Suspended Animation and Immortality

[Kanzler]

This month, the world's first attempts at placing humans in suspended animation using a new technique will take place at the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- not for space travel, but to save lives.

The technique will initially be used on 10 patients whose wounds would otherwise be lethal in an attempt to buy the surgeons some time. It works, as suggested by science fiction, by cooling the body -- but not by applying an external temperature change.

Instead, a team of surgeons will remove all of the patient's blood, replacing it with a cold saline solution. This will cool the body, slowing its functions to a halt and reducing the need for oxygen. Effects similar to this have been seen in accidents: Swedish Anna Bågenholm survived trapped under a layer of ice in freezing water for 80 minutes in a skiing accident; Japanese Mitsutaka Uchikoshi survived 24 days without food or water by entering a state of hypothermic hibernation.

"We are suspending life, but we don't like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction," Doctor Samuel Tisherman, the surgeon who will lead the trial, told New Scientist. "So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation."

The technique was developed by Doctor Peter Rhee, who successfully managed to test it on pigs in the year 2000. In 2006, Dr Rhee and his colleagues published the results of their subsequent research. After inducing fatal wounds in the pigs by cutting their arteries with scalpels, the team replaced the pigs' blood with saline, which lowered their body temperature to 10 degrees Celsius.

All of the control pigs, whose body temperature was left alone, died. The pigs who were warmed back up at a medium speed demonstrated a 90 percent survival rate, although some of their hearts had to be given a jump start (the pigs that were warmed up slow and fast had a 50 and 30 per cent survival rate respectively). Afterwards, the pigs demonstrated no physical or cognitive impairment.

The technique, therefore, will only be used as an emergency measure on patients who have suffered cardiac arrest after severe traumatic injury, with their chest cavity open and having lost at least half their blood already -- injuries that see only a seven percent survival rate. The survival rate of these patients will then be measured against a control group that has not received the treatment before further testing can begin.

It's not science fiction quite yet -- a human body can only be safely placed under these conditions for a maximum of a few hours -- but even if it raises the survival rate just the little, it will be a massive step forward.

Is the future now? "Suspended animation" techniques are ready to be fielded on human subjects facing lethal injuries. The blood is drained and replaced with a saline solution which will cool the body giving surgeons more time to operate. Right now the technique may extend lives by hours, but perhaps it can improve until lives are extended by days, months, even years.

Do you think this technology will continue to develop until lives can be preserved indefinitely? Would you use such a technology to preserve yourself until technology for "true" immortality is developed? What are ethical issues (pros and cons) surrounding immortality? Are we humans "playing God" when we develop the ability to extend life? How far is too far?

Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/suspended-animation-trials-to-begin-on-humans/

 

[PokemonLeagueChamp]

Wouldn't be the first time we've gone off playing God, I doubt it'll be the last.

And it's a far cry to go from an extreme technique used to stabilize patients for a procedure that might otherwise kill them to extending life for any significant period, let alone immortality.

 

[Deleted member 211486]

I'm very hopeful for this experiment. It stands as one more footstep to the progress of the scientific community, and definitely not "playing God". Kudos to those surgeons and trauma patients.

 

[Oryx]

Has science gone too far???

On a serious note, this is no more playing God than restarting a heart, even less so probably. I have to wonder when this will become a commercial procedure, and rich people suspend themselves while poor people have no choice but to die.

 

[twocows]

Cryonics is my ultimate personal goal. I don't know if it will work, but if there's even a 1 in 10 chance I could live for, say, another 100 years past my life expectancy? That's well worth it.

The general procedure is to take out a life insurance policy on yourself and list whatever company is performing the procedure as the recipient. I'll probably do that once I've got a bit more money.

 

[BadPokemon]

I don't think it is "playing God". It may or may not be morally right- I don't know. As long as it's saving lives, and not used in harmful ways, I guess it's fine. In fact, I think it's ingenious.

I have heard a theory that if you are put in a train and it goes fast enough (faster than speed of light), you can live forever. The outside world goes on as normal, but inside the train everything slows down. Is this similar? Is this possible? I don't know. It's just a theory.

Back with the main topic, the cold slows things down. Hear speeds things up (bodies rot faster in heat). If it is cold enough, the body could essentially last an absurd amount of time. I just don't know about the brain and heart being able to function correctly after the time. What about breathing? Does the cold slow down the body so much, everything barely works? Just enough? What about food and water? Does this process slow down time similar to the train?

 

[Livewire]

But does the cool down slow the body's cellular activity, too? You can't have real immortality unless you can bypass the Hayflick limit/senescence (amount of times cells can divide), so. But even still, if you can save lives with it, then I think it's worth looking into.

As for the idea of immortality, I think I would like the idea of living indefinitely, or being able to be witness to many many years beyond a human life span's worth of history.

 

[PortableCatnip]

I read a book called "The Timekeeper" and there was a very rich man (14th in the world) that was diagnosed with cancer. He decided he wanted to freeze himself until future scientists could bring him back. Although, later in the book, he realized that God gives you a limited time for a reason; it's so you can cherish every day you have. Although I personally don't believe in god, I kind of think reviving yourself in the future is just cheating :x especially since only the rich can do it.

 

[twocows]

But does the cool down slow the body's cellular activity, too? You can't have real immortality unless you can bypass the Hayflick limit/senescence (amount of times cells can divide), so. But even still, if you can save lives with it, then I think it's worth looking into.

As for the idea of immortality, I think I would like the idea of living indefinitely, or being able to be witness to many many years beyond a human life span's worth of history.

There are already theories being put to the test on how to bypass that particular limit. The point of cryonics isn't to save you now, though, it's to preserve you until such a time when the health issues have been solved.

only the rich can do it.

Not true. As I said earlier, the general way to go about it is to take out a life insurance policy on yourself and pay into that. That's affordable on many peoples' budgets.

 

[griever7x]

I certainly hope it will be continued being developed.
What if the great men of history could be preserved, so as to be called in times of need?
Optimistically, this kind of technology would enable ill people with no hopes of recovery by today's technological standards to be suspended, so that in a remote future, when said technologies will be available, they may be brought back from suspension and live the lives they could not live in the past.
We are still far from this, though. Suspension techniques are still primitive. Probably all the people already suspended as of today are in a state that cannot be reverted; even if a technology in the future would normally allow a recovery, the technology utilized now to preserve them is simply too bad.
Still, I can only think of religious people not accepting this kind of technology, but there is nothing inherently bad about it, it's just how it will be used by us ( and as with everything with potential, there will be a few rich people trying to exploit this for their own agenda ).

 

[Deleted member 211486]

Cryonics is my ultimate personal goal. I don't know if it will work, but if there's even a 1 in 10 chance I could live for, say, another 100 years past my life expectancy? That's well worth it.

The general procedure is to take out a life insurance policy on yourself and list whatever company is performing the procedure as the recipient. I'll probably do that once I've got a bit more money.

Does that mean you actually plan to freeze yourself before dying? :)

 

[twocows]

Does that mean you actually plan to freeze yourself before dying? :)

Before or shortly after. I would like to, yes.