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Reanimated Lobsters?

SYFer writes "Trufresh, a Connecticut-based frozen food company claims that lobsters frozen with its special freezing process sometimes come back to life when thawed. If these claims prove true, will the dubiously regarded field of "cryonics" finally get some respect?" If people were more like lobsters, maybe. The company's success rate at reviving lobsters after short-term freezing (at -40 degrees) is 12 out of 200.

15 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Don't forget... by wizbit · · Score: 4, Funny
  2. Ice Fishing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I used to go ice fishing as a kid. We'd just throw the fish on the snow. They'd freeze solid. At home we'd toss them in water and they all came back do life, only to die minutes later. Clearly the article is about something quite different, but I'm not stunned.

    1. Re: Ice Fishing by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny


      > My comment can be read two different ways. The fish died because we killed them. I have no idea how long they would survive if we left them alone.

      Kill them once, shame on you; kill them twice, shame on them.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    2. Re: Ice Fishing by ibbey · · Score: 4, Funny

      Kill them once, shame on you; kill them twice, shame on them.

      I think a certain bowl of Petunias would disagree with you on this one...

  3. Not that big of a deal... by ibbey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I worked in Alaska on a crab processing ship, & we used to do the same thing to crabs all the time. You'd toss them in the brine (salt water cooled well below freezing) for a few minutes & they'd come back to life pretty consistently. Crab's (& presumably lobsters as well) are pretty simple life forms, so they respond just fine to the freezing.

  4. Poor lobsters by Anonymous+Crowhead · · Score: 5, Funny

    Frozen to death, reanimated, then boiled to death.

  5. Re:A Wonderful Innovation for the Culinary Industr by RobertB-DC · · Score: 4, Funny

    just freeze 'em til you need your customer to pick out his lobster, then kill him and cook it!

    But if you kill your customer, who will pay for your delicious lobster dinnner?

    (Comment is particularly disconcerting coming from a user named "Meneudo"...)

    --
    Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
  6. Re:Selective breeding by datababe72 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It also presumes that the survival of any single lobster is due to some positive genetic component, and not just random chance or subtle variations in the freezing technique/time frozen. The article doesn't really have enough detail to tell whether or not their techniques are rigorously standardized.

    I don't know enough about lobsters to know whether there is a plausible genetic component. I do know that certain types of deep sea fish have proteins that bind to ice particles in their blood, thereby allowing them to live happily in very, very cold water. The proteins are called antifreeze proteins. A quick search on PubMed turned up no mention of whether or not they exist in lobsters, but they do seem to exist in bacteria and plants as well as the arctic fish I was originally thinking of.

  7. Flash Freezing... by OneFix+Away · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's called flash freezing and it works...in theory...

    Problem is, ice crystals form in the soft tissue...in humans, ice crystals form inside of the brain tissue and cause brain damage. This is the problem with cryogenics...

    If we fix the ice crystal problem, we still can't fix the damaged tissue in those folks that have frozen their bodies/heads/etc before...

    This is why it's pretty dumb to pay to be frozen until we can reverse the process and revive a person...

  8. I can imagine the next spam mail I get... by stienman · · Score: 4, Funny

    Subject "En1arge y0ur manh0od - then free2e it so it's redy when u are!"

    -Adam

  9. -40 degrees by 3141 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Incidentally, Timothy was totally correct in saying -40 degrees without specifying Celsius or Fahrenheit, because -40 degrees Celsius is the same temperature as -40 degrees Fahrenheit.

    1. Re:-40 degrees by Imperator · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, but I had taken it to be -40 Kelvins.

      --

      Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
  10. Not so breaking news.... by SuccuBUS · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Back in school we did an experiment on mud crabs with the similar results. We progressively cooled them down and measured their responses (forget how). Soon got bored and left them in the freezer. Remembered next day and found them (unsurprisingly) frozen completely solid in a block of ice. Thawed them out and the little buggers walked away. Our teacher nearly fell over in surprise!

    Same thing happens with alpine Wetas (Native NZ crickets). In heavy frosts they freeze solid overnight and thaw out the next day. Research shows they have an antifreeze in their blood which helps to prevent ice xtals forming.

    --
    don't got no stinkin sig
  11. Sure by GCP · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And there's no REAL reason to believe we could fly in space. After all, everyone knows there's no air, so flapping your wings would have no effect.

    Yep. It's pretty dumb to imagine they they'll be able to do things in the future that we don't know how to do already.

    --
    "Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
  12. So? People gamble on longer odds by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They are dead anyway. Adding a tiny percentage of surviving dead no matter how small doesn't sound all that crazy.

    The real problem I am afraid isn't tech. It is why. Why should we want to unfreeze these people in a hundred years? It is not like we are running out of people.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.