Slashdot Mirror
Blood Type: NULL
slank writes: "Oxygent popped up in the latest (print) Wired magazine. It's a milky-looking synthetic oxygen-carrying substance that's intended to replace blood in some cases where transfusions would normally be necessary. This means less donor blood shortages and a lower risk of disease transmission due to contaminated blood. Oxygent also works with all blood types, so there's no chance of making blood type mistakes." Is anyone else thinking of Ash from Alien?
I read the entire site about Oxygent and everywhere it keeps saying how it delivers oxygen to the cells much much more efficiently and quickly than normal blood cells. The first adverse effects occur 2 hours after infusion and that's just elevated body temperature. Oxygent will also thin out your blood due to its small overall size thus allowing for easier blood flow.
My question is, just prior to an athletic event (or even an exam for that matter) you dose up on this stuff. It won't necessarily help with energy delivery but the extra oxygen that hits your muscles and brain cells will help extremely. Muscle fatigue occurs mostly because of lack of oxygen to the muscles after all.
Remember that X-Files episode about people drilling holes in their skulls to allow better oxygen access to the brain and how that would enhance brain functions? Well, this stuff will do it for you with a big shot.
If it can live up to what it claims, it could be really really interesting.
Get a full transfusion, then when you get a cut, you'll bleed milky white, and everyone'll think you're a robot!
Sure. But you'd have problems before you got cut.
I'm sure that this stuff is meant to fill up your bloodstream to avert the most immediate causes of corporal damage from excessive blood loss. But it's not a replacement.
Nutrients are dissolved in your bloodstream, and they feed your cells. You'd very rapidly start to run out of energy. Your body temperature would drop, your heart rate would slow, and you'd die like a campfire with no wood.
Your cells excrete carbon dioxide and other wastes, which are dissolved in your bloodstream and are disposed of by your kidneys and lungs. If, for example, the blood replacement doesn't dissolve CO2, it never osmoises through the cellular membranes, and your cells essentially suffocate.
Does this stuff have a clotting mechanism, or are you going to bleed to death from a paper cut?
And, your immune system is a blood-borne system. With no immune system, you'd be in exactly the same position as an acute AIDS patient.
Either way, this is not a permanent replacement for blood, you're not going to bleed to death in designer colors, and I'm sure this stuff confers absolutely no benefits to your body except as a very temporary replacement in the case of an accident-induced blood shortage.
I wonder how effectively the body will get rid of this stuff as it replaces it?
Fire and Meat. Yummy.