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Human Hibernation on the Horizon?
Mincemeat.net writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists at University of Washington have successfully induced a state of extreme hibernation in mice. The mice suffered no ill effects. Naturally, testing in larger animals will ensue. Humans wouldn't necessarily appreciate the smell of hydrogen sulfide while being placed into suspended animation. However, the applications are numerous if the usage of similar techniques can be applied to us. Cancer treatment, delaying death from injuries, interplanetary expeditions top the lists of possibilities. While it's not a quick freeze, maybe Fry will be able to meet Bender after all."
Funny, Hydrogen Sulfide is a common enough contaminant in ground (well) water systems as well as a byproduct of oil refineries. It deprives the brain of oxygen and causes what IIRC is called "blowdown" or "knockdown" in oil refineries when people momentarily pass out.
6x9=42
...an instant coast-to-coast flight.... "Fifth Element" is coming true. :)
-Palal
Hibernation has been taking place in people since geeks took to their parents' basements.
Now that they've got that done, they can work on getting people to function on less sleep. I want to be a microsleeper.
I'm up for a little hibernation for space travel, but for medical aid? Aren't we already saving too many people who should be dead and thereby contributing greatly to world problems like overcrowding and world hunger and fun stuff?
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Here
I don't want to read
So I'll be alive when Duke Nukem Forever is finally released. :)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
why? oh why did it have to be THAT molecule?
Free electronics!
Wake me up when the Olson Twins are legal.
Wait, nevermind...
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Injectable Hybernation. I'm sure this can't be abused in any way whatsoever.
"Finally, after being in a constant state of hibernation for the last fifty years, I am ready to greet the future!"
"Yeah...about that...we all kinda went in after you...so science and technology is about at the same point you left off."
"So I still have cancer?"
"Technically, yes. But hey, at least that asteroid never hit...right?"
One of the effects of hydrogen sulphide exposure is that is "paralyses" the sense of smell before a fatal dose is reached. This is normally very dangerous as people can think they have left the contaminated area while continuing in fact to breathe in more of the toxic gas.
So chances are you wouldn't have to put up with the smell too long, before you either stop smelling, die horribly or maybe just go into suspended animation.
Bender isn't really an alchoholic in the sense a human would be. In Futurama alcohol is fuel for robots, and they consider not drinking to be like alcoholism.
It's funny that Futurama has the technological development of two distinct and competing technologies for longevity. Fry gets frozen in the chrogenics centre, wakes up in the future and, a few episodes later, discovers that celebrities live on as brains in jars. If we had the technology to keep a human brain alive and kicking I'd much prefer that to getting my head lopped off and frozen in the hope that a sufficiently advanced technology will one day be able to revive me. Even if it ment I had to spend the rest of my days as a body-less paraplegic in a wheelchair I think I'd rather that than to die from cancer.
Hybernation offers a third technology. Instead of lopping off my head at the first sign of cancer, you could put my body into hybernation and keep my brain active with regular stimulation. Hopefully you could do it by jacking me into a video game. I could handle living in MxO, as long as it was on a non-hostile server. Maybe I could even earn a living as a member of the Live Events team.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hey, I was frozen, I know what guy wants to hear first: the bathroom's that way.
</end of obligatory Futurama quote>
And what strikes me right off (because of my field) is, if a 'hibernation' state can be easily and mobily achieved, you could save a LOT of critical cases by slowing them down right at the point of injury or on the ambulance, maybe even before moving them. That would have a definite positive benefit for sure, though thinking about flying through space in slo-mo is a cool vision too, for sure. =)
-chitlenz
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
Letter to my lawyer
Enclosed in this envelope is my account information. Please wake me up when I can afford a decent spaceship.
Thank you
PS. ZZZZZzzzzzzzz
The article and research paper note that they placed the mice in the hibernation state for six hours, without any long-term effects. Unfortunately, I can't find in either the article or paper if they tried longer hibernation periods. If they haven't, I suppose that's the next logical thing to try. Looking at their figures, it seems that the 6 hour mark is about when the body temperature finally finishes asymptoting down to the ambient temperature.
Anyways, here's the research abstract from Science:
H2S Induces a Suspended Animation-Like State in Mice
Eric Blackstone, Mike Morrison, Mark B. Roth
Mammals normally maintain their core body temperature (CBT) despite changes in environmental temperature. Exceptions to this norm include suspended animation-like states such as hibernation, torpor, and estivation. These states are all characterized by marked decreases in metabolic rate, followed by a loss of homeothermic control in which the animal's CBT approaches that of the environment. We report that hydrogen sulfide can induce a suspended animation-like state in a nonhibernating species, the house mouse (Mus musculus). This state is readily reversible and does not appear to harm the animal. This suggests the possibility of inducing suspended animation-like states for medical applications.
Really, I've done this. I hacked my deep freeze to cryogenically freeze me and let me awake in the year 2211. I set up a Unix server to run it all and made sure I had power available until then at least by having my power bill paid from an account into which I deposited $263. I figured the compounding interest over that time would more than pay for the power plus give me a nice nest egg when I awoke. Assuming they still used money in those days. I put myself to sleep on Februray 4th, 2003. Unfortunately I had forgotten to put out dog food for the time I was going to be asleep and poor old Turing (the dog) got a bit restless and he ended up pulling the power on that Unix box. Well, the freezer defrosted, the door popped open and I awoke. First thing I did was turn on the TV. MTV in fact and wow, everything was so different than before. I saw nothing I recognised. I was convinced I had awoken in my choosen time. ThenI looked at my watch and it was February 5th. 2003. Damn the fast moving and ever changing world of popular music.
From eating you alive? Metabolism is down to 10% of normal conditions and almost all of our enzymes have an optimum around 310 K (37 Degrees C). Immune cells won't be very active in hibernation (282 K, 11 degrees C), while some microorganisms flourish at that temperature. Just put a piece of cheese in your fridge, wait two months and take a look to see what the effects can be.
Actually there's probably already a couple of billion of them on your skin and completely sterilizing a human being (alive) is long from possible. Six hours of hibernation is one thing, but I wouldn't want to try this for more than a day.
Our penal system is based on the "Penetentiary" concept developed by the Quakers. Basically, sitting in a room, unable to leave, and deprived of your senses gives you time to think about your crimes. It also turned out to be a reasonably heinous form of psychological torture.
So around the 1960s they watered down the Penetentiary concept, and we got what is more or less the modern "Convict Warehouse". Fitting as many bodies as possible into a confined space without them killing each other.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Mice are also much smaller than humans (yes a statement of the obvious) and so their thermal mass is much slower - i.e. they cool down MUCH faster due to their increased surface area to mass ratio. I'll try to not become too enthusiastic until I see some larger animal studies - preferrably on cats (not dogs please - I like them) or also on a few of the weird looking guys who hang out at the gas station by my house.
..........FULL STOP.
As hibernation tech increases you can bet many will pay millions for it, and why not? All we need now is some megacorp to set up a freezing station on the moon to store all those human popsicles and they will be billionaires.
I doubt you would be so quick to condemn someone to death rather than hibernation if it was your life on the line.
at least airlines wont have to;
1. put up with idiotic customers
2. serve drinks and food
3. show entertainment
4. have good leg room
Just pack up em like cargo as tight as it can go.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Fry: "You're a robot, why do you need to drink?"
;)
Bender: "I don't need to drink! I can quit any time I want!"
It's not as funny without the voices..
The trouble is, not all criminals care about what they've done. Some of them just don't feel pity or remorse.
CS Lewis argued against a purely penetentiary model of justice on the grounds that it would lead to disproportionate punishment. If we discount punishment as a motive for putting people in jail, then the only reason to send people to jail is to reform them and protect the public. This means that instead of sending people to jail for a fixed time that matches how much punishment the criminal deserves, it is more logical to imprison people until they see the error of their ways and are deemed safe to release. But in some cases this could take a very long time, and there are some criminals who will never be reformed.
Are we really willing to put people in jail indefinitely? It was proposed here in the UK that "psycopathic" criminals who were judged a permanent danger could be subject to open-ended detention. This met widespread opposition from people who, I assume, feel that jail sentences should fit the crime (ie, they believe in just and proportionate punishment, rather than simply the necessary evil of reformative incarceration).
As another Slashdotter once put it, imagine if someone was in jail for sharing MP3s online. Should they stay there until they can convince the parole board that they're sorry and won't do it again, even if that takes years? I would say that the punishment for copyright infringement should be proportionate to the harm it causes. Those who make illegal copies should only be punished as much as their crime deserves to be punished. Under a purely penetentiary regime, the whole question of punishment and how much a person deserves to be punished is irrelevant.
Reforming criminals is a vital part of the justice system, but I wouldn't like a society where it was the only part. I don't believe in insanely heavy penalties for file sharing. Likewise I would be angered if a murderer got off with a light sentence on the grounds that he was unlikely to do it again.
I mean since mice can't talk how do they know how this affects their memories? The normal human brain cannot go without oxygen for 5 minutes, and while oxygen wouldn't be completely cut off from the brain, it would still be greatly reduced. I wonder if this would send the brain into a "skeleton system" type of environment where it keeps on only the bare essentials to survive and therefore shuts out memories. Humans breathe roughly 12 - 20 times per minute, if we apply the rate change of the mouse (1/12 it's normal rate) then humans would be breathing between 1 and 1.5 times a minute. I wonder if this would be enough oxygen for the brain to retain everything that it needs so when the person wakes up they can still perfrom their lives and jobs.
The Technomancer
"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active."-
Or it would just make it even harder to get rid of evil people with good networking skills. Right now, no matter how bad an evil dictator or tycoon is you can at least count on the fact that someday the bastard will die.
Any advance in longevity technologies will have to be accompanied by advances in assassin tech.
It will drop you for a little more than "momentarily". H2S has the capacity to kill at less than 100ppm, depending on how long your exposure is. Yes, it will make you pass out -- but you might never wake up.
It's nasty stuff and all refineries, pipelines, and other oil/gas installations are trained about H2S and it's risks. Where H2S is present in the lines, you will see many of the technicians wearing portable H2S monitors.
(BTW, I sell H2S detectors for natural gas custody transfer points. Not the portable ones I spoke about but large scale one for pipeline intersections)
The uses are almost endless. Anyone can build a home H2S chamber and just shut themselves down for days at a time. I can envision a time when people are freed of the need to wait for anything. Spiderman 7 coming out in 15 days and you just can't wait? Hop in the chamber, dial it up for 14 days and 23 hours, and just "chill out".
The cool thing is that since metabolic activity cease, your cells would stop dividing, and therefore the aging process would cease as well. Opportunistic viruses would not multiply since they require cellular mitosis, and most bacteria would also take a nap.
I would, however, worry about anaerobic bacteria, especially the kind that thrive on sulfur gases; they'd literally eat you for lunch while you were out like a light. If even one of those suckers got inside, then when someone opened your chamber six months from now you'd be pretty much a skeleton with a mass of oozing, smelly residues--ewwwww!
I would also wonder about undigested food sitting in your stomach and small intestine for days or months, not to mention feces still in the colon. You want to move that stuff through before you shut down the system. On second thought I think I'll wait before trying this one out.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
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No longer use my nose
The kittens run away from me and hide
Weird things between my toes
And people often think something has died.
I climb a lonely hill
On the Boulevard of Bad Hygiene
I frighten CowboyNeal
But he could learn to love it if he tried.
Something has died? Something has died.
Something has died? Something has...
My B.O.'s the only thing that walks beside me.
My B.O. makes strong men think of suiciding.
My Odor kills the flowers and the pine trees.
Smells like, something has died.
Arrgh ack, Arrgh ack, Arrgh ack, *Cough* *Cough*
Arrgh ack, Arrgh ack, Arrgh ack.
I'm walking down the line
diners flee the buffet so that's fine
so I can take my time
And eat onions, cabbage and... *sniff* something has died.
I can shower, fine.
Or I could on go slashdot tonight.
Closed window, pull the blinds.
But the neighbours think something has died.
Something has died? Something has died.
Something has died? Something has...
My B.O.'s clings to surfaces behind me
My B.O.'s beyond a mortal understanding
Sometimes they wish someone would put me in a... um...
Plastic bag, something has died.
Arrgh ack, Arrgh ack, Arrgh ack, *Cough* *Cough*
Arrgh ack, Arrgh ack, Arrgh ack.
Something has died? Something has...
I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Bad Hygiene
City evacuates
in it's pants and something has died.
My B.O. is worse than a Bush e-con-omy.
My B.O. gets UN weapons inspectors antsy.
My Odor could be casus beli if they could find me.
I think, Something has died.
from amiright.com