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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
Hibernation has been taking place in people since geeks took to their parents' basements.
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
"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.
Hey, I was frozen, I know what guy wants to hear first: the bathroom's that way.
</end of obligatory Futurama quote>
I live in Switzerland, you insensitive clod !
From what I've heard, the use of certain acetylated opium derivatives induce a state where one needs less sleep (2hrs/day).
The use has quite some side effects, one of them, in my city at least, seems to be a strong preference for car hifi equipment.
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.
Actually, as a parent I can think of a few times where a few hours of peace could be a really good thing. Now the question is do I administer it to me or the child...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
If you do a little math, you'll see that neither killing people nor exploring space are solutions to overpopulation.
The population is just growing too quickly. We get 75 million new people a year.
Let's start with the easy one -- space colonies. You can start exploring planets all you want, but unless you can figure out a way to ship off more than 75 million people a year, the population is still going to increase on Earth. Think about how many resources and man-hours are required to get seven people into LEO -- we couldn't reduce population by shipping people into space even if the whole world were united behind the project.
Next, let's talk war. Suppose you started a war that lasted a week and killed 1,000,000 people. That's a lot of people in a short amount of time -- it would be horrific. At the end of that week, you'd still have 430,000 more people than you started with! You could drag that war on for ten years, kill half a billion people (more than any war in history), and you'd still be way behind. Sure, you could pull out the nukes, but then you'd be reducing livable space and making a mess for the survivors.
The other thing you have to keep in mind is that many of the people saved by modern medicine are already past child bearing. The sort of people who could afford hiberation treatment would be in wealthy countries where the birth rate is low, anyway.
Everyone dies eventually, so killing a few adults off early doesn't change much in the long term balance sheet. The only practical way to do so is to alter the birth rate.
And one of the best ways to lower birth rates is to raise living standards and give people access to modern medical care (including contraceptives). When the mortality rate drops to some reasonable level and half the family isn't sick from malaria, you don't need to overproduce children just to make sure you'll have enough healthy members in the family.
It's also a lot more efficient for people to have a few healthy children than it is for them to spend resources raising a lot children only to have some large portion of them struck down by one of the four horsemen.
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.