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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.
50*F is 10*C, still not frozen (and who the hell uses Fahrenheit in a medical setting?!). There have been tests with cooled-down mammals including dogs and baboons since the 1950's. I'll get optimistic when they break the 0*C barrier.
Suspending someone in animation has at least one application: the military. I don't know how complicated the process is, but if you can suspend a wounded soldier in a forward area and ship him back to a proper hospital for treatment, then two hours would be an eternity. Of course, suspended animation won't keep a guy alive if he were blown in half, but the forward MASH could do some quick stabilization, freeze him, and send him back for delicate neurosurgery to remove shrapnel from his brain, for example, to minimize damage.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I'm missing something here. What are the ethical problems? It is my belief that my soul is encoded in my pattern of neural connections, and therefore the only way for me to preserve my soul at this time is to preserve my physical brain. In accordance with my belief, I spend my own money on a life insurance policy and name a cryonics company as the beneficiary. Of my own free will I enter into a contract with this cryonics company whereby they agree to place me in suspended animation as soon as possible after I am prounounced dead. Some people want to be cremated, some want to be buried, I want to be frozen. Explain to me the ethical problem here.
Oh, you must mean the ethical problem of society being full of reactionary sanctimonous busy-bodies who think they know what's best for me. I agree, this is a big ethical problem, and thank you for agreeing that they should get off our backs and let us do as we like with our bodies and our estates.
You might be right. But a key point to maintaining soldier morale is making sure they think everything will be done to save them if they are injured.
If you start withholding care that could save their buddies, they'll quickly realize that the care will be withheld from them too - and they're less likely to fight so well.
Soldiers can be pretty pragmatic too...