Slashdot Mirror
Freeze Recovery Drug - Step Toward Suspended Animation?
arete writes "Apparently a simple injection (in rats and mice so far) can revive body functions before warming. Since you're cold, your brain isn't using oxygen, and doesn't go into oxygen deprivation. But it lets breathing and autonomic functions (like shivering) restart even in the absence of a brain restart. Sounds to me like a big leap towards suspended animation. Of course, you can't be frozen below 0 C using this techique, because all your cells explode when the water freezes. Plausibly with some mild oxygen influx you wouldn't need to be below 0 C, though. " I think I'll wait a while before planning my interstellar trip, tho'.
I think its a different story for mammals which tend to be more delicate than insects. Not to mention hibernation is only good for so long, just because this animal can stay near frozen for 1 year doesnt mean it can do 20.
Let's see... In a thousand years when mankind is capable of unfreezing these carcasses and reviving them back into living people, what will honestly be their reason for doing so? They'll look back in their history "books" and see that our generation was characterized by people who over-consumed, over-polluted, intellectually under-performed (for the most part), and was also characterized by many people who become more excited by the entrance music of some WWF wrestler than by fantastic scientific discoveries that accomplish real work and have practical applications. Right...I'm sure they'll be quick to unfreeze the carcasses circa 20th century - early 21st century:)
Worse yet, you could be stuck in that dark tunnel between your body and "the Light" for 1000 years. Sure it's fun to go sliding through it really fast, but after a few decades, it gets rather boring just sitting there watching the souls go by.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
There has been work on the lysing of cells due to freezing. Antifreeze proteins in Antartic and Arctic fish bind to the ice crystals as they grow allowing them only to grow basally. If anyone is interested I have a few citations for reviews I could find. Ta ta for now ladies!
I don't know -- better head than dead.
(sorry)
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Maybe they could inject some that stuff into the US presidential race and put an end to this nepotistic nonsense.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Note that any form of re-animation that involves temperature below 0C would require cellular re-construction due to the tearing of cell walls caused by growing ice crystals on the interior of every cell. Water, as you know, becomes less dense and thus of greater volume as it freezes, and the crystals that form expand so that cell walls become torn. Also, the fat cells surounding nerve inter-connections may cut the nerve, causing massive brain failure.
The simple fact is, without nanotechnology to repair this vast damage, revival of all the 'frozen-in-nitrogen-suspended-animation' people is HIGHLY unlikly.
This is perhaps MUCH more applicable to transporting organs for transport, and perhaps in reviving hipothermia victims who havn't frozen solid yet.
Hemos is correct
Though it's a great advancement
I won't beta test
For a good review of the problems that need to be overcome to achieve suspended animation, see The Contributions of Low Temperature Science to Cryobanking and the Prospect of Suspended Animation for Manned Space Travel by Michael J. Taylor, Ph.D., Debra J. Battjes Siler, M.S., John R. Walsh, Ph.D., Kelvin G.M. Brockbank, Ph.D. in Graft, May 2050, volume 3, issue 3 (also known as Volume 3, Issue 3, May/June 2000).
In my opinion, the currently most likely near term pathway to suspended animation lies in the use of vitrification. Vitrification involves introducing a sufficiently high concentration of cryoprotectant into an organ such that upon cooling, the fluid within the organ forms a glass instead of a crystal, thereby avoiding the problem of ice crystallization altogether. Please see this review article Organ Cryopreservation by Greg Fahy, PhD. for a succinct review of the approach and numerous references to the available literature.
Finally, I would caution that the New Scientist is not a particularly discriminating science news source. For example, see the September 28, 1996 New Scientist article (p.22) regarding Olga Visser, a South African perfusionist at the University of Pretoria, who claimed that she had found a technique for successfully cryopreserving rat hearts at liquid nitrogen temperatures. In cryobiology circles, this is like someone claiming a cure for cancer. It is one of the "big problems" in cryobiology, that a number of scientists have spent decades trying to solve. Visser's claim could not be duplicated and were never published in a peer reviewed journal. Even worse, Visser later claimed that the same drug she used to achieve the holy grail of cryobiology, dimethylformamide, was also a cure for AIDS.
I know some of those people planning to freeze their heads when they die, and they do have some reasons-- by isolating the head, the freezing process can be conducted more carefully with less body mass to mess with in the limited timeframe before the body decays too much after death. And they expect that the level of nanotechnology neccessary for the cell-repair functions needed for proper 'reanimation' will also be able to either create a new body for them or 'upload' their consciousness into a non-biological state. For further information on cryonics, you can visit Alcor Life Extension Foundation's site (they do head-freezes) or the Cryonics Institute (they only do whole bodies).
---
---
Impossible means no one's done it yet.
In Chapter 9 of Drexler's Engines of Creation, the author states, "It is a common myth that freezing bursts cells; in fact, freezing damage is more subtle than this - so subtle that it often does no lasting harm. Frozen sperm regularly produces healthy babies. Some human beings now alive have survived being frozen solid at liquid nitrogen temperatures - when they were early embryos."
I personally recommend a read of the entire book (it's all online), but this chapter seems to have the most to do with the discussion.
"Feel a glory in so rolling / on the human heart a stone" --E. A. Poe, "The Bells"
Suspended Animation: The condition which arises when your Windoze 9X box freezes while attempting to animate your 3DSMAX project.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
One of the reasons I think the gradual method is better is because your own biological cells are constantly replacing themselves and yet one doesn't have an end of one's consciousness due to the gradual replacement. Like the "if you gradually replace every part of a car (or computer), it's still the same car (or computer)" thing. By replacing the neurons gradually, with functionally-identical technological counterparts, the other neurons could incorporate the replacements into the functioning of the brain, and hence one's consciousness, until the last biological one has been replaced and *you* are still there but with a non-biological brain.
The gradualness is what makes the difference, in my opinion. Another possible method of "soft"-uploading, although even more theoretical, is that if/when direct neuro-computer interfaces become available, there is something of a possibility that if someone were to spend enough time with their mind joined with the computer, their consciousness would gradually "spread" to the computer and remain active even once the original biological brain becomes inactive. (All totally theoretical for now, of course. :-) ) But once again, the gradualness of the process is what I think is the key to *you* being the one in the computer and not merely a duplicate of you. Just my opinion.
---
---
Impossible means no one's done it yet.