Suspended Animation Tests Successful

chrisb33 writes "Wired News reports that suspended animation tests have been successfully carried out with pigs. From the article: 'Long the domain of transhumanist nut-jobs, cryogenic suspension may be just two years away from clinical trials on humans (presuming someone can solve the sticky ethical problems).'" The pig that was the subject of the article was kept in suspended animation for two hours, and Duggan and his team have successfully suspended hundreds of pigs for an hour at a time. It's still a far cry from a spaceship filled with sleep pods, but would be just the ticket for doctors who need to buy extra time to save lives.

Comments

Re:Welcome

[davidsyes]

You can bet your almost-frozen ass the neither the military NOR the government (of the USA) want to see Iraq-bound-and-wounded soldiers being preserved after being rended into pieces because they were building city-sized oil-draining fortresses in the middle of Iraq.

It won't be like UniSols (from Universal Soldier), but it could be worse. Such soldiers might not be on the recipient list to replace their missing organs or limbs. Even if suspended and reanimated/revived, they still might suffer tissue rejection unless the donate their own stems and other cells PRIOR to shipping out and IF science and government have the skill and the will to store their donor's own spares back home for reattachment/reintegration.

Another moral/ethical/morale issue is this: if soldiers fighthing for CORRUPT (death-deserving) officials can be put into suspended animation for repair and return home, what's to stop the return leg from becoming a return-to-the-front route. After all, not ALL soldiers wounded or maimed will survive or be repairable, so replacements might, as usual, come from the walking-wounded pool until they, too, are too shattered and too over-re-built to fight anymore. Then, they won't be allowed to RETURN home because they'll be a political and security nightmare for such governments to deal with.

Maybe the years-ago Jet Li movie and those two Trek episodes in which drugged purpose-built soldiers topple their uncouth governments are not so far ahead in the future afterall....