Posted on 12/11/2005 3:35:37 PM PST by paulat
Zombie Dogs
By STEPHEN MIHM Published: December 11, 2005
[SNIP]
In a series of experiments, doctors at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research at the University of Pittsburgh managed to plunge several dogs into a state of total, clinical death before bringing them back to the land of the living.
{SNIP]
The Safar Center team took the dogs, swiftly flushed their bodies of blood and replaced it with a relatively cool saline solution (approximately 45 to 50 degrees) laced with oxygen and glucose. The dogs quickly went into cardiac arrest, and with no demonstrable heartbeat or brain activity, clinically died.
[SNIP]
After three full hours, the team reversed their steps, withdrawing the saline solution, reintroducing the blood and thereby warming the dogs back to life.
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They jump-started their patients' hearts with a gentle electric shock. While a small minority of the dogs suffered permanent damage, most did not, awakening in full command of their faculties.
[SNIP]
Imagine a stabbing victim brought to the emergency room, his aorta ruptured, or a soldier mortally wounded, his organs ripped apart by shrapnel. Ordinarily, doctors cannot save such patients: they lose blood far more quickly than it can be replaced; moreover, the underlying trauma requires hours of painstaking repair. But imagine doctors buying time with the help of an infusion of an ice-cold solution, then parking their patients at death's door while they repair and then revive them.
Such a day may soon be at hand. Assuming the financing materializes, the Safar Center will coordinate human trials in the next two years (using patients who, after arriving at a trauma center, suffer cardiac arrest from massive blood loss).
[SNIP]
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I remember a similar experiment in the 80's.
ping!
I think there was a movie (rather non-scientific, though) that had this theme. Flatliners?
Big Deal - Democrats have bringing back the dead (to vote) for years :o).
Maybe this is what they will do to Tookie. That way, they can say the execution was carried out, and in fact, he's served his life term & can now go free.
The fact that these pups met the clinical definition of being dead only points to the inadequacy of the defnition.
I don't know much, but I know what dead is. You don't come back. (He did, of course, but you're not Him!)
Where's PETA stand on this abomination?
That's why they used the term "clinically dead," seeing as there is no way for us to measure the time at which the soul leaves the body.
unless of course, you see someone vote Democrat for the first time... (sorry, I couldn't resist!)
They are not killed, nor are they brought back to life. the headline is totally misleading.
Big deal. We used to do this with crawfish for years. If you catch a sack of crawfish and don't have time for a boil right away, put em in an ice chest covered with ice or in the fridge. Several hours later while the pot is coming to a boil, get out the sack and spray with water and watch them come back to life.
Maybe the dogs came back to life as zombie muslims.
Thanks for the laugh. No need to ~try~ to resist. Resistance is futile.
The amount of time that we can suspend "life" has been increasing for some time. Eventually it will be indefinite, and we will have a tool that will allow us to reach the stars.
I share your confidence in the potential of science to continue to march spectacularly forward.
I am less sanguine that civilized conditions sufficient to sustain high science will persist on this earth long enough for such future to arrive. :-(
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