Would Wired have the balls to print any of the above sentences? I doubt it. Too scared of being boycotted, firebombed, or sued. So are these cowards getting a few cheap laughs at the expense of our beliefs about the soul and life after death because they know there aren't enough of us nut-jobs to fight back? At least our beliefs are slowly coming closer to realization, unlike the anti-scientific belief systems portrayed above. Why are we the nutjobs then?
What, you're into tolerance and respect for other people's beliefs unless you outnumber them by a comfortable margin, is that the true extent of your commitment to civil liberties? Screw you Wired bigots. And the inevitable flood of Slashdot bigots who will think it's fun to bully people who have never done them or anybody else any harm whatsoever.
To clarify: I'm not saying Wired should be sued, bombed, or censored. They have a right to say what they like. Just like I have the right to say they're low-lifes for going out of their way for no particular reason to insult me and other people who share my beliefs.
Re:Nut-jobs. Real tolerant. (Score:2)
Re:Nut-jobs. Real tolerant. (Score:5, Insightful)
religion (n): a large, popular cult.
That's really all there is to it. If there were large enough numbers of transhumanist nutjobs to gain recognition for their nutty beliefs, those beliefs would cease to be regarded as nutty, and when some transhumanist blowhard got up on TV to talk about his chosen brand of nuttiness, everyone would nod wisely and stroke their chins and say, "Well, of course we must respect the views of those who follow the transhumanist faith
So get out there and start converting the heathens, brother!
Re:Nut-jobs. Real tolerant. (Score:2)
And if they don't, we won't be any deader.
(Which reminds me: I'd better check that my Alcor dues are up to date. B-) )
What sticky ethical problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, you must mean the ethical problem of society being full of reactionary sanctimonous busy-bodies who think they know what's best for me. I agree, this is a big ethical problem, and thank you for agreeing that they should get off our backs and let us do as we like with our bodies and our estates.
Re:What sticky ethical problems? (Score:4, Interesting)
And what proves that you don't cease to exist?
Maybe a long time after you are frozen, people wake up someone who swears it is you, but I have given it some thought, and I am sure that life is a continuous thing, and that once you are dead, you are dead. And that, even if they can wake up a conscious person, you would be dead.
The real problem with that way of seeing it, is that the woken-up guy would think that the procedure actually worked, but you would be dead. so there would be no experimental way of finding out if am wrong.
I am really concerned about that, specially, because I haven't seen anyone with my same view of things.
Of course, my point is easier to get, when you use the example of star trek style teletransportation, but this case gives me the creeps too.
Re:What sticky ethical problems? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What sticky ethical problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are in a car accident that severely dammages your internal organs. The doctors think that with current medical knowledge you have a 25% chance of living. They decide that, in your best interests, they should keep you on ice for a year or two to see if treatments get better. Your distraught life (or even worse, estranged but still custodian of your next of
Re:The ones you didn't think of, perhaps? (Score:2)
Re:The ones you didn't think of, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
transhumanistic (Score:5, Insightful)
Bold words from Wired, the official newsletter of transhumanist nut-jobs.
Re:transhumanistic (Score:2)
sticky ethical problem indeed (Score:3, Informative)
So I guess the idea is that you get cryogenically frozen and then, someday, when society has come up with a cure for death, you will be revived and live long into the future!
Oblig. (Score:2)
Suspension vs. Freezing (Score:2)
The problem is really cold makes water into crystals which destroy cells and makes the corpsical very brittle.. Esp. true if they are using liquid nitrog. which is very very cold..
Hibernation, not cryonic suspension (Score:5, Informative)
Matter over mind. (Score:2)
I don't know (Score:2)
Cool, all the same.
Russians did it in the 40's (Score:3, Interesting)
WARNING: Not for the squeemish...
Partially been done to humans. (Score:2, Informative)
This has already been done in humans, to a degree. Something similar to this is done in treating brain anuerisms when caught early. They redirect the blood and chill it, slowly lowering the body to 70 degrees. Where, all brain function and heart function stop. By controlling this, they can surgically remove the anuerism before it bursts, which they couldn't do when the person is 'awake'. It's not really suspended animation, because the machine is pumping your blood and breathing for your. Unlike these
It wasn't the doctor who saved her life... (Score:4, Funny)
But 78-6 is, in fact, only mostly dead
the thing that brought her back to life was TRUE LOVE...
In related news ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wake up rich? (Score:5, Funny)
Fry: My God! It's the future. My parents, my co-workers, my girlfriend; I'll never see any of them again. Yahoo!
Re:Wake up rich? (Score:2)
Ethical Problems? Where? (Score:2, Interesting)
There's testing on medicinal practices like this going on all the time; if the people aren't being tricked into it, and if it's being thoroughl
Re:WTF (ethical problems) (Score:2, Insightful)
It would also have an interesting effect on the legal status of death. Is a frozen person alive? If not, what can people do while they are dead? If so, how long can you claim someone is alive before you have to just thaw a corpse and let life move on? See
Re:WTF (ethical problems) (Score:2)
Re:WTF (ethical problems) (Score:3, Interesting)
True.. Let's say you freeze yourself to collect interest while you're frozen, becoming rich after 100 yeras. What if that interest is taxed every year and the person you asked to pay your taxes dies during that 100 years? Then the IRS gets upset at these unpaid taxes, how will they handle that? I imagine a company can be established to take care of your estate, but what if that company fai
Re:WTF (ethical problems) (Score:2)
Re:.Population problem (Score:2)
Re:Cool! (no pun intended) (Score:3, Interesting)
That is, unless the aforementioned nanotech advances happen and make it possible to fix radiation burns before thawing and find and repair/kill cancerous cells.
People frozen with current technology aren't likely to be revived just by thawing and restarting, without MAJOR repair on the cellular and m
Re:Freezer Burn (Score:3, Informative)
Includes suspended animation, sentient stars, deep (near-C) relativity, and yes... freezer burn.